Sunspots 658

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Christianity: Relevant lists five things we shouldn't say to our pastors.

Relevant also offers, and rebuts, several reasons why we don't volunteer.

Christianity Today reports that the government of Egypt is claiming that, for a Muslim, dying to protect a Christian church is worthy of martyrdom.


Computing: Wired has listed, with explanation, the most dangerous people (or groups) on the internet.

Health: (sort of) Listverse describes strange objects that have been removed from people's bodies. Very strange objects.

Humor: (or something) National Public Radio reports on Vanna White's 35th anniversary on Wheel of Fortune.


Politics: National Public Radio analyzes the number, and significance, of the laws signed by President Donald Trump, and compares them to laws signed by previous Presidents in a comparable period.

Science: Undark has posted an annotated list of misleading claims about science, by various politicians, during 2016,

Listverse gives summaries of the histories of 10 interesting numbers. I learned a number of things while reading this one.

I thank one of my brothers for suggesting some of these items!

Thanks for looking!

Image source (public domain)

Don't try to legislate morality

Relevant has a fine essay, entitled "The Biblical Case Against Legislating Morality."

I suggest that you read it. I'll summarize. The author, Jasmin Patterson, does not believe that trying to get people to behave through legislation is effective. She has four reasons:

She says that legislating morality doesn't actually change people.

Jesus didn't use that approach.
In the discussion of that point, Patterson says she is not for letting people get away with, say, murder. She writes: "I recognize there is an inherent moral quality in declaring some things legal and illegal based on their impact on society, even if all people may not agree on where that moral standard comes from. But we need to evaluate whether laws are God’s primary method of producing morality and change in people. They are not."

She thinks that legislating morality actually pushes people away from Christ.

When Christians want to make their morality into the morality of the state, they are trying to do so for their own comfort.

Read Patterson. Thanks for looking at this post.

Sunspots 567

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:



Christianity: BioLogos reports that almost 100% of scientists believe that humans evolved over time. However, about 50% of white self-reported evangelical Christians who say that they attend church regularly believe that scientists are deeply divided over that question, when they clearly are not so divided.

Computing: From National Public Radio: a wide-ranging interview on cyber-privacy and the government's right to know. It includes a discussion about President Reagan seeing a scary movie.

Politics: (sort of) The New York Times discusses the effects of growing up in a bad neighborhood, and of leaving such a place fairly early in life.

Science: NPR on the unfortunate confusion about the word, theory, in science and elsewhere.

NPR also reports on what non-human primates are thinking.

NPR also reports on a new sort of artificial organism, manufactured from a previous one in nature, by removing genes, one by one, to get to those genes that the organism absolutely has to have, in order to grow and reproduce. We don't know what several dozen of those necessary genes do.

Listverse reports on 10 interesting strategies in the "war" between plants and bugs.

Sports: FiveThirtyEight backs up my guess that Breanna Stewart may be the best player ever, in women's college basketball, with statistics. (She's had lots of help, from Moriah Jefferson, Morgan Tuck and others.)

Image source (public domain)