{"id":7899,"date":"2026-01-30T16:59:34","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T00:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=7899"},"modified":"2026-01-30T16:59:34","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T00:59:34","slug":"tgfi-volume-540-marrying-atheists-and-using-ai-to-avoid-awkwardness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2026\/01\/30\/tgfi-volume-540-marrying-atheists-and-using-ai-to-avoid-awkwardness","title":{"rendered":"TGFI, Volume 540: marrying atheists and using AI to avoid awkwardness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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You\u2019ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things Glen Found Interesting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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  1. Tough Love: Can I Marry an Atheist?<\/a> (Abigail Shrier, The Free Press): \u201cYou can have all kinds of successful relationships with someone whose worldview is profoundly different from yours\u2014but not marriage. I\u2019ve only been married 18 years, but I know this: Good marriage requires, at a minimum, staying on the same page as your spouse. Compromise on the small stuff, fine. Not on the foundations of the home. That can only create distance between you, a distance that will grow as your children ask you to interpret their world.\u2026 Don\u2019t marry a woman you hope, even secretly, will change.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Students Are Skipping the Hardest Part of Growing Up<\/a> (Clay Shirky, New York Times): \u201cOne study found that 18-to-25-year-olds alone accounted for 46 percent of ChatGPT use. And this analysis didn\u2019t even include users 17 and under. Teenagers and young adults, stuck in the gradual transition from managed childhoods to adult freedoms, are both eager to make human connection and exquisitely alert to the possibility of embarrassment.\u2026 teens were adamant that they did not want to go directly to their parents or friends with these issues and that the steady availability of A.I. was a relief to them. They also rejected the idea of A.I. therapists; they weren\u2019t treating A.I. as a replacement for another person but instead were using it to second-guess their developing sense of how to treat other people. A.I. has been trained to give us answers we like, rather than the ones we may need to hear. The resulting stream of praise \u2014 constantly hearing some version of \u2018You\u2019re absolutely right!\u2019 \u2014 risks eroding our ability to deal with the messiness of human relationships. Sociologists call this social deskilling. Even casual A.I. use exposes users to a level of praise humans rarely experience from one another, which is not great for any of us but is especially risky for young people still working on their social skills.\u201d