Tag: capitalism

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 480

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. I Give Thanks in the Bright Dark­ness (Christi­na Gon­za­lez Ho, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “It seems that, his­tor­i­cal­ly, Thanks­giv­ing was not meant to be a pure­ly cel­e­bra­to­ry day, a time to lux­u­ri­ate in self-sat­is­fac­tion, but rather a day to hold grat­i­tude in ten­sion with sor­row, suf­fer­ing, and sin—to acknowl­edge the bright­ness and dark­ness that always exist simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in the world.”
    • Christi­na is an alum­nus of Chi Alpha.
  2. The Con­quest of Canaan Explained in 6 Min­utes (Gavin Ortlund, YouTube). Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. This is a top­ic I think I explain pret­ty well, but Ortlund does it bet­ter. Worth your time if the destruc­tion of the Canaan­ite cul­tures both­ers you.
  3. And They Began to Be Mer­ry (Kevin D. Williamson, The Dis­patch): “The mir­a­cle at Cana isn’t water becom­ing wine—any old magi­cian could do that sort of thing. What­ev­er it was that Jesus was about, it wasn’t stu­pid par­ty tricks. The mir­a­cle is that the Ruler of the Uni­verse cared about such a lit­tle thing as the social anx­i­eties of a bunch of nobod­ies in an obscure lit­tle cor­ner of the world of no par­tic­u­lar impor­tance, and that He loved them the way a father loves his children—and what kind of father offers just enough at a time like that when he has, at his dis­pos­al, the very best?… The super­nat­ur­al stuff is one thing, but con­sid­er the mag­nif­i­cence of that ges­ture, the sheer auda­cious style of it. I do not care if you are the most cyn­i­cal athe­ist walk­ing the Earth—it is impos­si­ble not to admire the panache. He bends real­i­ty into a new shape, makes the uni­verse fol­low new rules, to help out a friend, and He does it cool—nobody even knows what hap­pened except for the wait­ers.”
  4. What I Wish Some­one Had Told Me About Moth­er­hood (Daniela J. Lamas, New York Times): “For my gen­er­a­tion— and, I’d argue, espe­cial­ly for women in my gen­er­a­tion — the deci­sion of whether to have a child has become high­ly fraught. It’s tied up with our desires for ful­fill­ing careers, our will­ing­ness to risk a shift in the iden­ti­ties and lives we have built. It’s tied up in an under­stand­ing of all that went into mak­ing moth­er­hood a choice that we get to make. With so much at stake, it is so easy to become par­a­lyzed by inde­ci­sion. But per­haps what I would have want­ed to hear when I was dither­ing was some­thing like this: Hav­ing a child has been extra­or­di­nary.… And for some rea­son, I feel almost embar­rassed to admit how much I love being a moth­er. I spent my adult life until now with this idea that I was dif­fer­ent from — and maybe even a lit­tle supe­ri­or to — my peers who chose to spend time build­ing their fam­i­lies. I was so wor­ried about what a child would mean for my career. But what I did not antic­i­pate was that what I would want itself would change.”
  5. This Mav­er­ick Thinker Is the Karl Marx of Our Time (Christo­pher Cald­well, New York Times): “Mr. Streeck has a clear vision of some­thing para­dox­i­cal about the neolib­er­al project: For the glob­al econ­o­my to be ‘free,’ it must be con­strained. What the pro­po­nents of neolib­er­al­ism mean by a free mar­ket is a dereg­u­lat­ed mar­ket. But get­ting to dereg­u­la­tion is trick­i­er than it looks because in free soci­eties, reg­u­la­tions are the result of people’s sov­er­eign right to make their own rules. The more demo­c­ra­t­ic the world’s soci­eties are, the more idio­syn­crat­ic they will be, and the more their eco­nom­ic rules will diverge. But that is exact­ly what busi­ness­es can­not tol­er­ate — at least not under glob­al­iza­tion. Mon­ey and goods must be able to move fric­tion­less­ly and effi­cient­ly across bor­ders. This requires a uni­form set of laws. Some­how, democ­ra­cy is going to have to give way.”
    • Cald­well is an inter­est­ing thinker, so as soon as I saw his byline I knew I had to read the arti­cle. Worth a pon­der.
  6. ‘A God Who Con­tin­u­al­ly Sur­pris­es Us’: A Q&A With a The­olo­gian Who Changed His Mind About Gay Mar­riage (Peter Wehn­er, New York Times): “…I would say that the way I was appeal­ing to the Bible or the way I was inter­pret­ing the Bible was too nar­row­ly focused on the few texts in Scrip­ture that do say some­thing explic­it­ly about homo­sex­u­al rela­tion­ships. The dic­tum in Leviti­cus is that for a man to lie with a man as with a woman is an abom­i­na­tion. And those texts had a cer­tain impact on my opin­ion. But I think I was I was far too nar­row in the way I thought about how the Bible speaks to issues like this. What I came to think over time is that what the Bible shows is not some iso­lat­ed proof texts or iso­lat­ed state­ments of law, but it shows us a much big­ger pic­ture of God as a God who con­tin­u­al­ly sur­pris­es us, con­tin­u­al­ly sur­pris­es his peo­ple with the scope of gen­eros­i­ty and grace and mer­cy.”
    • This is one of many reveal­ing moments in this inter­view. Hays stopped believ­ing what the Bible actu­al­ly says in favor of what he takes the deep­er mes­sage of the Bible to be. It’s as though he sub­or­di­nates the real text of the Bible to the hypo­thet­i­cal text of the Bible in his head.
    • This arti­cle makes me sad. Shar­ing because it’s a clear­er-than-usu­al pre­sen­ta­tion of an argu­ment that I often encounter, and its clar­i­ty makes the weak­ness­es of the revi­sion­ist posi­tion more evi­dent.
  7. How Uni­ver­si­ties Cracked Down on Pro-Pales­tin­ian Activism (Isabelle Taft, New York Times): “Uni­ver­si­ties have seen just under 950 protest events this semes­ter so far, com­pared to 3,000 last semes­ter, accord­ing to a log at the Non­vi­o­lent Action Lab at Har­vard University’s Ash Cen­ter. About 50 peo­ple have been arrest­ed so far this school year at protests on high­er edu­ca­tion cam­pus­es, accord­ing to num­bers gath­ered by The New York Times, com­pared to over 3,000 last semes­ter. When stu­dents have protest­ed this fall, admin­is­tra­tors have often enforced — to the let­ter — new rules cre­at­ed in response to last spring’s unrest. The moves have cre­at­ed scenes that would have been hard to imag­ine pre­vi­ous­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly at uni­ver­si­ties that once cel­e­brat­ed their his­to­ry of stu­dent activism.”

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 303

top­ics range from the pan­dem­ic to a Bib­li­cal view of UFOs

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

This is the 303rd edi­tion, which is fun because 303 is a lucky num­ber, a cat­e­go­ry of num­bers that gives us insight into prime num­bers.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Dr. Fran­cis Collins Dis­cuss­es The Com­plex­i­ties Of Herd Immu­ni­ty (Col­bert Report, YouTube): sev­en min­utes. Dr. Collins is a fel­low believ­er and emi­nent sci­en­tist. He flat-out shares his tes­ti­mo­ny! Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  2. Why I Did­n’t “Just Bake the Cake” (Jack Phillips, First Things): “My com­mit­ment to God and to the truth of a book I believe to be his holy Word is the defin­ing premise of my life, the focus of my faith, and the guid­ing direc­tive for my actions. If you ask me to sep­a­rate all of that from my work, from my deci­sions, from my art … I sim­ply can’t do that. Not just won’t—can’t. It’s like ask­ing a con­trac­tor to build a great build­ing, but first remove the foun­da­tion.”
  3. It’s Time to Devel­op a Bib­li­cal Ufol­o­gy (Kyle Beshears, The­ol­o­gy in the Mid­dle): “What is the rela­tion­ship, if any, between UAP phe­nom­e­na and Chris­t­ian angelolo­gies and demonolo­gies? How does the doc­trine of the ima­go Dei fit in? Can our the­ol­o­gy of the fall address extrater­res­tri­als? What if they arrive deny­ing the lord­ship of Christ (Gal 1:8; 1 John 2:22)? What if they arrive pro­claim­ing the lord­ship of Christ (Rom 10:9)?”
  4. The Myth of the Val­ue-Neu­tral Mar­ket (Mark Movs­esyian, First Things): “The neu­tral mar­ket does not cre­ate tol­er­ance for diverse views; rather, it’s the oth­er way around. Tol­er­ance for diverse views cre­ates the neu­tral mar­ket; when tol­er­ance dis­ap­pears, the mar­ket becomes as polar­ized as every­thing else.”
  5. The future of war is bizarre and ter­ri­fy­ing (Noah Smith, Sub­stack): “The world may yet explode into anoth­er WW2-style con­fla­gra­tion, or the kind of nuclear holo­caust we feared dur­ing the Cold War. If so, then my bet is that drones will dom­i­nate that bat­tle­field. But most of the mod­ern mil­i­tary tech­nolo­gies led them­selves to a very dif­fer­ent kind of great-pow­er war — a war of con­stant snip­ing and harass­ment. Assas­sin drones, cyber­at­tacks, info ops, and bioweapons raise the pos­si­bil­i­ty of nev­er-end­ing low-grade attacks that are below the thresh­old of mas­sive retal­i­a­tion.”
  6. For Cos­mopoli­tan Chris­tians, Sec­u­lar Approval Is a Com­mon Temp­ta­tion (Justin E. Giboney, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “We need Chris­tians who aren’t smit­ten with the cul­ture or mere­ly pro­fi­cient at regur­gi­tat­ing its litur­gy. We need believ­ers who can wres­tle with sec­u­lar thought, affirm­ing the mer­its and oppos­ing the lies. Chris­tians must be con­fi­dent and dis­tinct­ly Chris­t­ian in our fields—boldly speak­ing up when the emper­or is strid­ing around with no clothes. When change is nec­es­sary, we must cor­rect the mis­takes of our elders by mov­ing clos­er to the Bible, not fur­ther from it.”
  7. Some thoughts about Wuhan:
    • The medi­a’s lab leak fias­co (Matt Ygle­sias, Sub­stack): “If some­thing is a 70–30 issue but the 30 are keep­ing their heads down, it can look like a 98–2 issue.… There is just more dis­agree­ment and dis­sen­sion than you would know unless you took the time to reach out to peo­ple and speak to them in a more relaxed way. My strong sus­pi­cion is that this is true across domains of exper­tise, and is cre­at­ing a lot of bub­bles of fake con­sen­sus that can become very mis­lead­ing.”
    • Check­ing Facts Even If One Can’t (Zeynep Tufek­ci, Sub­stack): “If any­thing, all this over­reach and hur­ry to declare every­thing a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry or ‘not fol­low­ing the sci­ence’ just helps erode what trust author­i­ties or fact-check­ers may have had in their pro­nounce­ments. Imag­ine that in a few years, we do get some evi­dence that real­ly helps resolve the ques­tion one way or the oth­er, and the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty were indeed able achieve a con­sen­sus of sorts. Who’d believe it after this?”
    • The Con­sid­er­able, If Cir­cum­stan­tial, Evi­dence of a Wuhan Lab Leak (Jim Ger­aghty, Nation­al Review): “Per­haps the least plau­si­ble argu­ment in oppo­si­tion to the lab-leak the­o­ry is that the staff of the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy or oth­er Chi­nese facil­i­ties are just too dili­gent to ever make a con­se­quen­tial mis­take. The orig­i­nal SARS virus had acci­den­tal­ly leaked from the Chi­nese Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy in Bei­jing, part of China’s Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol. Twice.” The com­pi­la­tion of the evi­dence is com­pelling. To use a legal image, if I was a on a jury I’d vote to con­vict unless the oppos­ing coun­sel had some slam dunk argu­ments — and in this sit­u­a­tion the oppos­ing coun­sel is fran­ti­cal­ly try­ing to get the case dis­missed before it comes to court.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 McAr­dle, Bloomberg 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). 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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 235

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. Weath­er­ing the Storm: How Faith Affects Well-Being (Byron John­son & Chris­tos Makridis, Pub­lic Dis­course): “First, and con­sis­tent with pri­or stud­ies, active Chris­tians exhib­it 6 per­cent greater cur­rent life sat­is­fac­tion and are 6 per­cent­age points more like­ly to report that they are thriving—a mea­sure from Gallup that com­bines respon­dent infor­ma­tion on both cur­rent life sat­is­fac­tion and expect­ed future life sat­is­fac­tion over the next five years. Sec­ond, and at least as impor­tant, we found that SWB is either acycli­cal or slight­ly coun­ter­cycli­cal for active Chris­tians, where­as it is strong­ly pro­cycli­cal for (inac­tive) Chris­tians and the­ists.”
  2. More Non-Evan­gel­i­cals Are Call­ing Them­selves Born Again (Ryan Burge, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Just over 36 per­cent of the entire sam­ple said that they were born again in 1988, the first year the ques­tion was asked. The ques­tion appeared spo­rad­i­cal­ly on the GSS until 2004, when it became a part of every bi-annu­al sur­vey as the num­ber of affir­ma­tive respons­es began to rise. In the last 14 years, the share of born-again Amer­i­cans has risen to 41 per­cent, and much high­er (54%) among peo­ple of col­or. Since 2010, at least half of peo­ple of col­or say that they have had a ‘turn­ing point in their life’ when they com­mit­ted them­selves to Christ.”
  3. Sex dif­fer­ences in chim­panzees’ use of sticks as play objects resem­ble those of chil­dren (Sonya M. Kahlen­berg & Richard W. Wrang­ham, Cur­rent Biol­o­gy): “…when pre­sent­ed with sex-stereo­typed human toys, cap­tive female mon­keys play more with typ­i­cal­ly fem­i­nine toys, where­as male mon­keys play more with mas­cu­line toys. In human and non­hu­man pri­mates, juve­nile females demon­strate a greater inter­est in infants, and males in rough-and-tum­ble play. This sex dif­fer­ence in activ­i­ty pref­er­ences par­al­lels adult behav­ior and may con­tribute to dif­fer­ences in toy play. Here, we present the first evi­dence of sex dif­fer­ences in use of play objects in a wild pri­mate, in chim­panzees (Pan troglodytes). We find that juve­niles tend to car­ry sticks in a man­ner sug­ges­tive of rudi­men­ta­ry doll play and, as in chil­dren and cap­tive mon­keys, this behav­ior is more com­mon in females than in males.” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2010.11.024
  4. When a sex offend­er calls, she’s there to lis­ten (Ser­e­na Solomon, Vox): “On the desk in her liv­ing room, a [Women Against Reg­istry] sign sum­ma­rizes her pitch: ‘Destroy­ing Fam­i­lies Does Not Pro­tect Chil­dren.’ It’s a mes­sage geared toward women. WAR argues that the reg­istry can pre­vent reg­is­trants from liv­ing with sup­port­ing rel­a­tives; it can bank­rupt fam­i­lies and invites vig­i­lante attacks.” A fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle. Rec­om­mend­ed by a Chi Alphan.
  5. Detroit man set­tles race dis­crim­i­na­tion law­suit, then bank won’t cash his check (Tre­sa Bal­das, Detroit Free Press): “Thomas closed his [exist­ing bank] account that day and left the premis­es. With­in an hour, he deposit­ed the checks into a new account at a Chase bank in Detroit. They cleared with­in 12 hours. Thomas, who had no car and walked to work, used the mon­ey to buy a 2004 Dodge Duran­go.” This sto­ry bog­gles the mind.
  6. Adven­tures in the Old Athe­ism, Part IV: Marx (Ed Fes­er, per­son­al blog): “Indeed, oppo­si­tion to Marx­ism is in my view a pre­req­ui­site to being a seri­ous crit­ic of cap­i­tal­ism, for Marx­ism con­tains none of the good that is in cap­i­tal­ism, much of the bad that is in it, and adds grave evils of its own to boot.” That’s not the main thrust of this essay, but I loved that quote. The whole thing is worth read­ing.
  7. Peo­ple crit­i­cize pro-lif­ers for focus­ing so much on abor­tion. But there’s a rea­son we do. (Matthew Lee Ander­son, Vox): “But for the pro-lif­er, that ‘clump of cells’ is as won­drous, as potent, as mys­te­ri­ous as, well, the cos­mos. The recog­ni­tion of the ‘baby’ induces a hushed rev­er­ence. The uni­verse once appeared out of noth­ing, a fact that rea­son­ably seems to induce the strange ver­ti­go of awe, but the for­ma­tion of a new human being is not so dif­fer­ent from this. The embryo con­tains a whole world of pos­si­bil­i­ties and adven­tures.”
    • Relat­ed: Abor­tion Regret Isn’t a Myth, Despite New Study (Maria Baer, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “…researcher Michael J. New not­ed that women who vol­un­teer to respond to ques­tions fol­low­ing an abor­tion are more like­ly to be the ones who feel pos­i­tive­ly about it, and there­fore the find­ings do not rep­re­sent the full spec­trum of women who have had abor­tions. New—a pro­fes­sor at the Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty of Amer­i­ca and a schol­ar with the pro-life Char­lotte Lozi­er Institute—noted that of all the women asked to par­tic­i­pate, less than 40 per­cent agreed, and rough­ly 30 per­cent of the 667 who par­tic­i­pat­ed had stopped respond­ing by the end of the five-year study.”
    • Relat­ed: Trump March­es For Life (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “So, I am gen­uine­ly sur­prised that Don­ald Trump has been so good on pro­life issues, and that he came to the March For Life today. And if peo­ple wor­ry that the march is becom­ing too asso­ci­at­ed with Repub­li­can pol­i­tics, then they should not fault Trump for it, but should redou­ble efforts to get more Democ­rats to get involved.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Mak­ing Sense of the Num­bers of Gen­e­sis [pdf link] (Car­ol Hill, Per­spec­tives on Sci­ence and the Chris­t­ian Faith): “Joseph and Joshua were each record­ed as dying at age 110—a num­ber con­sid­ered ‘per­fect’ by the Egyp­tians. In ancient Egypt­ian doc­trine, the phrase ‘he died aged 110’ was actu­al­ly an epi­taph com­mem­o­rat­ing a life that had been lived self­less­ly and had result­ed in out­stand­ing social and moral ben­e­fit for oth­ers. And so for both Joseph and Joshua, who came out of the Egypt­ian cul­ture, quot­ing this age was actu­al­ly a trib­ute to their char­ac­ter. But, to be described as ‘dying at age 110’ bore no nec­es­sary rela­tion­ship to the actu­al time of an individual’s life span.” You will not agree with every­thing in this arti­cle, but it is full of fas­ci­nat­ing insights. (first shared in vol­ume 51)

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 186

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. Amer­i­ca in one tweet:“We are liv­ing in an era of woke cap­i­tal­ism in which com­pa­nies pre­tend to care about social jus­tice to sell prod­ucts to peo­ple who pre­tend to hate cap­i­tal­ism.” (Clay Rout­ledge, Twit­ter)
  2. Engi­neers of the Soul: Ide­ol­o­gy in Xi Jin­ping’s Chi­na (John Gar­naut, Sinocism): “In clas­si­cal Chi­nese state­craft there are two tools for gain­ing and main­tain­ing con­trol over “the moun­tains and the rivers”: The first is wu (weapons, vio­lence — æ­¦) and the sec­ond is wen (lan­guage, cul­ture — æ–‡). Chi­nese lead­ers have always believed that pow­er derives from con­trol­ling both the phys­i­cal bat­tle­field and the cul­tur­al domain. You can’t sus­tain phys­i­cal pow­er with­out dis­cur­sive pow­er. Wu and wen go hand-in-hand.”
  3. A Strange Argu­ment for the Com­mon­place (Cato Unbound, Agnes Callard): “We should not equal­ize the rich and poor, but rather endeav­or to make the poor of tomor­row wealth­i­er than the rich of today.” I’m includ­ing this link most­ly because of that quote. Also because it has some com­men­tary on Peter Singer which dove­tails with a con­ver­sa­tion I had ear­li­er this week.
  4. Most Teenagers Drop Out of Church as Young Adults (Aaron Earls, Life­way Research ): “Almost half (47 per­cent) of those who dropped out and attend­ed col­lege say mov­ing to col­lege played a role in their no longer attend­ing church for at least a year…. Among all those who dropped out, 29 per­cent say they planned on tak­ing a break from church once they grad­u­at­ed high school. Sev­en in 10 (71 per­cent) say their leav­ing wasn’t an inten­tion­al deci­sion.”
    • The title is a bit mis­lead­ing. Yes, a major­i­ty of young adults who pre­vi­ous­ly attend­ed church do stop attend­ing church for at least one year between the ages of 18–22, but if you look at their under­ly­ing research about 70% even­tu­al­ly start attend­ing again. Also, it doesn’t seem to ask whether any of these peo­ple were involved in an activ­i­ty that they might not char­ac­ter­ize as church (like Chi Alpha or Inter­var­si­ty). I know some of my Chi Alpha stu­dents are not cur­rent­ly wor­ship­ing with a Sun­day morn­ing con­gre­ga­tion, but it would be wrong to infer that their faith has been put on pause.
  5. Have Aliens Found Us? A Har­vard Astronomer on the Mys­te­ri­ous Inter­stel­lar Object ‘Oumua­mua (Isaac Chotin­er, New York­er): “Last year, I wrote a paper about cos­mol­o­gy where there was an unusu­al result, which showed that per­haps the gas in the uni­verse was much cold­er than we expect­ed. And so we pos­tu­lat­ed that maybe dark mat­ter has some prop­er­ty that makes the gas cool­er. And nobody cares, nobody is wor­ried about it, no one says it is not sci­ence. Every­one says that is mainstream—to con­sid­er dark mat­ter, a sub­stance we have nev­er seen. That’s com­plete­ly fine. It doesn’t both­er any­one. But when you men­tion the pos­si­bil­i­ty that there could be equip­ment out there that is com­ing from anoth­er civilization—which, to my mind, is much less spec­u­la­tive, because we have already sent things into space—then that is regard­ed as unsci­en­tif­ic.”
    • I am skep­ti­cal, but I find the con­ver­sa­tion fas­ci­nat­ing. Relat­ed: an arti­cle on the Fer­mi para­dox I shared back in vol­ume 159 and an arti­cle on gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tion of UFO reports from vol­ume 132.
  6. The mar­vel of the human dad (Anna Machin, Aeon): “But cru­cial­ly, dad has not evolved to be the mir­ror to mum, a male moth­er, so to speak. Evo­lu­tion hates redun­dan­cy and will not select for roles that dupli­cate each oth­er if one type of indi­vid­ual can ful­fil the role alone. Rather, dad’s role has evolved to com­ple­ment mum’s.” Dr. Machin is a pro­fes­sor of evo­lu­tion­ary anthro­pol­o­gy at Oxford.
  7. The Virtue Sig­nalers Won’t Change the World (John McWhort­er, The Atlantic): “Just as the first and sec­ond waves of both fem­i­nism and antiracism trans­formed social struc­tures, third-wave antiracism may seem par­al­lel to third-wave fem­i­nism in mov­ing on to a dif­fer­ent form of abuse, psy­cho­log­i­cal rather than insti­tu­tion­al. But this focus on the psy­cho­log­i­cal has mor­phed, of late, from a prag­mat­ic mis­sion to change minds into a witch hunt dri­ven by the per­son­al ben­e­fits of virtue sig­nal­ing, obsessed with uncon­scious and sub­con­scious bias. As noble as this cul­ture of sham­ing gen­uine­ly seems to many, it’s a dead end.”
    • A use­ful, detailed fol­low-up: The Per­ils of a Psy­cho­log­i­cal Approach to Anti-racism (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “If the phe­nom­e­non McWhort­er described is real, we should be able to find left­ists who intend to fight bias by call­ing out psy­cho­log­i­cal harms, only to fall into ‘hyper­sen­si­tiv­i­ty, over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, and even a degree of per­for­mance’ as par­tic­i­pants sig­nal virtue in ways that help no one.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Inside Grad­u­ate Admis­sions (Inside High­er Ed, Scott Jaschick): if you plan to apply to grad school, read this. There is one reveal­ing anec­dote about how an admis­sions com­mit­tee treat­ed an appli­ca­tion from a Chris­t­ian col­lege stu­dent. My take­away: the pro­fes­sors tried to be fair but found it hard to do, and their stat­ed con­cerns were most­ly about the qual­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion rather than the faith of the appli­cant. Trou­bling nonethe­less. (first shared in vol­ume 32)

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.