Category: Reasonable Answers to Honest Questions

Over on Boundless there’s a really great dialog between a student and a prof on the reasonableness of theism. The student is wondering if he believes just because he was raised to believe.

Here’s an excerpt:
[student] “I was talking with my friend Don. You know him.” 

[professor] “Sure. It’s through him that I know you.” 

“Well, the other day he asked whether I believe in God, and I didn’t know what to tell him.” 

“You don’t know whether God is real?” 

“It’s not that. I don’t know whether I believe in Him.” 

“Isn’t that the same thing?” 

“No. See, I do believe in God. But I don’t see why my belief should be true. So maybe I don’t believe in Him, if you see what I mean.” 

“Maybe you’re trying to say that your belief doesn’t reflect real knowledge, so even though you believe in God, you also think maybe you shouldn’t. Am I getting warm? 

“Yeah, that’s it. See, one of my other professors said that the only reason I believe in God is that I’ve been brought up that way. If I’d been brought up by pagans, probably I’d believe in lots of gods. If I’d been brought up by atheists, probably I wouldn’t believe in any god. So I have this belief but so what?”…

The rest of the dialog gives a very satistfying answer to that question!

This is a follow-up to our article about famous living scientists who are Christians:

Larry Wall, creator of the programming language Perl, is a Christian. In a recent interview on Slashdot he was asked the following question:

I remember reading at some point that you are a Christian, and there have been suggestions that some of your early missionary impulses (a desire to do good, help others) are perhaps part of the zeal you have put into Perl over the years. 

Preferring a scientific view, I am not religious, and have no desire to be. Perhaps there is a God, but if there is, I think he/she has no opposable thumbs; in other words, has no power to change anything; reality is just playing out according to the laws of physics (whatever those are). 

Please tell us how in the world a scientific or at least technical mind can believe in God, and what role religion has played in your work on Perl. 

If you’re a scientific sort of person, I encourage you to read his answer. It’s question number 7 in the interview.

I recently received an email from a student asking me why there were so many different campus ministries at Stanford. I think a lot of students have similar questions, so I’ve decided to tweak my reply and post it here.

Do The Various Campus Ministries Compete?
Only in intramurals.

Seriously though: I sure hope not! Ideally, we should each view ourselves as having a small role in accomplishing what God is doing on campus.

Then Why Don’t They Merge?
There are at least two significant reasons: we believe slightly different things and having different groups maximizes ministry.

Why Should Different Beliefs Lead to Different Ministries If You Agree On the Essentials?
Because beliefs drive behavior, and at some point different beliefs will call for different behavior. Let me give you a concrete example: some groups believe that you must celebrate communion at every weekly meeting and others don’t. In a given group, only one of those practices can prevail. By having two different groups, both sets of believers can flourish.

OK, Maybe. But How Does Having Different Groups Maximize Ministry?
In the same way that having multiple churches maximizes ministry in a town. Suppose there was only one church in a town of 10,000. Even if the church building can accommodate 500 people, it would take 20 services a week to accommodate everyone if they all decided to come!

Suppose, on the other hand, that you have 10 churches each of which can accommodate 250 people. If each church had 4 services a week everyone could attend.

In the same way, there’s limited meeting space on campus (and we’re not allowed to build our own buildings). We need to have different groups scheduling meetings at different times in different places.

Also, since each group develops its own flavor, personal preferences can be accommodated. There are some people who would never consider attending a religious group that worshiped God by means of 45 minutes of continuous light rock. There are others who would never consider attending a group that worshiped God by means of incense and hymns. By having multiple groups, there is a greater likelihood of a person finding a group that they click with.

But Shouldn’t We All Be In Unity?
Absolutely! But that doesn’t imply that the groups should merge into one. Just as you can be in unity with other Christians without becoming the same person as them, groups can remain distinct and exist in unity.

We are in unity in that we proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ and consider one another a part of God’s plan for exposing students to the gospel. We encourage one another on to love and good deeds, and we pray for one another. We rejoice at one another’s successes and commiserate over one another’s failures.

We do not, however, merge. To do so would be a bad strategy for reaching the campus. 

Don’t You Ever Do Anything Together?
Yeah. There are some special prayer meetings and worship services–you’ll find out about those as the school year progresses.

The Objectivist Club at Stanford is pretty active, and so this seemed like an appropriate first entry in our “Reasonable Answers to Honest Questions” category.

In case you’re not familiar with it, objectivism is the system of philosophy defined by Ayn Rand. It deals with much more than merely ethics, but that’s what I want to comment on today. 

Ayn Rand’s ethical theory is of the type known as “ethical egoism,” which means that we should always choose to do things that benefit ourselves (we also call this selfishness). A short way to summarize Ayn Rand’s ethical theory would be “selfishness is a virtue.” That’s not a completely fair summary: she argues for a very specific type of selfishness: an enlightened self-interest which recognizes that sometimes acting for the good of others actually benefits oneself. Here’s a more detailed description written by one of her fans:

The Objectivist ethics rebuilds morality from the ground up. “You cannot say ‘I love you’ if you cannot say the ‘I’,” wrote Ayn Rand. According to Objectivism, a person’s own life and happiness is the ultimate good. To achieve happiness requires a morality of rational selfishness, one that does not give undeserved rewards to others and that does not ask them for oneself. (source

I sent an email to Ravi Zacharias International Ministries asking them to provide me with a critique of Ayn Rand’s ethical theory. Paul Copan was kind enough to craft this brief reply:

“AYN RAND’S ETHICAL EGOISM (OBJECTIVISM)

• Rand’s ethical views presuppose a naturalistic fallacy; that is,
  it moves from the descriptive (that we are naturally selfish) to the
  prescriptive (that we ought to look out for Number One). But there is
  nothing logically compelling about making this jump. 
• What happens if there is a conflict of interests? How do we adjudicate between conflicting egos? 
• If the rules of morality are really rules of expediency, then they
  will be obligatory only so long as they are expedient. 
• The pursuit of selfish pleasures/goals eventually leads to anarchy,
  in which everyone does what is right in his own eyes. 
• What happens when an ethical egoist turns into a dictator? It seems
  morally counter-intuitive to suggest that acting egoistically is legitimate
  for him. 
• The ethical egoistal view is arbitrary. Why should I opt for my own
  good as opposed to society’s good (or the good of some other grouping)?
  It seems that the egoist can give no real reasons for why his view is to be
  preferred. 
• Egoism presumes a universal relevance (i.e., the egoist presumes
  a willingness to see others should embrace this view and act on it, but if
  the egoist does not, then it seems to be a deficient moral view). However,
  if the egoistic ethic is universalized, then it seems that this would go
  against the egoist’s own selfish ends. That is, the egoist wouldn’t
  want his ethic universalized. 
• The ethical egoist can’t be trusted when offering moral advice
  to others since it will be to his own advantage rather than to that of the
  one seeking his advice. 
• Furthermore, even if pursing selfish ends is legitimate, it seems
  hard to believe that this is the only moral virtue. That is, one’s good may
  be an object to pursue, but it need not be the only one. 

There is a fuller defense of an objective, divinely-rooted ethic in the book, True for You, But Not for Me; this can be ordered through RZIM’s order line at 800–448-6766.”

If this topic is of more interest to you, Copan (author of the above critique) also recommends that you read The Ethics of Ayn Rand: Appreciation and Critique by John Piper. Piper takes more space to elaborate on Rand’s theory and points out several elements of it he agrees with.

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