Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 361

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 361, which is also the num­ber of inter­sec­tions on a Go board.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Actu­al­ly Good AI-Gen­er­at­ed Bible Art with DALL·E 2 (John Dyer, per­son­al blog): “The GPT‑3 prompts I used evolved over time, but this one is emblem­at­ic: Sug­gest 5 unique con­cept ideas for a work of visu­al art inspired by Luke 14:7–11 (do not pick the place of hon­or) in the Bible. Include art direc­tion and a spe­cif­ic medi­um and artist to emu­late. Include artists from a vari­ety of eras, styles, and media. Try for an unusu­al per­spec­tive. Title, year, medi­um. Descrip­tion.”
   • Some of these are stun­ning. Rec­om­mend­ed.
2. Reli­gion Is Dying? Don’t Believe It (Byron R. John­son & Jeff Levin, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Data from five recent U.S. pop­u­la­tion sur­veys point to the vibran­cy, ubiq­ui­ty and growth of reli­gion in the U.S. Amer­i­cans are becom­ing more reli­gious, and reli­gious insti­tu­tions are thriv­ing. Con­sis­tent with some pre­vi­ous stud­ies but con­trary to wide­ly held assump­tions, many peo­ple who report no reli­gious affiliation—and even many self-iden­ti­fied athe­ists and agnostics—exhibit sub­stan­tial lev­els of reli­gious prac­tice and belief.”
   • The authors are pro­fes­sors of social sci­ence and epi­demi­ol­o­gy, respec­tive­ly. I one hun­dred per­cent believe this report. The so-called “rise of the nones” is most­ly the result of con­fir­ma­tion bias by sec­u­lar aca­d­e­mics and jour­nal­ists who find reli­gious­ly com­mit­ted peo­ple annoy­ing.
   • This WSJ arti­cle (which I think is pay­walled) is based on the freely avail­able schol­ar­ly arti­cle: Are Reli­gious “Nones” Real­ly Not Reli­gious?: Revis­it­ing Glenn, Three Decades Lat­er (Levin et al, Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Jour­nal of Research on Reli­gion): “The use of words and phras­es such as none, no reli­gion, and not reli­gious to describe this group of unaf­fil­i­at­ed indi­vid­u­als is thus inap­pro­pri­ate, inac­cu­rate, and mis­lead­ing.”
3. Which Sins Are Feed­ing Your Sin of Lust? (David Powli­son, Cross­way): “Tom con­cen­trat­ed all his atten­tion on one mar­quee sin that sur­faced spo­rad­i­cal­ly, defin­ing and ener­giz­ing all his guilty feel­ings. But that nar­row­ing of atten­tion served to mask far more seri­ous, per­va­sive sins. As a pas­tor, friend, or oth­er coun­selor, you don’t want to con­cen­trate all your ener­gies in the same place Tom did. There were oth­er, deep­er oppor­tu­ni­ties for grace and truth to rewrite the script of this man’s life.”
4. A Media-Fueled Social Pan­ic Over Unmarked Graves (Jonathan Kay, Quil­lette): “It’s now been 14 months since the orig­i­nal announce­ment was made about pre­sumed graves in Kam­loops, and no phys­i­cal evi­dence has been unearthed. No graves. No corpses. No human remains.… I’ve been in jour­nal­ism for a quar­ter cen­tu­ry, and have wit­nessed plen­ty of bizarre con­tro­ver­sies with­in my trade. But I’ve nev­er wit­nessed any­thing sim­i­lar to this phe­nom­e­non. It’s like one of those case-stud­ies in mass hys­te­ria and pop­u­lar delu­sion that you read about in his­to­ry books.”
   • This is not a claim that bad things did­n’t hap­pen. It’s more of a claim that the spe­cif­ic bad things that are alleged did­n’t hap­pen or that they did­n’t hap­pen on the scale wide­ly report­ed.
5. Chi­na relat­ed:
   • Chi­na Tar­get­ed Fed to Build Infor­mant Net­work and Access Data, Probe Finds (Kate O’Keeffe and Nick Timi­raos, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Chi­na tried to build a net­work of infor­mants inside the Fed­er­al Reserve sys­tem, at one point threat­en­ing to imprison a Fed econ­o­mist dur­ing a trip to Shang­hai unless he agreed to pro­vide non­pub­lic eco­nom­ic data, a con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tion found.”
   • CNN Exclu­sive: FBI inves­ti­ga­tion deter­mined Chi­nese-made Huawei equip­ment could dis­rupt US nuclear arse­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions (Katie Bo Lil­lis, CNN): “Among the most alarm­ing things the FBI uncov­ered per­tains to Chi­nese-made Huawei equip­ment atop cell tow­ers near US mil­i­tary bases in the rur­al Mid­west. Accord­ing to mul­ti­ple sources famil­iar with the mat­ter, the FBI deter­mined the equip­ment was capa­ble of cap­tur­ing and dis­rupt­ing high­ly restrict­ed Defense Depart­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tions, includ­ing those used by US Strate­gic Com­mand, which over­sees the coun­try’s nuclear weapons.” 
6. NHS will SHUT its con­tro­ver­sial Tavi­s­tock trans­gen­der clin­ic for chil­dren after damn­ing report warned it was ‘not safe’ (John Ely and Lau­rence Dol­limore, The Dai­ly Mail): “It fol­lows an announce­ment last month that every child treat­ed for gen­der dys­pho­ria in the last decade will have their med­ical records scru­ti­nised to see if NHS care is caus­ing them more harm than good.”
7. Hot Takes Don’t Belong in Church (Chris Nye, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “So long as we are cre­at­ing a palat­able state­ment for social media or Sunday’s ser­mon, we are not pray­ing, wor­ship­ing, or orga­niz­ing our­selves for mean­ing­ful action. But in today’s cul­ture, the appear­ance of moral­i­ty is more impor­tant than moral actions, and speak­ing is more high­ly val­ued than pray­ing.”
   • This is full of good points. Chris is an acquain­tance of mine.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• https://twitter.com/TheFigen/status/1550911126287929346 — we should have the wor­ship team try this
• The Two Step Guide To A Ful­fill­ing Career (Pearls Before Swine)
• Op-Ed: Hey Man, How’s It Going? Please Don’t Remove Your Deb­it Card—REMOVE DEBIT CARD NOW HOLY SMOKES WHY HAVEN’T YOU REMOVED YOUR DEBIT CARD YET WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE (Baby­lon Bee): facts.
• Anti­mat­ter (SMBC)
• Sur­prise! (The Far Side)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have This Cul­tur­al Moment (pod­cast): I lis­tened to this pod­cast about fol­low­ing Jesus in the post-Chris­t­ian world upon the rec­om­men­da­tion of some alum­ni and a stu­dent. It’s quite good. Def­i­nite­ly start with episode 1. First shared in vol­ume 231.

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.