holy spirit - Glen Davis

TGFI, Volume 557: peer-reviewed miracles and AI-informed voting

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

Peer-Reviewed Miracles: Are Miraculous Cures Published in Scientific Journals? (Caleb Jackson, Substack): “It is often suggested that, if the evidence for miracle cures were truly compelling, it would be expected that such cases would be published in mainstream scientific journals. If these instances cannot stand the scrutiny of peer review, then they ought to be dismissed as nothing more than uncorroborated anecdotes. I am not persuaded. Indeed, this argument remains toothless for a myriad of reasons. As we shall see below, there are no less than several dozen instances of ‘miracle cures’ published in scientific journals, both mainstream and fringe, over the last century. To claim otherwise is to plead ignorance of the publicly available data.”
- Includes a bibliography of miraculous stories published in academic literature
Use AI This Election (Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten): “I’m not saying AI is superintelligent or can decide better than you can. I’m saying that if you — like me — spend an hour or so doing research before voting on local seats, AI can aid that research very effectively. And if you don’t do that research — because you weren’t willing to waste an hour on it before — AI makes it so much faster that you might want to start.”
- He gives a version of the prompt he used to generate a custom voter’s guide, so I tried it with a customized version and was pleased with the results. I tried it on both Claude and ChatGPT, only Claude was willing to do it. ChatGPT seemed to think it was unethical to help me. I recommend giving it a try. For a start, just go through his prompt sentence by sentence and change it to what you believe.
The Twin Fallacies of Christian Nationalism and AI Maximalism (Samuel D. James, Substack): “Here are two questions I think about a lot: How does Christianity restrict someone’s use of technology? How does Christianity restrict someone’s stratagems in politics? These questions come from a conviction that the claims of Christ in Scripture are such a nature that one cannot believe and obey them without experiencing some kind of limiting principle on their technology and on their politics. In other words, if you really take Christ seriously, your tech use and your politics will bear a conspicuous mark. ”
- Recommended by a student.
Nihilism With a Business Model (John Seel, Substack): “At one level, the gig economy reflects an understandable economic adaptation to a rapidly changing technological environment. But every economic system eventually shapes not merely how people make money, but how they imagine reality itself. The gig economy does not simply create gig work. It creates a gig mindset. And that mindset is increasingly reshaping the moral imagination among younger generations in deeply consequential ways. At the center of the gig mindset is the assumption that nearly everything can become monetized, optimized, and converted into market value. Everything and every experience are now for sale. The self itself becomes a platform. Consider two rapidly expanding phenomena among young adults: men are increasingly addicted to online sports betting, and women are increasingly posting on platforms such as OnlyFans. These two are deeply connected manifestations of the same cultural logic.”
- Emphasis in original.
Are “Real” Catholics as Conservative as Evangelicals? (Ryan Burge, Substack): “I think this is the best test I can devise to really compare devout, conservative Catholics to evangelicals in the same segment of the population. I just can’t look at these results and say that ‘real’ Catholics are just as socially conservative as ‘real’ evangelicals. They aren’t — empirically speaking — as conservative on these three core issues [abortion, gay marriage, and premarital sex]… What I take away from all of this is that evangelical identity carries something that can’t be fully explained by how often you show up or how conservative you vote. There’s a theological and cultural foundation to evangelicalism that shapes how adherents think about the body, sexuality, and the family in ways that Catholic identity simply doesn’t replicate — even among the most devout and politically conservative Catholics. The Church may teach the same things on paper, but the people in the pews aren’t internalizing them the same way. And that gap between official teaching and lived belief is, frankly, one of the most interesting stories in American religion right now.”
- Emphasis in original.
Searching for God in Silicon Valley (Avital Balwit, The Free Press): “AI workers tend to be less religious than the rest of the U.S. population. They are mostly lapsed in their faith, or were never religious to begin with. Perhaps they were circumcised or baptized; now they may occasionally meditate. This is, for the most part, a materialist lot—by which I mean people for whom the world is atoms and physical laws with nothing supernatural left over, and for whom morality is something worked out from intuition or from philosophy, rather than received from outside the world.… Not all of them would say they are missing something, and I take the ones who say so at their word. But enough are visibly _searching_ that it is worth asking what they are searching for.”
- The author is chief of staff to Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic.
Perfect randomness realized for the first time (Gaby Clark, Phys.org): “…Wallraff’s and Renner’s teams have found a way to take imperfect randomness and still extract perfectly random numbers from it. They call their method randomness amplification.”

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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 413

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 issue 413, which I have been told is a structured hexagonal diamond number. I don’t know what that means, but it sounds very impressive. I also know that 413 = 7 · 59, which I find both cool and understandable.

Things Glen Found Interesting

I’m a Continuationist with Cancer. I Still Believe in Healings. (Tim Shorey, The Gospel Coalition): “I live my life and face my cancer somewhere between seemingly sincere ‘namers and claimers’ who expect healing every time and seemingly surrendered ‘if-the-Lord-willers’ whose prayers affirm God’s healing power but whose caveats and qualifiers make it sound like he’s not likely to use it. God alone knows the heart. But the tone of the former party can sound like presumption masquerading as faith, while the tone of the latter can sound like doubt masquerading as humility.”
- Recommended by a student who appropriately asks, “if you read this, please also pray for the author, Tim Shorey.”
Date to marry, not to have fun (Bethany Mandel, The Spectator): “A lot of things are important in a marriage: love, respect, trust, laughter. But perhaps most important is to remember that it’s a partnership for life; and as such, dating should not be considered fun, but instead like a job interview for the most important role you’ll ever have, that of a spouse. If you were interviewing for a job, would you allow the process to drag on, long after you know it’s the right fit (or not)?”
- Broadly agree, with the provision that this is advice about dating relationship and not just about going on dates. In other words, go on dates to have fun and then carefully discern who is a good match for progressing into a serious dating relationship. Too many Christians want to know they want to marry someone before they go out for coffee with them, and that’s a lot of pressure to put on a latte.
- Related: Swiping and Dating Preferences (Rob K. Henderson, Substack): “Here’s a sketch of what might be happening: Men high on the Dark Triad (psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism) use dating apps. They might make up 10–20% of users. They go on a rampage, sleeping with lots of women, playing games with them, leading them on, ghosting them, lying to them, etc. Dark Triad men are excellent impostors; they are good at mimicking desirable romantic qualities, and are thus able to procure lots of sex partners. The women they sleep with become disillusioned. These women begin to behave in psychopathic and narcissistic ways to protect themselves from emotional vulnerability and pain, and perhaps as a way to even the score with ‘men’ as a category. They learn to avoid Dark Triad men and exploit normal men. These men become confused and upset, and begin to treat other women the same way to ‘get even.’ In short, Dark Triad men mistreat women, who then mistreat ordinary men, who then mistreat ordinary women. Bad behavior drives out the good. A system tailor-made for psychopathic males (dating apps facilitate anonymity, superficiality, and deception) predictably gives rise to a defect-defect equilibrium.”
- Full of interesting data.
Study of Elite College Admissions Data Suggests Being Very Rich Is Its Own Qualification (Aatish Bhatia, Claire Cain Miller and Josh Katz, New York Times): “Elite colleges have long been filled with the children of the richest families: At Ivy League schools, one in six students has parents in the top 1 percent.… For applicants with the same SAT or ACT score, children from families in the top 1 percent were 34 percent more likely to be admitted than the average applicant, and those from the top 0.1 percent were more than twice as likely to get in.”
- The academic study Raj Chetty, David J. Deming and John N. Friedman, "Diversifying Society's Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges"
- One of the authors wrote about their findings on his Substack: Ivy-Plus colleges are a gateway to the elite (David Deming, Substack): “Waitlist admits are 60% more likely than waitlist rejects to have earnings in the top 1% for their age, are nearly twice as likely to attend a top 10 graduate school and are three times as likely to work in a prestigious firm (think highly ranked research hospitals, top law and consulting firms, national newspapers, etc.).”
Why won’t Indiana Jones convert to something after all he has seen in his life? (Terry Mattingly, On Religion): “What we want to know is why he is always back to square one at the start of every adventure – a skeptic, or even a scoffer. I mean, think about it: He has seen the Ark of the Covenant opened and the destroying angels pour out God’s vengeance on his enemies. He has seen the sacred Hindu stones come to life. …He has seen the true cup of Christ heal his own father from a fatal gunshot wound – on screen, with no ambiguity.”
- It’s revealing about modern assumptions that almost no one thinks to ask this question.
Are We Living Through ‘End Times’? (Bari Weiss interviewing Peter Turchin, The Free Press): “Elite overproduction turns out to be the best predictor of a crisis to come. It is essentially ubiquitous in the pre-crisis periods of all societies. I used the game of musical chairs to illustrate it, except in the usual game, you start with 11 players and ten chairs, and one person loses. Here, instead of removing chairs, you keep chairs constant, and we add more players. You can imagine the amount of chaos that is going to happen. Now let’s connect this to the overproduction of wealthy people in the United States. As more and more of them become players in politics, they drive up the price of getting into office. And more importantly, the more people are vying for these positions, the more people are going to be frustrated. They’re going to be losers. But humans don’t have to follow rules. This is the dark side of competition: if it’s too extreme, it creates conditions for people to start to break rules.”
- Turchin is a social scientist at U Conn. Recommended by a student.
- The author explains the relationship between what he does and the science fiction we see in the Foundation series: Psychohistory and Cliodynamics (Peter Turchin, personal blog): “Prediction is overrated. What we really should be striving for, with our social science, is ability to bring about desirable outcomes and to avoid unwanted outcomes. What’s the point of predicting future, if it’s very bleak and we are not able to change it? We would be like the person condemned to hang before sunrise – perfect knowledge of the future, zero ability to do anything about it.”
Bad Definitions Of “Democracy” And “Accountability” Shade Into Totalitarianism (Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten): “You could, in theory, define ‘democratic’ this way, so that the more areas of life are subjected to the control of a (democratically elected) government, the more democratic your society is. But in that case, the most democratic possible society is totalitarianism — a society where the government controls every facet of life, including what religion you practice, who you marry, and what job you work at. In this society there would be no room for human freedom.”
The Importance Of Saying “Yes” To The “But” (Andrew Sullivan, Substack): “One of the enduring frustrations of living in a politically polarized country is the evaporation of nuance. As the muscles of liberal democracy atrophy, and as cultural tribalism infects everyone’s consciousness, it becomes more and more difficult to say, ‘Yes, but …’ Everyone hates the but. It complicates; it muddles; it can disable a slogan; and puncture a politically useful myth.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Fighting Against Satanism (TikTok via Reddit): This is hilarious and worth the two and half minutes to watch. The story is fabulous on its own. The Jamaican accent exponentially increases the payoff. I showed this to a Jamaican student who said, “It’s the way we exaggerate every single detail. That’s why I always go home for the holiday season, everyone has a new story to dramatize. You always have to be prepared to cry in laughter at Jamaican parties.”
‘Bet You Wish You Had Listened To The Safety Presentation Now, Eh?’ Says Smug Stewardess As Plane Plummets Toward The Ground (Babylon Bee)
Jenny (SMBC)
Democracy Man (Pearls Before Swine)
Can a Lego Car Roll Downhill Forever? (Brick Technology, YouTube): nine minutes of clever engineering. I think he starts to cheat at around the 50° incline but it’s still super interesting.
Twitter Justice (Pearls Before Swine)
How Do You Know If You’ve Got Chemistry? (Julie Kim, YouTube): six minutes.

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll highlight an older link still worth your consideration. This week we have Religious Community and Human Flourishing (Tyler J. VanderWeele, Psychology Today): “In some cases, our results closely replicated past work. For example, we found that, even after controlling for the factors above, individuals who attended religious services weekly or more were 16% less likely to become depressed, and saw a 29% reduction in smoking and 34% reduction in heavy drinking. These results match reasonably closely results from several prior studies, including the prior meta-analyses mentioned above. Somewhat strikingly, but again in line with prior analysis, weekly service attendees were 26% less likely to die during the follow-up period.” VanderWeele, himself a Christian, is an epidemiologist at Harvard and I have shared some of his work before. From volume 290.

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Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 276

I really like the stories of the shamelessly sketchy judge near the end

Things Glen Found Interesting

Azerbaijan’s drones owned the battlefield in Nagorno-Karabakh — and showed future of warfare (Robyn Dixon, Washington Post): “In a matter of months, however, Nagorno-Karabakh has become perhaps the most powerful example of how small and relatively inexpensive attack drones can change the dimensions of conflicts once dominated by ground battles and traditional air power.”
The U.S. Divorce Rate Has Hit a 50-Year Low (Wendy Wang, Institute for Family Studies): “Divorce in America has been falling fast in recent years, and it just hit a record low in 2019. For every 1,000 marriages in the last year, only 14.9 ended in divorce, according to the newly released American Community Survey data from the Census Bureau. This is the lowest rate we have seen in 50 years. It is even slightly lower than 1970, when 15 marriages ended in divorce per 1,000 marriages.”
Gender Activists Are Trying to Cancel My Book. Why is Silicon Valley Helping Them? (Abigail Shrier, Quillette): “This is what censorship looks like in 21st-century America. It isn’t the government sending police to your home. It’s Silicon Valley oligopolists implementing blackouts and appeasing social-justice mobs, while sending disfavored ideas down memory holes. And the forces of censorship are winning. Not only because their efforts to censor leave almost no trace. They are winning because, thus far, most Americans have been content to surrender virtually every liberty in exchange for the luxury of having products delivered to their door.”
- Related: How corporations can delete your existence (Gavin Haynes, Unherd): “In the banking system’s capacity to disable the individual without pro-actively doing them harm, there’s an echo of the elegance of the Chinese government’s social credit.”
On the validity of the election:
- Who’s covering this? Are charismatics and Pentecostals behind Trump’s refusal to concede? (Julia Duin, GetReligion): “…these folks are a subset — a movement among charismatics/pentecostals — of a Christian subset and not well known to the general public. However, when you have flocks of Republicans calling foul on the election and the president’s most high-profile pastor is having nightly prayer meetings because she is certain that prophets have decreed four more years for Trump, it’s time more reporters give a listen.”
- How we can be confident that Trump’s voter fraud claims are baloney (Henry Olsen, Washington Post): “Mass voter fraud should be relatively easy to detect, even if it might be difficult to prove. Since we elect presidents through the electoral college, political operatives trying to nefariously produce a victory would focus on states critical to an electoral college majority…. None of these early warning signs of fraud appear in the results.”
- The Presidential Election Was Legitimate. Conspiracies Are Not. (David French, The Dispatch): “The counting must continue and all legal challenges must be heard, but as of this moment there is nothing—absolutely nothing—that should cause Americans to believe that this election was illegitimate, and it is shameful and dangerous for anyone to suggest or allege otherwise.”
- A Primer in Basic Electoral Skepticism (Douglas Wilson, blog): “We have reports that everything is fine and normal. We have reports of voter fraud. We do not know which reports are true. But we do know which reports are censored. And if that doesn’t tell you something, then you are not paying attention.”
- Means, motive, and opportunity (Ed Feser, blog): “…some mainstream historians and journalists, including liberal ones, think that these states were indeed stolen from Nixon [in 1960]. For example, Kennedy biographer Seymour Hersh judges that the election was stolen. Historian Robert Dallek thinks that at least Illinois was stolen, via Daley’s political machine. Historian William Rorabaugh thinks that Nixon may have been cheated out of as many as 100,000 to 200,000 votes in Johnson’s corrupt Texas.” Wild stuff that I did not know. The author is a professor of philosophy at Pasadena City College.
- My own view: the election was valid and of course there was cheating. People cheat at cards, people cheat on their taxes. Why in the world wouldn’t people try to cheat in an election? But it seems unlikely to me that despite all the eyes on the process any cheating was significant enough to change the outcome of the election. Having said that, it is inevitable that people are skeptical. The media and the tech firms have made themselves so partisan that they have forfeited the trust which would be very handy for them to have right now.
Lessons from the election
- When Political Prophecies Don’t Come to Pass (Craig Keener, Christianity Today): “This year, many Christians have listened to leaders prophesy that Trump would again win the election. Some, such as Jeremiah Johnson, have continued to affirm that their prophecy will turn out to be true in the end. Others, such as Kris Vallotton, have publicly apologized. For now, many will decide that the prophecy was contingent, mistimed or, more likely, mistaken.” This is outstanding.
- Why California Rejected Racial Preferences Again (Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic): “As I understand the state’s history, the country’s history, and the world’s history, government officials cannot be trusted to factor race into decision making without treating people unjustly, and intergroup stigmas and resentments tend to increase when any group is given preferential treatment.”
- May God Bless President Biden (David French, The Dispatch): “So here’s my simple prayer for President Biden: May God bless him and grant him the wisdom to know what’s just, the courage to do what’s just, and the stamina to withstand the rigors of the most difficult job in the world. May his virtuous plans prevail and may his unrighteous efforts fail. And may God protect him from all harm.” Amen.
- A Moment Of Peril (Matt Yglesias, Substack): “But the broad reality remains that in order to obtain and wield political power, Democrats need to embrace candidates who are less reflective of the progressive worldview of young college graduates, and they need to run them in states that are less right-wing than Alabama or Montana.”
- How 2020 Killed Off Democrats’ Demographic Hopes (Zack Stanton, Politico): “For years, the Democratic Party has operated under one immutable assumption: Long-term demographic trends would give the party something like a permanent majority as the country as a whole grows less white and more urban. President Donald Trump’s reliance on the politics of racial resentment would only quicken the process, solidifying support for Democrats among people of color. Then came November 3, 2020. And all those assumptions now seem like total nonsense.” An interview with David Shor.
- LatinX-plaining the election (Antonio Garcia-Martinez, The Pull Request): “The problem with basing a political platform on white guilt is that, at some point, you run out of either whites or guilt. Which is what happens in a truly majority-minority nation when non-whites (at least as currently defined) assume their equal place in the economic and political firmament.” The author normally writes about technology issues (hence the title of the newsletter).
Secularization and the Tribulations of the American Working-Class (Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution): “I praise the scholarship and courage of Brian N. Wheaton.”
- Related: Getting Past the Gatekeepers (J. Budziszewski, personal blog): “Your gatekeepers want you to write a book more like the one they would have written. If you do make revisions, make them in such a way that the book becomes not less your own, but even more your own. That’s not pride. If God condescends to allow certain insights to the historians on your board, how wonderful! Let them write about them! Read and learn from them! But if He condescends to allow certain other insights to you, you should write about yours, not theirs.” The author is a professor of politics and philosophy at UT Austin.
COVID-related
- Super-spreader wedding party shows COVID holiday dangers (Karen Kaplan, LA Times): “Only 55 people attended the Aug. 7 reception at the Big Moose Inn in Millinocket. But one of those guests arrived with a coronavirus infection. Over the next 38 days, the virus spread to 176 other people. Seven of them died. None of the victims who lost their lives had attended the party.”
- COVID-19 Mobility Network Modeling (Stanford): “Our model predicts that a small minority of ‘superspreader’ POIs [points of interest] account for a large majority of infections and that restricting maximum occupancy at each POI is more effective than uniformly reducing mobility.” Click on “Simulation” and play around with the Religious Organizations toggle. Recommended by a friend of the ministry, who drew my attention especially to figures 2d and 3c in the appendix of the paper.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Judge Richard Neely, RIP — Marginal REVOLUTION (Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution): this is amazing. It’s short, so please read the whole thing.
Q: What Is a Hole? A: We’re Not Sure! (Jason Kottke, personal website): “As for straws — reason tells me they only have one hole but I know in my heart they have two.”
Climate Change And Wally (Dilbert)
New Blinds (At Random)
Local Man Wouldn’t Have Believed There Was Election Fraud Except Media, Big Tech Keep Insisting That There Wasn’t (Babylon Bee)
Death (SMBC)
Bayesian (SMBC) — this feels very Stanford to me

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll highlight an older link still worth your consideration. This week we have Asymmetric Weapons Gone Bad (Scott Alexander, Slate Star Codex): “Every day we do things that we can’t easily justify. If someone were to argue that we shouldn’t do the thing, they would win easily. We would respond by cutting that person out of our life, and continuing to do the thing.” This entire series of articles (this is the fourth, the others are linked at the top of it) is 100% worth reading. It’s a very interesting way to think about the limits of reason and the wisdom hidden in tradition. First shared in volume 206.

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Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 154

Things Glen Found Interesting

The Baptist Apocalypse (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “We’re a long way from any final judgment on God’s purposes in the Trump era. But so far the Trump presidency has clearly been a kind of apocalypse — not (yet) in the ‘world-historical calamity’ sense of the word, but in the original Greek meaning: an unveiling, an uncovering, an exposure of truths that had heretofore been hidden.”
- Related: On Gender, Power, and Sin: The Evangelical #MeToo Moment (Richard Beck, personal blog): “A theological and biblical way to say all this is that men’s dominance over women is a part of the Fall’s curse upon humanity. The wound of sin upon gender relations is clear in Genesis 3: ‘He will rule over you.’ So if that’s a part of the curse, why do evangelicals think that building the curse into the system–gender subordination–is going to produce anything other than cursed outcomes?” I wish the author spent more time building the Biblical case for his perspective.
A One Parameter Equation That Can Exactly Fit Any Scatter Plot (Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution): “Overfitting is possible with just one parameter and so models with fewer parameters are not necessarily preferable even if they fit the data as well or better than models with more parameters.” Researchers take note.
- The underlying mathematics paper is well-written and interesting: One Parameter Is Always Enough (Steven T. Piantadosi) — among other things, it points out that you can smuggle in arbitrarily large amounts of data into an equation through a single parameter because a number can have infinite digits.
What I’ve Learned in Twenty Years of Marriage (Russell Moore, personal blog): “My grandmother wisely asked one night when I was finally going to ask ‘that girl from Ocean Springs’ to marry me. I answered, ‘When I can afford it.’ She laughed. ‘Honey, I married your grandpa in the middle of a Great Depression,’ she said. ‘We made it work. Nobody can afford to get married. You just marry, and make it work.’ Apart from the gospel, those were, and remain, the most liberating words I ever heard. I bought a ring that wouldn’t impress anyone, then or now, but we were headed for the altar. My only regret is that we aren’t today celebrating our twenty-first anniversary instead of our twentieth.” This is from a few years back and is full of wisdom.
Title IX Is Too Easy To Abuse (Caitlyn Flanagan, The Atlantic): “Is it possible for two people to simultaneously sexually assault each other? This is the question—rife with legal, anatomical, and emotional improbabilities—to which the University of Cincinnati now addresses itself, and with some urgency, as the institution and three of its employees are currently being sued over an encounter that was sexual for a brief moment, but that just as quickly entered the realm of eternal return. ”
Whatever Happened to Gifts of Language, Prophecy, and Healing? (Andrew Wilson, Christianity Today): “taking a longer view by tracing our roots back to the early church fathers leads to some surprises. We discover that some things, though relatively unusual in recent times, are actually very normal across the broader sweep of human history. Angels and demons would be an obvious example. Or, more surprisingly, miraculous gifts.”
I was Jordan Peterson’s strongest supporter. Now I think he’s dangerous (Bernard Schiff, The Star): “When he was renovating his house I invited his family to live with mine. For five months, they occupied the third floor of our large house. We had meals together in the evening and long, colourful conversations. There, away from campus, I saw a man who was devoted to his wife and his children, who were lovely and gentle and for whom I still feel affection. He was attentive and thoughtful, stern and kind, playful and warm. His wife, Tammy, appeared to be the keel, the ballast and the rudder, and Jordan ran the ship.” This is a long profile, by turns informative and puzzling.
The Evangelical Fight to Win Back California (Elizabeth Dias, New York Times): “Though the state has one of the highest percentages of religiously unaffiliated adults, the fast growing religious group in the country, that largely blue sea is dotted with evangelical islands that are largely red. One in five adults in the state are evangelical Christians, according to the Pew Research Center, and there are more megachurches in California than in any other state.” This article is mostly about politics, but is interesting nonetheless.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Help (SMBC)
Magician Dan White astounds Jimmy Fallon (YouTube)
Local Charismatic Declares The Gift of Discernment Has Ceased (Babylon Bee)
The Best Thing To Paint On The Roof Of Your House (Imgur)

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)

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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.

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Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 121

Things Glen Found Interesting

The Exchanged Life (J. Husdon Taylor, a letter to his sister): “It little matters to my servant whether I send him to buy a few cash worth of things, or the most expensive articles. In either case he looks to me for the money, and brings me his purchases. So, if God place me in great perplexity, must He not give me much guidance; in positions of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trial, much strength? No fear that His resources will be unequal to the emergency!” (brought to my attention by a student, highly recommended)
The news from Las Vegas is so heartbreaking. Here are a few pieces about it and also about the issue of guns more generally.
- After Mass Shootings, Americans Turn to Four Bible Verses Most (Kate Shellnut, Christianity Today): John 16:33, Psalm 34:18, Romans 12:19, and Psalm 11:5.
- What Is God Saying About Las Vegas? (Jared Wilson, Gospel Coalition)
- 3 Ways To Pray For Las Vegas: It’s a Powerful (Not Political) Act For Christians (Ed Stetzer, Christianity Today)
- After Sandy Hook we said never again. And then we let 1,518 mass shootings happen. (German Lopez, Ryan Mark & Soo Oh, Vox). The title is very Vox, but the statistics inside are quite interesting.
- I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise. (Leah Libresco, Washington Post): “By the time we published our project, I didn’t believe in many of the interventions I’d heard politicians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don’t want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can’t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them.”
- From way back in volume 48 I posted a thoughtful debate between two pastors on guns — it’s worth re-reading.
A Brief History of Cessationism (Thomas Kidd, Gospel Coalition): “In the 1700s and 1800s, suspicion of claimed miracles was connected to anti-Catholicism. Protestant critics saw the Catholic tradition as riddled with fake claims of miracles. Ridiculing the fake miracle claims of Catholics (such as icons bleeding a liquid that turned out to be cherry juice) became a staple of Reformed polemics against the Catholic Church. So when seemingly miraculous events happened in Protestant churches, even sympathetic observers warned against the threat of bogus miracles.”
The Limits of “Diversity” (Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker): “It is possible that ‘diversity’ will ultimately prove too weak a term to do all that is asked of it. Contemporary advocates sometimes emphasize, instead, “inclusion,” a less neutral concept, and one that gestures at the political agendas that inevitably shape these debates.”
‘Panicked’ London train commuters force open doors, flee onto tracks when man reads the Bible aloud (Douglas Perry, Oregon Live). I’ve said it before — our culture has replaced the fear of God with the fear of religion. It’s a poor trade.
Why the rule of law suffers when we have too many laws (Ilya Somin, Washington Post): “Because of the vast scope of current law, in modern America the authorities can pin a crime on the overwhelming majority of people, if they really want to. Whether you get hauled into court or not depends more on the discretionary decisions of law enforcement officials than on any legal rule…. the rule of law has largely been supplanted by the rule of chance and the rule of executive discretion. Inevitably, political ideology and partisanship have a major impact on the latter. For example, federal law enforcement priorities are very different under Trump than they were under Obama.”
Roy Moore is a fascinating figure with a compelling story. He’s the guy you might know as “that Ten Commandments judge from the South.” He is running for a seat in the US Senate and he just won the primary election and seems on track to win the general election. There are interesting times ahead as a result.
- The Resurrection of Roy Moore (Eric Velasco, Politico): “That period about sums up Moore’s long career in Alabama: He throws jabs at the system; then, when the system counterpunches, he somehow springs back up—stronger.”
- Covering Roy Moore: Is it impossible for many reporters to write fairly about him? (Julia Duin, GetReligion): “I interviewed Moore years ago in Gadsden, Ala., and was struck by this man’s adherence not so much to the Bible (which he definitely holds dear) but to the Constitution. That’s what many reporters seem to not understand about this man. He is manic on obeying the letter of the law…”
- Roy Moore disrupts U.S. Senate race in Alabama — and prepares for new level of defiance in Washington (Michael Sherer, Washington Post): I was very impressed with this piece.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Ryan Hamilton, Happy Face (Netflix): he’s a clean, funny standup comedian. Highly recommended.
Signs You’re Ready to Graduate (Ph.D. Comics)
Local Christian Proud Of Himself For Loving People Who Are Exactly Like Him (Babylon Bee)
The Perils of Dating Apps (Dilbert)

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Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 78

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times" — 1 Chronicles 12:32 — they “understood the times”

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

On Wednesday I mentioned how some modern research about speaking in tongues aligns very well with Paul’s comments about tongues strengthening believers even while their mind is unfruitful (1 Cor 14:4, 14). A readable summary from a few years back is A Neuroscientific Look At Speaking In Tongues (Benedict Carey, NYT) and also Speaking in Tongues: Glossalalia and Stress Reduction (The Dana Foundation). If you want to see the actual research they are alluding to, check out the university press release Language Center of the Brain Is Not Under the Control of Subjects Who “Speak in Tongues” (U Penn, 2006) or the academic papers Salivary Alpha-Amylase and Cortisol Among Pentecostals on a Worship and Nonworship Day (American Journal of Human Biology, 2013) and Glossolalia is associated with differences in biomarkers of stress and arousal among Apostolic Pentecostals (Religion, Brain and Behavior, 2012).
A horrifying look into the mind of 9/11’s mastermind, in his own words (Marc Thiessen, Washington Post): Indisputably interesting. Two caveats: you should look up the name James E. Mitchell for context and there are surely those who testify differently than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Having said that… fascinating.
Religious Liberty Experts Stand Together, on Cases Inside Prison Walls (Terry Mattingly, On Religion): “There is space enough in our culture to allow different people with different beliefs to live peaceably in the same land.”
Texas elector who criticized Trump says he’s resigning (Kyle Cheney, Politico): “Since I can’t in good conscience vote for Donald Trump, and yet have sinfully made a pledge that I would, the best option I see at this time is to resign my position as an Elector…. I will sleep well at night knowing I neither gave in to [the people’s] demands nor caved to my convictions. I will also mourn the loss of our republic.” The elector is clearly a thoughtful Christian who made his decision very theologically. Read his own words about it at Conflicted Elector In A Corrupt College. Even if you differ with his theology at points, applaud his consistency. Also note how much Politico edited out his theological convictions in their reporting — a very common occurrence in major media outlets.
Gays, Bias, And Phony Science (Naomi Schaefer Riley, NY Post): “In the end, neither LaCour nor Hatzenbuehler actually did the work to prove their theses — because there would be no real consequences if they were caught, and anyway academia writ large didn’t want to ‘catch’ them at all.”
The Understudied Female Sexual Predator (Conor Friederdorf, The Atlantic): “In incidents of sexual violence reported to the National Crime Victimization Survey, 38 percent of victims were men…”
Cheat or Go Home: Inside the ‘Dysfunctional Hell’ of Becoming a CFB Coach (Matt Hayes, Bleacher Report): “Auburn officials have always denied it, the NCAA could never nail it down and the statute of limitations on infractions has long since passed. But here’s the catch: I’ve seen the ledger.” Even if you don’t like sports, this is a worthwhile read.

Things Glen Found Amusing

College Legends — imagine a plaque commemorating your exploits — what would it say and where would it be posted?
U.S. Christians Brace For Brutal Onslaught of ‘Happy Holidays’ Attacks (Babylon Bee)

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