Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 324

some pre-Hal­loween links

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 324, which is 182.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Emp­ty Pews Are an Amer­i­can Pub­lic Health Cri­sis (Tyler J. Van­der­Weele and Bren­dan Case, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Reli­gious par­tic­i­pa­tion strong­ly pro­motes health and well­ness. This means that Amer­i­cans’ grow­ing dis­af­fec­tion with orga­nized reli­gion isn’t just bad news for church­es; it also rep­re­sents a pub­lic health cri­sis, one that has been large­ly ignored but the effects of which are like­ly to increase in com­ing years.”
    • The authors are part of the Human Flour­ish­ing Pro­gram at Har­vard. I have quot­ed Tyler Van­der­Weele’s research sev­er­al times in the past.
  2. Some per­spec­tives on the Amer­i­can church:
    • J.D. Vance and the Great Chal­lenge of Chris­t­ian Mal­ice (David French, The Dis­patch): “The real cri­sis [in Amer­i­can Chris­t­ian polit­i­cal engage­ment] is instead a cri­sis of the heart. Our ortho­doxy is under­mined by our actions, and our actions spring forth from the deep­est parts of our being. At a time of ris­ing antipa­thy, a Chris­t­ian polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty should blaze forth with a radi­ant coun­ter­cul­tur­al embrace of kind­ness and grace. Instead, all too many of us have for­got­ten a fun­da­men­tal truth. There are no ‘right peo­ple’ to hate.”
    • Why ‘Evan­gel­i­cal’ Is Becom­ing Anoth­er Word for ‘Repub­li­can’ (Ryan Burge, New York Times): “For instance, in 2008, just 16 per­cent of all self-iden­ti­fied evan­gel­i­cals report­ed their church atten­dance as nev­er or sel­dom. But in 2020, that num­ber jumped to 27 per­cent. In 2008, about a third of evan­gel­i­cals who nev­er attend­ed church said they were polit­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive. By 2019, that had risen to about 50 per­cent.… [also] more peo­ple are embrac­ing the label who have no attach­ment to Protes­tant Chris­tian­i­ty. For exam­ple, the share of Catholics who also iden­ti­fied as evan­gel­i­cals (or born again) rose to 15 per­cent in 2018 from 9 per­cent in 2008. That same pat­tern appears with Mus­lims. In fact, there’s evi­dence that the share of mem­bers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter-day Saints, Ortho­dox Chris­tian­i­ty and Hin­duism who iden­ti­fy as evan­gel­i­cal is larg­er today than it was just a decade ago.”
    • The Evan­gel­i­cal Church Is Break­ing Apart (Peter Wehn­er, The Atlantic): “Scott Dud­ley, the senior pas­tor at Belle­vue Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Belle­vue, Wash­ing­ton, refers to this as ‘our idol­a­try of pol­i­tics.’ He’s heard of many con­gre­gants leav­ing their church because it didn’t match their pol­i­tics, he told me, but has nev­er once heard of some­one chang­ing their pol­i­tics because it didn’t match their church’s teach­ing. He often tells his con­gre­ga­tion that if the Bible doesn’t chal­lenge your pol­i­tics at least occa­sion­al­ly, you’re not real­ly pay­ing atten­tion to the Hebrew scrip­tures or the New Tes­ta­ment.”
    • Church Mem­ber­ship Is Not a One-Way Street (Alex Duke, Cross­way): “Think of your church as a light­bulb hooked up to a dim­mer switch in a dark room. Every­thing we do makes our wit­ness brighter or dark­er. Prac­tic­ing mean­ing­ful mem­ber­ship is one of the surest ways to turn that dim­mer switch up; ignor­ing it is one of the surest ways to turn it down. Mean­ing­ful mem­ber­ship is more impor­tant than you think.”
  3. The Prob­lem With Dave Chap­pelle (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “Chap­pelle is not a hap­less vic­tim of a crush­ing ide­o­log­i­cal agen­da; he’s not Bar­ronelle Stutz­man or James Eich. Chap­pelle is, like many before and many after him, a Robe­spierre of the very rev­o­lu­tion that’s after him now. His for­tune was made inside the same pro­gres­sive sen­si­bil­i­ty that threat­ens him, and it is pre­cise­ly Chappelle’s (and many oth­er come­di­ans) skill with which he dis­missed any notion of the sacred that has tak­en root in the peo­ple who are walk­ing out on his un-PC act.” Real­ly sol­id insights here.
  4. The par­ent­ing prob­lem the gov­ern­ment can’t fix (Stephanie H. Mur­ray, The Week): “There is a cul­tur­al weight dan­gling from the yoke of mod­ern Amer­i­can par­ent­hood — one that is prob­a­bly beyond the gov­ern­ment to alle­vi­ate.… Chil­dren are a per­son­al choice and there­fore a per­son­al prob­lem, many peo­ple seem to believe. Have as many as you want — just make sure they don’t both­er the rest of us. The prob­lem is that this cre­do is total­ly out of step with real­i­ty.… par­ent­ing is an inher­ent­ly social occu­pa­tion. Try­ing to cram it into an indi­vid­u­al­ist frame­work, where the costs and con­se­quences of chil­dren fall on par­ents and no one else, dis­torts the whole endeav­or.”
    • I have long thought that dis­lik­ing chil­dren is pro­found­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal. You were once a child who craved affec­tion and under­stand­ing, how rude to reject chil­dren now that you have learned to nav­i­gate the world more effec­tive­ly.
  5. Sci­en­tists Built an AI to Give Eth­i­cal Advice, But It Turned Out Super Racist (Tony Tran, Futur­ism): “And as is often the case, part of the rea­son Delphi’s answers can get ques­tion­able can like­ly be linked back to how it was cre­at­ed. The folks behind the project drew on some eye­brow-rais­ing sources to help train the AI, includ­ing the ‘Am I the Ass­hole?’ sub­red­dit, the ‘Con­fes­sions’ sub­red­dit, and the ‘Dear Abby’ advice col­umn, accord­ing to the paper the team behind Del­phi pub­lished about the exper­i­ment. It should be not­ed, though, that just the sit­u­a­tions were culled from those sources — not the actu­al replies and answers them­selves.… the team behind Del­phi used Amazon’s crowd­sourc­ing ser­vice Mechan­i­cal­Turk to find respon­dents to actu­al­ly train the AI.”
  6. About Israel and Jew­ish peo­ple:
    • When Your Body Is Some­one Else’s Haunt­ed House (Dara Horn, Bari Weiss’ Sub­stack): “Those girls were not stu­pid, and prob­a­bly not even big­ot­ed. But in their entire­ly typ­i­cal and well-inten­tioned edu­ca­tion, they had learned about Jews main­ly because peo­ple had killed Jews. Like most peo­ple in the world, they had only encoun­tered dead Jews: peo­ple whose sole attribute was that they had been mur­dered, and whose mur­ders served a clear pur­pose, which was to teach us some­thing. Jews were peo­ple who, for moral and edu­ca­tion­al pur­pos­es, were sup­posed to be dead.”
    • Whose Promised Land? A Jour­ney Into a Divid­ed Israel (Patrick Kings­ley & Laeti­tia Van­con, New York Times): “‘I believe in the coun­try as long as it doesn’t fight reli­gion, as long as it doesn’t fight me,’ he said. In his view, the new gov­ern­ment has under­mined Israel’s Jew­ish­ness, under­cut­ting the state’s legit­i­ma­cy. ‘If it’s not a Jew­ish state, then we have no right to exist here,’ he said. ‘Our right to exist here is based on the fact that God gave us the land.’”
    • Pales­tine Isn’t Fer­gu­son (Susie Lin­field, The Atlantic): “Any use­ful analy­sis of the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict requires engag­ing with an unre­solved, frus­trat­ing­ly com­plex, griev­ous­ly resilient strug­gle between two nation­al move­ments, each with a jus­ti­fied claim to the land. Once that effort is aban­doned, a vac­u­um ensues. It is filled by the trans­for­ma­tion of a coun­try into a metaphor; by the rewrit­ing (or ignor­ing) of his­to­ry; by Manichean think­ing; and by the con­ver­sion of lan­guage into a means of per­for­mance rather than a descrip­tion of real­i­ty.”
  7. Learn­ing From Our Defeat: The Skill of the Vul­cans (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “…both of these rel­a­tive non-enti­ties were pulled aside from their reg­u­lar posi­tions and hand­ed an addi­tion­al respon­si­bil­i­ty— coor­di­na­tor of the Amer­i­can effort in Afghanistan.Read that again: they were both giv­en the same job at the same time. Yet the prob­lem was worse than just dupli­ca­tion of effort and con­fused lines of author­i­ty. The two men were not even aware the oth­er man was work­ing the same port­fo­lio!”

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 Dis­solv­ing the Fer­mi Para­dox (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Imag­ine we knew God flipped a coin. If it came up heads, He made 10 bil­lion alien civ­i­liza­tion. If it came up tails, He made none besides Earth. Using our one para­me­ter Drake Equa­tion, we deter­mine that on aver­age there should be 5 bil­lion alien civ­i­liza­tions. Since we see zero, that’s quite the para­dox, isn’t it? No. In this case the mean is mean­ing­less. It’s not at all sur­pris­ing that we see zero alien civ­i­liza­tions, it just means the coin must have land­ed tails. SDO say that rely­ing on the Drake Equa­tion is the same kind of error.”  First shared in vol­ume 159.

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.

Leave a Reply