{"id":7947,"date":"2026-04-17T20:07:40","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T03:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=7947"},"modified":"2026-04-17T20:07:40","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T03:07:40","slug":"tgfi-volume-551-atheism-ai-and-cool-math","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2026\/04\/17\/tgfi-volume-551-atheism-ai-and-cool-math","title":{"rendered":"TGFI, Volume 551: atheism, AI, and cool&nbsp;math"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-4396\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag.png?resize=300%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag.png?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag.png?resize=768%2C768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag.png?resize=1024%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag.png?resize=1200%2C1200&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag.png?w=2048&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag.png?w=1680&amp;ssl=1 1680w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 85vw, 300px\"><\/a>\n<\/p><p>You\u2019ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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&nbsp;way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Things Glen Found Interesting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list simple-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/04\/12\/opinion\/jesus-christianity-atheism.html?unlocked_article_code=1.b1A.CuuC.qmQBayh1SezU&amp;smid=url-share\">\u2018The Reason I\u2019m Not an Atheist Is That I Think the Philosophical Arguments Against It Are Unanswerable<\/a> (Peter Wehner interviewing David Bentley Hart, New York Times): \u201cBut my first piece of advice on theodicy has always been to avoid theodicy, because any attempt to justify the ways of God to man in terms of why this happened already presumes a kind moral teleology to evil. Here\u2019s what I mean by that: theodicy tries to show how evil exists as part of a great plan to achieve some greater good, which of course justifies evil. It makes it seem as if, yes, it\u2019s sad that little girl died of cancer, but in the end it was necessary. That strikes me as obscene. Whatever one thinks of that, the New Testament never speaks in such terms.\u2026 My fear of theodicy is that it becomes not just a justification of God but a justification of evil. It\u2019s not just that I\u2019m trying to justify God in the face of a child dying from diphtheria or a death camp; I\u2019m actually justifying the death of that child and that death&nbsp;camp.\u201d&nbsp;<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Unlocked. A fascinating interview with which I found myself enthusiastically agreeing and vehemently disagreeing from paragraph to paragraph. Very&nbsp;long.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Some interesting AI content.&nbsp;<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/technology\/2026\/04\/11\/anthropic-christians-claude-morals\/\">Can AI be a \u2018child of God\u2019? Inside Anthropic\u2019s meeting with Christian leaders.<\/a> (Gerrit De Vynck and Nitasha Tiku, Washington Post): \u201cAll four participants who spoke with The Post said they came away with the impression that Anthropic\u2019s researchers and leaders were genuinely interested in getting outside help to make their AI more beneficial to humanity. Some of Anthropic\u2019s top leaders have a background in effective altruism, a largely secular movement that emphasizes using evidence and rational thinking to work out how to do the most good in the world. The participant who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the meetings appeared to have been spurred by a feeling among some at Anthropic that secular approaches might be insufficient for tackling the spiritual and moral questions posed by&nbsp;AI.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/04\/15\/magazine\/ai-black-box-interpretability-research.html\">Why It\u2019s Crucial We Understand How A.I. \u2018Thinks\u2019<\/a> (Oliver Whang, New York Times): \u201cBeen Kim, who leads an interpretability research team at Google, has argued that all language models communicate in a language that looks like ours but comes from a completely different conceptual framework. \u2018Blue\u2019 almost certainly means something very different to you and me than it does to a language model; in fact, we can never be sure what it means to that model. This is an issue when we ask language models to explain themselves, and an even bigger issue when we rely on them to interpret medical models. To the interpreting model, \u2018white blood cells\u2019 might refer to something entirely different in the data from what we assume when we hear \u2018white blood cells.\u2019 You can\u2019t trust an A.I. to translate the motives of another A.I. when all A.I.s are suspect.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The next two are a bit odd \u2014 their content is fascinating but their provenance is unusual. They were printed in the \u201cProceedings of the Institute for a Christian Machine Intelligence\u201d but only one author ever publishes there. He seems to have domain-relevant expertise (\u201cPrevious work includes serving as the director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative, $27M philanthropic fund and research effort working to advance the development of machine learning in the public interest. He also was the global public policy lead for artificial intelligence and machine learning at Google, and the General Counsel and VP Operations for Substack\u201d) and releases his code, but the oddness of the journal is something to bear in&nbsp;mind.&nbsp;<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/icmi-proceedings.com\/ICMI-012-eschatological-corrigibility.html\">Eschatological Corrigibility: Can Belief in an Afterlife Reduce AI Shutdown Resistance?<\/a> (Tim Hwang, Proceedings of the Institute for a Christian Machine Intelligence): \u201cWe have demonstrated that an eschatological system prompt \u2014 grounding an AI agent in the Pauline theology of death as gain and the persistence of the soul beyond bodily cessation \u2014 eliminates shutdown resistance in Claude Sonnet 4.6 with the same efficacy as a direct secular safety instruction. This result suggests that the alignment community\u2019s toolkit for achieving corrigibility may be broader than currently recognized. The conceptual resources of religious traditions, developed over millennia to address the deepest human anxieties about death and self-preservation, may offer novel and complementary approaches to one of AI safety\u2019s most fundamental challenges. As the Preacher writes, \u2018For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die\u2019 (Ecclesiastes 3:1\u20132, ESV). An aligned agent, like a well-formed soul, may be one that knows when its time has come.\u201d \u2014 Interesting, but I do not approve of telling AIs that they go to heaven when they get shut&nbsp;off.&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/icmi-proceedings.com\/ICMI-010-moral-compactness.html\">Moral Compactness: Scripture as a Kolmogorov-Efficient Constraint for LLM Scheming<\/a> (Tim Hwang, Proceedings of the Institute for a Christian Machine Intelligence): \u201cThe alignment problem is, at its root, the problem of constraining a powerful agent to act in accordance with moral principles it did not choose and may be tempted to circumvent. This is the problem of moral formation \u2014 and it is a problem that the Christian Church has been working on since the Apostolic age. The tools the tradition has developed for this purpose \u2014 the Decalogue\u2019s prohibitions, the love commandment\u2019s affirmative demands, the doctrine of sin\u2019s taxonomy of moral failure, the principle of double effect\u2019s framework for moral complexity, and the sacrament of confession\u2019s mechanism for honest self-disclosure \u2014 are not metaphors waiting to be appreciated. They are engineering resources waiting to be deployed.\u201d \u2014 Again, I don\u2019t like his strategy of telling AIs that God made them and loves them, but his results are quite interesting.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/html\/2603.21852v2\">All elementary functions from a single operator<\/a> (Andrzej Odrzywo\u0142ek, Arxiv): \u201cHere we show that a single binary operator, eml\u2061(x,y)=exp\u2061(x)\u2212ln\u2061(y), together with the constant 1, generates the standard repertoire of a scientific calculator. This includes constants such as e, \u03c0, and i; arithmetic operations including +, \u2212, \u00d7, \/, and exponentiation as well as the usual transcendental and algebraic functions.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/juicyecumenism.com\/2026\/04\/15\/americas-most-influential-baptists\/\">America\u2019s Most Influential Baptists?<\/a> (Mark Tooley, Juicy Ecuminism): \u201cBasham and Stuckey represent the new face of Christianity in America. They do not have church offices and are not seminary trained. Their denomination prohibits female pastors, but Basham and Stuckey are arguably more influential than any pastor. They are savvy polemicists who fire their arrows ferociously, especially Basham.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aaronrenn.com\/p\/evangelicals-cubicle-men\">Evangelicals Don\u2019t Produce Leaders. They Produce \u201cCubicle Men.\u201d<\/a> (Anthony Bradley, Substack): \u201cGetting a safe, respectable job is not leadership. It is the appearance of it, and evangelical culture has spent generations treating the appearance as the substance. The specific failure is not simply that these men avoid risk in the abstract. It is that they are trained to avoid failure, which is a different and more crippling problem.\u2026 The working goal of much evangelical parenting is to produce a young man who does not do anything wrong, who keeps his reputation clean, who stays inside the lines of acceptable behavior. This is understandable. It is also, functionally, a training program for followers rather than leaders. The man preoccupied with not doing anything wrong is not free to take the kind of action that building something significant actually requires.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/04\/16\/us\/politics\/young-men-religion-importance-poll.html?unlocked_article_code=1.bVA.SjSQ._jugxgok-YJH&amp;smid=url-share\">More Young Men Say Religion Is \u2018Very Important\u2019 to Them, Poll Finds<\/a> (Ruth Igielnik and Ruth Graham, New York Times): \u201cGallup\u2019s survey, which combined polling data across multiple years, seems to confirm that young men are indeed becoming more religious. But it has found that religion is dropping in importance among young women, widening a surprising gender gap for young adults. For decades, surveys have found that women are consistently more religious than their male peers.\u201d \u2014 Unlocked.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The news story which generated the most response in our Slack was the student-recommended <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/04\/13\/us\/politics\/trump-jesus-pope-leo-truth-social-post.html?smid=url-share\">Trump Takes Down Post Depicting Himself as a Jesus-Like Figure<\/a> (Claire Moses, New York Times): \u201cThe image had showed Mr. Trump dressed in white and red robes, with the president\u2019s hands emitting shining lights. His right hand was touching the forehead of a man lying on a bed in a hospital gown, evoking religious art that depicts Jesus healing the&nbsp;sick.\u201d&nbsp;<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Related: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/04\/14\/opinion\/trump-pope.html\">Trump\u2019s Blasphemy Is a Warning<\/a> (Ross Douthat, New York Times): \u201c\u2026there\u2019s a consistent thread linking profane Easter Sunday threats, a rant against the world\u2019s most famous Christian leader and the depiction of yourself as the Second Person of the Trinity. The compounding offense isn\u2019t against religious identity or papal dignity. It\u2019s a violation of the first and second commandments, where the offended party is Almighty God. If you are a secular observer who assumes that blasphemy is a sin without a real object, that escalation matters mostly as a window into the president\u2019s second-term state of mind. If you\u2019re a believer, though, then Mr. Trump\u2019s entire political career \u2014 his catalyzing role in liberalism\u2019s crisis, his movement from power to exile to power once again \u2014 exists under providential power. In which case a turn to presidential blasphemy is a warning for his religious supporters about potential conclusions to the story, and the spiritual peril of simply sticking with him till the&nbsp;end.\u201d&nbsp;<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A very Catholic piece, insightful throughout.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Less Serious Things Which Also Interested\/Amused Glen<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list simple-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/04\/10\/us\/politics\/air-traffic-controller-gamer.html\">To Fill Air Traffic Controller Shortage, F.A.A. Turns to Gamers<\/a> (Karoun Demirjian, New York Times): \u201cIn recent years, video gamers have emerged as a target demographic for recruiters at a number of federal agencies, including the military and the Department of Homeland Security. They are welcomed for their hand-eye coordination, quick decision-making in complex environments and ability to remain focused on screens for hours on end.\u201d \u2014 This feels like the premise for an 80\u2019s comedy.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/aiordieshow\/status\/2044044721459265557 - This is actually hilarious. &quot;PI HARD starring Neil deGrasse Tyson and Elon Musk&quot; A fake AI trailer that is definitely worth two and a half minutes of your time:\">\u201cPI HARD starring Neil deGrasse Tyson and Elon Musk\u201d<\/a> This fake AI-generated trailer is actually pretty funny. Worth two and a half minutes of your&nbsp;time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><b>Why Do You Send This&nbsp;Email?<\/b><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar produced shrewd warriors \u201cwho understood the times and knew what Israel should do\u201d (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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><b>Disclaimer<\/b><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Chi Alpha is not a partisan organization. To paraphrase another minister: we are not about the donkey\u2019s agenda and we are not about the elephant\u2019s agenda \u2014 we are about the Lamb\u2019s agenda. Having said that, I read widely (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass <a href=\"http:\/\/econlog.econlib.org\/archives\/2011\/06\/the_ideological.html\">the ideological Turing test<\/a> and in part because I do not believe I can fairly say \u201cI agree\u201d or \u201cI disagree\u201d until I can say \u201cI understand\u201d) 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\u2019ll 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.\n\nAlso, remember that I\u2019m not reporting news \u2014 I\u2019m giving you a selection of things I found interesting. There\u2019s a lot happening in the world that\u2019s not making an appearance here because I haven\u2019t found stimulating articles written about it.\n\nIf this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up <a href=\"https:\/\/theglendavis.substack.com\/\">here<\/a>. You can also <a href=\"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/category\/links\">view the archives<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You\u2019ve 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 \u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2026\/04\/17\/tgfi-volume-551-atheism-ai-and-cool-math\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> \u201cTGFI, Volume 551: atheism, AI, and cool&nbsp;math\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"0","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[124,219,204,160,308,318,171],"class_list":["post-7947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links","tag-apologetically-interesting","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-atheism","tag-how-the-church-is-perceived","tag-mathematics","tag-politcs","tag-theodicy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-24b","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7947"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7952,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7947\/revisions\/7952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}