Author: Glen

Really Famous Stanford Alumni

A brief overview of Stanford’s really famous alumni.

Really Famous Stanford Alumni

I’ve talked about the incredible Stanford alumni roster before, but I had occasion recently to make a postcard featuring them. I thought uploading the photo montage I created might help you get a handle on exactly who I’m talking about (not all are pictured): 

In other words, Stanford is one of the most strategic mission fields in the world! For an even fuller list of alumni, check out the famous alumni list maintained by Stanford itself!

RSS Feed from Chi Alpha @ Stanford!

Hear ye, hear ye: you can now check out both our personal site and the Chi Alpha @ Stanford site at once!

Check this out: look at the bottom right of this screen. Notice anything different?

Of course you do–all the postings from Chi Alpha @ Stanford are now listed in an RSS feed! (Thanks to ScriptyGoddess for making me aware of this great code snippet available at the Trommeter Times).

Woohoo!

Postcards Are Very Confusing…

Just a little note to myself on the legal definition of a postcard

This is a bit of a random entry, but I’m about to send out a postcard to all the churches in my new district, and I’ve had the hardest time figuring out what the rules and rates are for postcards.

You’d think it would be extremely easy to find that information on the US Post Office website transporter 3 online , but it’s not. 

After much searching, here are the basic rules: postcards cost $.23 to mail and must be between a minimum of 3–1/2 inches high by 5 inches long by 0.007 inch thick and a maximum of 4–1/4 inches high by 6 inches long by 0.016 inch thick.

I don’t know if you’ll ever find that information useful, but by blogging it here I’ll save myself a huge headache next time around!

What Jefferson Really Thought About Church And State

Here’s an interesting tidbit reported by The Washington Times: Thomas Jefferson did not want a wall built between church and state. There are two books by two different scholars referenced in the above article: Daniel Dreisbach’s Thomas Jefferson and The Wall of Separation Between Church and State and Separation of Church and State by Philip Hamburger.

Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and Public Life at Boston College, is impressed by the new findings but doubts they can make a difference.

“I think it is terrific scholarship, but I don’t think it can change anything,” said Mr. Wolfe, who reviewed the Hamburger book and has surveyed public opinion on politics and religion.

“The ‘wall’ idea has taken on a life of its own and is part of our custom and law,” Mr. Wolfe said. “Americans love God and hate politics, so they ask, ‘Why mix the two?’ ”

You can read some reviews from Harvard University Press here and here.

Newsweek In Favor Of Hell

Relevant Magazine brought an unexpected article to my attention. In Why We Need Hell, TooNewsweek journalist Kenneth Woodward argues for the importance of Hell as an inducement for moral living.

This is a sidebar article to the main Why We Need Heaven, which is a discussion of the rival Jewish, Muslim, and Christian perspectives on the afterlife and the way they impact the news.

I found quote particularly amusing: (Speaking of the Koran’s promise of heavenly orgies) Georgetowns Voll doesnt think that the virgins carry much weight with the Palestinian martyrs; unlike the Iranians in the 1980s, teenagers on the West Bank do have access to sex. More seductive is that you would have a house, regular food, prosperity, he says. You would have flowing water; someone wouldnt be bombing your well. If you had lived without all that stuff for the first 15 or 20 years of your life, heaven would sound pretty good with or without 72 virgins. Hmmm… I’m guessing Voll doesn’t know any teenage boys.

And of course, Ernest Hemingway wrote that he thought of heaven as two lovely houses in town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors. Hmm… logical consistency wasn’t one of Hemingway’s dominant concerns.

The author buys some unfortunate interpretations of the development of the afterlife in Jewish theology, and enjoys playing with the notion that both the suicide bombers and their victims think they’re going to heaven (and that their enemies are going to hell). Overall, it’s a pretty interesting read (if not a good course in theology).

Supper With Pastor Richard Cook

A great meeting with our executive presbyter is clouded by some bad news about Chi Alpha.

Tonight Paula and I were able to meet Richard Cook and his wife for supper at the local Chili’s. Pastor Cook pastors Spirit of Life Church in San Carlos, and is also one of the Northern California/Nevada executive presbyters.

We had a great time! Unfortunately, Brother Cook was able to confirm some bad news that I received when I met with Pastor Beiser. It seems that Chi Alpha has a very negative reputation with the Assemblies of God churches in the Bay Area. The reasons aren’t particularly important (at least not worth broadcasting over the Internet), but the ramifications for our ministry are going to be pretty radical. It will definitely affect how quickly we can reach full funding so that we can begin ministering on campus.

Please pray that God will give us favor with local churches and will give us wisdom in relating to the churches that feel they’ve been burned by Chi Alpha in the past.

Funding Evangelical Scholarship

Emergesque just turned me on to a great article about evangelicals in academia.

The articles focuses on the necessity of large foundations (especially the Lilly Endowment and the Pew Charitable Trusts) to provide funding for evangelical scholars (things like research and sabbaticals cost money!)

Something I find pretty interesting: the evangelical scholars seem to be good investments: “As measured by scholarly productivity, foundations supporting evangelical scholarship have received an unusually high return on their investment. A study by the National Endowment for the Humanities found that 45 percent of their grant recipients had published books within six years of receiving their grants. By contrast, a study of scholars receiving grants from the Pew Evangelical Scholars Program found that 90 percent had finished their books within six years.”

There’s a related article from 2000 in the The Atlantic Monthly

John Ashcroft: Son of a Preacher Man

The August 4th San Francisco Chronicle has a fascinating article on John Ashcroft called Son of a Preacher Man. The article is pretty factual, although the journalist’s dislike of Ashcroft’s value system shows through.

In case you didn’t know it, John Ashcroft (our current U.S. Attorney General) is an Assemblies of God layperson, and his father J. Robert Ashcroft was responsible for the founding of Chi Alpha.

Scientists And Their Gods

Note: this was originally an excerpt from the article mentioned at the beginning. Since then, I’ve added a few others and I’ve also done some further research on most of the scientists.

In Scientists And Their Gods, Dr. Henry F. Schaefer (Christian, Nobel nominee, Stanford grad, and the third most-quoted chemist in the world) writes about the fact that there are many Christians who work in the hard sciences. I was particularly interested to note that three (four counting the author) have connections to Stanford.

Some notables:

Robert Griffiths, “member of our U.S. Academy of Sciences, Otto Stern professor of physics at Carnegie Mellon University received one of the most coveted awards of the American Physical Society in 1984 on his work in physical mechanics and thermodynamics. Physics Today said he is an evangelical Christian who is an amateur theologian and who helps teach a course on Christianity and science.” (incidentally, he’s a Stanford grad)

Richard Bube “For many years, Bube was the chairman of the department of materials science at Stanford and carried out foundational work on solid state physics concerning semiconductors. He said:There are proportionately as many atheistic truck drivers as there are atheistic scientists.”

John Suppe, “Member of the U.S. Academy of Sciences and noted professor of geology at Princeton, expert in the are of tectonics, began a long search for God as a Christian faculty member. He began attending services in the Princeton Chapel, reading the Bible and other Christian books.”

Charles H. Townes “My candidate for the scientist of the century is Charlie Townes. (Of course, he is a friend of mine and there could be some bias here.) He did something fairly significant when he discovered the laser. He almost got a second Nobel Prize for the first observation of an interstellar molecule.”

Arthur Schawlow: “won a Nobel Prize in physics, 1981, serves as physics professor at Stanford and identifies himself as a Christian.”

Allan Sandage: “the world’s greatest observational cosmologist, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution, was called the Grand Old Man of cosmology by The New York Times when he won a $1 million prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.”

William Phillips yet another Nobel laureate. Read a fascinating article about him.

David Cole: a Berkeley biochemist. Couldn’t find a bio page on him.

Francis Collins: director of the Human Genome Project, the largest scientific project ever undertaken, Dr. Collins once said I’d call myself a serious Christian. That is someone who believes in the reality of Christ’s death and resurrection, and who tries to integrate that into daily life and not just relegate it to something you talk about on Sunday morning. (source) Incidentally, Collins was an atheist who became a believer after attaining his doctorate.

Arno Penzias said “The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted had I had nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.” (read more about him)

Owen Gingerich, professor of astronomy at Harvard and a devout Christian, said “I can only imagine that God, as a powerful force in the universe, could put on many different faces. If God is in fact all-powerful, there’s no reason why this all-powerful force in the universe could not represent itself and relate to the self-conscious human beings, in some fashion, through communication with human beings. And how do you communicate? Through prophets of all ages.” (source)

Related Stories

  • You might also want to take a look at the American Scientific Affiliation: a fellowship of men and women in science and disciplines that relate to science who share a common fidelity to the Word of God and a commitment to integrity in the practice of science.
  • Also read about our comment on Stanford’s own Don Knuth–the ultimate mac-daddy of computer science.
  • Larry Wall, creator of Perl and devout Christian, gets posed a tough question on Slashdot: read all about it.

last updated 5/21/2005: added Owen Gingerich

Emil and Vipul Come to Visit

Hosting a prospective Stanford student while he checks out the campus.

emil_and_vipul_pic.jpg Right now we’re blessed to have under our roof one Emil Geiger and one Vipur Sharma. Emil is a Chi Alpha student from Lousiana State University, and is hoping to get his master’s in engineering from Stanford.

It’s a lot of fun having them around (side note: they’re very appreciative of the XBox that the Southwest Missouri State Chi Alpha group blessed up with).