Archive for the 'Academic Integration' Category

The Evolution of Faith

Published
by
Glen
6 months, 2 weeks ago
in Academic Integration, Rants, Opinions, and General Contrariness and Stanford/Ministry News
. 1 Comment

Dr. Collins, a geneticist who strongly believes in Christ, lectured on “God and the Genome” earlier this week. As a geneticist, he strongly believes in evolution. Watching the Christians on campus respond to his presentation has been fascinating.

A few thoughts:

1) I really wish Christians on all sides of this debate would realize that others are doing the best that they can with the knowledge that they have. As they update their knowledge, they update their views. For the most part, people on all sides really do love God and truth. In Philippians 1:18 Paul makes the point that he even gives thanks for false teachers: “But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.” In like manner, learn to rejoice in those who differ from you on this issue.

2) On the Bible side of things, I wish more Christians knew just how many different options there are for interpreting Genesis 1 - google for “Framework Interpretation”, “Gap Theory”, “Day-Age View”, and “Theistic Evolution” to get started. In the end you’ll likely conclude that some of the options are fairly implausible, but they are all worth considering. For the record, I’m fond of the Framework Interpretation. The idea that Genesis 1 might not be a chronology of creation isn’t some sort of knee-jerk reaction to Darwinian ideas. Way back in the 4th century Augustine was looking at the text and saying, “Something complex is going on here.” For a good summary of Augustine’s perspective, read The Contemporary Relevance of Augustine.

3) On the science side of things, I wish more Christians were open to the idea that scientists have good reasons for the things that they say. There is no vast anti-Bible conspiracy. Scientists are looking at reams of data and trying to synthesize it reasonably. That doesn’t imply that every single claim science makes is proven true in the long run, but it does mean that we should take scientists very seriously when they tell us there is overwhelming evidence that the earth is billions of years old and when we discover that there has been consensus within the scientific community about this for a while now. If you’d like to do a little more digging on the science side, these three websites are pretty good places to start: SciBel is a fun little website with engaging articles, the Faraday Institute has some short but stimulating papers on essential topics, and the American Scientific Affiliation has a huge collection of articles from a variety of perspectives.

I’ll wind this down by quoting from an email I sent to my students last night.

1) There are two sources of data for Christians - the Word and the world.
2) Facts from the two realms don’t contradict one another, but the interpretations we use to arrange those facts often do.
3) We’ve almost always got more interpretative options than we realize (this is true of both sources of data).

And while I’m talking about science and faith, I’d like to recommend an article about Galileo’s dispute with the church. The full story is something you’ve likely not heard before: The Myth of Galileo.

Scientist Francis Collins Presents Compelling Case for Faith

Published
by
Glen
6 months, 2 weeks ago
in Academic Integration, Chi Alpha and Stanford/Ministry News
. 1 Comment

I’m sitting in the green room (the room a speaker uses to prepare for a speech or performance) just after Francis Collins finished a phenomenal presentation on the compatibility of faith and science.

He was astounding. If you haven’t read his book The Language of God then I recommend you pick it up. We’ll be putting a video of his presentation up soon at http://franciscollinstalk.stanford.edu. If you’re impatient you can see one of a similar presentation at MIT last year.

Our venue, Memorial Auditorium, seats 1,700. Our overflow room, Bishop Auditorium, seats 324. We had to open five additional classrooms. I’m confident we had at least 2,000 people turn out, but a police officer providing security was bold enough to suggest that the real total was 2,300.

My favorite part of the event? Looking at the program and seeing six lines.

Welcome: Lisa Ooi
PhD student, Chemical & Systems Biology

Introduction: Professor William Newsome
Chair, Stanford Department of Neurobiology

Lecture: Dr. Francis Collins
Director, National Human Genome Research Institute

Those six lines sum up the whole event brilliantly - many very bright scientists see no necessary conflict between science and Christianity.

Oh - if you’ve been following my blog for a long time, you might remember Lisa Ooi’s name. She’s a longtime Chi Alphan who actually lived with Paula and I for a brief season. She did a great job and we’re very proud of her.

My second-favorite part of the event? Him showing the clip of himself being grilled by Stephen Colbert. Funny stuff.

Big thanks to Chi Alpha’s co-sponsors InterVarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship (the real driving force for this event), the Catholic Community at Stanford, and the Veritas Forum. We could never have pulled off an event of this scale alone. A big special thanks to Amy Chambers and Kyle Heath who shouldered a ridiculous amount of the administrative details, to Pete Sommer for raising a lot of money to make this happen, to Kyle Pubols and Andrea Romero for running microphones during the q & a so very well, to the many students who helped route people to overflow rooms on an instant’s notice, and to Lena Ho, Xianne Leiong, Hilary Dyer, Isaac Penny, and all those who sat through lengthy meetings to plan this whole thing. Oh, and Dr. Bill Newsome did a tremendous job. And thanks to the Office for Religious Life and Dean Scotty McLennan for giving us permission to go for it.

Finally, a special thanks to Clare Kasemset who did a great job on the planning side but fell ill at the last minute and was unable to make it to the event. Hope you enjoy the video, Clare. Get well soon.

I’ll try to get some photos and more thoughts online later. Right now I need to focus on getting ready to preach a sermonic perspective on the same themes tomorrow night. I’ve got some big shoes to fill.

The American Religious Impulse

Published
by
Glen
3 years, 7 months ago
in Academic Integration
. Closed

I just read the most amazing article by a Yale prof explaining the religious impulse in American history.

If you have any interest at all in politics, international relations, anti-Americanism, or the role of religion in public life you really ought to give this article a read: Americanism–And Its Enemies by David Gelernter (that’s his faculty bio page, there’s a much more interesting profile here). If you want to have your mind blown wide-open, read Amazon’s summary of his survival of an attack from the Unabomber.

Also, we have new photos in the gallery.

Religion By Major

Published
by
Glen
4 years, 4 months ago
in Academic Integration
. 1 Comment

Check out the results (or see some detailed data) of a national survey of 3,680 students by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute [which] found that religious commitment runs strongest among fine arts, education and humanities majors and lowest among biology, history and sociology majors.

I found one excerpt fascinating: In addition, Astin found that arts and humanities majors were twice as likely to exhibit signs of “spiritual distress” — questioning beliefs, struggling to understand evil, wrestling with religious upbringing — as business or computer science students.

Still, Astin said it is premature to label all scientists or computer whizzes as spiritually hollow. Most of these academic disciplines simply don’t prompt or promote spiritual reflection, he said.

Implicit in there is the notion that students who don’t exhibit signs of “spiritual distress” can be supposed to be “spiritually hollow”. Interesting. I wonder how much of that is Astin’s real perspectve and how much of that is the byproduct of the interviewer’s line of questioning.

Also of note: Students who party frequently are more likely to stop attending religious services, and “spiritually committed” students generally earn higher grades.

Students who score high on measures of spiritual commitment generally are healthier, happier and more involved in community service.

Thanks to World Magazine blog for unearthing this link!

Religion and Economic Growth Linked

Published
by
Glen
4 years, 6 months ago
in Academic Integration
. Closed

Here’s an interesting story from the New York Times: Research Around the World Links Religion to Economic Development.

Intriguing excerpts:

Since the German sociologist Max Weber wrote about the Protestant work ethic and the spirit of capitalism, social scientists have argued that culture — including religious habits — is part of the complex mix that determines a country’s economic health. What distinguishes the work of Mr. Barro and Ms. McCleary, some scholars said, is that it uses a sophisticated analysis of a huge set of data to quantify the arguments of anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists.

…

As the couple began their study, Ms. McCleary said, it was clear that the widely discussed secularization thesis — the idea that a country becomes more secular as it becomes richer and more industrialized — did not apply to the United States, one of the most religious nations in the world.

And over the last 30 years, many East Asian countries, including Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea, have experienced both rapid economic growth and the spread of Christianity, Mr. Barro said.

“South Korea is a good example of that rapid growth and more religion,” he said. There the number of converts from Confucianism and other Eastern religions to Christianity is growing rapidly, he explained.

Some of the lowest levels of religiosity were found in China and North Korea. The lowest levels of economic growth were in sub-Saharan African countries. The former East Germany (which includes Weber’s birthplace) was one of the lowest in both religiosity and growth.

Flannery O’Connor on writing Christian fiction

Published
by
Glen
4 years, 7 months ago
in Academic Integration
. Closed

Take heed, all you budding novelists - Flannery O’Connor has shown the way! Read all about it in O’Connor v. the Antichrist.

A few quotes from O’Connor taken from the essay:

“If you live today you breathe in nihilism. In or out of the Church, it’s the gas you breathe. If I hadn’t had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.”

In her most famous statement about her work, she explained that “to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.”

“All my stories,” she wrote, “are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it.”

O’Connor once wrote that “more than ever now it seems that the kingdom of heaven has to be taken by violence, or not at all. You have to push as hard as the age that pushes against you.”

Check out the essay (or at least check out some of O’Connor’s books).

Christian Professors Help Out In Afghanistan

Published
by
Glen
4 years, 8 months ago
in Academic Integration
. Closed

Rebuilding Afghanistan U is a fascinating story of how well-educated Christians can make a difference.

It talks about how the International Institute for Christian Studies sent professors to Afghanistan after the war against the Taliban to rebuild their higher-education infrastructure.

The group is very picky about its candidates’ credentials (a graduate degree is a must), experience, and Christian witness. Only one of 10 applicants gets accepted. When Communist countries ask CEO Daryl McCarthy for teachers, he says something like this:

“You want experienced, hard-working, ethical professionals? We’ll get them for you. In fact, IICS is so particular that we make sure that every one of them is a Christian.” Says McCarthy: “It’s fun to hear the foreign officials say, ‘Ah, yes, very good. That’s what we need.’ “

The article is fascinating and well worth a read.

Dick Staub Interviews Mary Poplin

Published
by
Glen
4 years, 8 months ago
in Academic Integration
. Closed

I just ran across a transcript of an interview with Mary Poplin.

Dr. Poplin is the Dean of the School of Educational Studies at Claremont Graduate University and she’s currently writing a book (title unknown) about integrating faith and academia. (see her faculty bio page)

You should really read the interview on Dick Staub’s website, but I’ve excerpted the most fascinating bits…
Continue reading ‘Dick Staub Interviews Mary Poplin’

Jesus, Ethics, and Us

Published
by
Glen
5 years, 3 months ago
in Academic Integration
. Closed

these are notes from a class presentation I gave in Ron Howard’s class The Ethical Analyst about ethics in Christian perspective

The Hidden Danger of Ethics Classes
There is a great but hidden danger in classes such as this. By spending hours debating moral issues we too often train ourselves for rationalization instead of righteousness. There is no point in trying to understand good unless we also seek to be good!

Why Should We Care What Christianity Says?
Today it is common to regard Christianity as morally bankrupt. This is naïve and represents massive prejudice.
Continue reading ‘Jesus, Ethics, and Us’

John W Templeton Student Internship

Published
by
Glen
5 years, 4 months ago
in Academic Integration
. Closed

Student Internship
John Templeton Foundation
Radnor, PA

The John Templeton Foundation and its new Division, Templeton Venture Philanthropy Associates, is seeking a student intern for the summer of 2003.

The Foundation awards grants around the globe for projects that involve science and religion, spirituality and well-being, character development in youth, and free enterprise. A flavor of some of this work is on the Foundation’s website. Suitably qualified students might assist in a range of research-related tasks that might include searches of the WWW, statistical analyses, project design and day-to-day management, survey administration, and econometric modeling. Interns work a minimum of 10 hours per week to a maximum of 40 hours. Compensation will be determined based on background and whether academic credit is being sought.

Interested students should send a brief resume highlighting skills and work experience and a short cover letter in Word format to Marta Oliver at moliver@templeton.org. Questions may also be directed to this e-mail address. Please do not call the Foundation.