Tag: LGBTQ

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 52

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. Nicole Cliffe: How God Messed Up My Hap­py Athe­ist Life (Nicole Cliffe, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “I emailed a friend who is a Chris­t­ian, and I asked if we could talk about Jesus. I instant­ly regret­ted send­ing that email and if human­ly pos­si­ble would have clawed it back through the Inter­net.”
  2. The Sun Is Always Shin­ing In Mod­ern Chris­t­ian Pop (Leah Libresco, FiveThir­tyEight): inter­est­ing, although the author is com­par­ing con­tem­po­rary per­for­mance songs to old­er wor­ship songs, and I sus­pect the genre dif­fer­ence accounts for some of her find­ings. Doing some research on the author I dis­cov­ered that she wrote a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle at First Things called Stat­ting While Catholic — you should read it if you’re a social sci­en­tist.
  3. Why Amer­i­cans Don’t Trust Gov­ern­ment (Lar­ry Sum­mers, Wash­ing­ton Post): “I’m a pro­gres­sive, but it seems plau­si­ble to won­der if gov­ern­ment can build a nation abroad, fight social decay, run schools, man­date the design of cars, run health insur­ance exchanges, or set prop­er sex­u­al harass­ment poli­cies on col­lege cam­pus­es, if it can’t even fix a 232-foot bridge com­pe­tent­ly.“ Sum­mers is, of course, the for­mer pres­i­dent of Har­vard.
  4. Could a neu­ro­sci­en­tist under­stand a micro­proces­sor? (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Could the tools of neu­ro­science be used to under­stand the much sim­pler Atari brain? The answer is most­ly no. The authors, for exam­ple, looked at three ‘behav­iors’, Don­key Kong, Space Invaders and Pit­fall (!) and they are able to find tran­sis­tors which unique­ly crash one of the games but not the oth­ers. ‘We might thus con­clude they are unique­ly respon­si­ble for the game – per­haps there is a Don­key Kong tran­sis­tor or a Space Invaders tran­sis­tor.’ Of course, this con­clu­sion would be very mis­lead­ing but what are we then to make of sim­i­lar brain lesion stud­ies?”
  5. Study: Same-sex expe­ri­ences are on the rise, and Amer­i­cans are increas­ing­ly chill about it (Rachel Felt­man, Wash­ing­ton Post): noth­ing to see here, folks. Every­thing is 100% genet­ic. There are no moral choic­es involved at any point on the jour­ney. Move along, please.
  6. The Return of Bernard Lewis (Mar­tin Kramer, Mosa­ic): “Forty years ago, nobody fore­saw the rise of rad­i­cal Islam—except for the pre­em­i­nent his­to­ri­an who both pre­dict­ed and explained it, and much else besides.”
  7. Under Attack (edi­to­r­i­al, The Econ­o­mist): “…when pro­gres­sive thinkers agree that offen­sive words should be cen­sored, it helps author­i­tar­i­an regimes to jus­ti­fy their own much harsh­er restric­tions…“
  8. Like A Prayer: Is Social Jus­tice The New Cam­pus Reli­gion? (Ana Marie Cox, MTV News): Cox came out as a Chris­t­ian (her words) last year. She has a much more enthu­si­as­tic take on cam­pus activism than many of the arti­cles I share (such as the ones above and below).
  9. The amaz­ing 1969 prophe­cy that racial pref­er­ences would cause the exact griev­ances of pro­test­ers today (Jonathan Haidt, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): the dis­claimers at the bot­tom apply to this one most of all. I at first won­dered if it was based upon a hoax, but it seems legit­i­mate. If you have a strong neg­a­tive reac­tion to this piece, you’re wel­come. Think­ing through why will help you be more per­sua­sive.
  10. 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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 51

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

  1. Why Amer­i­ca Spends So Much On The Mil­i­tary (red­dit): this was a sur­pris­ing­ly edu­ca­tion­al read. It was writ­ten in response to the claim that “next year’s pro­posed mil­i­tary bud­get could buy every home­less per­son a $1 mil­lion home.”
  2. Chew­bac­ca Laugh­ter Brings Unex­pect­ed Plat­form (Dan Van Veen, PE News): “On Wednes­day night before mak­ing the video, she felt that the Holy Spir­it had direct­ed her to a spe­cif­ic restau­rant for sup­per just pri­or to church. There, God had a ‘divine oppor­tu­ni­ty’ wait­ing.”
  3. 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.
  4. Unsafe Cars Can Save Lives (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Safe­ty is rel­a­tive so cars judged unsafe by glob­al stan­dards could save lives in India. The big­ger les­son is that it’s always dan­ger­ous to impose glob­al stan­dards with­out tak­ing into account the dif­fer­ing cir­cum­stances of time and place.”
  5. The Big Uneasy (Nathan Heller, The New York­er): “A [uni­ver­si­ty] president’s job is to push past con­tra­dic­tions, while an activist’s duty is to call them out. The insti­tu­tions that give many peo­ple a lan­guage and a forum to denounce injus­tice are, inevitably, the near­est tar­gets of their crit­i­cism.” Bonus points for quot­ing Toc­queville. 
  6. The Trans­gen­der Bath­room Debate and the Loom­ing Title IX Cri­sis (Jean­nie Suk, New York­er): “Whether or not the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment act­ed unlaw­ful­ly, it has now set in motion a poten­tial Title IX col­li­sion course between its direc­tives on sex­u­al vio­lence and on bath­rooms…. The dis­com­fort that some peo­ple, some sex­u­al-assault sur­vivors, in par­tic­u­lar, feel at the idea of being in rest rooms with peo­ple with male sex organs, what­ev­er their gen­der, is not easy to brush aside as big­otry.“ The author is a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Law School.
  7. Claims by trans­gen­der school­teacher (who wants to be called ‘they’) yield $60,000 set­tle­ment, agree­ment to cre­ate dis­ci­pli­nary rules reg­u­lat­ing ‘pro­noun usage (Eugene Volokh, Volokh Con­spir­a­cy): the sec­ond half is what cap­tured my atten­tion. “When the gov­ern­ment is act­ing as sov­er­eign, telling us what we must or must not say on pain of coer­cive­ly imposed legal lia­bil­i­ty, the First Amend­ment is at full force. That force, I think, should pre­clude gov­ern­ment com­mands that we start using new words — or rad­i­cal gram­mat­i­cal mod­i­fi­ca­tions of old, famil­iar words — that con­vey gov­ern­ment-favored mes­sages about gen­der iden­ti­ty or any­thing else.”
  8. Peter Thiel’s fund­ing of Hulk Hogan-Gawk­er lit­i­ga­tion should not raise con­cerns (Eugene Kon­torovich, Volokh Con­spir­a­cy):  “if the law­suit is not friv­o­lous, it is hard to see how the moti­va­tions of fun­ders are rel­e­vant (or dis­cernible). One would not say a civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion could not accept dona­tions from phil­an­thropists angered by a per­son­al expe­ri­ence with dis­crim­i­na­tion.” Also see Tyler Cowen’s take.
  9. Amus­ing: Oth­er Promis­es of God (xkcd)

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.

If you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 50

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

  1. What are the most-cit­ed pub­li­ca­tions in the social sci­ences (accord­ing to Google Schol­ar)? (Elliot Green, Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics Impact Blog): I am famil­iar with many of them, but some I have nev­er even heard of. Appar­ent­ly I am less well-read than I thought.
  2. The False Promise of DNA Test­ing (Matthew Shaer, The Atlantic): DNA test­ing exon­er­ates some but false­ly impli­cates oth­ers.
  3. Good Cit­i­zen­ship as Barack Oba­ma and Clarence Thomas See It (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “There are real diver­gences in the ways that Oba­ma and Thomas view cit­i­zen­ship, but their approach­es are more com­ple­men­tary than con­tra­dic­to­ry. Tak­en togeth­er, their advice encom­pass­es the per­son­al and the polit­i­cal, afford­ing a bet­ter por­trait of the whole cit­i­zen than either offers in iso­la­tion.”
  4. The cul­ture wars play out in the most fas­ci­nat­ing ways:
    • Media Want To Make Sure You Nev­er Hear About The Lit­tle Sis­ters of the Poor (Mol­lie Hem­ing­way, The Fed­er­al­ist): “A case of “Lit­tle Sis­ters of the Poor” vs. “Pow­er­ful Men in Gov­ern­ment” is a gift from the edi­to­r­i­al gods…. If any Repub­li­can pres­i­dent went to war against a group called Lit­tle Sis­ters of the Poor, that edi­to­r­i­al gift would be unwrapped on every front page of every news­pa­per in the land.” (addi­tion­al com­men­tary at GetRe­li­gion)
    • Relat­ed: Pro­fes­sor Michael McConnell on Zubik v. Bur­well (Michael McConnell, Volokh Con­spir­a­cy): “the deci­sion was basi­cal­ly a qui­et, face-sav­ing, non-prece­dent-set­ting defeat for the gov­ern­ment.”
    • How The Fight Over Trans­gen­der Kids Got A Lead­ing Sex Researcher Fired (Jesse Sin­gal, NY Mag): this is a very long piece which I found utter­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. It shows that for some peo­ple 90% agree­ment is not enough: “And if you look close­ly at what real­ly hap­pened — if you read the review (which CAMH has now pulled off of its web­site), speak with the activists who effec­tive­ly wrote large swaths of it, exam­ine the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence, and talk to for­mer GIC clin­i­cians and the par­ents of patients they worked with, it’s hard not to come to an uncom­fort­able, polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect con­clu­sion: Zucker’s defend­ers are right. This was a show tri­al.”
    • Yes, my sex­u­al­i­ty is a choice: Why I reject the “born this way” nar­ra­tive (Mar­cie Bian­co, Salon):  “The pro­gres­sive move away from iden­ti­ty cat­e­gories negates the need for the nor­ma­tive, ‘born this way’ nar­ra­tive that has been used to social­ly val­i­date them…. if sex­u­al­i­ty is social­ly con­struct­ed and expressed through cul­ture, then there is no norm, nor is there deviance.”
    • State-Man­dat­ed Mourn­ing for Abort­ed Fetus­es (Emma Green, The Atlantic): I am some­what baf­fled that this sto­ry doesn’t men­tion the Cen­ter for Med­ical Progress videos from last year. There is clear­ly a rela­tion­ship.
  5. Quick Links:

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 49

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

  1. The Exper­i­ment Exper­i­ment (Plan­et Mon­ey): a con­sis­tent­ly excel­lent pod­cast. This episode is the best expla­na­tion I’ve heard about the repli­ca­tion cri­sis that plagues many dis­ci­plines.
  2. The Faith­ful: René and Juan Car­los set out to con­vert their Colom­bian megachurch to Ortho­dox Judaism. This is what hap­pened. (Gra­ciela Mochkof­sky, The Cal­i­for­nia Sun­day Mag­a­zine): this is a very sad sto­ry. The temp­ta­tions Paul warned the Gala­tians about are real.
  3. A Con­fes­sion of Lib­er­al Intol­er­ance (Nicholas Kristof, NY Times): “This bias on cam­pus­es cre­ates lib­er­al priv­i­lege. A friend is study­ing for the Law School Admis­sion Test, and the test prepa­ra­tion com­pa­ny she is using offers test-tak­ers a tip: Read­ing com­pre­hen­sion ques­tions will typ­i­cal­ly have a lib­er­al slant and a lib­er­al answr.”
  4. Face­book is going to get more polit­i­cal­ly biased, not less (Ezra Klein, Vox): “The bad press Face­book has received for polit­i­cal bias in recent days is like­ly to push it away from human cura­tion and toward yet more algo­rith­mic cura­tion. The irony is that will make Face­book more of an echo cham­ber, not less of one. Face­book’s human cura­tors are under pres­sure to present both sides, but its algo­rith­mic cura­tors are not.” The arti­cle Klein is respond­ing to is For­mer Face­book Work­ers: We Rou­tine­ly Sup­pressed Con­ser­v­a­tive News (Michael Nunez, Giz­mo­do).
  5. World Hunger Is At Its Low­est Point In 25 Years. Thank Democ­ra­cy. (Lib­by Nel­son, Vox): and as I nev­er tire of point­ing out, for wide­spread democ­ra­cy thank Bible-believ­ing Chris­tians. You’re wel­come.
  6. Ravi Zacharias On The Chris­t­ian View Of Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty (YouTube): the clip is 11 min­utes long.
  7. Where John Piper and Oth­er Evan­gel­i­cals Stand on Black Lives Mat­ter (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Piper also encour­aged white evan­gel­i­cals to ‘pause’ before say­ing any­thing like, ‘All lives mat­ter.’ ‘Because if you quick­ly add that, it sounds like a rebuke,’ he said. ‘It sounds like a min­i­miz­ing of what was just said. It sounds like the point that was try­ing to be made isn’t worth being made,’ he said. ‘… Of course that is true, all lives mat­ter, but oh how tim­ing mat­ters and how con­text mat­ters.’”
  8. How Bath­rooms Became the New Legal Bat­tle­ground of the Reli­gious Right (Michelle Gold­berg, Slate): Very slant­ed but inter­est­ing piece. “Polls sug­gest that a slight plu­ral­i­ty of Amer­i­cans believe peo­ple should have to use the bath­rooms that match the sex on their birth cer­tifi­cate. To a lib­er­al, this is evi­dence that more edu­ca­tion is need­ed. To a con­ser­v­a­tive, it’s proof that aver­age people’s pref­er­ences are being tram­pled on.”
  9. 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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 39

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. This is the research paper behind the sto­ry I shared in my ser­mon this week: Spon­ta­neous Human Speech Mim­ic­ry By A Cetacean (Cur­rent Biol­o­gy), a read­able sum­ma­ry is The Whale Who Talked (Nature) and to hear it your­self, here is a one minute YouTube video about Noc. (the video describes his voice as kazo­o­like, which is apt).
  2. How The Church Helps Black Men Flour­ish In Amer­i­ca (Wilcox and Wolfin­ger, The Atlantic): “The black church’s suc­cess val­i­dates the cul­tur­al argu­ments made by con­ser­v­a­tives and the struc­tur­al argu­ments made by lib­er­als regard­ing race in Amer­i­ca.”
  3. Who Are The Gay Evan­gel­i­cals? (Mol­ly Worthen, NY Times):  “In an era when gay mar­riage is legal and a range of gay Chris­tians are mod­el­ing dif­fer­ent ways to rec­on­cile sex­u­al­i­ty and faith, are the deci­sions of young believ­ers like Lani­ra Postell still a result of coer­cion and con­fused self-hatred? I asked her what she thought about those lib­er­al crit­ics who might think so. ‘I under­stand where they’re com­ing from, that to them what I’m doing doesn’t make any sense,’ she said. ‘That’s why being a Chris­t­ian is not com­mon. It’s weird. It is unnat­ur­al for me to deny myself what I desire, but I do it because of the love of God.’”
  4. Are You A Fem­i­nist If You Always Let Him Pay? (Aman­da Fitzsim­mons, Elle): def­i­nite­ly not writ­ten from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive. I found it fas­ci­nat­ing through­out and insight­ful at points. “…of all the myr­i­ad rea­sons I’ve enter­tained as to why a guy did­n’t call me or a friend back (and, believe me, I’ve not lacked for cre­ativ­i­ty in this area), the fact that we did­n’t offer to pay the bill nev­er once occurred to me.”
  5. As the elec­tion draws ever clos­er, some stim­u­lat­ing con­tent:

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.

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links (you can also sign up to receive them at that site)

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 34

Here are some things I found inter­est­ing this week. See the bot­tom for con­text.

  1. On The Via­bil­i­ty of Con­spir­a­to­r­i­al Beliefs (David Robert Grimes, PLOS One): Oxford physi­cist Grimes came up with an equa­tion that shows how like­ly a con­spir­a­cy will be to suc­ceed under ide­al con­di­tions. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the chart on the bot­tom of page 11, show­ing that a con­spir­a­cy with more than 502 peo­ple has a 95% like­li­hood of expo­sure after just 25 years. Read­ing that puts 1 Corinthi­ans 15:3–6 in a new light: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first impor­tance: that Christ died for our sins accord­ing to the Scrip­tures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day accord­ing to the Scrip­tures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hun­dred of the broth­ers and sis­ters at the same time, most of whom are still liv­ing, though some have fall­en asleep.” Please note that there are all kinds of assump­tions in the paper that are sub­ject to chal­lenge… but if one of your friends brings this study up you should men­tion this pas­sage to them. 🙂
  2. Cer­ti­tude And Seek­ing The Truth (Peter Wehn­er, Com­men­tary). Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus (the rec­om­men­da­tion was actu­al­ly for a blog post excerpt­ing this arti­cle, but I thought the whole thing was worth read­ing — it aligns nice­ly with my dis­claimer at the bot­tom).
  3. My Major, Myself: (Olga Khaz­an, The Atlantic). What does your major reveal (prob­a­bilis­ti­cal­ly) about your per­son­al­i­ty?
  4. Why Humans Find It Hard To Do Away With Reli­gion (John Gray, The New States­man): Gray is him­self an athe­ist. My favorite line: “The invet­er­ate human incli­na­tion to reli­gion is, in effect, the athe­ist prob­lem of evil.” This isn’t quite right but it is amus­ing.
  5. Peo­ple Can Be Con­vinced They Com­mit­ted A Non-Exis­tant Crime In Just Three Hours (Bec Crew, Sci­ence Alert). Dis­turb­ing. This is a sum­ma­ry of the find­ings of an aca­d­e­m­ic paper: Con­struct­ing Rich False Mem­o­ries of Com­mit­ting Crime (Shaw & Porter, Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence).
  6. How Reli­gion Is Shap­ing the 2016 Pres­i­den­tial Race (Pew Research). If pol­i­tics is your thing, this arti­cle will be inter­est­ing.
  7. Are Aca­d­e­mics Dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly Gay? (Colleen Fla­her­ty, Inside High­er Edu­ca­tion). The tl;dr ver­sion is yes.

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.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). 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.

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 20

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.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. From the Glen-allud­ed-to-this-in-his-ser­mon depart­ment:
  2. From the cur­rent events depart­ment
  3. From the all-things-sex­u­al depart­ment:
  4. From the Stan­ford depart­ment: this Dai­ly op-ed caught my eye: Peti­tion To Stu­dent Activ­i­ties and Lead­er­ship to End Open Mem­ber­ship. There was a swift nuh-uh from the admin­is­tra­tion. The peti­tion itself is on change.org. For the record, Chi Alpha has no desire to exclude peo­ple from our min­istry. I do, how­ev­er, think that Stanford’s open mem­ber­ship pol­i­cy need­less­ly abridges stu­dents’ con­sti­tu­tion­al right to free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion. As a pri­vate insti­tu­tion, Stan­ford is allowed to do that… but it is unwise to do so.

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 15

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.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

  1. From the help­ing-you-get-bet­ter-grades depart­ment: Here’s The Best Way To Guess Cor­rect­ly On A Mul­ti­ple-Choice Test (Justin Couch­man, Quartz): the author, a psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, describes a tech­nique you can use to tell whether to trust your first instinct or revise the answer. You’re wel­come.
  2. From the kim-davis-no-rela­tion depart­ment:
  3. From the with-this-ring-I-thee-wed depart­ment:
  4. From the rag­ing-debates-which-enrage-peo­ple depart­ment: Hun­gry For Souls: Was Junipero Ser­ra A Saint? (Gre­go­ry Orfalea, Com­mon­weal): this is a help­ful sum­ma­ry of the case for Junipero Ser­ra. I’m not sure — is it J‑Ro that is named after him, Ser­ra, or both?

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 6

In the time of King David, the Bible says that 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.

To that end, I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

  1. From the sex­u­al­i­ty depart­ment: in light of the Supreme Court’s deci­sion to rede­fine mar­riage to include same-sex cou­ples I’ve got some sug­gest­ed read­ings.
  2. From the some­thing-com­plete­ly-dif­fer­ent depart­ment: On Obsti­na­cy In Belief (C.S. Lewis, The Sewa­nee Review): I was not aware of this C.S. Lewis essay before this week. It was reward­ing.
  3. From the if-it-is-not-news-can-it-be-dis­ap­point­ing-news depart­ment: How Aca­d­e­mics View Con­ser­v­a­tive Protes­tants (Yancey, Reimer, and O’Connell, Soci­ol­o­gy of Reli­gion): The lead author, a soci­ol­o­gist, blogs at Black, White and Gray and I fre­quent­ly ben­e­fit from what he shares there.

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.