Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The Pagoda Puzzle: What Can Save China’s Oldest Wooden Tower? (April 21) "First, the pagoda’s unique structure and scale make the risk of disassembling and replacing original components extremely high. It is a spatial high-rise framework, not a conventional single-beam structure. It would be extremely difficult to reset tens of thousands of rotted, cracked, and deformed components, restore the structural logic of the hidden layers, and avoid secondary damage during disassembly and reassembly."

2. Falling Leaves and Failing Arguments: Why Autumn Adaptation Doesn’t Prove Irreducible Complexity (April 21) "This is the kind of question that sounds simple but turns out to be remarkably difficult for young-earth creationists to answer consistently. Either the pre-Fall world had deadly winters and needed deciduous trees, or it didn’t and the whole system was purposeless until after the Fall."

3. Gene therapy for a rare type of deafness shows lasting results (April 22) "The results indicate that this could be a one-and-done treatment that lasts a lifetime, profoundly transforming patients' lives, Chen says."

4. Journal Club: Sexual pain in Christian Women (April 22) "In the lit review, the paper says that sexual pain may affect up to 46% of women, and that 6.2% of White Christian women report lifetime sexual pain with obstructed penetration."

5. Penn & Teller & the Supreme Court & BS (April 23) "Despite the fact that he had an alibi and bore no resemblance to the witness’s sketch, the police were sure Flores was the second man and they arrested him. So they brought Barganier back in and an officer “hypnotized” her in order to improve her recollection, telling her that hypnosis allows her to tap into the “tape recorder” in her brain."

6. The Onion has agreed to a new deal to take over Infowars (April 20) "Families of those killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, who sued Jones for defamation, want the sale to happen. They're still waiting to collect on the nearly $1.3 billion judgment they won against Jones for spreading lies that they faked the deaths of their children to boost support for gun control. That prompted Jones' followers to harass and threaten the families for years."

7. We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More AI (March 6, via) "A student praised for years for being an exceptional writer now feels like a cheater because she had to learn how AI detection works in order to protect herself from being falsely accused. The surveillance apparatus has turned writing talent into a liability."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. The tariff refund process has begun for businesses. What about customers? (April 22) "That's because a product, like a TV, often has parts from multiple countries, and each was hit with different tariff rates. Those rates changed over time by presidential decree, which makes calculating a customer's actual cost even more difficult. Plus, the retailer likely absorbed some of that tariff expense. The tariff burden was also shared up and down the supply chain, between vendors, distributors and finally customers."

2. More immigrants are being held in detention for over a year. NPR followed one family's ordeal. (April 22) "This isn't legal. According to a decades-old federal settlement, children can't be detained for more than 20 days. But data from the non-profit newsroom The Marshall Project shows, since the start of Trump's second term, more than 1,600 children have been detained for longer than that."

And update on that: Alleged Colorado attacker's family released after nearly a year in detention (April 27) "Back home in Colorado on Saturday, two days after their release, El Gamal and her children reported to an ICE office for a required check-in. There, ICE detained them again, told them they were being deported to Egypt, and rushed them onto a plane, their lawyers said."

3. They got to the part with the cattle and the creeping things (April 22) "They were taught 2 Timothy 3:16 as a promise and a contract. They were told what they could and should expect to gain from reading every word of every scripture and they were told what others would expect them to gain from it, and so what they learn — not just from this single passage, but from the entire experience of cover-to-cover reading — is to cultivate those expectations while ignoring the often-boring or confusing or unexpected aspects of the actual text itself."

This! This is exactly what it's like, being evangelical and really taking seriously the "read the entire bible" task that evangelicals are always saying we should do. You have an idea of what the bible is, and what the experience of reading it is supposed to be, and then when the actual bible itself doesn't match those expectations at all, you learn to subconsciously ignore what the actual bible is saying.

Also from the Slacktivist: Text and contexts: More Bible in the news (April 23) "That gets very antisemitic and very blasphemous very quickly, and it’s particularly dumb and dim as a reading of this passage, which involves God making a promise. See, the whole basis of supercessionism is that God’s promises are not worth diddly squat and can be revoked at any time because God is a capricious liar."

4. A chaotic White House Correspondents' Dinner, as told by NPR reporters in the room (April 26) "Just minutes into the dinner, guests heard muffled popping sounds as a gunman attempted to charge past a security checkpoint."

5. Justice Department makes it easier to deport those with DACA status (April 25) "DACA, created in 2012 to protect children who arrived in the country illegally prior to 2007 from deportation, now covers around half a million people. Starting last year, DHS officials began urging DACA recipients to self- deport, arguing that the program itself does not equate to automatically providing legal status."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Air Bud Pt. II: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (Web Exclusive) (October 20, 20-minute video) I love when people take the details of a fictional universe way too seriously.

2. From definitions to motivations (October 21) "Educators must be on guard against the shitty imaginations of skeptical audiences."

3. An explainer about kiwi farms. (October 21) "Kiwi farms has always existed as a community designed to foster, celebrate and encourage online harassment of vulnerable people."

4. Iceland reports the presence of mosquitoes for the first time, as climate warms (October 22) [content note: article has a close-up photo of a mosquito]

5. Reversing peanut advice prevented tens of thousands of allergy cases, researchers say (October 21) I'm kinda surprised to read this- I have little kids and so I've been through the whole process of how to introduce new foods to a baby, and the concerns about allergens, and the impression I got was basically "Don't give foods that are possible allergens to your baby until they are 1 year old! Oh, but wait, there's this other scientific evidence that giving potential allergens to the baby earlier can actually prevent allergies, and that also makes a certain kind of sense. Hmm, both sides have good points here, hard to say which one is right." But this article is saying yeah that standard advice has changed, now we are telling parents they should introduce potential allergens to their babies earlier, and this is a real thing with scientific evidence to back it up, and wow look how many allergies it has prevented. I'm really surprised to hear that "U.S. health guidance changed in 2015 and 2017"- that was before my kids were born, but when I was doing this for my kids, I very much did not get the impression that this advice was well-supported by evidence. I have always seen it talked about in parenting social media groups like "well, there's a certain logic to the idea that introducing these foods earlier can avoid allergies, but who's to say?" 

Could be that different countries have different standard advice? The groups I'm in are moms from all different countries, currently living in China. Or it could be that parents are overly-cautious, and view delaying introducing these foods as the "safer" move- even though that's not what the research says- but I can understand how intuitively it "feels" safer.

6. ‘Huge Lesson’: A Beijing Farmer Learns to Live in Climate Extremes (October 22) "It was 4 a.m. on July 28, when record-breaking downpours struck the mountains in Miyun District, northern Beijing, part of a storm system that swamped valleys overnight. By dawn, the flood had erased his 30-hectare farm."

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Links related to the antichrist:

A lot of bad stuff going on... don't get discouraged by all of it; instead, find ways to take action. Protest, donate money, connect with people near you to see how you can help.

1. Trump’s college compact is a trap (October 17) "The only reasonable response for now is for colleges to show solidarity and refuse."

2. We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days. (October 16) "'If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States,' Kavanaugh wrote, 'they promptly let the individual go.' But that is far from the reality many citizens have experienced."

3. Millions Show Up AGAIN To Tell Trump They Hate Him (October 20) Photos and videos from No Kings protests across the US. [content note: one of the photos shows a giant penis costume]

4. Trump posts AI video showing him dumping on No Kings protesters (October 20) "President Donald Trump on Saturday posted an AI-generated video depicting him in a fighter jet dropping what appears to be feces on U.S. protesters." What on earth.

5. Why the State Department handed U.S. informants over to El Salvador (October 21) "So a core part of an informant relationship is that the United States says, you know, if you give us some information, we're not going to turn around and send you to the very government that you are giving us information about. That just doesn't happen."

6. White House begins demolishing part of East Wing for Trump ballroom (October 21, via) 

7. Legal experts question Rep. Goldman’s call for NYPD to arrest ICE agents if they act unlawfully (October 21) "'It is abundantly clear that the Trump administration is unwilling to police its own officers or hold them accountable for gross misconduct,' the letter states. 'Accordingly, NYPD — pursuant to the department’s own mission, values and oath of office — has an obligation to intervene and take appropriate action, including arrest, when federal immigration officers engage in conduct that is unlawful under state law and beyond the scope of their federal enforcement authority.'"

Also from Gothamist: Federal judge in NYC rules ICE can keep detaining people at immigration court — for now (September 13)

8. Arizona Attorney General’s Office confirms lawsuit against House Speaker Johnson (October 21) "Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva has still not been sworn in four weeks after her win. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is suing House Speaker Mike Johnson, citing 'taxation without representation.'"

9. Home missions (October 21) "For 21st-century white evangelicals, Hudson Taylor and Lottie Moon are too 'woke.'"

Also from the Slacktivist: Get angry. Stay angry. Do better. (October 22) "That anger is the thing missing from all of the recent stories of more than merely 'problematic youthful indiscretions.' These stories involve plenty of defensiveness and dismissal and diminishment, but no self-reproach. No anger."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know (October 2) An extremely long post overanalyzing a weird thing- this is the exact content I am interested in.

2. The phantom menace of biblical chronology (October 7) "No Star Wars fan will let you get away with suggesting that Episode IV: A New Hope was written as a sequel to Rogue One. They’ll be upset by the suggestion not just because it is incorrect, but because that error would change how we should understand and interpret both of those stories."

3. 30 Years Ex-evangelical (August 29, via) "In other words, I was under the impression that evangelicalism was a deep personal commitment to love Jesus for the sake of making the world a more just and beautiful place for all of God’s children. Lol."

4. Israel, Hamas reach a ceasefire, with hostages and prisoners to be freed within days (October 9)

Gazans stream towards wrecked homes as Israeli forces pull back under ceasefire (October 10)

And another thought related to this: That felon supposedly has a plan where the whole population of Gaza would "voluntarily" leave and then the land would be turned into a nice resort (?) and then the people of Gaza would come back (??). Uh, but, fact check, relocating a population is ethnic cleansing and can sometimes even count as genocide. I wish I had a good article that explained this. I think a lot of Americans may have this really naive idea that it's not a bad thing to just move people from one place to another. It would be nice to have a link which very clearly lays out what exactly the problem is and why this is a bad thing.

5. A rescue ship saved them from the sea. Now these migrants find a tough road in Europe (2024) "When the rescuers from Doctors Without Borders reach them, they find 162 people, 29 of them children, so tightly packed into the vessel that many can only stand. The overcrowded boat rocks precariously and if the crowd moves too fast toward the rescuers' dinghies, it could capsize."

6. Over 350 Rescued After Blizzard Hits Everest’s Eastern Slope (October 7) I saw some reports about this from other news sites, but since it's in China it's good to have an article about it from Sixth Tone.

7. How Birthday Party Lady Is Showing the World Boundaries in Marriage (October 8) "SIL sent a text at midnight the night before the party asking if it was still on. On the day of the party, no decorations had been bought, and husband got off work AFTER the party was supposed to start. But she held her ground."

8. The “Debate Me Bro” Grift: How Trolls Weaponized The Marketplace Of Ideas (September 17) "He was showing up armed with a string of logical fallacies, nonsense talking points, and gotcha questions specifically designed to enrage inexperienced college students so he could generate viral social media clips of himself 'owning the libs.'"

The difference between debating to "win", vs actually wanting to communicate and listen to people and learn from each other... I think this is really important, and it took me way too long to even realize the difference. (I'm thinking about my own experiences with apologetics.) When someone makes a point and you don't know how to respond to it, or asks you a question you don't know the answer to, do you try to come up with whatever "your side's" official answer would be? Or do you genuinely ask yourself what you believe about it and what your actual reasons are? To say your actual reasons can be embarrassing- and don't do it if you're in a discussion with someone who can't be trusted with that kind of honesty- but is a very necessary step to coming to a belief that makes sense.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Action item: Submit a comment on this proposed change that would affect overseas voters (and other US citizens who vote by mail). This proposed change would require voters to show documentary proof of US citizenship, such as a passport, in order to register to vote. It sounds like this means people would actually have to go *in person*, which is impossible for US citizens like me who live overseas. (Comment period is open until October 20.)

2. Treasury Department may issue $1 Trump coin for 250th anniversary of U.S. independence (October 6) Eww, what on earth?

3. Eventually You're Going to Have to Stand for Something (October 5) "When Klein scolds that "we have to live here with each other" he is making a statement about who it is he is getting ready to live with and who he is getting ready to live without, and most gallingly he is ignoring the fact that when it comes to supremacists all of us have been living with them already all along. Nobody is suggesting mass deportation of white supremacists, or the dissolution of straight marriages, or stripping away health care for conservatives."

4. Federal workers sue the Education Department over partisan shutdown emails (October 5) "'Without giving notice to their employees, let alone obtaining their consent, the Department of Education has replaced employees' out-of-office email messages with partisan language that blames 'Democrat Senators' for the shutdown,' the complaint said. 'Employees are now forced to involuntarily parrot the Trump Administration's talking points with emails sent out in their names.'"

And also about the shutdown: IRS walks back guidance promising back pay for furloughed workers (October 10) Excuse me, what?

Schumer slams GOP health care policies: ‘No f‑‑‑ing way’ (October 8) 

5. Higher Education Leaders Reject Trump Administration's "Compact for Academic Excellence" (October 5, via) 

6. Standing up to ICE in the suburbs, the People’s Patrol puts its faith in resistance (September 29) "Racing toward the industrial park on an expressway, Cavazos says the People’s Patrol includes 180 people, all volunteers. The center holds trainings for the work every other Friday."

7. Judge William Young's ruling against Rubio and Noem is a lesson for all in the Trump era (October 2) "Throughout his opinion, Young focused in on several actions of this administration — allowing Rubio’s horrifying statements to speak for themselves, confronting America with a matter-of-fact description of what ICE is and how America’s immigration system operates, and damning the administration’s use of masks in its immigration enforcement."

And this quote (via) from lawyers who know what's what:

Plaintiffs of course understand the hardship the government shutdown places on everyone, including the government's attorneys and their clients. For that reason, Plaintiffs offered to agree to the stay Defendants seek if Defendants in turn would agree to refrain from enforcing the TPS terminations challenged in this case. But Defendants refused. They apparently have the resources to detain and deport thousands of immigrants with no criminal history to dangerous countries, but would prefer not to expend the resources needed to defend the legality of such actions in court. 

Also from Law Dork: Supreme Court lets Noem end legal status for many Venezuelans in the U.S. (October 4) "Explaining the stay request before the Supreme Court over Chen’s September ruling, Jackson echoed that concern, 'What should happen to 300,000 human beings while our colleagues on the Ninth Circuit, and then perhaps we, do the job of judging?'"

Blogaround

Hey, all the links today are news. You may be thinking to yourself, "Does Perfect Number just go read NPR and then copy all the links to here?" Well, that's a big chunk of it, yes.

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Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Guns are the leading cause of death of kids and teens, and state laws matter (June 11)

2. Unanimous Supreme Court makes it easier to sue schools in disability cases (June 12) "'This is bigger than our family,' Aaron Tharpe, Ava's father, told NPR. Tharpe said the most important thing about the ruling is that it gives other families who don't have the resources he does, the tools to fight back."

3. EXCLUSIVE: American Security Contractor Unloads On US-Israeli ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ (June 12, via) "We all got in a line and began pushing these people out. We’re telling crying women trying to pick up food for their families that they had to go. They were looking at this food on the ground that they desperately needed, and they couldn’t take it. It was absolutely horrific."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Where are the people the Trump administration has deported? (June 12) This is a good summary of a bunch of the cases we've been hearing about, though it certainly doesn't include everyone who has been deported.

2. Rep. McIver is indicted on federal charges related to tussle at immigration facility (June 11) "'The facts of this case will prove I was simply doing my job,' the representative said in a statement. She called the proceedings against her 'a brazen attempt at political intimidation.'"

3. Federal court orders resumption of legal services to separated families (June 11) "The ACLU filed a class-action lawsuit against the federal government over “Zero Tolerance” in February of 2018, arguing that separating families was unnecessary under the law and that the policy deprived migrant families of their right to due process."

4. How a shoplifting arrest in upstate NY summoned ICE and separated a family (June 11) "The case is one of several recent incidents fueling an ongoing debate about immigration among lawmakers. Should New York become a sanctuary state, following some of its biggest cities in passing a law to limit all local cooperation with immigration agents? Or should local law enforcement be compelled to contact ICE every time they cross paths with an undocumented immigrant – even people suspected of the smallest of crimes?"

5. Senator Alex Padilla handcuffed and forcibly removed from Kristi Noem’s LA press conference (June 12) "'If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the DHS responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers, throughout the LA community and throughout California and throughout the country,' Padilla, the son of immigrants from Mexico, told reporters. 'We will hold this administration accountable.'"

Also about LA: Some Notes on the City of Angels and the Nature of Violence (June 9) "All I've read about so far in L.A. is property damage by protestrs, while we've seen many kinds of violence and intimidation from the heavily armored and armed thugs serving the Trump Administration's war on immigrants."

6. Despite ongoing Taliban threats, the U.S. is ending some protections for Afghans (June 12) "The administration's claim that Afghan security and its economy have improved is widely disputed. The State Department strongly advises against travel to Afghanistan, 'due to civil unrest, crime, terrorism, risk of wrongful detention, kidnapping, and limited health facilities.'"

7. The GOP's massive bill would benefit the rich the most — while hitting the poor (June 12) 

8. ICE's novel strategy allows for more arrests from inside immigration courts (June 12) "Under the new approach, after their case is dismissed, immigrants are arrested again, at times before even leaving the building — as happened with Aliaksandr Bulaty. Then they're put in a process called expedited removal: a fast-track for deportation that does not guarantee the right to a day in court and comes with a five-year restriction on attempting to return to the U.S."

9. ‘Too Big a Risk’: Chinese Students Rethink the American Dream (June 13) "Lin, who was preparing to study law at the University of California, Berkeley, went straight to the U.S. visa site to try and book a visa appointment. For the next several hours, she cycled between browsers, devices, and VPN nodes, fighting her way through the overloaded visa portal. Each time she got close to booking an interview, the system crashed."

10. To my newborn son: I am absent not out of apathy, but conviction (May 11) "Like other Palestinian fathers, I was separated from you by racist regimes and distant prisons. In Palestine, this pain is part of daily life. Babies are born every day without their fathers – not because their fathers chose to leave, but because they are taken by war, by bombs, by prison cells and by the cold machinery of occupation. The grief your mother and I feel is but one drop in a sea of sorrow that Palestinian families have drowned in for generations." By Mahmoud Khalil.

Blogaround

 Links not related to the antichrist:

1. One Last Time, Discord Is Not A Suitable Replacement For Forums (May 12, via) "Discord, meanwhile, is a river that never stops running. It has some forum-like features, sure, and a search bar, but its conversations are supposed to take place in real time, which is fantastic for people who are around and talking at the same time, but far less useful for anyone coming around later. Like, say, those with tech support issues, which make up a huge percentage of video game community posts."

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Political cartoon which shows Nixon saying "I'm not a crook" and Trump saying "I'm a crook, so what." Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

1. First of all, if you're American, make sure you contact your senator and tell them to vote against the Republican budget bill. Calling on the phone is best, but if you have phone anxiety you can email them- search for your senator's web site and look for a "contact" page.

2. Here's some good news- a few weeks ago, I linked to an article about how funding for the Women's Health Initiative had been cancelled. I just found out that this decision was reversed: In a reversal, the Trump administration restores funding for women's health study (April 25)

So be loud, protest, tell the government what you think. It does make a difference.

3. Trump’s Lie About Dead “White Farmers” Just Got Even More Grotesque (May 24) "But there’s another ugly irony here that shouldn’t pass unnoticed: The Trump administration has suspended foreign aid to Congo and the resettlement of refugees from that nation, thus abandoning countless victims of the very same real-life humanitarian catastrophe that he’s cherry-picking imagery from to portray an atrocity against whites that isn’t actually happening."

4. Federal judge blocks immigration authorities from revoking international students’ legal status (May 23) "The order by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White in Oakland bars the government from arresting, incarcerating or moving students elsewhere based on their legal status until the case is resolved." This is about the international students across the country whose legal status was suddenly terminated for unclear reasons. 

It's a separate issue from what's going on with Harvard. Here's a link about that: Trump again blasts Harvard over international students as judge blocks revocation (May 25) "Trump's latest attack against Harvard comes two days after a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the administration from being able to revoke the university's ability to enroll international students."

5. The Greatness Paradox (May 26) "And yet, every day we see Trump tear down the things that have made America great: scientific excellence, the rule of law, trade, alliances, our open society, and the soft power that comes from the attractiveness of our vision. How does that make any sense? Is it just hypocrisy? Is “greatness” just a buzzword to exploit? A false banner for the gullible to flock behind?"

6. When the abuse of power is assumed (May 26) "That’s the weird bit. What does it matter if Trump — the guy who personally and arbitrarily created this problem with his weird and dumb tariff hobby — says mean things about you in late-night posts on his personal social media platform? How could that possibly be meaningful enough to weigh against the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars that would come from “eating” his tariffs and selling a third of your inventory at a loss?"

7. With Tariffs Paused, China’s Holiday Goods Hub Races to Fill Orders (May 27) "To reach U.S. shelves in time for Halloween and Christmas, goods must leave China by July, giving factories just a few weeks to restart production, clear backlogs, and move inventory before tariffs potentially return." An article about what's going on with the tariffs, from the perspective of Chinese retailers.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Doctors urged to treat pain for IUD insertion and other procedures (May 20) Hey, this is great. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is now saying that doctors need to inform patients about the possible pain of procedures like IUD insertion, and give patients options about anesthesia/ pain management. I'm all for that. Informed consent in a medical setting.

2. The Chicago Sun-Times Published an AI-Generated Summer Reading List Full of Fake Books — And This is Just the Beginning (May 20) "Let's connect the dots here. Media company cuts 20% of its staff, including experienced editors. Two months later, AI-generated nonsense makes it into print without anyone catching it. Are we really surprised?"

3. Gatsby’s Secret (April 7, via) "The more Thompson read, the more convinced he became that Gatsby was about a man “passing” for white."

4. Supreme Court sidesteps religious charter school question for now on 4-4 deadlock (May 22) "No religious charter schools. For now."

5. No more pennies: In big change, Treasury will stop minting them (May 22) "The Treasury Department has placed its last order for blank pennies and plans to stop minting the one-cent coins as soon as that's exhausted."

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Political cartoon that shows the White House (with a flag that says "King Donald") with a sign out front that says "Please wipe your feet!" pointing to the Constitution laying on the ground. Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

We've got a lot of links today. If it's too stressful, you don't have to read all of them, but here is an important action item: Contact your senators and tell them to vote no on the Republican budget bill.

1. Supreme Court says Trump can strip protected status for Venezuelans for now (May 19) "'From what we can tell, this is the single largest action in modern American history, stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status,' Ahilan Arulanantham, the co-director for Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA, and one of the lawyers representing the Venezuelans, told reporters Monday."

2. DHS secretary misstates meaning of habeas corpus under Senate scrutiny (May 20) "Responding, Senator Hassan corrected the secretary, stating, 'Habeas corpus is the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea.'"

3. Judge says Trump administration violated court order on third-country deportations (May 21) "'No meaningful opportunity at all was provided to him to express a fear of being sent to South Sudan,' Ryan said."

And an update on that: White House agrees to keep migrants in Djibouti for now, blasts federal judge's ruling (May 22)

In this specific case, the immigrants being deported actually have committed serious crimes. I think people have a tendency to think "well why does it matter if they're sent to some random other country, since they are violent criminals?" No, not cool- if people commit crimes, you sentence them according to what the law says. We have laws for this! The government can't just make up whatever punishment they want.

4. Charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver spark backlash after incident with ICE agents (May 21) "'This administration will never stop me from working for the people in our district and standing up for what is right. I am thankful for the outpouring of support I have received and I look forward to the truth being laid out clearly in court,' she added."

5. U.S. sends 68 migrants back to Honduras and Colombia in first voluntary deportation (May 20) 

6. These students protested the Gaza war. Trump's deportation threat didn't silence them (May 21) "'All of us international students, we had this thought of, 'what if it was me?'' she said of her reaction to the first few students that ICE agents arrested. 'Students that were higher risk, they all started to talk to their lawyers and make arrangements for if that were to happen.'"

7. Alliance Defending Freedom Sues Minnesota To Mandate Trans Discrimination (May 22) "While the immediate impact would be limited to Minnesota, an appeal could escalate the case to higher courts—and if the Supreme Court takes it up, this fringe legal theory could become the basis for mandating anti-trans discrimination in schools nationwide, from bathroom bans to sports bans and more."

8. These Are Not My Thoughts On Banning GAC (May 22) [content note: violence against intersex children] "So when the GOP includes intersex exceptions to genital reconstruction laws that ban gender affirming care for trans kids, This is what they’re preserving. Not care. Not concern. Not empathy. They are preserving the right of parents to rip apart children’s bodies with pliers, and the right of doctors to support them in their demented, evil efforts."

9. Trump administration revokes Harvard's ability to enroll international students (May 22) Holy crap. 

10. Lawsuit challenges USDA demand for food stamp data as some states prepare to comply (May 22) "'If you're trying to design a public benefits program that supports the most vulnerable people and makes sure that nobody in our country goes hungry, this is obviously not the way to do it,' said Ami Fields-Meyer, a senior fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University specializing in the intersection between civil liberties and technology, and a former senior policy adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris. 'But if you're trying to integrate critical assistance into a machinery for hunting immigrants and breaking up families and deporting people without due process — this is exactly how you do it.'"

11. Educators fear their homeless students could become a target for Trump cuts (May 22) "Amid all the moves, one thing has been constant for Dayana: her school. That's because a federal law, known as the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, allows students like her to stay in their school even when their housing takes them far from where they originally enrolled."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. UN Report: Israel’s Gender-Based Violence in Gaza Amounts to “Genocidal Acts” (March 14, via)

Also: Palestinian deaths in Gaza rise above 50,000 as Israel expands its military campaign (March 23)

2. Tesla Falls for 'Wile E. Coyote-Style' Fake Road Wall (March 17) Oh I am really interested in this test, because working with lidar and camera data used to be my actual job. (I recommend watching the whole video from that link- really cool stuff about sensor data!)

Here's the important thing about sensors for robotics (including self-driving cars): Every sensor has its weaknesses- some situations where it won't give you reliable data. Rain, darkness, objects of a certain color, too far away, etc. So you have to know what the weaknesses of your sensors are, and combine data from different sensors, to make up for those weaknesses. And probably calculate some kind of confidence value to indicate how much you should trust your data. You could see in the test with lidar and the jets of water, the lidar wasn't able to really make out whether there were any objects among the jets of water- so it stops the car there. You have to stop the car, because you can't have any confidence about whether there are any obstacles in there or not. But, the problem is false positives when you take that approach. 

Still, though, if you literally can't be sure there's not an object there, the car absolutely should not be driving there. If this gives you too many false positives, you need a different sensor setup- the sensors you're using aren't right for the application you're trying to use them for. Honestly I don't know that there are any sensors (including the human eye!) that can reliably identify whether there are any actual obstacles among sheets of heavy rain- maybe that's a sign you shouldn't be driving at all.

3. George Foreman dies at 76: Heavyweight boxing legend, famous entrepreneur leaves 'big' legacy (March 21)

4. Big Bear Bald Eagle Live Nest - Cam 1 (via) Wow this is great! It's a live webcam looking at a bald eagle nest with little baby chicks.

5. Skin bleaching is terribly popular — and takes a terrible toll (March 25) "Within a few years, she moved on to a stronger product called Dermovate — at the time, the in-vogue skin whitening body lotion, recommended by her friends at high school. They knew most boys in her school were more interested in lighter skinned girls."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Columbia University agrees to Trump demands in effort to restore federal funding (March 22) "On Thursday, 41 of the roughly 100 members of the university's history department warned the university against allowing the administration to interfere in its policy. They compared the administration's actions to attempts by "authoritarian regimes" to seek control over independent academic institutions."

2. Why trying to understand what the Trump admin did in response to the TRO matters (March 17) "It is essential that everyone in the structure of government is forced to be accountable for their role in supporting or allowing — or in seeking to stop — illegal and unconstitutional actions."

And also related to that: Judge won’t lift block on Trump use of Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans (March 24) It's scary that this is already happening. People are getting arrested and put in immigration detention- sometimes even deported- without any kind of due process.

3. The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans (March 24) Holy crap. This is WILD. These people are so incompetent.

Political cartoon showing two Greek soldiers looking at the Trojan horse. One of them says, "Then, after we unwittingly roll it in, they leap out & attack us, according to this groupchat I'm in with Pete Hegseth." Image source.

Image text: "'I Messed Up At Work Again,' Crestfallen Michael Waltz Texts Wife, National Geographic Editorial Staff" (from the Onion). Image source.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. GOP Rep. who wanted to “protect” girls from trans people arrested for preying on young girl (March 18, via) "Eichorn is a co-sponsor of S.F. 2531, a bill that would allow anyone to accuse a female athlete in school sports of being transgender. Any player accused of being trans would then have to get a signed physician’s statement indicating the athlete’s sex that is based solely on their internal and external reproductive anatomy; their naturally occurring level of testosterone; and an analysis of the student’s chromosomes."

2. Lungfish (March 17) From xkcd.

3. Jury says Greenpeace owes hundreds of millions of dollars for Dakota pipeline protest (March 19) "In the lawsuit, Energy Transfer says Greenpeace participated in a publicity campaign that hurt the project and the firm's bottom line — allegedly raising the cost of construction by at least $300 million."

4. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams return to Earth after 9 months stuck in space (March 19) Very happy to hear this! This is why I'm not going to space. I don't want to get stuck up there.

5. Ohio Appeals Court Rules Trans Care Is Healthcare, Strikes Down Ban For Trans Youth (March 19)

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. As always, if the news is stressing you out, you don't have to read everything. Instead, make sure you *do* something. Make friends with immigrants, protest, donate money, check on your trans friends, etc. Here's an action item, for Americans: Submit a public comment about the Removal of National Environmental Policy Act Implementing Regulations (via). Deadline is March 27. Here's some info on what the NEPA is: Trump Administration Seeks to Unravel NEPA 

2. Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True. (March 15) [content note: child death] "Another household kept alive by American aid was that of Jennifer Inyaa, a 35-year-old single mom, and her 5-year-old son, Evan Anzoo, both of them H.I.V.-positive. Last month, after the aid shutdown, Inyaa became sick and died, and a week later Evan died as well, according to David Iraa Simon, a community health worker who assisted them. Decisions by billionaires in Washington quickly cost the lives of a mother and her son."

3. I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped (March 19, via) "Everything felt like it was meant to break you. Nothing was explained to us. I wasn’t given a phone call. We were locked in a room, no daylight, with no idea when we would get out."

4. 15 Ways You Can Fight for Democracy (March 19) 

5. March 17, 2025 (March 18) "The rejection of a government that works for all Americans in order to concentrate power in the executive branch appears to serve individuals like Musk, rather than the American people."

6. Protesters arrested after storming Trump Tower to demand release of Mahmoud Khalil (March 13, via) "'As Jews, we’re here today, mere hours before the holiday of Purim begins – a holiday where we honor Esther who used her voice to speak out and demand that the king not commit genocide,' the woman said in the video. 'Today we are using her same courage to speak out.'"

Related: ‘Rules aren’t clear anymore’: Trump crackdown on student protesters sends shock waves across US universities (March 18) "'This case sets a terrifying precedent for all students, particularly international students, particularly those on visas and green cards, but I think students in general should be horrified,' said Zaid, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, who asked that his full name not be used for fear of retribution."

7. First They Came for Columbia (March 14, via) "So far, America’s leading universities have remained virtually silent in the face of this authoritarian assault on institutions of higher education. That must change."

8. Justice Dept. says ending Louisiana petrochemical case helps ‘dismantle radical DEI programs’ (March 8) What?

9. Here are all the ways people are disappearing from government websites (March 19) "'And that's a tragedy because it's going to make our military weaker,' says Fulton. 'It's not just about getting rid of trans people and gay people and women and black folks. It's about getting rid of leaders. It's about disrupting units, taking people out of those units who are fully trained and fully qualified and replacing them with who? People who pass Trump's ideological test?'"

10. “Soaked in Animus”: Federal Judges Strikes Down Trump’s Trans Military Ban (March 19) "'Neither document contains any analysis nor cites any data,' Reyes writes. 'They pronounce that transgender persons are not honorable, truthful, or disciplined—but Defense counsel concedes that these assertions are pure conjecture.'"

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. In Praise of Links (March 10, via) Apparently there are large subsections of the internet where people just don't link to things, and/or the platform (Instagram, etc) doesn't support it? I am so boggled by this. Links are great. What is the internet without links?

2. AI Search Has A Citation Problem (March 6, via) "Premium chatbots provided more confidently incorrect answers than their free counterparts."

This study gave AI chatbots quotes from news articles and asked them to find the original article (headline, publisher, date, and url). The chatbots did a pretty bad job of it- but also, this isn't really a normal use case for an AI chatbot/ LLM. Normally you use them to tell you about the general vibes about something, not really to get an exact correct answer.

3. Chinese City Offers Families $13,800 for More Kids (March 14) China's one-child policy ended in 2016. Since then, China has been trying to encourage people to have more kids, by making policies which given mothers more maternity leave, or even in some cities giving families money when they have 3 or more kids. 

Really, though, the issue is that after a whole generation under the one-child policy, the economics around having kids are like, you spend such a huge amount of your income on just 1 kid's education- so for most Chinese people, it's unthinkable to have more than 1 kid. I live in China and have 2 kids, and when the second kid was born, both me and my husband got comments from people asking "Why would you have 2 kids??? Kids are so expensive."

So, I think when some city governments give families money for having more kids, that will help increase the birth rate a little bit, but it doesn't really address the real reason the birth rate is so low.

Also from Sixth Tone: Married Chinese Women Are Buying Their Own Homes. Why? (March 18) An article about gendered expectations in marriage in China- the man is supposed to buy a home. This article is about how there's a trend where a wife's parents will buy an apartment, which will be in the wife's name, so that she has her own property, because the main home is in the husband's name (to clarify, this wouldn't be to live in, this would be for her to hold on to as an investment, and/or rent out). Btw, this is about people who have way more money than the average person.

4. What Even is Gender? (Book review) (March 16) "In place of gender identity, George & Briggs propose an alternate framework that they call “gender feels”. Gender feels are attitudes towards oneself having (or the possibility of having) certain gendered traits. They discuss three broad categories for gendered traits: sexed biology, gendered behavior, and gender categories."

5. Harvard will be free for students whose families make $100,000 or less (March 17) This makes me very curious about the statistics on current students' families' incomes. $100,000 seems pretty high to me- does this mean that such a large proportion of the students come from families with much higher incomes than that, such that the school will still receive a decent amount of income from tuition even though it's free for this subset of students? Or is there some mysterious other source of money?

6. ‘I don’t have a sinful bone in my body’ (March 15) "White evangelicals don’t want to talk about the sin of racism, in part, because it challenges their inadequate, unreal, and unbiblical theology of sin."

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Bumper sticker that says "Pray for Trump / Psalm 109:8" Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

1. Trans People are Under Attack and We Must Help Them (March 8) "Guess how many people in Germany were Jewish in January of 1933? Less than .8%. Half as many. Were their lives inconsequential? And did the Nazis stop with them?"

2. Columbia University Obeyed In Advance, Why Is That Not Working Out For Them??? (March 15) "This is what you would call a threat. Or, as the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia accurately interpreted it, 'We’ll destroy Columbia unless you destroy it first.'"

3. ICE Detention: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (March 10) 24-minute video

4. Where Is The Line? Democratic Budget Capitulation Foreshadows LGBTQ+ Fights To Come (March 16) "If protecting Medicaid and democracy isn’t their line, what does that mean for the issue I have dedicated my life to—reporting on efforts to protect LGBTQ+ people? If faced with a budget that guts transgender healthcare, bans gender-affirming care for youth, and strips funding from any organization or study that even mentions transgender people, would these same Democrats not offer the same excuse?"

Also from Erin in the Morning: Arkansas Bill Would Make “Contributing To Social Transitioning” Of Trans Youth Against The Law (March 18) "The ACLU also notes that any legal cases brought under this bill would be 'extremely unlikely to hold up in court,' calling the suits frivolous and warning that they could target anyone—from cashiers to teachers to hairdressers. 'The bill’s intent is to scare people into silence and deter them from providing respect, dignity, and care to LGBTQ youth,' they add."

5. Judge seeks sworn declaration from Justice Department in deportation case (March 17) "A federal judge Monday ordered the U.S. Justice Department to provide a sworn declaration by noon ET Tuesday with details on how planeloads of alleged members of Tren de Aragua were deported despite his order to turn the planes around."

And related to that: Trump invoking Alien Enemies Act to deport is 'a threat to everyone,' lawyer argues (March 17) "This is not normal and it's not OK."

Also from npr: Pentagon website removes, then restores, page honoring Black Medal of Honor recipient (March 17) Yeah what exactly is going on with this anti-DEI removal of web pages, etc? It's coming across like they think any time there's a person who's not a white man in a position of leadership, or receiving an award, it can't possibly be because that person is actually good at what they do- it must be because of DEI. This boggles my mind because it's just so blatantly racist/sexist- is that really the position that these MAGAs are taking? Really? I mean, I grew up hearing that we should be "colorblind" and affirmative action was bad because it gives certain groups an advantage, but we are all equal and should simply judge people on their actual merits. This "colorblindness" is its own kind of racism, but whatever's going on with this backlash to DEI is something different.

A Story About Bullying

A high school gym. Image source.

So here's a thing that happened to me in high school.

In gym class, we had a unit on volleyball. It was probably a few weeks long, and we were put into teams, and stayed with the same team for the whole unit. I was very bad at volleyball, and there was a girl on my team, let's call her Sylvia, who was always criticizing me for it.

Many times I would try to hit the ball and fail, or I would not hit it because I thought it was going out of bounds but then it didn't, and Sylvia would yell at me at tell me I'm doing such a bad job, and all that.

I'm writing about this because back then, I didn't know what she was doing was wrong. I thought, well, she's correct, I am bad at volleyball, that's an obvious fact. If I didn't want her to yell at me about it, I should stop messing up when trying to hit the ball. I thought it was my fault, and she was justified in constantly criticizing me.

But now I realize that it was wrong for her to do that. This was high school gym class, who cares if you're bad at it? What does it matter? It's not like it's a real sports competition. You are allowed to be bad at it, there's nothing wrong with that.

Another aspect that ties into this: On tv shows, there was a common narrative that went like this: Character A is mocking Character B for being bad at something. But then, it is revealed that Character B is actually really good at it! Wow! Everyone is impressed with Character B, and Character A feels so ashamed at how wrong they were for mocking Character B.

And we like to see that; we like to see bullies brought down and embarrassed for their behavior. But it also sends the message that the way to avoid being mocked is to prove them wrong. Character A was wrong to mock Character B because Character B is actually good at volleyball. If Character B was truly bad at it, well then Character A would be in the right.

I seem to remember that there was a "Bring Your Parent To School" Day, and my mom came with me to school. On that day, in gym class, I continued to be bad at volleyball, but Sylvia didn't say anything to me about it. Wow, fascinating. So she knew it was wrong for her to treat me that way, and that's why she didn't do it when my mom was there. Very interesting that Sylvia knew it was wrong, even though I didn't.

And now I'm thinking about it, and thinking "that was bullying," but, was it? When I think of bullying, I think of something that has long-term mental health consequences for the victim. I think of kids who are so unhappy that they refuse to go to school. I don't really think it had any bad effects on me. It was only during gym class- Sylvia wasn't in any of my other classes. And it was only for a few weeks, during the volleyball unit. So was it bullying? Yes, I think so- because we should define it based on her behavior, not the effect that it had on me. 

I just wanted to write about this because what she did was wrong- but I had no idea back then.

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Related:

Tickling, Consent, and The Way It Works 

Touch (part 2 of Autism & Teaching Kids to Protect Themselves)

"The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" (book review)

Book cover for "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind," 1995 edition.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, by Mark Noll, is a book that was published in 1995. (There's also a 2022 version which includes some updates about Trumpism.) I've seen this book mentioned by ex-evangelical blogs many times over the years, and I finally read it. Here is my review of it.

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The overall thesis of the book

I had heard that this book was about anti-intellectual pressures in evangelical Christian culture. I had heard the quote, "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." 

And, growing up evangelical, I had experienced some of this anti-intellectualism. There are questions you're not allowed to ask in church. There is an attitude that "we know better than scientists and scholars because we have the bible." I was guessing that was the sort of thing this book would talk about.

But it mostly didn't. It was not about what it's like "on the ground" in evangelical culture. Noll is a historian, and the book traces the history of evangelical attitudes toward intellectual thought, over the past several hundred years, showing the movements that came and went, and how that led to where we are today. (Or rather, in 1995.) That's really useful to know about, but it wasn't what I was expecting, so at first I couldn't really understand what Noll's point was.

Here's his point: Evangelicals have not done the work of applying evangelical beliefs to high-level academic study. Catholics have universities which were founded out of the Catholic tradition and do good quality research in many many different fields, but evangelicals don't really have anything like that. Yes, there are evangelical seminaries and bible colleges, of course, but these aren't really known for their high-level research. We should be applying evangelical ideas to all fields of academic research- philosophy, art, politics, and so on, but evangelicals aren't doing that.

And, because of that, evangelicals are not obeying the command to "love God with your mind." They are not interested in learning about the world that God created. And because evangelical thinking is so shallow, they are not prepared to face new ideas or societal developments and respond to them in a way that's reasonable and consistent with evangelical Christian beliefs.

The first thing that came to mind for me was, well, what about creationism, that's an example of evangelicals applying their ideology to science and going really deep with it and inventing a whole field of """science""" that's completely different from "secular" science. But, then Noll mentioned creationism as an example of evangelical anti-intellectualism. So, no, that's not what he thinks evangelicals should be doing.

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I have to admit I don't really get it

I'm having a really hard time grasping what it would mean for evangelicals to deeply apply evangelical thinking to big academic questions or societal problems.

The book talks about how Catholics have historically valued tradition and study, and major universities were started because of a Catholic drive to learn about the world and do excellent academic work. It's very hard for me to imagine evangelicals doing something similar, because, to be honest, when I was evangelical, that was one of the reasons we viewed Catholics as "fake." Yes, we were highly suspicious that Catholics were "fake Christians" because being Christian is about having a "personal relationship with God" (this is how evangelicals define "Christian"), and Catholics were not so big on that. Catholics were more into tradition and church hierarchy. Evangelicalism is about reading the bible yourself, experiencing God yourself, having spiritual experiences that mean a lot to you personally but are hard to explain to other people. We felt that Catholics had kind of missed the point- they followed their traditions and their church leaders and the pope, rather than going directly to the bible or directly to God. They were all caught up in listening to what other people said about God, rather than having a "personal relationship" with God. So, they were highly likely to be "fake Christians."

"The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" talks a lot about this aspect of evangelicalism. Experiencing God and the bible in an "intuitive" and personal way, which is accessible to everyone- and how that causes evangelicals to not value advanced academic study.

Academia is all about building on the work that other people have done. Spending years learning about some very very niche problem and then advancing humanity's knowledge on it- and only people who have spent years studying in your same field can even understand what you're working on. To me, it feels very incompatible with the evangelical focus on how God is always right there with us and God knows everything, and we already have all the answers we need because we have the bible.

Yes, there are evangelicals in academia. Of course there are. I went to grad school, for engineering, and I was evangelical back then. What I'm saying is, I don't understand what it would even look like to meaningfully bring one's evangelical beliefs into one's academic work, unless you were studying theology or something very obviously religious like that. The evangelicals who study engineering, for example, keep their engineering work separate from their religious beliefs. Yes, sometimes there's an element of "I'm really stuck on this problem, I'm going to pray for God to help me figure it out" or "I can't take credit for figuring this out on my own- God gave me the ability to do it." But beyond that, I don't see how they can mix.

Okay, maybe because I'm thinking about my experience in STEM, that's why it doesn't make sense to bring religious beliefs into it. Maybe for fields about philosophy and morality, and art and meaning, and how we should live and how we should structure society, maybe in those areas it makes sense that evangelicals should bring their evangelical beliefs into their academic work. And Noll says there are evangelicals who do a good job of this, but mostly they work for secular or Catholic universities. There aren't evangelical institutions where people do this kind of work.

But I'm still having trouble understanding what Noll wants evangelicals to do, exactly. The examples in the book, of evangelicals doing this well, come across as not evangelical, to me.

I'm not sure how to explain how exactly this feels "not evangelical." It's something about... for evangelicals, being a Christian is about having an active, dynamic, emotional "personal relationship with God." It's a little wild, a little risky, full of big dramatic gestures about "laying down your life", and God suddenly "calling" you to go do some ridiculous thing. This is the polar opposite of good academic work, which is about spending years studying the minute details about what other researchers have done in your field, very careful, getting the citations right, making sure every claim you make is backed up by something that your readers could look up. Just years of normal and boring human work- no "you have to believe me because God randomly told me this."

And it feels really "not evangelical" to me, when considering the question "what does our Christian faith have to say about this or that issue?", to answer by citing sources built on years of human effort doing the necessary academic work. No, that's exactly what we're NOT supposed to do, right? We should address the question "what does our Christian faith have to say about this or that issue?" by praying about it and considering whether any thoughts which subsequently pop into your head may or may not be from God. And reading the bible and simplistically applying 1 bible verse to whatever the issue is.

The bible says "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding." And "leaning on your own understanding" sounds a lot like valuing a legacy of work done by academics over many years, right? "Trusting in the Lord with all your heart" would be believing whatever random thing "God told you" just now, right?

So, I mean, I understand that evangelicals can be in academia and do good work there, but the work itself does not read as "evangelical" to me. It's a separate thing from their religion. So I couldn't really understand what Noll would want this to look like, in an ideal world. 

Keep in mind, this book was written in 1995, so things may be much different between then and when I was "on fire for God" sometime around 2010-ish. Also, my experience is as an average church member, who also read a lot of bible-study books because I'm a nerd. Whereas, Noll is a historian who studies evangelical culture in the US. He is an evangelical with much more of an academic background than I have. I've heard (mostly from the Slacktivist) that there is a disconnect between what pastors learn in seminary and what the average churchgoer believes. For example, scholars who have actually studied the story of the Exodus know that it didn't really happen. But even if the pastor knows this, no way they can say it out loud in church- to the average evangelical, it's very much NOT acceptable to believe the Exodus didn't really happen- that's an attack on the bible! So there's a disconnect between the anti-intellectualism of the average churchgoer, and the higher-level leaders who have more awareness that these commonly-required evangelical beliefs just aren't true.

So my point is, it's very likely there's a difference between my opinion and Noll's on what "feels evangelical."

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Creationism and pre-millennial dispensationalism

The two main examples of anti-intellectualism that this book gives are young-earth creationism and pre-millennial dispensationalism [PMD]. Here, let me define them: Young-earth creationism is the belief that God created the whole universe in 6 days, like Genesis 1 says, and therefore the earth is only about 6000 years old. Pre-millennial dispensationalism is the belief that the world is going to end "soon", and Jesus will come and "rapture" all the Christians away, and then the anti-christ will come, etc, and therefore we should obsess over news stories about things happening in the Middle East, to look for clues that match up with the prophecies in the bible.

I used to believe in young-earth creationism. And as for pre-millennial dispensationalism, and the other popular Christian ideas about how the world will end "soon", I never got into that at all. I guess I believed it was true that the bible gave prophecies about when the world would end, and that Christians who paid attention would be able to pick up on the "signs" when it happened, as the PMDs claimed. But I felt there was a very low probability that any of it would happen in my lifetime, so I didn't see any point to doing that kind of obsessed analysis and "being ready" for when Jesus comes. I thought, we've had 2000 years of Christians believing Jesus would come back "soon", and all of them were wrong. Probably it won't happen in my lifetime either! So I very much refused to be part of any of the "Jesus is coming back SOON, we have to be READY" hype.

"The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" points out that creationism is about refusing to learn about this amazing world that God made, if that knowledge might contradict your view of what "the bible says." And PMD ideology responds to news events in the Middle East (and/or the question of whether bar codes are "the mark of the beast") in an extremely shallow way- simply trying to match them up with bible verses, making claims about "here's what the bible says about this." Rather than actually learning about the history of the real-life groups involved, what they actually want, the reasons for conflict, etc.

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Inerrancy

The book talks about the evangelical belief in biblical inerrancy. Noll describes this modern approach as taking a "scientific" view of the bible; in other words, viewing the bible as a list of ironclad true statements, and building on top of that. Developing ideas about biology/geology, as in young-earth creationism, or piecing bible verses together like a challenging puzzle, to find connections to modern news events, as in pre-millennial dispensationalism. Simply taking each verse as a true statement which can be 100% believed, and making logical deductions accordingly. 

This is a very new view of the bible. (Noll says that Christians who argue for this reading of the bible aren't "defending the bible"; they're defending an interpretation that's less than 100 years old.) In contrast, one could read the bible with an awareness of ancient literary genres and the reasons that writers would have spun the stories in certain ways. The things they wrote to make sense of the world, not because they actually happened.

This is also a bit confusing to me- is Noll saying biblical inerrancy is an example of evangelical anti-intellectual sentiment, and therefore evangelicals should abandon it? This makes no sense to me. How can you BE evangelical and not believe in biblical inerrancy? Like, yes, I agree that evangelicals should abandon their belief in inerrancy, but by doing so, they would cease to be evangelical- yes, I believe they should abandon evangelicalism, actually. But obviously that's not what Noll is trying to say.

I don't recall if the book says inerrancy is a problem, or if it says this approach of "reading the bible scientifically" is a problem. From my point of view, those are the same thing. As I define it, inerrancy is this insistence that every single thing in the bible is true, actually true. Does Noll define inerrancy differently? Does Noll think you can believe "the bible is inerrant" and also believe that the creation story in Genesis 1 didn't actually happen at all, under any interpretation of the word "happen", but was just something they wrote back then to illustrate how they viewed the relationship between God, people, and the earth? That's not inerrancy- or at least, I would not call it inerrancy.

Again, this book was published in 1995. Surely things have changed since then. And Noll is coming from an academic background, whereas I just went to church A LOT. So... that's why I'm not quite understanding some of his points.

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Some examples of my experiences of anti-intellectualism in church

In my experience in church, yes there were comments about how we already know the answers because we have the bible, and scientists don't know what they're talking about. I remember hearing a story that went something like this:

My 6-year old son was at school, and his teacher was telling the students that the Exodus didn't really happen the way the bible said. Moses didn't really part the Red Sea. The Israelites just walked across on a sand bridge where the water wasn't as deep. Just a few inches of water. Then my son raised his hand and said, "Wow, it's so amazing that the whole Egyptian army drowned in just a few inches of water!"

The point of this story is: Oh those public schools, trying to tell our kids that the bible isn't true! It's horrible, it's an attack on Christianity! This teacher talking about the Israelites walking through a shallow section of the Red Sea- lololololol! So ridiculous! Taking the big dramatic story about Moses parting the Red Sea, and turning it into this silly thing about simply wading through the water- that's so funny! Lolololol! And it doesn't even make any sense, because then how would the Egyptian army drown in that water? Even a child can see right through it! LOLOLOLOL! [whole congregation laughs]

(And don't even get me started on the uninformed jokes people at church make about evolution!)

I remember one of my history teachers in high school, saying something like "Religious people believe [some bible story]. And historians believe [some modified version of the bible story which doesn't have miracles]." I really didn't like the way she said it, like saying "people who are more realistic know that the things in the bible didn't really happen." I wondered if there were any historical scholars who were "on our side", ie, who believed a very simplistic, naive, "the bible is inerrant" ideology.

Another thing: I sometimes read articles talking about "People say Christians don't value science, but that's not true! There are scientists who are Christians! For example, Francis Collins." I don't know why, but it seemed that Francis Collins was always the one they pointed to. I heard about him many times, but I don't actually know what his scientific contributions were. I think something about medical research? [Oh okay I just googled him- he worked on the Human Genome Project.] Wow, that's very interesting, isn't it- evangelicals mention Francis Collins just to score points in a debate against an atheist who says "Christians are anti-intellectual", but do we know or care about what scientific things Collins actually worked on? Lol, no. We mentioned him not because we actually cared about science, but because we wanted our debate opponents to stop saying we didn't care about science.

And another thing I remember from when I was evangelical was this: Sometimes I would read about scientists who were Christians, and it was presented like "hooray, our beliefs aren't illogical, see, here are some smart people who believe in this." But sometimes I would dig deeper, and find more information about these role models, and I would find out that they didn't actually believe all the things that "real Christians" should believe. Their faith was much more nuanced than that. For example, they weren't creationists. They didn't believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch. Etc. So... they didn't meet the evangelical criteria to be "real Christians" actually. And so they couldn't really be used as evidence for "see, smart people believe these things." I remember being kinda concerned about that, back then.

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Other writing which used "scandal" in the title

Because this is an important book related to the history of American evangelicalism, the title has inspired some other similar titles:

The Scandal of the Evangelical Heart, a 2013 post by Rachel Held Evans. It's about how she grew up always knowing all the apologetics answers- but the reason she began to question what she had been taught was because of her heart. This is very similar to my own reasons for leaving evangelicalism. 

The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, a 2005 book by Ron Sider. I have not read this, but I know that Ron Sider was an evangelical who advocated for evangelicals to seriously follow the bible's teachings regarding helping poor people and other social-justice causes.

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Conclusion

If you're always talking about evangelicalism, like I am, then you should read this book. Yes, definitely required reading if you are this specific type of person.

But, as I said, I feel like I didn't really *get* it. I don't even know what it would look like for evangelicals to seriously apply their beliefs in an academic sense. That would mean valuing tradition and history and the work that other people have done, long before us, and that comes across to me as not evangelical. Evangelicals are more about "I read this bible verse and here's how I felt about it" or "I was praying and a random thought popped into my head, maybe it's from God"- and treating these personal, emotional experiences as more real and truthful than whatever those stuffy arrogant scholars have to say. From that perspective, building on the academic work that people have been doing for hundreds of years is NOT a good thing- it means there have been hundreds of years during which that line of study could have gotten off-track, as sinful humans continue to develop it. Better to go directly to the source- directly to God, who is the Truth- ie, whatever random thoughts passed through your head while praying and/or reading the bible.

I honestly don't see any way you can be evangelical and believe that the way we advance our evangelical thinking is through work done by researchers rather than claims about "God told me this."

Well, I mean, I'm oversimplifying it a bit... In my experience, yes, evangelicals are interested in learning the meanings of ancient Greek and Hebrew words, to understand the bible better. Yes, evangelicals do believe that whatever the original Greek or Hebrew said is a better interpretation than whatever naive thought popped into your head when you read an English translation. Yes, we did believe we could get more insight into what the bible was saying if we learned about the culture it came from. And no, we didn't just believe that any thought that flittered across your mind while praying must be a message from God.

But... it wasn't like we were going to learn anything new from that kind of study. It was like, we already knew the answers, generally, and we looked up the meanings of ancient Greek words to kinda fill in some details.

And yes, we very much did believe that it was common for God to tell you something by just giving you some random thought out of the blue. A big source of evangelical anxiety is trying to figure out which random thoughts are from God and which aren't. (And some random thoughts might actually be from the devil! Watch out!)

I never realized how the "personal relationship with God" is so bound up with anti-intellectualism, so I'm glad I read this book. 

(When I think of anti-intellectualism in Christian spaces, I think of someone saying "I'm having doubts about the existence of God" and then people shaming them for even saying that out loud. People telling them the point is to "have faith" with no evidence. And yeah that kind of thinking definitely exists in evangelical spaces, but there are also a lot of evangelicals pushing back against it, saying, "God really is real, therefore our beliefs are strong enough to handle any questions you have. Ask any questions you want. It's normal to doubt." I was one of the evangelicals advocating for the right to question and doubt back then. But still, there was always a limit to it- you could ask any question you wanted, but at the end of the day you had to come back to what we already know are the "correct" beliefs.)

In the book, Noll doesn't really come right out and say "the concept of a 'personal relationship with God' is inherently anti-intellectual." He talks about historical movements which have placed emphasis on each person being able to easily understand the bible and having an "intuitive" experience of God, and how that came along with de-prioritizing advanced academic work based on evangelical beliefs. I'm having a hard time understanding what he would want evangelicals to do instead, because to me this is sounding like "the concept of a 'personal relationship with God' is inherently anti-intellectual" but I don't think it's possible to be evangelical and not believe that the most critical aspect of Christian faith is having a personal relationship with God.

So, in summary: This is an important book if you're interested in the history of American evangelicalism. Evangelicals have emphasized having an individual, "intuitive" experience of God, and have not applied their beliefs in more advanced, academic ways. The result is a shallow ideology which isn't able to meaningfully address new societal issues. But, I don't understand what the book wants evangelicals to do instead. Respect for history, tradition, and the work that scholars have done feels not evangelical to me.

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Related:

I used to be a young-earth creationist 

A Bit Suspicious That "Heavenly Tourism" Confirms Everything We Already Believe