Weekend Reads

How to Roll Back Fanaticism

Progress is not made by crushing some swarm of malevolent foes; it’s made by finding balance between competing truths — between freedom and security, diversity and solidarity. There’s always going to be counter-evidence and mystery. There is no final arrangement that will end conflict, just endless searching and adjustment.

Female engineers explain why James Damore was really fired from Google

One engineer, writing under the name Edith, said it wasn't just the content of the memo that was objectionable. It was the intent and framing too, and that's why she said Google was right to fire Damore.

Parenting Is Not a "Job," and Marriage Is Not "Work"

A big reason we call motherhood a job is to impress upon our patriarchal, work-obsessed society the value, importance, and difficulty of women’s unpaid domestic labor. But in adopting the vocabulary of an oppressive system in order to improve women’s prospects within it, we concede the nature the system itself. If everything is work, then talk of "work-life balance" is a sham.

Facebook's artificial intelligence robots shut down after they start talking to each other in their own language

The 2017 Total Solar Eclipse Will Be 'One of the Events of the Century'

According to Rao, viewing the rare spectacle is akin to watching a Broadway theater's lights dimming before the drama begins: The excitement kicks in as one feels the temperature change and the birds quiet down. He said that a viewer will leave feeling so engrossed in every moment of a total solar eclipse that they feel like it passes in just seconds, although it lasts a few minutes.

Too Many Churches, Not Enough Christians

That organized religion is responding to their departure by trying to figure out how to keep them in is proof of the basic problem: a focus on the prosperity (and now survival) of the organization at the expense of strengthening the practitioners of the faith.

Watch Hackers Take Over a Segway with Someone On It

The half-beef/half-mushroom burger: Notes from the field

I have to say, the results were delicious—juicy, firm and deeply meaty in terms of flavor. Yet they were also lighter on the stomach than a typical beef burger, leaving me satisfied but not over full. Interestingly, they were also more forgiving on the grill. Due to a scheduling error in the kitchen, I overcooked them a little to 160 degrees, and yet they still turned out juicy, and even a little pink.

Some Random Observations Concerning Yet Another Similarity Between Some Atheists and YECists

The irony of all this is that the very thing that Ken Ham wrongly asserts that evolutionists claim—namely that the human species were nothing more than stupid, ape-like brutes with no sense and no understanding of any kind of technology whatsoever—was essentially what this rabid atheist was claiming in his attempt to discredit the intelligence of the ancient people and biblical writers who lived a few thousand years ago!

Do Egalitarians Take the Bible Seriously?

What struck me was not the depth of the complementarian argument, but rather the constant emphasis on a few verses, ripped from their context and narrowly applied to one issue—women’s role. I was even more troubled when the author argued for the eternal subordination of God the Son to the Father as an analogy for male-female relations.

Dear purple church pastor