Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 495: Math Points to God, Slavery Persists, and the Gospel Draws Crowds at Stanford

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The mir­a­cle of math (Sarah Sal­vian­der, Sub­stack): “In 1960, the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Eugene Wign­er iden­ti­fied a meta­phys­i­cal mys­tery for the ages: why are the laws of nature so apt­ly described by math­e­mat­ics? It is a decep­tive­ly sim­ple ques­tion. We think we grasp the answer easily—until we actu­al­ly try to explain it. Wigner’s essay, titled ‘The Unrea­son­able Effec­tive­ness of Math­e­mat­ics in the Nat­ur­al Sci­ences,’ high­lights this enig­ma. The term ‘unrea­son­able’ cap­tures the bewil­der­ing real­i­ty that there is no appar­ent rea­son why math should so flaw­less­ly mir­ror the universe’s behav­iors. This sug­gests, whether intend­ed by Wign­er or not, that the answer to this mys­tery lies beyond the uni­verse.”
    • The author is an astro­physi­cist who now does apolo­get­ics.
    • For those who have nev­er seen it, here is the well-known paper: The Unrea­son­able Effec­tive­ness of Math­e­mat­ics in the Nat­ur­al Sci­ences (Eugene Wign­er, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions in Pure and Applied Math­e­mat­ics): “The mir­a­cle of the appro­pri­ate­ness of the lan­guage of math­e­mat­ics for the for­mu­la­tion of the laws of physics is a won­der­ful gift which we nei­ther under­stand nor deserve. We should be grate­ful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for bet­ter or for worse, to our plea­sure, even though per­haps also to our baf­fle­ment, to wide branch­es of learn­ing.”
  2. The Secret Cam­paign in Chi­na to Save a Woman Chained by the Neck (Vivan Wang, New York Times): “The out­cry rip­pled nation­wide for weeks. Many observers called it the biggest moment for women’s rights in recent Chi­nese his­to­ry. The Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty sees pop­u­lar dis­con­tent as a chal­lenge to its author­i­ty, but this was so intense that it seemed even the par­ty would strug­gle to quash it. And yet, it did. To find out how, I tried to track what hap­pened to the chained woman and those who spoke out for her. I found an expan­sive web of intim­i­da­tion at home and abroad, involv­ing mass sur­veil­lance, cen­sor­ship and deten­tions — a cam­paign that con­tin­ues to this day.”
    • Pray for Chi­na reg­u­lar­ly.
    • Relat­ed: slav­ery is not a rel­ic of the past and crops up in unex­pect­ed places. UN judge guilty of forc­ing woman to work as slave (BBC): “Gasps were heard from the pub­lic gallery as the ver­dicts were giv­en, and the court was cleared as the defen­dant appeared unwell.… Mugambe, who was study­ing for a law PhD at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford, had con­spired with Ugan­dan deputy high com­mis­sion­er John Leonard Muger­wa to arrange for the young woman to come to the UK.”
  3. Jesus Is A Jew (David Brooks, Com­ment): “Jesus is inher­ent­ly mysterious—a lion who is also a lamb. But he is also intel­li­gi­ble. And that’s because he lived an actu­al life in an actu­al his­tor­i­cal con­text.… Jesus is amid the muck and armed with the Word, and yet emerges as a fig­ure ulti­mate­ly alone—a vor­tex of spir­i­tu­al forces con­verg­ing in one per­son, no one else quite like him.”
  4. We Live Like Roy­al­ty and Don’t Know It (Charles Mann, The New Atlantis): “My wife and I were at a table­ful of smart, well-edu­cat­ed twen­ty-some­things — friends of the bride and groom. The wed­ding, with all its hope and aspi­ra­tion, had put them in mind of the future. As young peo­ple should, they want­ed to help make that future bright. There was so much to do! They want­ed the hun­gry to be fed, the thirsty to have water, the poor to have light, the sick to be well. But when I men­tioned how remark­able it was that a hun­dred-plus peo­ple could para­chute into a remote, unfa­mil­iar place and eat a gourmet meal untrou­bled by fears for their health and com­fort, they were sur­prised. The hero­ic sys­tems required to bring all the ele­ments of their din­ner to these tables by the sea were invis­i­ble to them. Despite their fine edu­ca­tion, they knew lit­tle about the mech­a­nisms of today’s food, water, ener­gy, and pub­lic-health sys­tems. They want­ed a bet­ter world, but they didn’t know how this one worked.”
    • Relat­ed: Break­fast for Eight Bil­lion (Charles Mann, The New Atlantis): “Some­time in the 1980s, an unprece­dent­ed change in the human con­di­tion occurred. For the first time in known his­to­ry, the aver­age per­son on Earth had enough to eat all the time.”
  5. The Work­ism Trap (Bob­by Jamieson, Plough): “And a 2018 research arti­cle found that, com­pared to women who grad­u­at­ed from low­er-ranked schools, women who attend­ed elite, selec­tive uni­ver­si­ties do not, on aver­age, earn more per hour, but they do work more. For women, it seems, the ben­e­fits of an elite diplo­ma are more time at work and low­er chances of mar­ry­ing and hav­ing chil­dren.”
    • Vague­ly relat­ed (at least to the excerpt): Are Men OK? (Eamon Whalen, The Nation): “The biggest risk fac­tor for drop­ping out of col­lege, con­trol­ling for every­thing else, is being a man. Those strug­gles have extend­ed to the labor mar­ket. When adjust­ed for infla­tion, most Amer­i­can men today earn around $3,000 less than men did in 1979, which leads to a grim real­iza­tion: Much of the nar­row­ing of the per­sis­tent wage gap between men and women can be explained by the stag­nat­ing wages for men.”
    • Com­ment­ing on the above arti­cle: Cre­at­ing a Per­mis­sion Space for Men’s Issues (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “The fem­i­nist movement’s suc­cess depend­ed on telling men they had to change, that there were cer­tain choic­es and behav­iors they could no longer engage in. It also explic­it­ly real­lo­cat­ed resources and posi­tions from men to women.  While I don’t think the sit­u­a­tion with men is sym­met­ri­cal, it strikes me as dubi­ous that noth­ing needs to change with regards to women. For exam­ple, as econ­o­mist Melis­sa Kear­ney, also a Brook­ings affil­i­at­ed schol­ar, doc­u­ment­ed in her superb book The Two-Par­ent Priv­i­lege — I sum­ma­rized some key find­ings — the ben­e­fits of grow­ing up in an intact fam­i­ly vs. a sin­gle par­ent home are over­whelm­ing. The Unit­ed States has the high­est share of its chil­dren liv­ing in sin­gle par­ent homes of any coun­try in the entire world. That’s Amer­i­can excep­tion­al­ism we could live with­out.” (empha­sis removed for read­abil­i­ty)
  6. Is Reli­gion Taboo at Stan­ford? (Sloane Wehman, Stan­ford Review): “On the after­noon of Mon­day March 3, hun­dreds of stu­dents con­gre­gat­ed in White Plaza to lis­ten to Cliffe Knech­tle and his son Stu­art Knech­tle debate Chris­tian­i­ty as a part of their ‘Give Me An Answer’ min­istry, a pro­gram that strives to answer tough ques­tions about faith. Cliffe and Stu­art are both pas­tors at Grace Com­mu­ni­ty Church in New Canaan, Con­necti­cut, and Cliffe has been debat­ing stu­dents on Chris­tian­i­ty since devel­op­ing the Give Me An Answer min­istry in 1991.”
  7. How Do You Solve a Prob­lem Like Mar­tinez? (Ben­jamin Flesh­man, SSRN): “All told, there are reports of 175 reli­gious stu­dent groups that were ful­ly denied offi­cial recog­ni­tion since 1990. One hun­dred and nine­teen of those groups were kicked off their cam­pus­es after Mar­tinez was decid­ed. That means that more than twice as many groups have been dere­c­og­nized in the fif­teen years since Mar­tinez than in the twen­ty years before­hand. Part of this is due to the more aggres­sive mass dere­cog­ni­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa, Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, and Van­der­bilt. There real­ly weren’t any mas­sive dere­cog­ni­tion cam­paigns pre-Mar­tinez, with the largest being Cal State’s dere­cog­ni­tion of a hand­ful of groups that led to the lit­i­ga­tion in Alpha Delta Chi. When you include the num­ber of recog­ni­tion issues that stopped just short of a full dere­cog­ni­tion, but which still required the inter­ven­tion of legal coun­sel or nation­al orga­ni­za­tions to resolve, the num­bers shoot to 257 total report­ed inci­dents since 1990, with 195 occur­ring post-Mar­tinez. That means rough­ly three times as many total report­ed inci­dents post-Mar­tinez as pre-Mar­tinez.”
    • Men­tions Chi Alpha (not at Stan­ford, just gen­er­al­ly) in a few places. The Beck­et Fund, with whom the author is affil­i­at­ed, are Chi Alpha’s legal rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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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