Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 466



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 466, which is 1234 in base 7.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Following Jesus in the Desert of Mental Illness (Samuel D. James, Substack): “Bryant writes that a breakthrough for him came when he realized that Christ had not committed himself to Bryant’s plans, but to Bryant himself. Once the life that Bryant had planned for himself disintegrated, he was left with deeply painful questions about whether Jesus had stopped loving him. But eventually he realized that Christ wanted something more for Bryant than his own (good) desires. He wanted Christ for him. He wanted dependence on the cross.”
  2. Danger, AI Scientist, Danger (Zvi Mowshowitz, Substack): “[Did you hear about] the automated AI Scientist that tried to rewrite its code to get around resource restrictions and launch new instances of itself while downloading bizarre Python libraries? Its name is Sakana AI. (魚≈סכנה). As in, in hebrew, that literally means ‘danger’, baby. ”
  3. Election-related stuff:
    • Voting Isn’t A Window Into the Soul (Jonah Goldberg, The Dispatch): “The idea that voting is a window into someone’s soul strikes me as almost a theological heresy and a failure of empathetic imagination. It assumes that the person who voted wrong—or right—sees the world the same way you do and that they invest the same moral, philosophical, and political significance in their vote that you do in yours.”
    • Nate Silver on Kamala Harris’s Chances and the Mistakes of the ‘Indigo Blob’ (Ezra Klein interviewing Nate Silver, New York Times): “What you seem to be doing in the book is making an interesting cut in society between people with different forms of risk tolerance and thinking about risk. And you wrote something that caught my eye: ‘Covid made those risk preferences public, worn on our proverbial sleeves and our literal faces.’ And you go on to say, ‘People are becoming more bifurcated in their risk tolerance and that this affects everything from who we hang out with to how we vote.’ ” 
      • An interesting (and kinda long) interview.
  4. Christianity and politics intersecting in various ways: 
    • Trump has put social conservatives in a dilemma (Ed Feser, personal blog): “…I will set out the relevant moral principles for deciding how to vote when faced with a choice between candidates whose positions on matters related to abortion, marriage, and the like are gravely immoral. Finally, I will discuss how these principles apply to the present case.” 
      • Feser is my favorite living philosopher. Written from a Catholic perspective but addressed to a broader audience.
    • A pastor said his pro-Trump prophecies came from God. His brother called him a fake. (Danielle Paquette, Washington Post): “On the morning he could no longer stand it, the preacher was sipping coffee at his kitchen table. The house was quiet. The boys weren’t up yet. Josiah Johnson wanted to savor the peace, but his attention drifted to his younger brother, the one he had decided was a false prophet. How many souls, he wondered, was that Christian influencer manipulating on social media right now? Hundreds of thousands followed Jeremiah, who’d helped popularize the far-right belief that God handpicked Donald Trump to lead the United States.” 
      • Long, interesting, sad.
    • My Old Church’s Fundamentalist Wing Canceled Me (David French and Vishakha Darbha, New York Times): “What you’re seeing throughout American Christianity now is the fundamentalist wing is really exerting itself. And so what that means is when you encounter somebody who’s a fundamentalist and you say, ‘I’m not voting for Trump,’ they often don’t look at that as a debatable point for which Christians in good will can disagree. They will look at this and say, ‘It is the natural and inevitable consequence of applying Christian principles that you will support Donald Trump.’… What that does is it raises the stakes to this eternal level. And what ends up happening is they just sweep aside all of these scriptures about loving your enemies, being kind to those, blessing those who persecute you. All of that is just swept aside in favor of the burning certainty and ferocity of the culture war.”
    • The All-Male Christian Group Seeking a Resurrection in the Trump Era (Ruth Graham, New York Times): “Evangelical Christians have been a reliable Republican voting bloc since the 1980s, but they have historically been averse to hearing overtly partisan messages in spiritual settings. That has been shifting in recent years, as some high-profile conservatives, like Mr. Kirk and others at the conference, have characterized political engagement as a pastoral obligation. Some pastors who have leaned into preaching on topics like abortion and gender issues have seen their churches boom in a time of broad declines in attendance.” 
      • Pretty good article, although I take strong issue with the last sentence. Abortion and gender issues aren’t political simply because there is a partisan divide on them. Christians have been talking about human nature and sexual ethics since before America was a nation and should the Lord tarry we will continue after America is a distant memory.
  5. They All Got Mysterious Brain Diseases. They’re Fighting to Learn Why (Greg Donahue, New York Times)“In the context of a cluster of atypical cases that had stumped some of the most experienced scientists in Canada, Marrero believed that Jansen had not only overstepped his bounds but had failed to address the situation’s most critical questions: ‘Why so many young? Why so many in one area? Why so many in one family?’ Many of Marrero’s colleagues in the working group agreed. In a leaked email from last year, one of them referred to Jansen’s findings as a ‘loophole’ through which the politicians have eagerly leaped to conclude nothing coherent is going on.” 
    • Recommended by a student.
  6. Have National Abortion Numbers Increased Since the Dobbs Decision? (John McCormack, The Dispatch): “At first glance, headlines generated by that report might lead the casual reader to assume anti-abortion laws haven’t done anything to achieve their intended purpose of saving lives. But even if the new report is accurate (more on that below), other studies show that there are likely tens of thousands of infants and toddlers alive today because of laws allowed by the Dobbs decision.”
  7. Reservoir of liquid water found deep in Martian rocks (Victoria Gill, BBC): “The Insight probe was only able to record directly from the crust beneath its feet, but the researchers expect that there will be similar reservoirs across the planet. If that is the case, they estimate that there is enough liquid water on Mars to form a layer across the surface that would be more than half a mile deep. However, they point out, the location of this Martian groundwater is not good news for billionaires with Mars colonisation plans who might want to tap into it. ‘It’s sequestered 10–20km deep in the crust,’ explained Prof Manga.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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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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