Tag: secularism

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 478

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. When a Stan­ford Bible Study Led to an AI Start­up (Emi­ly Belz, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Hadas­sah Beta­pu­di and Eli­jah Kim met at a Chris­t­ian fel­low­ship at Stan­ford in 2022 and got to know each oth­er by lead­ing a Bible study togeth­er. Soon the duo—with their back­grounds in data orga­niz­ing and com­put­er science—was build­ing an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence start­up.”
    • The arti­cle nev­er names Chi Alpha, but they are both lead­ers in our min­istry. Super cool! Their start­up is Ess­lo, which helps stu­dents with their col­lege appli­ca­tion essays.
  2. I Believe in Mir­a­cles. Just Not All of Them. (David French, New York Times): “As the surgery date approached, I got a call from a dear friend, Ruth Okedi­ji. Ruth was the leader of my law school Chris­t­ian fel­low­ship, and she’s now a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Law School. I’ll nev­er for­get her first words. ‘It’s over,’ she said. ‘The Lord has healed you.’ My ini­tial reac­tion was frus­tra­tion. I was resigned to the surgery, and I want­ed encour­age­ment, not false hope. As a Chris­t­ian, I believe that God is real and works mir­a­cles. But I didn’t con­sid­er that he would work a mir­a­cle on me. My prayers were of the con­ven­tion­al kind that I grew up with — prayers that doc­tors would have wis­dom and that I’d have the courage to face the chal­lenge of the surgery. But Ruth’s prayer was dif­fer­ent. She asked God for heal­ing, and she said that God had grant­ed her prayer. I woke up the next morn­ing with­out any pain at all. I had no pain the entire day. The next day was pain-free as well, and so was the next. The doc­tors rein­tro­duced bland, sol­id food to my diet, and I con­sumed it vora­cious­ly. By Thanks­giv­ing, I’d gained most of my weight back, and a colonoscopy lat­er showed no evi­dence of the dis­ease at all. My doc­tor was sur­prised. I was sur­prised (and over­joyed). I knew that ulcer­a­tive col­i­tis could have remis­sion peri­ods, but this one stuck. And in the 29 years since, I’ve nev­er had a recur­rence.”
  3. The Online Sports Gam­bling Exper­i­ment Has Failed (Zvi Mow­showitz, Sub­stack): “When sports gam­bling was legal­ized in Amer­i­ca, I was hope­ful it too could prove a net pos­i­tive force, far supe­ri­or to the pre­vi­ous obnox­ious wave of dai­ly fan­ta­sy sports. It brings me no plea­sure to con­clude that this was not the case. The results are in. Legal­ized mobile gam­bling on sports, let alone casi­no games, has proven to be a huge mis­take. The soci­etal impacts are far worse than I expect­ed.… The impacts include a 28% over­all increase in bank­rupt­cies (!).… When the home team suf­fers an upset loss while sports bet­ting is legal, domes­tic vio­lence that day goes up by 9% for the day, with lin­ger­ing effects.”
  4. Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Rela­tion­ships: 1 in 4 Young Adults Believe AI Part­ners Could Replace Real-life Romance (Wendy Wang and Michael Toscano, Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “Young men are more like­ly than young women to believe that AI has the poten­tial to replace real-life roman­tic rela­tion­ships (28% vs. 22%). As shown ear­li­er, young men are gen­er­al­ly more open to AI friend­ships than young women, which par­al­lels the gen­der dif­fer­ence in their views of AI’s poten­tial for romance.… Among sin­gle young adults, those who watch porn online at least once a day are twice as like­ly as those who rarely, if ever watch porn to say they are open to an AI romance.”
  5. The Right With­out Wrong (Dustin Guastel­la, Jacobin): “For sec­u­lar lib­er­als who have made ‘believ­ing sci­ence’ their own kind of reli­gion, the pos­si­ble wan­ing of Chris­t­ian con­ser­vatism may seem like a bless­ing long over­due. What if it isn’t?… In the Chris­t­ian sto­ry, we are all equal­ly fall­en. Our orig­i­nal sin unites us in a kind of neg­a­tive equi­lib­ri­um. By recast­ing Chris­tian­i­ty as a unique per­ver­sion, a can­cer­ous growth that destroyed the glo­ri­ous Roman Empire from with­in (or a virus intro­duced by Jews, that ancient ene­my of the Right, from with­out), reac­tionar­ies can freely reject our pri­mor­dial equal­i­ty to instead embrace the sup­pos­ed­ly nat­ur­al hier­ar­chies evi­dent in the out­come of mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion, the body-obsessed ‘vital­ism’ that priv­i­leges phys­i­cal strength over the effete ide­al­ism of the Enlight­en­ment, and also, seem­ing­ly with­out fail, an aggres­sive, unashamed form of sci­en­tif­ic racism.”
    • Jacobin is a social­ist mag­a­zine — fas­ci­nat­ing to see how one of their authors feels about the rise of the post-reli­gious right.
  6. We Need to Fix Vot­ing in Amer­i­ca Now (Wil­fred Reil­ly, Nation­al Review): “Sim­ply put, there is no way to know the real rate of vot­er fraud in Amer­i­ca, so long as the U.S.A. does not require cit­i­zens to vote in per­son or show an ID when they vote.… Recall that a com­pe­tent­ly done scan-and-purge of the rolls in Iowa alone turned up almost two orders of mag­ni­tude more reg­is­tered nonci­t­i­zens than the num­ber that The Experts™ dis­cov­ered nation­wide — ful­ly 0.5 percent–1 per­cent of the state’s elec­torate in some off-year races. Say­ing that these folks do not exist because they have nev­er been jailed is like say­ing that there can­not real­ly be 1 mil­lion-plus dai­ly users of The Pirate Bay and sim­i­lar sites, because there are so few annu­al pros­e­cu­tions for inter­net crimes.”
    • The author is a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor. He presents data I’ve nev­er heard before.
  7. A Grave­yard of Bad Elec­tion Nar­ra­tives (Musa al-Ghar­bi, Sub­stack): “Accord­ing to Forbes, more than 50 oth­er bil­lion­aires also threw their weight behind Trump. So far so good for the pre­ferred nar­ra­tive. But here’s the twist: even more bil­lion­aires — 83 to be pre­cise — sup­port­ed the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee. Kamala had 60 per­cent more bil­lion­aire back­ers than Don­ald Trump did. And bil­lion­aires like Oprah and Mark Cuban hit the cam­paign trail serv­ing as sur­ro­gates for Har­ris in much the same way as Musk sup­port­ed Trump. If we want to look at who ‘big mon­ey’ tried to push into office this cycle, the answer is dis­con­cert­ing.… Over­all, this cycle, Democ­rats raised rough­ly twice as much mon­ey as their oppo­nents. In the months after Joe Biden dropped out, Democ­rats raised more than $1 bil­lion – more than three times as much as Repub­li­cans brought in over the same peri­od – large­ly thanks to enthu­si­as­tic sup­port for Kamala Har­ris with­in Wall Street, Sil­i­con Val­ley and Big Law.”

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 387

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 vol­ume 387, which I learned today is the low­est num­ber with a sort-then-add per­sis­tence of 10, which is a real­ly weird con­cept. Take 387 and add it to 378 (the dig­its sort­ed) and you get 765. Take 765 and add it to 567 to get 1332. Then sort that to add 1233. Keep doing that until you get an answer whose dig­its are already sort­ed (appear in increas­ing order). It takes 10 iter­a­tions to get there. Some­one dis­cov­ered this. Math­e­mati­cians are both won­der­ful and weird.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Under Munic­i­pal Reg­u­la­tions, UK Abor­tion Clin­ics ‘Safe’ From Silent Prayer (David Roach, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Adam Smith-Con­nor prayed silent­ly on a pub­lic street in Bournemouth, Eng­land, ear­li­er this month, his back to an abor­tion clin­ic. When com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty offi­cers asked what he was doing, he told them he was ‘pray­ing for [his] son, who is deceased.’ The offi­cers expressed con­do­lences but then said Smith-Con­nor, a 49-year-old phys­i­cal ther­a­pist and British army vet­er­an, was ‘in breach’ of a Pub­lic Space Pro­tec­tion Order (PSPO), accord­ing to a video of the inci­dent. Lat­er he was fined.”
    • I’ve been fol­low­ing these sto­ries on social media, this is the first decent write­up of them that I’ve seen. It blew my mind when I first saw it and I assumed some cops mis­un­der­stood a pol­i­cy. Nope. Insane and demon­ic. I’ve long known that you don’t have the right to free speech in the U.K. I did­n’t real­ize you also lacked the right to free silence.
  2. AI Stuff
    • OY, A.I. (Jaron Lanier, Tablet): “The prob­lem wasn’t that Israelites want­ed to craft a calf, but that they wor­shipped it, even though it was a thing they had just made. The calf was social nar­cis­sism and amne­sia. Jews have always had a prob­lem of get­ting bored, of not get­ting enough of a charge from what­ev­er is going on. The Israelites wait­ing for Moses to come back down were bored enough to go nuts. We peo­ple, not just Jews, still make gold­en calves all the time. Adam Smith’s invis­i­ble hand, cor­po­ra­tions-as-per­sons, the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty, Wikipedia, the lat­est AI pro­grams. All the same. All a bunch of peo­ple being sub­sumed to cre­ate an imag­i­nary super­hero.” An inter­est­ing the­o­log­i­cal reflec­tion on AI by a guy I don’t remem­ber hear­ing of before but clear­ly should have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier
    • What if you could talk to the Bible? (Andrew Gao, Twit­ter): See biblegpt.org
    • AI Ser­mon Out­line Gen­er­a­tor (John Dyer, Open­Bible): “To start, please enter up to 5 Bible pas­sages. The AI will then gen­er­ate 4 ser­mon the­sis state­ments, or main argu­ments, based on the pas­sages. After you choose a the­sis state­ment you like, it will gen­er­ate an out­line for you.”
    • Put Not Your Trust in Chat­G­PT, for Now (Emi­ly Belz, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Here is a sys­tem that will turn my head: You take an emp­ty sys­tem, and it has the capa­bil­i­ty of learn­ing lan­guage at the speed of a child. The way kids acquire lan­guage is tru­ly mind-blow­ing. And not just lan­guage, but even if you go open the cup­board door—they see some­thing once, and they fig­ure out how to do it. The sys­tem that this Google engi­neer was talk­ing about, it was giv­en tril­lions of exam­ples in order to get some sense of intel­li­gence out of it. It con­sumed ridicu­lous amounts of ener­gy, where­as a lit­tle kid’s brain requires the pow­er of a flash­light, and it’s able to learn lan­guage. We’re not any­where close to that kind of gen­er­al AI.” The inter­vie­wee has a PhD in physics and works in AI -https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomkehler
    • Five Days in Class with Chat­G­PT (Thomas Rid, The Alper­ovitch Insti­tute): “Last week brought two relat­ed fea­tures of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in edu­ca­tion into sharp relief: the first is that all that talk about pla­gia­rism and cheat­ing and abuse is unin­spir­ing and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. Yes, some unam­bi­tious stu­dents will use this new tool to cov­er sub­par per­for­mance, and yes, we could talk about how to detect or dis­in­cen­tivize such behav­ior. The far more inspir­ing con­ver­sa­tion is a dif­fer­ent one: how can the most cre­ative, the most ambi­tious, and the most bril­liant stu­dents achieve even bet­ter results faster?” An engag­ing and thought-pro­vok­ing case study.
  3. Five Rules for an Aging World (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “There are two kinds of peo­ple in the world: Those who believe the defin­ing chal­lenge of the 21st cen­tu­ry will be cli­mate change, and those who know that it will be the birth dearth, the pop­u­la­tion bust, the old age of the world.”
  4. What­ev­er Hap­pened to Light Verse? (Kevin Mims, Quil­lette): “Part of this seems to be due to what has late­ly been termed ‘elite over­pro­duc­tion.’ In pre­vi­ous eras, much of America’s jour­nal­ism, poet­ry, and fic­tion were writ­ten by peo­ple who not only lacked an elite col­lege edu­ca­tion, many of them lacked any col­lege edu­ca­tion at all. Nei­ther Ogden Nash nor Dorothy Park­er earned a col­lege degree (nor, for that mat­ter, did Emi­ly Dick­in­son, H.D., Robert Frost, and any num­ber of oth­er ‘seri­ous’ poets of pre­vi­ous eras). But for half a cen­tu­ry now, most of America’s most promi­nent jour­nal­ists, poets, and nov­el­ists have been grad­u­ates of elite uni­ver­si­ties. And, because the lec­ture is a pri­ma­ry method of deliv­er­ing edu­ca­tion at schools like Har­vard and Yale and Stan­ford, much con­tem­po­rary jour­nal­ism, poet­ry, and fic­tion reads like a lec­ture.”
  5. Has Church Abuse Activism Tak­en a Wrong Turn? (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “So why do so few peo­ple want to say ‘evil’ and so many more seem to say ‘tox­ic’? Because the word ‘evil’ evokes moral absolutes, where­as the word ‘tox­ic’ is impres­sion-cod­ed. An evil regime mer­its oppo­si­tion, even sac­ri­fi­cial oppo­si­tion. A tox­ic cul­ture mer­its qui­et quit­ting and self-care after­wards.”
  6. A clus­ter of LGBT-relat­ed arti­cles I stum­bled upon this week:
    • The first of two reac­tions to an hon­est con­ver­sa­tion about LGBT issues: L’Esprit d’Escalier, Dish­cast Edi­tion (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “I did not give an argu­ment about why the Chris­t­ian sex­u­al eth­ic is good. I real­ize that it’s because for me, it’s total­ly a mat­ter of obe­di­ence. As I’ve explained many times, and did again on Andrew’s show, once I under­stood that my own sex­u­al activ­i­ty was the only bar­ri­er to accept­ing Christ, and once I saw what a mess I was mak­ing of my life by stand­ing firm for what I believed was my sex­u­al free­dom, I knew that I had a choice to make: I could have my sex­u­al free­dom, or I could have Christ. Any­thing short of mak­ing that sac­ri­fice was dis­hon­est.”
    • The oth­er guy’s per­spec­tive (along with fas­ci­nat­ing com­men­tary from lis­ten­ers): Rod Dreher On His Crises Of Faith And Fam­i­ly (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “He’s cur­rent­ly writ­ing a book about bring­ing the enchant­ment back to Chris­tian­i­ty in a time of grow­ing sec­u­lar­ism. He was enchant­ed him­self after tak­ing LSD in col­lege, putting him on the path to Chris­tian­i­ty — some­thing he hasn’t talked about in pub­lic until now. We’ve been spar­ring online for a cou­ple of decades, while remain­ing friends.”
    • ‘Isla Bryson’ and the mad­ness of Scotland’s gen­der bill (Alex Massie, The Spec­ta­tor): “More­over, some 50 per cent of Scot­tish inmates only dis­cov­ered their new gen­der iden­ti­ty after they were charged by police. Bryson now adds to this num­ber. This seems dubi­ous­ly con­ve­nient to the point of being sus­pi­cious and it can­not sen­si­bly be thought ‘trans­pho­bic’ to think so. Some­thing is hap­pen­ing here, even if it is con­sid­ered indeco­rous to spec­u­late on pre­cise­ly what is occur­ring.… Ulti­mate­ly, this is a dis­agree­ment between fan­ta­sists and real­ists and it is deplorable to realise that the major­i­ty of Scot­tish par­lia­men­tar­i­ans are signed-up mem­bers of the fan­ta­sy club.”
    • Ivan Provorov jer­seys sell out days after NHL play­er refus­es to wear LGBT pride jer­sey (Luke Gen­tile, Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er): “Jer­seys for Philadel­phia Fly­ers defense­man Ivan Provorov have sold out online days after the 26-year-old refused to wear a gay pride-themed jer­sey for reli­gious rea­sons. Both NHL Shop and Fanat­ics have list­ed Provorov’s jer­seys as ‘almost gone,’ and there are no longer any men’s jer­seys with his name and num­ber avail­able. On Fanat­ics, the defense­man is list­ed as hav­ing the most pop­u­lar men’s jer­sey, wom­en’s jer­sey, and sweat­shirt, and his Brand­ed Backer shirt is being adver­tised as the most pop­u­lar sell­er relat­ed to the Philadel­phia Fly­ers, accord­ing to the online store.”
    • The Myth of “Reli­able Research” in Pedi­atric Gen­der Med­i­cine: A crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the Dutch Studies—and research that has fol­lowed (Abbruzzese, Levine & Mason, Jour­nal of Sex & Mar­i­tal Ther­a­py): “Our analy­sis of the Dutch pro­to­col has been writ­ten with three goals in mind. First, we want­ed to defin­i­tive­ly refute the claims that the foun­da­tion­al Dutch research rep­re­sents ‘sol­id prospec­tive research’ that pro­vides reli­able evi­dence of net ben­e­fits of youth gen­der tran­si­tion. In fact, it is much bet­ter described as case series—one of the low­est lev­els of evi­dence avail­able (Dekkers et al., 2012, Math­es & Pieper, 2017). Sec­ond, we aimed to demon­strate that the type of non-com­par­a­tive, short-term research that the gen­der med­i­cine estab­lish­ment con­tin­ues to pur­sue is inca­pable of gen­er­at­ing reli­able infor­ma­tion. And third and most impor­tant­ly, we want­ed to remind the med­ical com­mu­ni­ty that med­i­cine is a dou­ble-edged sword capa­ble of both much good and much harm. The bur­den of proof—demonstrating that a treat­ment does more good than harm—is on those pro­mot­ing the inter­ven­tion, not on those con­cerned about the harms.” I am sure there will be arti­cles cri­tiquing this in com­ing days, but wow. The authors did not come to play.
    • You Don’t Want A Pure­ly Bio­log­i­cal, Apo­lit­i­cal Tax­on­o­my Of Men­tal Dis­or­ders (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten):  “The peo­ple ask­ing for apo­lit­i­cal tax­onomies want an inco­her­ent thing. They want some­thing which doesn’t think about pol­i­tics at all, and which simul­ta­ne­ous­ly is more polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect than any oth­er tax­on­o­my. Or if ‘polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness’ sounds too dis­mis­sive, we can rephrase it as: ‘they want some­thing that doesn’t think about ethics and prac­ti­cal­i­ty at all, but which is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly more eth­i­cal­ly cor­rect and prag­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect than oth­er tax­onomies’.” Super spicy, short, and says things out loud which most peo­ple avoid.
  7. Who’s More Irra­tional — The Reli­gious or the Irre­li­gious? (Den­nis Prager, syn­di­cat­ed col­umn): “The truth is that today the sec­u­lar have a vir­tu­al monop­oly on irra­tional beliefs. One proof is that col­leges have become the most irra­tional insti­tu­tions in the coun­try. Not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, they are also the most sec­u­lar insti­tu­tions in our soci­ety. In fact, the for­mer is a result of the lat­ter.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

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 The Church Forests of Ethiopia (YouTube): nine min­utes. This com­men­tary by Rod Dreher was what brought the video to my atten­tion. Watch the video before you read the com­men­tary. These forests are a beau­ti­ful pic­ture of the way the Church bless­es the world around it, and what the Church must do to thrive in the envi­ron­ment we find our­selves in. From vol­ume 262.

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 199

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

If you’ve been fol­low­ing the news, arti­cles about the Mueller report are con­spic­u­ous by their absence in this week’s email. Apolo­gies if you were hop­ing for some­thing on that, but I find it dif­fi­cult to over­state how unin­ter­est­ed I am in this news cycle.

Also, next week will be vol­ume 200. Should I do any­thing spe­cial? Sug­ges­tions are wel­come.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Is Reli­gious Decline Inevitable in the Unit­ed States? (Ryan Burge, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The results are unam­bigu­ous: those with the least amount of edu­ca­tion are con­sis­tent­ly the most like­ly to iden­ti­fy as reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed. The far right bar in the graph, indi­cat­ing those with a grad­u­ate lev­el edu­ca­tion are almost always the group that is the most like­ly to be reli­gious­ly affil­i­at­ed.”
  2. The new reli­gion: why try­ing to be per­fect is doomed to fail (Oliv­er Burke­man, The Guardian): “It’s one thing to seek sal­va­tion in God, or to stop seek­ing sal­va­tion; but the attempt to engi­neer your own sal­va­tion is doomed to fail. We’re flawed and finite, so we lack the capac­i­ty to work, par­ent or romance our way to per­fec­tion. Try to do so and you’ll only end up strug­gling to exert ever more con­trol over your life – where­as deep rela­tion­ships, and oth­er mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences, require giv­ing up con­trol.”
  3. Now We’re Talk­ing: The Excep­tion­al Life of Paul Coates (Wil S. Hyl­ton, Huff­in­g­ton Post): “There weren’t white cats in hoods, burn­ing cross­es and beat­ing up on black peo­ple, but if you walked through town, the moment you got to the black side, the side­walks would dis­ap­pear, the streets would dis­ap­pear, and now you’re walk­ing in dirt. So the racism was subtle—but as your con­scious­ness expands, the sub­tle­ty melts away and the racism becomes more ran­cid to the eyes and nose.” This is a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ father.
  4. Mis­sion­ar­ies are sup­posed to suf­fer … So am I allowed to buy an air con­di­tion­er? (Amy Med­i­na, A Life Over­seas): “If God has called you to work among the upper-class in India, then you’ll need to live like them, in a lux­u­ry apart­ment. If God has called you to work among the coastal tribes of Tan­za­nia, then you’ll need to live like them, in a sim­ple cin­der-block house with a pit toi­let. Each life has its set of chal­lenges. Each life has its set of bless­ings.”
  5. Broke Mil­len­ni­als Are Flock­ing to Finan­cial Guru Dave Ram­sey. Is His Advice Any Good? (Kris­ten Bahler, Mon­ey): “[Young adults are] an audi­ence that mar­keters stake their entire bud­gets on, and he’s speak­ing to them in all the wrong ways. He quotes scrip­ture and Ronald Rea­gan. He calls young peo­ple ‘snowflakes.’ He has absolute­ly no chill, what­so­ev­er. But for a grow­ing swath of millennials—a gen­er­a­tion we’re told is too frag­ile, too god­less, too polit­i­cal­ly correct—his word is gospel.”
  6. Lis­ten­ing at the Great Awok­en­ing (Areo, Darel E. Paul): “…this spring the Great Awok­en­ing final­ly came to my home insti­tu­tion, Williams Col­lege. Admin­is­tra­tors and oth­er cam­pus lead­ers have encour­aged white mem­bers of the col­lege com­mu­ni­ty like myself to lis­ten. Over the past two months, I have striv­en to do exact­ly that…. Lis­ten­ing to these views from mul­ti­ple cam­pus­es helped me real­ize that what seems to be a local dis­course respond­ing to local issues is actu­al­ly a local man­i­fes­ta­tion of an inter­na­tion­al social, polit­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence at Williams Col­lege.
    • Relat­ed: The End of Empa­thy (Han­na Rosin, NPR): “…new research has scram­bled notions of how empa­thy works as a force in the world. For exam­ple, we often think of ter­ror­ists as shock­ing­ly blind to the suf­fer­ing of inno­cents. But Bre­i­thaupt and oth­er researchers think of them as clas­sic exam­ples of peo­ple afflict­ed with an ‘excess of empa­thy. They feel the suf­fer­ing of their peo­ple.’”
  7. The Gospel of AI: Evan­gel­i­cals Want Tech to Remain Good News (Grif­fin Paul Jack­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “[The doc­u­ment], com­posed by experts in busi­ness, pub­lic pol­i­cy, tech, ethics, and bib­li­cal the­ol­o­gy, con­sists of 12 arti­cles, each offer­ing bib­li­cal affir­ma­tions and denials about human nature and var­i­ous impli­ca­tions for the future of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. The doc­u­ment empha­sizes God’s pow­er as the author of life and humans’ spe­cial role as image-bear­ers. It most­ly focus­es on con­cep­tu­al and the­o­ret­i­cal frame­works for using AI but also explic­it­ly decries the use of AI for sex­u­al plea­sure as well as ‘manip­u­la­tive and coer­cive’ data col­lec­tion.”
    • See the full doc­u­ment: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: An Evan­gel­i­cal State­ment of Prin­ci­ples: “In light of exis­ten­tial ques­tions posed anew by the emer­gent tech­nol­o­gy of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), we affirm that God has giv­en us wis­dom to approach these issues in light of Scrip­ture and the gospel mes­sage. Chris­tians must not fear the future or any tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment because we know that God is, above all, sov­er­eign over his­to­ry, and that noth­ing will ever sup­plant the image of God in which human beings are cre­at­ed. We rec­og­nize that AI will allow us to achieve unprece­dent­ed pos­si­bil­i­ties, while acknowl­edg­ing the poten­tial risks posed by AI if used with­out wis­dom and care.”

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 The Preach­er And Pol­i­tics: Sev­en Thoughts (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “I have plen­ty of opin­ions and con­vic­tions. But that’s not what I want my min­istry to be about. That’s not to say I don’t com­ment on abor­tion or gay mar­riage or racism or oth­er issues about the which the Bible speaks clear­ly. And yet, I’m always mind­ful that I can’t sep­a­rate Blog­ger Kevin or Twit­ter Kevin or Pro­fes­sor Kevin from Pas­tor Kevin. As such, my com­ments reflect on my church, whether I intend them to or not. That means I keep more polit­i­cal con­vic­tions to myself than I oth­er­wise would.” First shared in vol­ume 150.

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.