Tag: atheism

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 101

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 Curi­ous Rise Of The ‘White Left” As A Chi­nese Inter­net Insult (Chenchen Zhang, Open Democ­ra­cy): “If you look at any thread about Trump, Islam or immi­gra­tion on a Chi­nese social media plat­form these days, it’s impos­si­ble to avoid encoun­ter­ing the term baizuo (白左), or lit­er­al­ly, the ‘white left’.… Crit­i­cisms of the ‘white left’ against the back­ground of the Euro­pean refugee cri­sis fit espe­cial­ly well with the ‘ris­ing Chi­na’ ver­sus ‘Europe in decline’ nar­ra­tive.”
  2. The True Heart­break Of Read­ing The Bible (Rebec­ca McLaugh­lin, Ver­i­tas): “When we humans make metaphors, we’re notic­ing con­nec­tions.  Love is a sick­ness. Life is a marathon. Par­ents can be heli­copters.  But if the mes­sage of the Bible is true – if there is a God who cre­at­ed the uni­verse  – then bib­li­cal metaphors are dif­fer­ent. God did not notice how human fathers love their chil­dren and decide to call him­self our Father (e.g. Isa­iah 63:16, Matthew 6:9).  Rather, God cre­at­ed father­hood, so that the best of human fathers could give us some small glimpse of how he loves us.”
  3. Beau­ty sleep is a real thing, research shows (Michelle Roberts, BBC): “Beau­ty sleep is a real thing, accord­ing to researchers who have shown that peo­ple who miss out on sleep do appear less attrac­tive to oth­ers. A cou­ple of bad nights is enough to make a per­son look “sig­nif­i­cant­ly” more ugly, their sleep exper­i­ments sug­gest.” Bad news for Stan­ford stu­dents.
  4. Way More Amer­i­cans May Be Athe­ists Than We Thought (Daniel Cox, Five Thir­ty Eight): I sus­pect that even the high­est esti­mate in the arti­cle is low­er than what many at Stan­ford assume.
  5. The Dam­age We Would Do To Each Oth­er If We Had “The Expla­na­tion”  (Richard Beck, per­son­al blog): “Imag­ine, if you will, that the Bible gave us an expla­na­tion for why there is so much pain and suf­fer­ing in the world. Imag­ine that the Bible gave us ‘The Expla­na­tion’ in a spe­cif­ic text, some­thing we could eas­i­ly quote and share…. Then imag­ine how The Expla­na­tion would be used.”
  6. What Makes A Par­ent? (Ian Park­er, New York­er): “…at the end she stood to make a skep­ti­cal point or two. In her view, the speak­ers had under­es­ti­mat­ed the legal con­se­quences of mak­ing a per­son a par­ent. The panel’s chair, a judge, asked Rabin to stop lec­tur­ing the room. It was a pecu­liar moment. Rabin—who is gay, and a par­ent, and who has no argu­ment with Barone’s vic­to­ry, and who is admired for her own chal­lenge to Ali­son D., in 2010—seemed to have been cast as a reac­tionary, intrud­ing on a cel­e­bra­tion.” This is a long, fas­ci­nat­ing piece which (in my view but not the author’s) high­lights some of the neg­a­tive con­se­quences of the LGBT rev­o­lu­tion in soci­ety.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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.