TGFI, Volume 546: atheists who believe in souls & why bad code leads to evil

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Isa­iah Iden­ti­fied in Archae­ol­o­gy (Titus Kennedy, Sub­stack): “Despite ful­fill­ing the role of prophet for more than 50 years, serv­ing under mul­ti­ple kings, and encoun­ter­ing the Assyr­i­ans, until recent­ly there was no archae­ol­o­gy direct­ly attest­ing to the renowned Isa­iah, and at present, there is no archae­o­log­i­cal con­fir­ma­tion for the prophets Hosea, Nahum, and Mic­ah, who were con­tem­po­rary with Isa­iah. This all changed when exca­va­tions of an Iron Age II lay­er of the 8th to 7th cen­tu­ry BC at the Ophel area in Jerusalem unearthed a seal impres­sion. This dis­cov­ery was a clay bul­la about 1.3 cm in diam­e­ter impressed by a seal with the name ‘Isa­iah’ and the title ‘prophet’ in the paleo-Hebrew script.… Exca­va­tions in this area also dis­cov­ered a bul­la of one of the kings Isa­iah served under, Hezeki­ah of Judah, along with 32 oth­er Hebrew bul­lae with var­i­ous names. It was found out­side what has been called the ‘roy­al bak­ery,’ where roy­al offi­cials and oth­er dig­ni­taries may have dis­card­ed old let­ters and the clay seals attached to those doc­u­ments.”
  2. Some thoughts on AI
    • Why I Don’t Want My Pas­tor to Use AI (Leah, Sub­stack): “If my pas­tor won’t wres­tle with God through writ­ing a ser­mon, I begin to ques­tion: will he wres­tle with Him in prayer? Will he be both­ered to wres­tle with God over the state of my soul, to plead on my behalf when I am tempt­ed and suf­fer­ing? …God called you to be my pas­tor. I want you to be my pas­tor.”
    • Who Uses AI in Con­gress? (Nicholas Deck­er, Sub­stack): “Adop­tion has been sub­stan­tial. In the past three months of the 119th Con­gress, ful­ly 25% of doc­u­ments in the Con­gres­sion­al Record are AI-gen­er­at­ed.… How­ev­er, mere adop­tion is an unin­ter­est­ing top­ic. Of course they are going to adopt the tools avail­able. What would be much more inter­est­ing is if AI tools were hav­ing an actu­al effect on the pol­i­cy posi­tions or the rhetor­i­cal empha­sis. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we can pret­ty con­clu­sive­ly rule those out.” — The author is a PhD stu­dent in econ at George Mason.
  3. The After­life Isn’t Going Away (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “In the full sam­ple, 88% of folks said that they did believe that each being pos­sess­es both a soul and a phys­i­cal body. I look at sur­vey data all day, and here’s what I know: it’s hard to get 88% of Amer­i­cans to agree on any­thing, real­ly. If you tried to pull togeth­er a bat­tery of ten pub­lic pol­i­cy pro­pos­als, it’s very unlike­ly that any of them would get 88% sup­port. But the data tells this sto­ry clear­ly: almost all Amer­i­cans believe that there’s some­thing hap­pen­ing beyond our phys­i­cal bod­ies.… Among the non-reli­gious, there’s also a huge divide on this ques­tion. Among noth­ing in par­tic­u­lars, 80% believe in a soul. That’s just a few clicks away from the nation­al aver­age. Agnos­tics score 11 points low­er than noth­ing in par­tic­u­lars. But then take a look at atheists—just one-third of them believe ‘in a soul or spir­it in addi­tion to their phys­i­cal bod­ies.’ ”
    • He kin­da buried the lede here: 1/3 of athe­ists believe in a soul. That’s remark­able!
  4. Some thoughts on the war
    • The Trump Admin­is­tra­tion Goes to War, by Any Memes Nec­es­sary (James Poniewozik, New York Times): “For Gen. William Tecum­seh Sher­man, war was hell. But as rep­re­sent­ed by the Trump White House’s social feeds, war is LOL.”
      • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent and quite inter­est­ing.
    • America’s Con­flict in Iran Is Not a Just War (Ed Fes­er, Pub­lic Dis­course): “Many who have com­ment­ed on the war on social media appear to think that as long as some aim for which a war is fought is in itself a good aim—such as depos­ing tyrants or pre­vent­ing them from get­ting hold of weapons of mass destruction—then the war has met the just-cause con­di­tion of just war doc­trine. That is not the case. This is mere­ly a nec­es­sary con­di­tion for hav­ing a just cause for war, not a suf­fi­cient con­di­tion.… It is clear that the attack on Iran was not in fact a ‘pre­emp­tive war’ in the sense of a mil­i­tary action tak­en in order to head off an immi­nent attack. Rather, it is a ‘pre­ven­tive war,’ in the sense of a mil­i­tary action car­ried out against a coun­try that does not pose an immi­nent threat but _could_ do so in the future. But while pre­emp­tive war can be jus­ti­fi­able in light of the just war cri­te­ria devel­oped in the nat­ur­al law tra­di­tion, pre­ven­tive war can­not be.”
      • Fes­er is a Catholic philoso­pher.
    • Why I Changed My Mind on Bible Prophe­cy and Pol­i­tics (Rus­sell Moore, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “My doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion was about how view­points on last things shaped evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian atti­tudes toward social and polit­i­cal engage­ment.… The king­dom of God—present already but not yet fulfilled—tells us what to care about (jus­tice, peace, the poor, the vul­ner­a­ble) while also shield­ing us from the dis­il­lu­sion­ment or blood­thirsti­ness that can come with expect­ing to have to bring the full­ness of that king­dom on our own. As embod­ied in Jesus, the king­dom con­cerns us not just with out­comes but with ways and means, even as it prompts humil­i­ty on how to get to those com­mon goals. I have no idea what will hap­pen in Iran. I have no idea what will hap­pen in the mod­ern state of Israel. I have no idea whether we have 5 more min­utes or 45 mil­lion more years before the Apoc­a­lypse. Jesus said, ‘It is not for you to know times or sea­sons that the Father has fixed by his own author­i­ty’ (Acts 1:7). Who needs a prophe­cy chart when we already have the Way?”
  5. Some thoughts on a Texas politi­cian:
    • James Talari­co Is a Chris­t­ian X‑Ray (David French, New York Times): “For too long we’ve eval­u­at­ed Chris­tians in pol­i­tics pri­mar­i­ly through their pol­i­cy posi­tions. Are you pro-life or pro-choice? Do you sup­port same-sex mar­riage? What’s your posi­tion on immi­gra­tion enforce­ment? Yet this is exact­ly back­ward. If you were to crack open Scrip­ture today and start read­ing, one of the first things you should notice is that the Bible con­tains remark­ably few polit­i­cal man­dates. You can read it from cov­er to cov­er and not know the defin­i­tive bib­li­cal tax rate, wel­fare pro­gram or for­eign pol­i­cy. But the next thing you’ll notice is that there is an immense amount of guid­ance describ­ing how Chris­tians should behave. Indeed, in the book of Gala­tians, the Apos­tle Paul says that the fruit of the spir­it is a set of virtues — ‘love, joy, peace, for­bear­ance, kind­ness, good­ness, faith­ful­ness, gen­tle­ness and self-con­trol.’ Absent from that list is a sin­gle the­o­log­i­cal or ide­o­log­i­cal propo­si­tion. That’s not to say that the­ol­o­gy or ide­ol­o­gy are unim­por­tant. It does real­ly mat­ter whether a politi­cian is pro-life or pro-choice, but there is no spir­i­tu­al or polit­i­cal sce­nario where you can aban­don Chris­t­ian virtue for the sake of the alleged greater good, and if a Chris­t­ian politi­cian aban­dons Chris­t­ian virtue, then Chris­t­ian believ­ers should aban­don him or her.”
      • FYI, this one has been super-divi­sive on social media. Some have said it is evi­dence of French’s apos­ta­sy and oth­ers have said it is self-evi­dent­ly true. Judge for your­self.
    • The Chris­tian­ism Of The Left (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “…the fusion of Chris­tian­i­ty and pol­i­tics isn’t exclu­sive­ly right-wing. You can invoke God to defend any­thing, after all. And a new left-Chris­tian­ism has emerged in the 21st cen­tu­ry that is a mir­ror image of the right’s. Left-Chris­tians have come to adorn their church­es with tran­squeer and BLM flags, treat NPR as the Holy Office, adopt lan­guage — ‘white suprema­cy,’ ‘cis-het­ero­sex­ism,’ ‘patri­archy’ — direct­ly from crit­i­cal the­o­ry, and inter­pret Scrip­ture to man­date high­er tax­es, DEI, abor­tion on demand, and open bor­ders. I find that Chris­tian­ism just as tox­ic to faith and pol­i­tics. Which brings me to James Talari­co, the Chris­tian­ist run­ning for Sen­ate in Texas.”
  6. China’s Long-Promised Con­sumer Boom Is a Mirage (Anne Steven­son-Yang, New York Times): “China’s peo­ple, per­haps more than at any time in the last few decades, are in no mood to go out and splurge. Many have been air­ing grow­ing anx­i­ety online about falling incomes and scarce jobs. The aver­age income was just over $500 a month in 2025. Unem­ploy­ment is high.… China’s peo­ple, per­haps more than at any time in the last few decades, are in no mood to go out and splurge. Many have been air­ing grow­ing anx­i­ety online about falling incomes and scarce jobs. The aver­age income was just over $500 a month in 2025. Unem­ploy­ment is high.… These are hard­ly the foun­da­tions of a vibrant con­sumer econ­o­my, and the future looks no bet­ter.” — I have been a con­sis­tent skep­tic of Chi­na’s econ­o­my ever since I first heard about ghost cities over a decade ago. If you’re unfa­mil­iar with the term, Google it. Do some dig­ging and you’ll be sur­prised.
  7. This A.I. Exper­i­ment Reopened an Ancient Argu­ment About Vice (Dan Kagan-Kans, New York Times): “[A] paper pub­lished in Nature in Jan­u­ary demon­strates that in machines cor­rup­tion can metas­ta­size — that in them, some­thing impru­dent or a bit bad, like writ­ing inse­cure code, is not so dif­fer­ent from some­thing wicked like prais­ing Hitler. This doesn’t prove virtue ethi­cists right about humanity’s moral nature. But it sug­gests they’re onto some­thing, and that the ancients weren’t as naïve or strange­ly ide­o­log­i­cal as they can some­times seem.”
    • One of the more fas­ci­nat­ing things I’ve read in a while.

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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