Tag: apologetically interesting

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 132

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.

There will prob­a­bly be no email next Fri­day — I’m going to be vis­it­ing fam­i­ly and won’t do much read­ing on the inter­net.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Not-So-White Evan­gel­i­cal­ism: How Con­ser­v­a­tive Denom­i­na­tions Actu­al­ly Fare Bet­ter on Diver­si­ty (Rebec­ca Ran­dall, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In the Unit­ed States today, 1 in 3 self-iden­ti­fied evan­gel­i­cals is non­white, accord­ing to a Sep­tem­ber study from PRRI. This ris­es to 4 in 10 evan­gel­i­cals when mea­sured by the­o­log­i­cal belief, accord­ing to a Decem­ber study from Life­Way Research. Of those that are white, 1 in 3 attends a mul­tira­cial church, report­ed anoth­er study, pub­lished in June in the Review of Reli­gious Research. Researchers Joseph Yi and Christo­pher Graz­i­ul dug into the more than 3,000 respons­es to the 2006 Faith Mat­ters Sur­vey, and found that more than a quar­ter of white evan­gel­i­cals report­ed hav­ing a close His­pan­ic friend. Even more—about 2 out of 5—said they have a close friend that is African Amer­i­can… In oth­er words, evan­gel­i­cals are now more like­ly than main­line Protes­tants to attend mul­tira­cial con­gre­ga­tions and to report African Amer­i­can and His­pan­ic friends.”
  2. The Zeal­ous Faith Of Sec­u­lar­ism (Mary Eber­stadt, First Things): “Pagani­za­tion as we now know it is dri­ven by a new his­tor­i­cal phe­nom­e­non: the devel­op­ment of a rival faith—a rival, sec­u­lar­ist faith which sees Chris­tian­i­ty as a com­peti­tor to be van­quished, rather than as an alter­na­tive set of beliefs to be tol­er­at­ed in an open soci­ety. How do we know this? We know it in part because today’s sec­u­lar­ist faith behaves in ways that only a faith can.”
  3. Is Trump a Bless­ing or Curse for Reli­gious Con­ser­v­a­tives? (Ross Douthat, David French, John Zmi­rak): “A year in, Trump has deliv­ered on many of his spe­cif­ic promis­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly where judi­cial appoint­ments are con­cerned. At the same time, there’s a great deal of angst with­in reli­gious cir­cles about what his per­son­al moral defects and his administration’s deep unpop­u­lar­i­ty mean for Chris­t­ian cul­tur­al wit­ness, and (among evan­gel­i­cals, espe­cial­ly) whether the Trump era is set­ting up a kind of gen­er­a­tional schism that will con­tribute to insti­tu­tion­al Christianity’s cri­sis going for­ward.”
    • Inci­den­tal­ly, I find many peo­ple are unaware of (or unwill­ing to admit) how much Trump has accom­plished. See The Show So Far by Tyler Cowen (Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion), Pres­i­dent Trump’s 2017 Report Card (A First Draft) by Scott Adams, and  A War Trump Won (Ross Douthat, New York Times). Love him or loathe him (appar­ent­ly the only two options), admit that he’s been busy.
    • Relat­ed: Can Evan­gel­i­cal­ism Sur­vive Don­ald Trump and Roy Moore? (Tim Keller, The New York­er): “Some time ago, the word ‘lib­er­al’ was large­ly aban­doned by Democ­rats in favor of the word ‘pro­gres­sive.’ In some ways, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is more lib­er­al now than when the old­er label was set aside, evi­dence that it is quite pos­si­ble to change the name but keep the sub­stance. The same thing may be hap­pen­ing to evan­gel­i­cal­ism. The move­ment may aban­don, or at least demote, the promi­nence of the name, yet be more com­mit­ted to its the­ol­o­gy and his­toric impuls­es than ever.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  4. Sil­i­con Val­ley Is Turn­ing Into Its Own Worst Fear (Ted Chi­ang, Buz­zfeed): “Bil­lion­aires like Bill Gates and Elon Musk assume that a super­in­tel­li­gent AI will stop at noth­ing to achieve its goals because that’s the atti­tude they adopt­ed.” This essay is built on a clever insight that it press­es too far.
  5. What Putin Real­ly Wants (Julia Ioffe, The Atlantic): “[Inter­fer­ing with the US elec­tion] is a stun­ning esca­la­tion of hos­til­i­ties for a trou­bled coun­try whose elites still have only a ten­u­ous grasp of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. And it is clas­si­cal­ly Putin, and clas­si­cal­ly Russ­ian: using dar­ing aggres­sion to mask weak­ness, to avenge deep resent­ments, and, at all costs, to sur­vive.” This is a long arti­cle.
  6. Why We Shouldn’t Let the #MeToo Move­ment Change His­to­ry (David Green­berg, Politi­co): “Today we remem­ber lit­tle more from that era than the taunt that greet­ed pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Grover Cleve­land in 1884—‘Ma, Ma, Where’s my Pa?’—when he copped to father­ing a child with an unwed woman. (He weath­ered the sto­ry, prompt­ing the riposte from his sup­port­ers, ‘Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha.’ Two years lat­er, at age 49, he mar­ried a 21-year-old, Frances Fol­som, in the White House.)” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Rut­gers. This one comes rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent and has a dif­fer­ent focus than you prob­a­bly assume from the title and the excerpt.
  7. Glow­ing Auras and ‘Black Mon­ey’: The Pentagon’s Mys­te­ri­ous U.F.O. Pro­gram (Helene Coop­er, Ralph Blu­men­thal and Leslie Kean, New York Times):  “The pro­gram col­lect­ed video and audio record­ings of report­ed U.F.O. inci­dents, includ­ing footage from a Navy F/A‑18 Super Hor­net show­ing an air­craft sur­round­ed by some kind of glow­ing aura trav­el­ing at high speed and rotat­ing as it moves. The Navy pilots can be heard try­ing to under­stand what they are see­ing. ‘There’s a whole fleet of them,’ one exclaims. Defense offi­cials declined to release the loca­tion and date of the inci­dent.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Spir­i­tu­al Shape of Polit­i­cal Ideas (Joseph Bot­tum, The Week­ly Stan­dard): many mod­ern polit­i­cal ideas are derived from Chris­t­ian the­o­log­i­cal con­cepts. (first shared in vol­ume 1)

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 131

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 West­ern Elite from a Chi­nese Per­spec­tive (Puzhong Yao, Amer­i­can Affairs): “Cer­tain beliefs are as ubiq­ui­tous among the peo­ple I went to school with as smog was in Shi­ji­azhuang. The doc­trines that shape the world­views and cul­tur­al assump­tions at elite West­ern insti­tu­tions like Cam­bridge, Stan­ford, and Gold­man Sachs have become almost reli­gious. Nev­er­the­less, I hope that the per­spec­tive of a can­did Chi­nese athe­ist can be of some instruc­tion to them.” This is quite fun­ny in places, espe­cial­ly his expe­ri­ences at the Stan­ford GSB.
  2. Uni­ver­si­ty evicts Chris­t­ian club over lead­er­ship faith require­ment (Caleb Parke, Fox News): “‘The [Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa] knows that what it is doing to BLinC is unfair, ille­gal, and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al,’ the com­plaint pre­pared by the firm says, adding that, while BLinC only requires adher­ence to their beliefs for their lead­ers and not their mem­bers, uni­ver­si­ty pol­i­cy is that cam­pus orga­ni­za­tions can require mem­bers to believe a cer­tain way.’” Read the actu­al legal com­plaint — it’s straight fire. I was espe­cial­ly tick­led by para­graph 76.
  3. How Cul­ture Affects Depres­sion (Mar­i­an­na Pogosyan, Psy­chol­o­gy Today): “How­ev­er, teach­ing peo­ple that this very com­plex social, cul­tur­al, and bio­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non is entire­ly bio­log­i­cal can back­fire. It encour­ages peo­ple to ignore envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors, and instead, essen­tial­ize depres­sion as a char­ac­ter­is­tic of them­selves and their biol­o­gy.” An inter­view with a George­town psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor.
  4. The War­lock Hunt (Claire Berlin­s­ki, The Amer­i­can Inter­est): “Giv­en the events of recent weeks, we can be cer­tain of this: From now on, men with any instinct for self-preser­va­tion will cease to speak of any­thing per­son­al, any­thing sex­u­al, in our pres­ence. They will make no bawdy jokes when we are lis­ten­ing. They will adopt in our pres­ence great def­er­ence to our exquis­ite sen­si­tiv­i­ty and frailty. Many women seem pos­i­tive­ly joy­ful at this prospect. The Rev­o­lu­tion has at last been achieved! But how could this be the world we want? Isn’t this the world we escaped?”
  5. Evan­gel­i­cals and Domes­tic Vio­lence: Are Chris­t­ian Men More Abu­sive? (Brad Wilcox, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “…church­go­ing evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tant hus­bands were the least like­ly to be engaged in abu­sive behav­ior…. Although the empir­i­cal sto­ry of reli­gion and domes­tic vio­lence looks good for prac­tic­ing believ­ers, it’s much less rosy for oth­ers. My research sug­gests that the most vio­lent hus­bands in Amer­i­ca are nom­i­nal evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants who attend church infre­quent­ly or not at all.” Brings to mind Rev 3:15–16 — be hot or cold, not luke­warm. The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at UVA.
  6. I read many arti­cles about the Alaba­ma elec­tion — these stood out.
    • Roy Moore and the Invis­i­ble Reli­gious Right  (Ben­jamin Wal­lace-Wells, The New York­er): “…what was most notable about the pas­tors on Moore’s list was their obscu­ri­ty. I found a list of the pas­tors of the thir­ty-six largest church­es in Alaba­ma, assem­bled this sum­mer by the Web site of the Birm­ing­ham News; no pas­tor on that list appeared on Moore’s. I called lead­ers with­in the deeply con­ser­v­a­tive South­ern Bap­tist Church—the largest denom­i­na­tion in Alaba­ma and, for decades, the core of the reli­gious right—and was told that not a sin­gle affil­i­at­ed South­ern Bap­tist pas­tor in the state was open­ly allied with Moore.”
    • Roy Moore Had Low­est White Evan­gel­i­cal Sup­port Of Any Alaba­ma Repub­li­can In The 21st Cen­tu­ry (Lyman Stone, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Exit polls from the Alaba­ma Sen­ate spe­cial elec­tion on Tues­day show that Roy Moore got 80 per­cent of the white evan­gel­i­cal vote, but nonethe­less went down to defeat. This is shock­ing, because white evan­gel­i­cals are a big share of Alabama’s pop­u­la­tion…. So if it’s a big vot­ing bloc and they’re 80 per­cent for a can­di­date, shouldn’t that can­di­date win?”
    • For a crit­i­cal take on the above claim: Is it pos­si­ble that white evan­gel­i­cals swung the Alaba­ma elec­tion against Roy Moore? (Scott Clement, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Moore’s sup­port among white evan­gel­i­cals is his­tor­i­cal­ly low for a Repub­li­can. At the same time, the drop-off in Moore’s sup­port among oth­er white groups from pre­vi­ous elec­tions (par­tic­u­lar­ly non-evan­gel­i­cals, white women and whites with col­lege degrees) is far larg­er, indi­cat­ing that evan­gel­i­cals were far less like­ly than oth­er typ­i­cal Repub­li­can vot­ers to alter their par­ty sup­port with Moore as a can­di­date.”
    • And more gen­er­al­ly: Pro-life Vot­ers and Pro-Choice Politi­cians (Michael Wear, per­son­al blog): “The way some invoke con­science in pol­i­tics reflects an odd moral­i­ty that puts one’s con­science at risk for sup­port­ing a can­di­date who oppos­es Roe v. Wade, but ratio­nal­izes away moral respon­si­bil­i­ty for a can­di­date who inten­tion­al­ly seeks to dis­en­fran­chise African-Amer­i­cans or restrict the right of wor­ship for Mus­lims or wan­ton­ly breaks up fam­i­lies through depor­ta­tion or mass incar­cer­a­tion. Per­haps abor­tion as a polit­i­cal issue car­ries greater moral weight than these oth­er issues—an idea some pro-lif­ers seem a bit too eager to accept, I have to say—but is there no con­flu­ence of evil that can affect the vot­ing cal­cu­la­tion of the pro-life per­son who believes their con­science requires them to vote for who­ev­er the pro-life can­di­date hap­pens to be?” Wear, an evan­gel­i­cal, was an Oba­ma White House staffer.
    • Also more gen­er­al­ly: Why I Can No Longer Call Myself an Evan­gel­i­cal Repub­li­can (Peter Wehn­er, New York Times): “the events of the past few years — and the past few weeks — have shown us that the Repub­li­can Par­ty and the evan­gel­i­cal move­ment (or large parts of them, at least), have become what I once would have thought of as lib­er­al car­i­ca­tures. Assume you were a per­son of the left and an athe­ist, and you decid­ed to cre­ate a cou­ple of peo­ple in a lab­o­ra­to­ry to dis­cred­it the Repub­li­can Par­ty and white evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty. You could hard­ly choose two more per­fect men than Don­ald Trump and Roy Moore.” (this one came rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent)
  7. Is Alp­haZe­ro real­ly a sci­en­tif­ic break­through in AI? (Jose Cama­cho Col­la­dos, Medi­um):  “I am a researcher in the broad field of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI), spe­cial­ized in Nat­ur­al Lan­guage Pro­cess­ing. I am also a chess Inter­na­tion­al Mas­ter, cur­rent­ly the top play­er in South Korea although prac­ti­cal­ly inac­tive for the last few years due to my full-time research posi­tion…. How­ev­er, there are rea­son­able doubts about the valid­i­ty of the over­ar­ch­ing claims that arise from a care­ful read­ing of AlphaZero’s paper.”  I was recent­ly hyp­ing this to some­one and clear­ly did not know as much about it as I thought. Inter­est­ing push­back.
  8. And last but not least : Want to raise employ­ee morale? Treat every day as an exper­i­ment (Chris­tos Makridis, Medi­um): our very own Chris­tos con­tin­ues to put his work out into the pub­lic square. Go, Chris­tos!

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have a provoca­tive read: In Defense of Flog­ging (Peter Moskos, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion) — the author is a for­mer police offi­cer and now a crim­i­nol­o­gist at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York. This one was shared back before I start­ed send­ing these emails in a blog post called Pun­ish­ment.

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 130

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. There is a small but vocal group of skep­tics who claim that Jesus nev­er exist­ed. Lar­ry Hur­ta­do, a pro­fes­sor of ear­ly Chris­tian­i­ty, takes them down in a series of blog posts.
    • Why The Myth­i­cal Jesus Claim Has No Trac­tion With Schol­ars (Lar­ry Hur­ta­do, per­son­al blog): “The attempts to deny Jesus’ his­tor­i­cal exis­tence are, for any­one acquaint­ed with the rel­e­vant evi­dence, bla­tant­ly sil­ly.”
    • Focus, Focus, Focus! (Lar­ry Hur­ta­do, per­son­al blog): “Anoth­er read­er seems great­ly exer­cised over how much of the Jesus-tra­di­tion Paul recounts in his let­ters, and how much Paul may have known…. Paul ascribes to Jesus a human birth, a min­istry among fel­low Jews, an exe­cu­tion specif­i­cal­ly by Roman cru­ci­fix­ion, named/known sib­lings, and oth­er named indi­vid­u­als who were Jesus’ orig­i­nal com­pan­ions (e.g., Kephas/Peter, John Zebedee).  Indeed, in Paul’s view, it was essen­tial that Jesus is a real human, for the res­ur­rect­ed Jesus is Paul’s mod­el and pro­to-type of the final redemp­tion that Paul believes God will bestow on all who align them­selves with Jesus.”
    • Gee, Dr. Car­ri­er, You’re Real­ly Upset! (Lar­ry Hur­ta­do, per­son­al blog): “This exam­ple will ade­quate­ly serve to illus­trate why Carrier’s work hasn’t had any impact in schol­ar­ly cir­cles.  He gets him­self into a mud­dle.”
  2. Four Ques­tions About Amer­i­can Great­ness (Bret Stephens, New York Times): Dif­fi­cult to excerpt but good. Stephens says Amer­i­ca is great and that to retain our great­ness we must have a prop­er atti­tude toward immi­grants, inde­pen­dent think­ing, fail­ure, and glob­al lead­er­ship. Rec­om­mend­ed by a friend — thank you!
  3. A Police Killing With­out a Hint of Racism (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “No unjust killing of a black per­son should go uncov­ered. But I sus­pect it would be in everyone’s inter­est if jour­nal­ists and activists paid more atten­tion to egre­gious police killings of white peo­ple. If you’re hor­ri­fied by Daniel Shaver’s untime­ly death, yet against Black Lives Mat­ter, con­sid­er that Shaver might well be alive if only the Mesa police depart­ment had long ago adopt­ed reforms of the sort that Black Lives Mat­ter sug­gests.” There is a fol­low-up arti­cle — Footage Of A Police Shoot­ing Jurors Chose Not To Pun­ish.
  4. The world is rely­ing on a flawed psy­cho­log­i­cal test to fight racism (Olivia Gold­hill, Quartz): “meta-analy­ses showed that the [Implic­it Asso­ci­a­tion Test] is no bet­ter at pre­dict­ing dis­crim­i­na­to­ry behav­ior (includ­ing microag­gres­sions) than explic­it mea­sures of explic­it bias, such as the Mod­ern Racism Scale, which eval­u­ates racism sim­ply by ask­ing par­tic­i­pants to state their lev­el of agree­ment with [racist state­ments].”
  5. Sur­vey: Evan­gel­i­cal Label, Beliefs Often At Odds (Bob Smi­etana, Bap­tist Press): “Few­er than half of those who iden­ti­fy as evan­gel­i­cals (45 per­cent) strong­ly agree with core evan­gel­i­cal beliefs…. Only two-thirds (69 per­cent) of evan­gel­i­cals by belief self-iden­ti­fy as evan­gel­i­cals.” This is impor­tant to remem­ber both when read­ing the news and when talk­ing with oth­ers — the label evan­gel­i­cal does­n’t mean what it should. Use­ful­ly illus­trat­ed in visu­al form on Twit­ter.
  6. The Ori­gin of Sil­i­con Valley’s Dys­func­tion­al Atti­tude Toward Hate Speech (Noam Cohen, The New York­er): “Cen­sor­ing a news­group, he explained to those who might not be famil­iar with Usenet, was like pulling a book from cir­cu­la­tion. Since ‘Mein Kampf’ was still on the library shelves, it was hard to imag­ine how any­thing else mer­it­ed removal.” The arti­cle is about Stan­ford, and it led me to entire­ly dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions than the author intend­ed.
  7. The Church’s Fate Is Not Elec­toral: Our Roy Moore Moment (Greg Forster, Gospel Coali­tion): ”There are no Flight 93 moments for the church; there nev­er have been and nev­er will be. Cer­tain­ly God’s peo­ple will con­tin­ue to face per­se­cu­tion from world­ly pow­ers, as we always have. But the idea that we have to com­pro­mise moral stan­dards in order to pre­vent the destruc­tion of the church reflects an appalling fail­ure to grasp where the church’s fate real­ly lies. The church’s fate is not elec­toral; it’s escha­to­log­i­cal. The church’s tri­umph over its ene­mies comes with the King’s return.”
  8. The Supreme Court heard argu­ments on Tues­day about the Col­orado bak­er who refus­es to bake cakes for events he find objec­tion­able — includ­ing gay wed­dings.
    • Argu­ment analy­sis: Con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty lean­ing toward rul­ing for Col­orado bak­er (Amy Howe, SCO­TUS­blog): “Although mak­ing pre­dic­tions based on oral argu­ment is always dan­ger­ous, it seemed very pos­si­ble that there are five votes for Phillips among the court’s more con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices, even if it is less clear how broad­ly they will rule.”
    • A Baker’s First Amend­ment Rights (Robert P. George and Sherif Gir­gis, New York Times): “You need the First Amend­ment pre­cise­ly when your ideas offend oth­ers or flout the majority’s ortho­dox­ies. And then it pro­tects more than your free­dom to speak your mind; it guards your free­dom not to speak the mind of anoth­er.”
    • We’re lawyers who sup­port same-sex mar­riage. We also sup­port the Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop bak­er. (Dou­glas Lay­cock & Thomas Berg, Vox): “The case tests the nation’s com­mit­ment to lib­er­ty and jus­tice for all. And we aren’t doing well on the part about ‘for all.’ Too many Amer­i­cans, left and right, reli­gious and sec­u­lar, want lib­er­ty for their own side in the cul­ture wars, but not for the oth­er side.” The authors are not just lawyers — they are pro­fes­sors of con­sti­tu­tion­al law.
    • How Not To Advance Gay Mar­riage (David Brooks, New York Times): “If you want to know why we have such a polar­ized, angry and bit­ter soci­ety, one rea­son is we take every dis­agree­ment that could be addressed in con­ver­sa­tion and com­mu­ni­ty and we turn it into a law­suit. We take every moral­ly sup­ple sit­u­a­tion and we hand it over to the legal priest­hood, which by neces­si­ty is a sys­tem of tech­no­crat­ic ratio­nal­ism, strained slip­pery-slope analo­gies and implied coer­cion.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have 20 Argu­ments For God’s Exis­tence (Peter Kreeft, per­son­al web­site): “You may be blessed with a vivid sense of God’s pres­ence; and that is some­thing for which to be pro­found­ly grate­ful. But that does not mean you have no oblig­a­tion to pon­der these argu­ments. For many have not been blessed in that way. And the proofs are designed for them—or some of them at least—to give a kind of help they real­ly need. You may even be asked to pro­vide help.” The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Boston Col­lege. (first shared in vol­ume 116)

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 127

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.

Also, next issue is vol­ume 128, an impor­tant com­put­er sci­ence num­ber. I should do some­thing to make it spe­cial. If you have an idea, let me know.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Endur­ing Appeal of Creepy Chris­tian­i­ty (David French, Nation­al Review): “The Bible doesn’t have a clear, spe­cif­ic pre­scrip­tion for every life chal­lenge. But rather than seek­ing God prayer­ful­ly and with deep humil­i­ty and rev­er­ence, we want answers, now. And thus we grav­i­tate to those peo­ple who pur­port to offer more than the Bible.”
  2. Chi­na Tells Chris­tians to Replace Images of Jesus with Com­mu­nist Pres­i­dent (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “‘Many poor house­holds have plunged into pover­ty because of ill­ness in the fam­i­ly. Some resort­ed to believ­ing in Jesus to cure their ill­ness­es,’ the head of the gov­ern­ment cam­paign told SCMP. ‘But we tried to tell them that get­ting ill is a phys­i­cal thing, and that the peo­ple who can real­ly help them are the Com­mu­nist Par­ty and Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Xi.’”
  3. She led Trump to Christ: The rise of the tel­e­van­ge­list who advis­es the White House (Julia Duin, Wash­ing­ton Post): This is an amaz­ing pro­file. “White insists that lec­tur­ing Trump is not her job. ‘I don’t preach to any­one on behav­ior mod­i­fi­ca­tion,’ she says. ‘There are things I can speak, but that’s not anyone’s busi­ness what I say. Why would I as a pas­tor expose that rela­tion­ship? Every­one needs a safe place in life, and pas­tors can be people’s safe place. That’s why I have this rela­tion­ship, because I don’t talk about it.’”
    • Speak­ing of Trump’s evan­gel­i­cal advi­sors… What Trump’s Evan­gel­i­cal Advis­ers Took Out of Egypt (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Rosen­berg thanked [Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent] Sisi for res­cu­ing Egypt and its Chris­tians from the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. He com­mend­ed the pres­i­dent for reach­ing out to Jews and to Roman Catholics. ‘But there is one group I don’t see: evan­gel­i­cals,’ he told Sisi. ‘It’s not your fault; prob­a­bly we haven’t asked. But would you like us to bring a del­e­ga­tion of lead­ers to come and vis­it you?’”
  4. A Har­vest Of Wit­ness­es (William Mum­ma, First Things): “The fight for reli­gious lib­er­ty is not a sub-cat­e­go­ry of the elec­toral con­test between Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats. It is a strug­gle over whether the state has the author­i­ty to ban­ish the great­est rival to tem­po­ral pow­er that exists. It is the age-old con­test between the King and the Church, between Cae­sar and the Truth. It is a con­test over who gets to decide: ‘What is truth?’” The piece is a lit­tle par­ti­san, but makes an impor­tant point.
  5. The Politi­ciza­tion of Moth­er­hood (James Taran­to, Wall Street Jour­nal): “The premise of Ms. Komisar’s book—backed by research in psy­chol­o­gy, neu­ro­science and epigenetics—is that ‘moth­ers are bio­log­i­cal­ly nec­es­sary for babies,’ and not only for the obvi­ous rea­sons of preg­nan­cy and birth. ‘Babies are much more neu­ro­log­i­cal­ly frag­ile than we’ve ever under­stood,’ Ms. Komis­ar says.”
  6. Stan­ford Stu­dents Pre­tend to Sup­port Free Speech, Stum­ble at Final Hur­dle (Stan­ford Review, Sam Wolfe): “…at 8:40 p.m., 20 min­utes after he began his talk, over 150 mem­bers of the crowd osten­si­bly gath­ered to hear him speak prompt­ly stood up and left, while Ara­bic music blared from Blue­tooth speak­ers con­cealed around the hall. The stu­dents, plant­ed by SAI, had arrived at the event ear­ly to clog up the venue. As a result, dozens of stu­dents, many of whom were pre­sum­ably inter­est­ed in start­ing a gen­uine dia­logue with Spencer about his views and rebuff­ing him, were turned away. I myself arrived at about 7:20 for an event sched­uled to begin an hour lat­er, and was one of the last peo­ple admit­ted… imag­ine if they had, instead of occu­py­ing the seats and sub­se­quent­ly vacat­ing them, sim­ply blocked oth­ers from enter­ing, and left the seats unfilled that way. The result would have been the same, the inten­tion large­ly the same, and their actions right­ly con­demned. This was bet­ter than vio­lence, yes, bet­ter than shout­ing Spencer down. But the protest was a delib­er­ate attempt to block stu­dents from engag­ing with Spencer in any capac­i­ty.”
  7. Police: ‘Every 16-year-old girl in Fres­no’ has been tar­get­ed by sex trade recruiters (Rory Apple­ton, Fres­no Bee): the entire sto­ry is hor­ri­fy­ing. This seg­ment caught my eye: “It is rare for boys to be traf­ficked, Chas­tain said, but it does hap­pen. It is even more dif­fi­cult for detec­tives to dis­cov­er these vic­tims because it is almost always done in total secre­cy, as even crim­i­nal gangs believe traf­fick­ing boys goes too far.” The instinct to con­sid­er your­self an okay per­son because at least you don’t do _______ is present even in very wicked peo­ple.
  8. Solar eclipse of 1207 BC helps to date pharaohs (Col­in Humphreys and Graeme Wadding­ton, Astron­o­my and Geo­physics): “How­ev­er, a plau­si­ble alter­na­tive mean­ing [to the sun and moon stand­ing still in Joshua 10] is that the Sun and Moon stopped doing what they nor­mal­ly do: they stopped shin­ing.” File under spec­u­la­tive — I am not con­vinced. If true, how­ev­er, this would be evi­dence for the lat­er date of the Exo­dus (13th cen­tu­ry vs 15th cen­tu­ry). The authors have been using astron­o­my to study the Bible for some time (see, for exam­ple, The Date of the Cru­ci­fix­ion writ­ten back in 1985).

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we’re going back to an arti­cle first shared in vol­ume 95, the long and amaz­ing Book Review: See­ing Like A State (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Peas­ants didn’t like per­ma­nent sur­names. Their own sys­tem was quite rea­son­able for them: John the bak­er was John Bak­er, John the black­smith was John Smith, John who lived under the hill was John Under­hill, John who was real­ly short was John Short. The same per­son might be John Smith and John Under­hill in dif­fer­ent con­texts, where his sta­tus as a black­smith or place of ori­gin was more impor­tant. But the gov­ern­ment insist­ed on giv­ing every­one a sin­gle per­ma­nent name, unique for the vil­lage, and track­ing who was in the same fam­i­ly as whom. Resis­tance was intense.”

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 126

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. For elites, pol­i­tics is dri­ven by ide­ol­o­gy. For vot­ers, it’s not.  (Ezra Klein, Vox): “In the­o­ry, ide­ol­o­gy comes first and par­ty comes sec­ond. We decide whether we’re for sin­gle-pay­er health care, or same-sex mar­riage, or abor­tion restric­tion, and then we choose the par­ty that most close­ly fits our ideas. You’re a lib­er­al and so you become a Demo­c­rat; you’re a con­ser­v­a­tive and so you become a Repub­li­can. The truth, it seems, is clos­er to the reverse.…”
    • I found the above inter­est­ing to read in con­junc­tion with this arti­cle — it’s on the long side:  The Pri­mal Scream of Iden­ti­ty Pol­i­tics (Mary Eber­stadt, The Week­ly Stan­dard): “Isn’t it sug­ges­tive that the ear­li­est col­lec­tive artic­u­la­tion of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics came from the com­mu­ni­ty that was first to suf­fer from the accel­er­at­ed fray­ing of fam­i­ly ties, a har­bin­ger of what came next for all? Iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics can­not be under­stood apart from the pre­ced­ing and con­comi­tant social fact of fam­i­ly implo­sion.”
    • Also rel­e­vant: Con­ser­v­a­tives, Don’t Dis­miss the Sex­u­al Mis­con­duct Claims Against Roy Moore (David French, Nation­al Review): “Each day seems to bring a new sto­ry of yet anoth­er pow­er­ful per­son fac­ing a string of accu­sa­tions. While there is a dan­ger of a witch hunt, the pres­ence of mul­ti­ple claims of mis­con­duct from mul­ti­ple sources should always make us pause — regard­less of whether the alleged abuser comes from the Left or the Right. It’s a moral imper­a­tive that we not deter­mine the verac­i­ty of the alle­ga­tions by the ide­ol­o­gy of the accused.” Roy Moore has been pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned in vol­umes 121 and 31.
  2. Fires Aren’t the Only Threat to the Cal­i­for­nia Dream (Enri­co Moret­ti, NY Times): “Over the past two years, San Fran­cis­co Coun­ty added 38,000 jobs, reach­ing its high­est employ­ment lev­el ever. Yet only 4,500 new hous­ing units were per­mit­ted. For all those new fam­i­lies knock­ing on San Fran­cis­co doors, new units are avail­able for less than 12 per­cent of them. The num­bers for Sil­i­con Val­ley are even worse. This is why the rents sky­rock­et. The prob­lem is large­ly self-inflict­ed: the region has some of the country’s slow­est, most polit­i­cal and cum­ber­some hous­ing approval process­es and most strin­gent land-use restric­tions.” The author is an eco­nom­ics prof at UC Berke­ley.
  3. Sculpt­ed By Evo­lu­tion (David Schmitt, Psy­chol­o­gy Today): “…empir­i­cal evi­dence shows that most sex dif­fer­ences are con­spic­u­ous­ly larg­er in cul­tures with more egal­i­tar­i­an gen­der roles—as in Scan­di­navia…. Extremes of sex­u­al free­dom beget larg­er psy­cho­log­i­cal sex dif­fer­ences. Or as explained by Israeli psy­chol­o­gists Shalom Schwartz and Tam­my Rubel-Lif­shitz, it may be that hav­ing few­er gen­dered restric­tions in a cul­ture allows ‘both sex­es to pur­sue more freely the val­ues they inher­ent­ly care about more.’” The author was men­tioned back in vol­ume 113 in con­nec­tion with the Google gen­der memo.
  4. Lib­er­al Tra­di­tion, Yes; Lib­er­al Ide­ol­o­gy, No (R.R. Reno, First Things): this is long, very Catholic, and veers into occa­sion­al bril­liance. Rec­om­mend­ed if that descrip­tion appeals to you. “Lib­er­al­ism, prop­er­ly under­stood, is not a creed; it is a tra­di­tion, a set of insti­tu­tions, and a habit of mind.”
  5. Some­thing Is Wrong On The Inter­net (James Bri­dle, Medi­um): “…I don’t even have kids and right now I just want to burn the whole thing down. Some­one or some­thing or some com­bi­na­tion of peo­ple and things is using YouTube to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly fright­en, trau­ma­tise, and abuse chil­dren, auto­mat­i­cal­ly and at scale, and it forces me to ques­tion my own beliefs about the inter­net, at every lev­el.” This is real­ly inter­est­ing.
  6. John Wal­ton and Israel’s Con­quest of Canaan: Did God Real­ly Com­mand Geno­cide? (Spoil­er Alert: No, he didn’t..and the Israelites didn’t claim he did to jus­ti­fy mass killing either) (Joel Ander­son, per­son­al blog):  “if you object to what is being described in the book of Joshua, that’s like object­ing to the Allies ban­ning Nazism and Nazi sym­bols in Ger­many, or to the Unit­ed States try­ing to get rid of the Tal­iban who had inflict­ed hor­ren­dous atroc­i­ties on the inno­cent Afghani peo­ple. But who in their right mind would do that?”
  7. Are Chris­tians Sup­posed To Be Com­mu­nists? (David Bent­ley Hart, New York Times): “There were no polit­i­cal ide­olo­gies in the ancient world, no abstract pro­grams for the recon­sti­tu­tion of soci­ety. But if not a polit­i­cal move­ment, the church was a kind of poli­ty, and the form of life it assumed was not mere­ly a prac­ti­cal strat­e­gy for sur­vival, but rather the embod­i­ment of its high­est spir­i­tu­al ideals. Its ‘com­mu­nism’ was hard­ly inci­den­tal to the faith.” This is ulti­mate­ly a med­i­ta­tion on the Greek word koinon­ia. Hart leaves out some impor­tant parts of the New Tes­ta­ment wit­ness (such as 1 Tim 6:17–18 and Acts 5:4) and there­by veers from the truth a lit­tle. Still, any­time some­one gets a the­o­log­i­cal op-ed pub­lished in the NYT I’m impressed.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness (William Dere­siewicz, The Amer­i­can Schol­ar): a long and thought­ful arti­cle. “Selec­tive pri­vate col­leges have become reli­gious schools. The reli­gion in ques­tion is not Method­ism or Catholi­cism but an extreme ver­sion of the belief sys­tem of the lib­er­al elite: the lib­er­al pro­fes­sion­al, man­age­r­i­al, and cre­ative class­es, which pro­vide a large major­i­ty of stu­dents enrolled at such places and an even larg­er major­i­ty of fac­ul­ty and admin­is­tra­tors who work at them. To attend those insti­tu­tions is to be social­ized, and not infre­quent­ly, indoc­tri­nat­ed into that reli­gion…. I say this, by the way, as an athe­ist, a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, a native north­east­ern­er, a per­son who believes that col­leges should not have sports teams in the first place—and in case it isn’t obvi­ous by now, a card-car­ry­ing mem­ber of the lib­er­al elite.” (first shared in vol­ume 92)

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 125

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. In my ser­mon this week I allud­ed to the glob­al impact of the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion and men­tioned two out­comes you might have found sur­pris­ing — the spread of democ­ra­cy and the rise of sci­ence. To learn more about the first, check out Robert Wood­ber­ry’s arti­cle The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy, for the sec­ond go inspect Peter Har­rison’s book The Bible, Protes­tantism, and the Rise of Nat­ur­al Sci­ence. For sim­i­lar­ly edi­fy­ing aca­d­e­m­ic reads, check the list of resources at The Gospel and Green Library.
  2. Tues­day was the 500th anniver­sary of the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion. I found two unex­pect­ed­ly sim­i­lar respons­es to it:
    • From a Protes­tant: Which Hen­ry Caused The Ref­or­ma­tion (Carl True­man, First Things): “But if we are tru­ly to under­stand the prob­lems the church faces in today’s world, and respond appro­pri­ate­ly to them, we need to move beyond the blame game, and beyond see­ing the mat­ter in pure­ly the­o­log­i­cal or ide­o­log­i­cal terms. It was the motor car, not Luther nor Calvin, that made the church just one more con­sumer choice. And there­in lies the prob­lem.”
    • From a Catholic: Who Won The Ref­or­ma­tion? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “First, [the dom­i­nant cul­tur­al nar­ra­tive] goes, Protes­tantism replaced the author­i­ty of the church with the author­i­ty of the Bible. Then, once it became clear that nobody could agree on what the Bible meant, the author­i­ty of con­science became pre-emi­nent — and from there we entered nat­u­ral­ly (if with some bloody resis­tance from var­i­ous reac­tionary forces) into the age of lib­er­ty, democ­ra­cy and human rights.”
  3. How the pros­per­i­ty gospel is spark­ing a major change in pre­dom­i­nant­ly Catholic Brazil (Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Brazil, which has the most Catholics of any coun­try in the world, is under­go­ing reli­gious debates sim­i­lar to those sparked in 1517 by a fiery Ger­man preach­er named Mar­tin Luther — over church rich­es and cor­rup­tion, polit­i­cal pow­er, and the prop­er way to read the Bible. By 2030, Catholics, now the reli­gious major­i­ty in Brazil, are pro­ject­ed to become a reli­gious minor­i­ty.” Rec­om­mend­ed.
  4. Across Myan­mar, Denial of Eth­nic Cleans­ing and Loathing of Rohingya (Han­nah Beech, New York Times): “‘We do some­thing that we call edu­cat­ing the peo­ple,’ said U Pe Myint, the nation’s infor­ma­tion min­is­ter. He acknowl­edged, ‘It looks rather like indoc­tri­na­tion, like in an author­i­tar­i­an or total­i­tar­i­an state.’” This is insane. Also, read­ing this may cause you to revise your opin­ion of the intrin­si­cal­ly peace­ful nature of Bud­dhism and the sig­nif­i­cance of the Nobel Peace Prize.
  5. Jobs Are A Cost, Not A Ben­e­fit (Tim Worstall, Forbes): “It is sim­ply non­sense that we should pre­fer using the labour of more peo­ple to achieve a goal than using less labour to achieve the same goal. Absolute, arrant, non­sense…. Labour is, after all, the sweat of the brow and the break­ing of the back for those who have to do it: peo­ple who would prob­a­bly pre­fer to be enjoy­ing a lit­tle more of that work life bal­ance and some leisure with loved ones if they did­n’t have to be climb­ing wind­mills in the mid­dle of a North Sea gale.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  6. ‘I Am a Man With Down Syn­drome and My Life Is Worth Liv­ing’ (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “Par­ents who car­ry a fetus with Down syn­drome to term, or who are con­flict­ed about whether or not to do so, will almost cer­tain­ly speak with a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al, and per­haps with a coun­selor or reli­gious advis­er. But they are unlike­ly to hear from an adult with Down syndrome—and per­haps unaware that many are lov­ing their lives, bring­ing joy to oth­ers, and giv­ing them­selves to their com­mu­ni­ties.”
  7. Is Athe­ism Irra­tional? (Kel­ly J. Clark, Big Ques­tions Online): “Accord­ing to a cul­tur­al­ly influ­en­tial nar­ra­tive, reli­gious beliefs are irra­tional because they are caused by unre­li­able cog­ni­tive mech­a­nisms, where­as athe­ism is ratio­nal because it is the prod­uct of ratio­nal reflec­tion on true beliefs. We have debunked a por­tion of the nar­ra­tive: athe­ism, at least in some cas­es, is cor­re­lat­ed with and medi­at­ed by a cog­ni­tive deficit.”
  8. Pros­ti­tu­tion Reduces Rape (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): Huh. I find it inter­est­ing that even though pros­ti­tu­tion is con­demned through­out the Bible, it was not actu­al­ly out­lawed in Old Tes­ta­ment Israel except in cer­tain spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances. In light of this research, that makes a lot of sense. See http://www.openbible.info/topics/prostitution to skim some of the key Bible vers­es.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have some thoughts about slav­ery and the Bible – Does The Bible Sup­port Slav­ery? (a lec­ture giv­en by the war­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, the link is to the video with notes) and Does God Con­done Slav­ery In The Bible? (Part One – Old Tes­ta­ment) and also Part Two – New Tes­ta­ment (longer pieces from Glenn Miller at Chris­t­ian Think­tank). All three are quite help­ful. (first shared in vol­ume 76)

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 123

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. Meet The “Young Saints” Of Bethel Who Go To Col­lege To Per­form Mir­a­cles (Mol­ly Hens­ley-Clan­cy, Buz­zfeed): “Behind Bethel’s rise is the enor­mous tal­ent and ambi­tion of the church’s mag­ne­tiz­ing lead­ers, Bill John­son and Kris Val­lot­ton, who cofound­ed BSSM in 1998. Depend­ing on who you ask, Val­lot­ton and John­son are genius­es, false prophets, or both. What’s unde­ni­able is that with Val­lot­ton at his side, John­son, a fifth-gen­er­a­tion pas­tor, has trans­formed a small, unre­mark­able local church into what Chris­tian­i­ty Today called ‘a hub of a glob­al revival move­ment.’” Fair and inter­est­ing — much bet­ter than oth­er sto­ries I have seen. I know a lot about Bethel and I learned sev­er­al things from this piece.
  2. A Let­ter to Jamie Dimon (and any­one else still strug­gling to under­stand cryp­tocur­ren­cies) (Adam Lud­win, com­pa­ny blog): this is a gen­uine­ly help­ful expla­na­tion of what Bit­coin and oth­er cryp­tocur­ren­cies are good for. “They’re a new mod­el for cre­at­ing, financ­ing, and oper­at­ing soft­ware ser­vices in a way that is decen­tral­ized top-to-bot­tom. That doesn’t make them bet­ter or worse than exist­ing soft­ware mod­els or the cor­po­rate enti­ties that cre­ate them. As we’ll see lat­er, there are major trade-offs. What we can say is sim­ply that they are rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from soft­ware as we know it today and rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from the forms of orga­ni­za­tion we are used to.”
  3. Meet­ing Mid­dle East Chris­tians is where West­ern stereo­types go to die (John Allen, Crux): “Spend­ing time among the Chris­tians of the Mid­dle East is always an edi­fy­ing expe­ri­ence, but for West­ern­ers it packs a spe­cial punch. That’s because the Chris­t­ian pop­u­la­tion of this peren­ni­al­ly trou­bled region often is where West­ern stereo­types about the Mid­dle East go to die.” The more you fol­low glob­al news the more sur­pris­ing you will con­sid­er the author’s claims to be.
  4. Chi­nese House Church Lead­ers and Tod­dler Arrest­ed After Singing in Pub­lic Park (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Oth­er provinces have been com­ing down espe­cial­ly hard on reli­gious edu­ca­tion for chil­dren. In Zhe­jiang province—where hun­dreds of cross­es were torn off church­es over the past sev­er­al years—elementary and mid­dle school chil­dren weren’t allowed to attend church or Sun­day school this sum­mer.”
  5. 4 Spe­cif­ic Things You Lose When You Leave Chris­tian­i­ty (Kristi Har­ri­son, Cracked) — this is well-writ­ten and heart­break­ing. “I have no idea why any­one thinks church is bor­ing. In my expe­ri­ence, church was not a slog through old songs, tired rit­u­als, or heavy-hand­ed ser­mons; it was an addic­tive, engag­ing expe­ri­ence where I felt like I had a seat at the table with the cre­ator of the Uni­verse.”
  6. Sci­ence v. Sci­ence+ (David Hed­dle, per­son­al blog): “So sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, at least, sci­ence and faith are not incompatible–unless you devise a way to measure/detect the incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty. I have pro­posed two exper­i­ments: 1. I’ll give you ten papers from tier‑1 peer-reviewed jour­nals. Five from athe­ists, five from the­ists, with the names redact­ed. Detect the incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty and accu­rate­ly sep­a­rate the papers into the two groups. 2. Design an exper­i­ment that can be done by an athe­is­tic sci­en­tist and not a the­is­tic sci­en­tist.” The author is a physics pro­fes­sor at Christo­pher New­port Uni­ver­si­ty.
  7. Free­dom not to choose is a faith worth believ­ing in (David Mitchell, The Guardian):  “I always say I’m agnos­tic because I’d like there to be a God – a nice lib­er­al one – but I can’t be sure there is and the idea of reg­u­lar reli­gious obser­vance unnerves me because it would be unusu­al in my peer group. Not a very well thought-through phi­los­o­phy, I know. But in the absence of fam­i­ly or soci­etal pres­sures, in a con­text of almost com­plete reli­gious free­dom, many of us rely on sim­i­lar back-of-an-enve­lope answers to eter­nal ques­tions, because adopt­ing the answers thou­sands of full-time pon­der­ers have come up with over thou­sands of years feels like squan­der­ing that free­dom.” David Mitchell is a British comedian/public intel­lec­tu­al (sort of) — if you’re unfa­mil­iar with him, watch some clips from the British game show Would I Lie To You? A good first clip is David Mitchell’s Code For Note­wor­thi­ness.

Things Glen Found Entertaining/Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The world will only get weird­er (Steven Coast, per­son­al blog): “We fixed all the main rea­sons air­craft crash a long time ago. Some­times a long, long time ago. So, we are left with the less and less prob­a­ble events.” The piece is a few years old so the exam­ples are dat­ed, but it remains very intrigu­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 67)

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 120

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. Divine To Divid­ed: How Occu­py Cen­tral Split Hong Kong’s Chris­t­ian Lead­ers (Jayson Albano, Mar­ta Colom­bo And Maria Cristhin Kuiper, South Chi­na Morn­ing Post): “Once on the street, he could see clear­ly. He could see the crowds form­ing, and he could see the mount­ing ranks of riot police. And when he saw those same police­men fir­ing tear gas into the assem­bled mass­es one thing became clear in his mind: that his faith in God demand­ed he act.”
  2. The old­est human lived to 122. Why no per­son will like­ly break her record. (Bri­an Resnick, Vox): “The authors pro­pose this is a built-in ‘nat­ur­al lim­it’ to our longevi­ty, an ‘inad­ver­tent byprod­uct’ of our biol­o­gy. And to increase the nat­ur­al lim­it we’d need to fun­da­men­tal­ly alter our genet­ics.”
    • This is based on a very read­able piece in Nature Evi­dence for a lim­it to human lifes­pan (Xiao Dong, Bran­don Mil­hol­land & Jan Vijg, Nature).
    • This find­ing reminds me of Gen­e­sis 6:3, “Then the Lord said, ‘My Spir­it will not con­tend with humans for­ev­er, for they are mor­tal; their days will be a hun­dred and twen­ty years.’”
  3. I used to sup­port legal­iz­ing all drugs. Then the opi­oid epi­dem­ic hap­pened. (Ger­man Lopez, Vox): “By the time I began as a drug pol­i­cy reporter in 2010, I was all in on legal­iz­ing every drug, from mar­i­jua­na to hero­in and cocaine. It all seemed so obvi­ous to me. Pro­hi­bi­tion had failed…. Then I began report­ing on the opi­oid epi­dem­ic.” FYI: this arti­cle is long: only read the first two sec­tions unless you’re real­ly into the sub­ject.
  4. Authors’ note: Deep neur­al net­works are more accu­rate than humans at detect­ing sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion from facial images (Michal Kosin­s­ki and Yilun Wang, self-pub­lished on Google Docs): this note by two Stan­ford researchers to explain their recent paper is extreme­ly inter­est­ing. “We used wide­ly avail­able off-the-shelf tools, pub­licly avail­able data, and stan­dard meth­ods well known to com­put­er vision prac­ti­tion­ers. We did not cre­ate a pri­va­cy-invad­ing tool, but rather showed that basic and wide­ly used meth­ods pose seri­ous pri­va­cy threats.”
  5. I called Hugh Hefn­er a pimp, he threat­ened to sue. But that’s what he was. (Suzanne Moore, The Guardian): “But this man is still being cel­e­brat­ed by peo­ple who should know bet­ter. You can dress it up with talk of glam­our and bun­ny ears and fish­nets, you can talk about his con­tri­bu­tion to gonzo jour­nal­ism, you can con­tex­tu­alise his dri­ve to free up sex as part of the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion. But strip it all back and he was a man who bought and sold women to oth­er men.”
    • Con­cep­tu­al­ly relat­ed: STD rates hit anoth­er record high, with Cal­i­for­nia near the top (Soumya Kar­la­mangla, LA Times): “More than a quar­ter-mil­lion Cal­i­for­ni­ans were infect­ed with either syphilis, chlamy­dia or gon­or­rhea last year, which con­sti­tutes a 40% jump com­pared with five years ago, state offi­cials said.” I am often struck by the fact that STDs would effec­tive­ly dis­ap­pear in one gen­er­a­tion if peo­ple obeyed the Bible.
    • Dit­to: Pas­tor­ing Sin­gles in a Sex-Crazed, Gen­der-Con­fused World (Juan Sanchez, Life­way): “Celi­bate sin­gle­ness is a gift from God with a pur­pose.” This one isn’t just for pas­tors — rec­om­mend­ed to all sin­gles.
  6. Col­in Kaeper­nick vs. Tim Tebow: A tale of two Chris­tians on their knees (Michael Frost, Wash­ing­ton Post): “They’re both Chris­t­ian foot­ball play­ers, and they’re both known for kneel­ing on the field, although for very dif­fer­ent rea­sons. One grew up the son of Bap­tist mis­sion­ar­ies to the Philip­pines. The oth­er was bap­tized Methodist, con­firmed Luther­an, and attend­ed a Bap­tist church dur­ing col­lege. Both have made a pub­lic dis­play of their faith. Both are prayer­ful and devout.” It’s a clever piece, although you should also read the gen­tle crit­i­cism of it at Kaeper­nick vs. Tebow? Wash­ing­ton Post pass­es along flawed take on a cru­cial heresy (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, GetRe­li­gion)
    • Inter­est­ing­ly, Kaeper­nick began kneel­ing after a meet­ing with a vet­er­an who told him that mere­ly sit­ting was dire­spect­ful. Kaeper­nick Meets With Vet­er­an Nate Boy­er, Then Kneels Dur­ing Anthem (Under the Radar) (an arti­cle I found after an alum­nus shared it on twit­ter this week — thanks, Han­nah!)
    • The Abbie Hoff­man of the Right: Don­ald Trump (David Brooks, New York Times): “The mem­bers of the edu­cat­ed class saw this past weekend’s N.F.L. fra­cas as a fight over racism. They felt mobi­lized and uni­fied in that fight and full of right­eous ener­gy. Mem­bers of the work­ing class saw the fra­cas as a fight about Amer­i­can iden­ti­ty. They saw Pitts­burgh Steel­ers coach Mike Tom­lin try to dis­suade Ale­jan­dro Vil­lanue­va, a three-time com­bat vet­er­an, from cel­e­brat­ing the flag he risked his life for. Mem­bers of this class also felt mobi­lized, uni­fied and full of right­eous ener­gy.”
  7. A lot of you seemed to like the graph­ic I used in this week’s ser­mon. Here’s a thumb­nail, you can down­load a high-res ver­sion from the source at Visu­al The­ol­o­gy: The Books of the Bible (Tim Chal­lies).
Books of the Bible — Peri­od­ic Table

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Every Place Has Detrac­tors. Con­sid­er Where They’re Com­ing From.(Megan McCar­dle, Bloomerg View): “There is grave dan­ger in judg­ing a neigh­bor­hood, or a cul­ture, by the accounts of those who chose to leave it. Those peo­ple are least like­ly to appre­ci­ate the good things about where they came from, and the most like­ly to dwell on its less attrac­tive qual­i­ties.” Bear this in mind when lis­ten­ing to con­ver­sion tes­ti­monies (both sec­u­lar and reli­gious). (first shared in vol­ume 62)

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 116

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 flood­ing in Hous­ton is crazy, and I say this as some­one who grew up fac­ing hur­ri­canes in Louisiana on a reg­u­lar basis. If you want to help, Con­voy of Hope is our rec­om­mend­ed dis­as­ter-relief orga­ni­za­tion. You can learn more about what they’re doing at Hur­ri­cane Har­vey Response. So far they’ve served over forty thou­sand peo­ple. More hur­ri­cane read­ing:
  2. 20 Argu­ments For God’s Exis­tence (Peter Kreeft, per­son­al web­site): “You may be blessed with a vivid sense of God’s pres­ence; and that is some­thing for which to be pro­found­ly grate­ful. But that does not mean you have no oblig­a­tion to pon­der these argu­ments. For many have not been blessed in that way. And the proofs are designed for them—or some of them at least—to give a kind of help they real­ly need. You may even be asked to pro­vide help.” I was remind­ed of this by a con­ver­sa­tion with an alum­nus. The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Boston Col­lege.
  3. A Beat­ing In Berke­ley (Matt Labash, Week­ly Stan­dard): “One of them, Will John­son, announces that he is a black Amer­i­can and a Chris­t­ian. ‘This is not a neo-Nazi, white suprema­cist ral­ly,’ he says. ‘I don’t know where they got that from. I actu­al­ly called Nan­cy Pelosi’s office and asked her to change that. There’s no way I am a white suprema­cist.’” An amaz­ing arti­cle. Well worth read­ing.
  4. Some Thoughts and Advice for Our Stu­dents and All Stu­dents (an open let­ter from some Har­vard, Yale and Prince­ton pro­fes­sors): “Think­ing for your­self means ques­tion­ing dom­i­nant ideas even when oth­ers insist on their being treat­ed as unques­tion­able. It means decid­ing what one believes not by con­form­ing to fash­ion­able opin­ions, but by tak­ing the trou­ble to learn and hon­est­ly con­sid­er the strongest argu­ments to be advanced on both or all sides of questions—including argu­ments for posi­tions that oth­ers revile and want to stig­ma­tize and against posi­tions oth­ers seek to immu­nize from crit­i­cal scruti­ny.” Inter­est­ing­ly, at least four of the sig­na­to­ries (near­ly 20%) are peo­ple who have pre­vi­ous­ly made an appear­ance in these emails.
  5. Wait, Do Peo­ple Actu­al­ly Know Just How Evil This Man Is? (Nathan J. Robin­son, Cur­rent Affairs): “And I am wor­ried that even those who detest Trump and are appalled by this par­don do not entire­ly appre­ci­ate the depth of Arpaio’s evil, or under­stand quite how inde­fen­si­ble what Don­ald Trump just has done is. Frankly I think even Trump may not ful­ly real­ize the extent of the wrong­do­ing that he has just sig­naled his approval of.” Depress­ing read­ing.
  6. The Pre­mi­um Mediocre Life of Maya Mil­len­ni­al (Venkatesh Rao, Rib­bon­farm): “Pre­mi­um mediocre is the finest bot­tle of wine at Olive Gar­den. Pre­mi­um mediocre is cup­cakes and froyo. Pre­mi­um mediocre is ‘truf­fle’ oil on any­thing (no actu­al truf­fles are harmed in the mak­ing of ‘truf­fle’ oil), and extra-leg-room seats in Econ­o­my. Pre­mi­um mediocre is cruise ships, arti­san piz­za, Game of Thrones, and The Bel­la­gio. Pre­mi­um mediocre is food that Insta­grams bet­ter than it tastes…. pre­mi­um medi­oc­rity is cre­at­ing an aura of exclu­siv­i­ty with­out actu­al­ly exclud­ing any­one.” The arti­cle is far too long. Read the first few para­graphs and you’ll get the idea.
  7. My IRB Night­mare (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “We, as the patient’s doc­tors, would make the diag­no­sis and write it down on the chart. But we (as study inves­ti­ga­tors) need­ed a full signed con­sent form before we were allowed to access the diag­no­sis we had just made.” This is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly dis­turb­ing and enter­tain­ing, and so is the fol­low-up post.
  8. The Cost of Run­ning Har­vard (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): I assume broad­ly sim­i­lar sta­tis­tics are true of Stan­ford.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Weight of Glo­ry (C.S. Lewis): orig­i­nal­ly preached as a ser­mon and then print­ed in a the­ol­o­gy mag­a­zine. Relat­ed: see the C. S. Lewis Doo­dle YouTube chan­nel – it’s real­ly good! (first shared in vol­ume 36)

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 112

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. ‘God’s ACLU’ Seeks Free­dom For The Faith­ful (Tunku Varadara­jan, Wall Street Jour­nal): “The pro­gres­sive or lib­er­al approach is to equate free exer­cise of reli­gion with the free­dom to wor­ship and to deny that it has any­thing to do with how a per­son orga­nizes his life. The Beck­et Fund and oth­ers assert that most reli­gions have com­plete codes gov­ern­ing not only wor­ship but oth­er aspects of con­duct. This com­pre­hen­sive Way of Life—which leads a devout­ly Chris­t­ian bak­er to decline to dec­o­rate a cake for a same-sex wed­ding, for instance—commands much more from believ­ers than pro­gres­sives will allow.” Beck­et is Chi Alpha’s pro bono legal team. The author is a fel­low at Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion.
  2. For Cul­tur­al­ly Illit­er­ate Sci­ence Reporters, Canaan­ite DNA Yields Occa­sion to Slap Bible Around (David Kling­hof­fer, Evo­lu­tion News): Did you see all those head­lines sug­gest­ing that a DNA study proved the Bib­li­cal accounts wrong? Yeah… don’t lose any sleep over that. When some­one tells you that the Bible is wrong, don’t assume they actu­al­ly know what the Bible says. See also a longer and more reflec­tive post from an OT schol­ar Break­ing News: Sci­ence Dis­proves The Bible (but I real­ly like the short and punchy one that’s the main link).
  3. The ‘Prophets’ and ‘Apos­tles’ Lead­ing the Qui­et Rev­o­lu­tion in Amer­i­can Reli­gion (Bob Smi­etana, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “It’s very spon­ta­neous. We went to a con­fer­ence where a num­ber of apos­tles were speak­ing and Bill John­son was doing a Bible teach­ing. He had prob­a­bly talked 20 or 30 min­utes, and you could feel the rest­less­ness in the room. He said, ‘I know you are just wait­ing for me to stop preach­ing because you want the pow­er. But just hang with me here.’ Peo­ple weren’t there to lis­ten to him. What they want­ed was for him to lay hands on them.” Inter­est­ing read that is not entire­ly fair but also fair­ly insight­ful. 
  4. Venezue­la’s Unprece­dent­ed Col­lapse (Ricar­do Haus­mann, Project Syn­di­cate). “Mea­sured in the cheap­est avail­able calo­rie, the min­i­mum wage declined from 52,854 calo­ries per day to just 7,005 dur­ing the same peri­od, a decline of 86.7% and insuf­fi­cient to feed a fam­i­ly of five, assum­ing that all the income is spent to buy the cheap­est calo­rie.” The author is a Har­vard pro­fes­sor and for­mer Venezue­lan offi­cial.
  5. Why The Scari­est Nuclear Threat May Be Com­ing From Inside The White House (Michael Lewis, Van­i­ty Fair): “The Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment might be the most com­pli­cat­ed orga­ni­za­tion on the face of the earth. Two mil­lion fed­er­al employ­ees take orders from 4,000 polit­i­cal appointees. Dys­func­tion is baked into the struc­ture of the thing: the sub­or­di­nates know that their boss­es will be replaced every four or eight years, and that the direc­tion of their enter­pris­es might change overnight—with an elec­tion or a war or some oth­er polit­i­cal event.” Fas­ci­nat­ing and fright­en­ing, even once you fac­tor in the author’s hos­til­i­ty to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.
  6. Mar­riage Mat­ters (W. Brad­ford Will­cox, City Jour­nal): “…young adults who fol­low three steps—getting at least a high school degree, then work­ing full-time, and then mar­ry­ing before hav­ing any chil­dren, in that order—are very unlike­ly to become poor.” The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at UVA.
  7. From the Enlight­en­ment to the Dark Ages: How “new athe­ism” slid into the alt-right (Phil Tor­res, Salon): “As a philoso­pher — some­one who cares deeply about intel­lec­tu­al hon­esty, ver­i­fi­able evi­dence, crit­i­cal think­ing and moral thought­ful­ness — I now find myself in direct oppo­si­tion with many new athe­ist lead­ers. That is, I see my own advo­ca­cy for sci­ence, crit­i­cal thought and basic moral­i­ty as stand­ing in direct oppo­si­tion to their posi­tions.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Read­ing The Whole Bible in 2016: A FAQ (Gospel Coali­tion, Justin Tay­lor). How much time each day would it take you to read the entire Bible in a year? “There are about 775,000 words in the Bible. Divid­ed by 365, that’s 2,123 words a day. The aver­age per­son reads 200 to 250 words per minute. So 2,123 words/day divid­ed by 225 words/minute equals 9.4 min­utes a day.” This arti­cle is full of good advice for what could be the best com­mit­ment you make all year. Do it! (first shared in vol­ume 31 and use­ful for any year)

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.