Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 306

some real­ly out­stand­ing arti­cles this week

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

This is vol­ume 306, which is an inter­est­ing num­ber because 306 = 71 + 73 + 79 + 83 and is there­fore the sum of con­sec­u­tive primes.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Amer­i­can Passover (Jon­ah Gold­berg, The Dis­patch): “June­teenth is a good thing for all Amer­i­cans, not just black Amer­i­cans, to cel­e­brate.… I’m at a loss to under­stand why cel­e­brat­ing the end of slav­ery is any­thing but good. In par­tic­u­lar, I’m at a loss to under­stand why see­ing white Amer­i­cans cel­e­brate the end of slav­ery is any­thing but good.”
  2. What We Learned Doing Fast Grants (Patrick Col­li­son, Tyler Cowen, and Patrick Hsu, Future): “In our sur­vey of the sci­en­tists who received Fast Grants, 78% said that they would change their research pro­gram ‘a lot’ if their exist­ing fund­ing could be spent in an uncon­strained fash­ion. We find this num­ber to be far too high: the cur­rent grant fund­ing appa­ra­tus does not allow some of the best sci­en­tists in the world to pur­sue the research agen­das that they them­selves think are best. Sci­en­tists are in the para­dox­i­cal posi­tion of being deemed the very best peo­ple to fund in order to make impor­tant dis­cov­er­ies but not so trust­wor­thy that they should be able to decide what work would actu­al­ly make the most sense!” EXTREMELY worth read­ing.
  3. Why Has “Iver­mectin” Become a Dirty Word? (Matt Taib­bi, Sub­stack): “A Catch-22 seemed to be ensnar­ing sci­ence. With the world des­per­ate for news about an unprece­dent­ed dis­as­ter, Sil­i­con Val­ley had essen­tial­ly decid­ed to dis­al­low dis­cus­sion of a poten­tial solu­tion — dis­al­low calls for more research and more study — because not enough research and study had been done.”
    • This is ridicu­lous. Dig into it your­self — it’s crazy­town. The pre­scient Lewis nailed it years ago: “Of all tyran­nies, a tyran­ny sin­cere­ly exer­cised for the good of its vic­tims may be the most oppres­sive. It would be bet­ter to live under rob­ber barons than under omnipo­tent moral busy­bod­ies. The rob­ber baron’s cru­el­ty may some­times sleep, his cupid­i­ty may at some point be sati­at­ed; but those who tor­ment us for our own good will tor­ment us with­out end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” (from the under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed God in the Dock: Essays on The­ol­o­gy and Ethics)
  4. Chris­tians, Beware the Blame Game (Carl True­man, First Things): “By all means, call out the moral fail­ings of Chris­tians, con­gre­ga­tions and denom­i­na­tions, left and right; but be spe­cif­ic, do so with­out slan­der and vit­ri­ol, and make a clear dis­tinc­tion between the church and the spe­cif­ic fail­ings to which you allude in order to pro­mote clear think­ing. And remember—if your cri­tique of Chris­tians is not bal­anced by a Pauline empha­sis on the church, the body of Christ, as the answer to the world’s prob­lems, you ulti­mate­ly offer no true Chris­t­ian com­men­tary on the con­tem­po­rary scene. For as soon as you see the church her­self as part of the prob­lem, you have lost the gospel and deprived your­self and your audi­ence of hope.”
  5. Some reli­gious free­dom news and com­men­tary:
    • Four Things You Need to Know After a Huge Day at SCOTUS (David French, The Dis­patch): “Very few com­ments about the Ful­ton case have empha­sized a crit­i­cal part of its ruling—that Philadel­phia has very lim­it­ed abil­i­ty to force city con­trac­tors to con­tract away their First Amend­ment rights.… When the gov­ern­ment expands—and gov­ern­ment con­tracts and gov­ern­ment funds touch more Amer­i­can lives and institutions—opposing par­ti­sans fre­quent­ly demand that those funds come with ide­o­log­i­cal strings attached.” Sad­ly pay­walled, but the best com­men­tary on the rul­ing I’ve read. If you’re an avid news con­sumer, The Dis­patch is well worth a sub­scrip­tion.
    • From the court, a vin­di­ca­tion of faith-based ser­vice. From Ali­to, a blue­print for the future. (Andrea Pic­ciot­ti-Bay­er, SCO­TUS­blog): “At the end of the day, Ful­ton is an impor­tant rebuke to overzeal­ous gov­ern­ment offi­cials who weaponize anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion laws against tra­di­tion­al reli­gious belief. Brace your­self for the response of dis­grun­tled pro­gres­sives.”
    • Supreme Court Backs Catholic Agency in Case on Gay Rights and Fos­ter Care (Adam Lip­tak, New York Times): “The deci­sion, in the lat­est clash between antidis­crim­i­na­tion prin­ci­ples and claims of con­science, was a set­back for gay rights and fur­ther evi­dence that reli­gious groups almost always pre­vail in the cur­rent court.”
    • Jus­tice Depart­ment says it can defend reli­gious school­s’ exemp­tion from anti-LGBTQ dis­crim­i­na­tion laws (Michelle Boorstein, Wash­ing­ton Post): “To oth­ers, includ­ing sup­port­ers of Pres­i­dent Biden, the admin­is­tra­tion had no oth­er option, since fed­er­al civ­il rights law regard­ing edu­ca­tion — called Title IX — exempts reli­gion. They not­ed the pur­pose of the department’s fil­ing, which was to block con­ser­v­a­tive reli­gious groups from becom­ing par­ties to the law­suit, argu­ing the agency can defend the exemp­tion on its own.”
    • A frank analy­sis of the dynam­ics: No, the Biden Admin­is­tra­tion Isn’t Betray­ing Its Sup­port for LGBTQ Rights (Mark Joseph Stern, Slate): “The best way to pre­vent the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry from adopt­ing CCCU’s extreme stance is to stop the orga­ni­za­tion from mak­ing it before a court in the first place. That is pre­sum­ably one rea­son why the Jus­tice Depart­ment strong­ly opposed the group’s request to inter­vene, insist­ing on Tues­day that the admin­is­tra­tion can defend the Title IX exemp­tion just fine by itself. The DOJ’s lat­est fil­ing does not imply that the agency is exceed­ing­ly enthu­si­as­tic about the exemp­tion, but rather that the Biden admin­is­tra­tion can be trust­ed to sup­port the law’s legal­i­ty in court.”
  6. The Per­il of Politi­ciz­ing Sci­ence (Anna I. Krylov, The Jour­nal of Phys­i­cal Chem­istry Let­ters): “The Cold War is a dis­tant mem­o­ry and the coun­try shown on my birth cer­tifi­cate and school and uni­ver­si­ty diplo­mas, the USSR, is no longer on the map. But I find myself expe­ri­enc­ing its lega­cy some thou­sands of miles to the west, as if I am liv­ing in an Orwellian twi­light zone. I wit­ness ever-increas­ing attempts to sub­ject sci­ence and edu­ca­tion to ide­o­log­i­cal con­trol and cen­sor­ship. Just as in Sovi­et times, the cen­sor­ship is being jus­ti­fied by the greater good.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of chem­istry at USC.
  7. Some Stan­ford news:
    • Stan­ford ther­a­pists allege ‘hostile cli­mate’ for Jews in the work­place (Gabe Stut­man, Jew­ish News of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia): “Two Jew­ish men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als at Stanford’s on-cam­pus coun­sel­ing clin­ic have filed work­place dis­crim­i­na­tion com­plaints after what they call ‘severe and per­sis­tent’ anti-Jew­ish harass­ment from col­leagues. Dr. Ronald Albuch­er, a psy­chi­a­trist and asso­ciate pro­fes­sor in the med­ical school, and Sheila Levin, a ther­a­pist spe­cial­iz­ing in eat­ing dis­or­ders, describe being pressed into join­ing a ‘white­ness’ affin­i­ty group by staffers with the Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty and Inclu­sion pro­gram, being told they were ‘priv­i­leged,’ and see­ing anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents down­played.”
    • When the medal­ists aren’t the mon­ey-mak­ers (Jas­mine Ker­ber, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “If ath­let­ic direc­tors were reward­ed for Olympic sports every bit as much as for foot­ball and men’s bas­ket­ball, you would see dif­fer­ent behavior,” Hogshead-Makar said.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have some thoughts about slav­ery and the Bible – Does The Bible Sup­port Slav­ery? (a lec­ture giv­en by the war­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, the link is to the video with notes) and Does God Con­done Slav­ery In The Bible? (Part One – Old Tes­ta­ment) and also Part Two – New Tes­ta­ment (longer pieces from Glenn Miller at Chris­t­ian Think­tank). All three are quite help­ful. (first shared in vol­ume 76)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

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