Tag: gambling

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. Online Sports Gam­bling and Col­lege Stu­dents: A Chris­t­ian Response to a Grow­ing Indus­try (Kim­ber­ley Reeve and Jared Pincin, Chris­t­ian High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Because the Bible does not offer direct guid­ance on the top­ic of gam­bling, Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tions take dif­fer­ing posi­tions.… The com­mon thread across these tra­di­tions is that there is a point where gam­bling becomes moral­ly imper­mis­si­ble.”
   • Relat­ed: How to Rein in Run­away Sports Bet­ting (Lyman Stone, Sub­stack): “A good reg­u­la­to­ry response is sim­ple: ban all win lim­its. Let win­ners win. Bet­tors don’t like lim­its on win­nings. They are obvi­ous­ly unfair. They are also clear­ly a key source of prof­its for com­pa­nies.… Sec­ond­ly, there should be lim­its on how much an indi­vid­ual can lose on a web­site. Once an indi­vid­ual has lost a cer­tain amount of mon­ey, bet­ting web­sites should be required to shut down their account. The harms of gam­bling are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly caused by big-losers, and gam­bling com­pa­nies can iden­ti­fy those big losers and pro­tect them. They don’t do this because they make mon­ey when losers lose.… So no lim­its for win­ning, lim­its for los­ing is a pret­ty rea­son­able reg­u­la­to­ry approach. Win­ners don’t threat­en seri­ous social harms. Losers do. Uncap­ping win­ners and pro­tect­ing losers will also dra­mat­i­cal­ly wors­en the bal­ance sheet of gam­bling sites, forc­ing them to charge high­er spreads on bets, which will deter many gam­blers.”
2. As Chris­tians Are Slaugh­tered, the World Looks Away (Madeleine Kearns, The Free Press): “The world should have seen it com­ing. Since 2009, Islamists in north­ern Nige­ria have destroyed over 18,000 church­es and, through­out the coun­try, have mur­dered over 50,000 Chris­tians. A fur­ther 5 mil­lion Chris­tians have been dis­placed with­in the coun­try, accord­ing to a 2023 Vat­i­can report.… If West­ern media reports on the per­se­cu­tion at all, it typ­i­cal­ly char­ac­ter­izes it as land dis­putes between neigh­bor­ing eth­nic groups. For instance, after the atroc­i­ties at Yel­wa­ta, the BBC report­ed: ‘The author­i­ties have not blamed any group, but it is safe to assume that there are lots of vic­tims on both sides, as any attack usu­al­ly leads to revenge and then a cycle of vio­lence.’ But where is the evi­dence that Chris­tians are killing Fulani Mus­lims by the hun­dreds, shout­ing ‘Christ is king’ as they hack peo­ple of oth­er faiths to death?”
3. Pen­te­costals Keep Grow­ing: What the Assem­blies of God’s 2024 Report Shows About the Spir­it-Filled Move­ment (Ed Stet­zer and Todd Kor­pi, Church­Lead­ers): “The AG in the Unit­ed States is a part of the World Assem­blies of God Fel­low­ship (WAGF), which togeth­er makes up one of the largest Protes­tant bod­ies on the plan­et with over 85 mil­lion adher­ents. The WAGF is now larg­er than the Angli­can com­mu­nion, which is often cit­ed as the third-largest Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion. Instead, the WAGF is itself now the third-largest Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion­al tra­di­tion.”
   • Ed Stet­zer is a professor/dean at the Tal­bot School of The­ol­o­gy, and Todd Kor­pi is a pro­fes­sor at Fuller The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary. The Assem­blies of God is, of course, the spon­sor of Chi Alpha and the group with which I am ordained.
4. When Women Are Rad­i­cal­ized (Claire Lehmann, The Dis­patch): “There is grow­ing aware­ness of how young men can be drawn into far-right extrem­ism or misog­y­nis­tic sub­cul­tures, but we in the media—and soci­ety more broadly—pay less atten­tion to how young women become drawn into polit­i­cal sub­cul­tures. Indeed, the terms ‘rad­i­cal­iza­tion’ and ‘women’ are rarely—if ever—seen togeth­er. This over­sight has con­se­quences, because radicalization—defined as rigid com­mit­ment to an ide­o­log­i­cal cause to the point where it dis­torts one’s world­view, harms men­tal health, under­mines rela­tion­ships, or dis­rupts functioning—is not a male-only phe­nom­e­non.”
5. Solipsism»Determinism (Bryan Caplan, Sub­stack): “A large major­i­ty of my smartest friends insist that deter­min­ism is true. Physics text­books say so, basic log­ic (‘Every effect must have a cause’) says so, and they say so. Who am I to dis­agree? My answer begins with a tru­ism: The foun­da­tion of sci­ence is repeat­ed, care­ful obser­va­tion. If sci­en­tists are allowed to dis­miss piles of repeat­ed, care­ful obser­va­tions as ‘illu­sion,’ there is no sci­ence. Next step: I have a life­time of repeat­ed, care­ful obser­va­tion of my own mind. Via intro­spec­tion, I direct­ly observe myself mak­ing gen­uine choic­es in every wak­ing moment. There­fore: Any ‘sci­en­tif­ic’ the­o­ry that con­tra­dicts these obser­va­tions is, at best, incom­plete.”
6. God and Woman at Cor­nell (Mary Eber­stadt, First Things): “Why does sec­u­lar­ism flour­ish on col­lege cam­pus­es? Ear­li­er today, some of us were talk­ing about the philoso­pher René Girard, who had an idea that sounds sim­ple, but isn’t: We fig­ure out what we desire by see­ing what oth­er peo­ple desire. That’s part of what hap­pens with stu­dents on cam­pus, and it’s why even those raised in a reli­gious home tend to become more secular—because they don’t see a lot of peo­ple like them­selves in a place like Cor­nell. The idea dawns, even sub­con­scious­ly, ‘Well, maybe there’s a rea­son why they all think dif­fer­ent­ly from me. After all, we’re in a very sophis­ti­cat­ed place with high­ly edu­cat­ed peo­ple, so maybe I should be like that.’ That’s the rel­a­tive­ly benign force that dri­ves peo­ple who were raised reli­gious toward sec­u­lar­ism. There is anoth­er force, more malev­o­lent: intim­i­da­tion, the chill­ing effect of being sur­round­ed by, or per­ceiv­ing one­self to be sur­round­ed by, peo­ple who think your belief sys­tem is ridicu­lous. There is also the fact that col­lege is famous­ly the place where a lot of young peo­ple break free from the con­strain­ing Judeo-Chris­t­ian rule­book about sex and mar­riage. These real­i­ties togeth­er con­spire to dri­ve col­lege kids away from faith.”
7. Audi­ences Prove that Experts Are Dead Wrong (Ted Gioia, Sub­stack): “The rebirth of long­form runs counter to every­thing media experts are ped­dling. They are all try­ing to game the algo­rithm. But they’re mak­ing a huge mis­take. They believe that long­form is doomed. They see that dig­i­tal plat­forms reward ultra-short videos on an end­less scroll. And they under­stand that this works because the inter­face is extreme­ly addic­tive. So short must defeat long in the dig­i­tal mar­ket­place. That’s obvi­ous to them. But all the evi­dence now proves that this isn’t hap­pen­ing.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Man Very Par­tic­u­lar About Which Ver­sion Of The Bible He Buys And Doesn’t Read (Baby­lon Bee)
• Match­ing poten­tial part­ners based on brows­er his­to­ry (Flow­ing­Da­ta): “Ide­al­ly, your roman­tic part­ner for life has sim­i­lar inter­ests, hopes, dreams, and brows­ing behav­ior. At least that’s the premise of browser.dating, an actu­al ser­vice that you can sign up for.”
• You’ve Got ‘The Ick.’ Is Your Rela­tion­ship Doomed? (Jancee Dunn, New York Times): “Dr. Col­lis­son sug­gest­ed dis­cussing con­cerns with your poten­tial part­ner instead of your friends — as awk­ward as that con­ver­sa­tion may be. Through his research he has learned that ‘the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple are talk­ing about their ‘icks’ to every­body except for the per­son elic­it­ing the ick.’ ”

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.