Intelligence vs Integrity

Andrew found an inter­est­ing arti­cle called Too Smart To Be Dumb.

Here’s an excerpt:

Read­ing [the rel­e­vance of intel­li­gence] in a book review the oth­er day remind­ed me (for rea­sons you’ll soon under­stand) of a car acci­dent my wife and daugh­ter were lucky to walk away from three years ago. A 16-year-old dri­ving a new Lin­coln coupe hit them at 70 mph–twice the speed limit–after careen­ing off a hill­side. Lat­er that night the kid’s moth­er told me how shocked she was by the wit­ness reports of his reck­less dri­ving. “But he got 1550 on his SAT,” she cried.

“What do you do for a liv­ing?” I asked.

It was no sur­prise to hear that she’s a col­lege pro­fes­sor.

Like mil­lions of intel­lec­tu­al elites and wannabes, this woman pre­sumes an inher­ent con­nec­tion between intel­li­gence and good­ness, and between intel­li­gence and wis­dom, as though there exists some objec­tive domain of eth­i­cal­i­ty to which Men­sa mem­bers are auto­mat­i­cal­ly admit­ted.

The arti­cle is pri­mar­i­ly a polit­i­cal one, but it’s got a recur­ring theme that I found quite inter­est­ing: smart does­n’t imply moral. Read the arti­cle.

I Was Predestined To Believe In Free Will

Ques­tions about free will ever keep you up at night? I just read a great ram­bling round­table of an essay called Faith and The Sci­ence of Free Will.

It’s a response to an essay by John Hor­gan in the New York Times, which reads in part: A cou­ple of books I’ve been read­ing late­ly have left me brood­ing over the pos­si­bil­i­ty that free will is as much a myth as divine jus­tice. The chief offend­er is The Illu­sion of Con­scious Will, by Dr. Daniel M. Weg­n­er, a psy­chol­o­gist at Har­vard.… We think of will as a force, but actu­al­ly, Dr. Weg­n­er says, it is a feeling—“merely a feel­ing,” as he puts it—of con­trol over our actions. I think, “I’m going to get up now,” and when I do a moment lat­er, I cred­it that feel­ing with hav­ing been the insti­gat­ing cause. But as we all know, cor­re­la­tion does not equal cau­sa­tion.

The exchanges (sev­er­al peo­ple com­ment) are insight­ful, such as this one: My response to this is based on The Voli­tion­al Brain: Towards a Neu­ro­science of Free Will, edit­ed by Ben­jamin Libet (Imprint Aca­d­e­m­ic, 2000). As I under­stand it, Libet was actu­al­ly one of the sci­en­tists involved in the exper­i­ments that Dr. Weg­n­er refers to. The fact that Libet’s posi­tion is nowhere men­tioned makes me very sus­pi­cious of Weg­n­er’s agen­da.

The con­scious will appears to be ini­ti­at­ed by an uncon­scious brain event. If the exper­i­ment is cor­rect, then this calls into ques­tion free will. But Libet says the con­scious will can veto these sub­con­scious deci­sions (see page 51 of The Voli­tion­al Brain). The con­scious veto may itself have a pre­ced­ing uncon­scious process. But this would become an uncon­scious choice of which we become con­scious rather than a con­scious­ly causal event (52). The con­scious veto is a con­trol func­tion, not just sim­ply becom­ing aware of a wish to act. The role of con­scious free will would be, then, not to ini­ti­ate a vol­un­tary act, but rather to con­trol whether the act takes place. The eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions of this are actu­al­ly con­sis­tent with most eth­i­cal and reli­gious sys­tems. Most of the Ten Com­mand­ments are thou-shall-not com­mand­ments (54). The exper­i­ments cit­ed by Weg­n­er give us no indi­ca­tion that actions can­not be con­scious­ly con­trolled.

Pret­ty cool stuff. You can read an expand­ed ver­sion of the essay here.

Luis Trujillo, XA president, Helps Build Guatemalan Ministry Center

Check it out: our very own Chi Alpha pres­i­dent, Luis Tru­jil­lo, is in the Stan­ford Dai­ly for help­ing to con­struct a com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter for abused teens and oth­ers in Guatemala: Class designs facil­i­ty for Guatemalan town.

A Stan­ford archi­tec­ture class is play­ing a vital role in the con­struc­tion of a com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter and school in Amati­t­lan, Guatemala. Design­ing all aspects of the project — from dor­mi­to­ries to a church and retreat cen­ter — these stu­dents will show their work at a pro­fes­sion­al pre­sen­ta­tion to poten­tial clients and con­trib­u­tors on Mon­day.

The Guatemalan facil­i­ty will be a cam­pus for the Cen­ter for the Restora­tion of Women and the Social­ly Dis­re­gard­ed, also referred to as the CEREM project, after the Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tion spon­sor­ing its devel­op­ment. The cen­ter will act as a res­i­den­tial cen­ter and school for home­less chil­dren and for­mer pros­ti­tutes, as well as a church and place of retreat.

…

“One of the amaz­ing things about CEREM is the peo­ple who start­ed it,” said Luis Tru­jil­lo, anoth­er teach­ing assis­tant who is also act­ing as the client rep­re­sen­ta­tive respon­si­ble for com­mu­ni­cat­ing the facility’s needs to stu­dent design­ers. “They have real­ly chal­lenged me to give all that I have. You don’t do this because you feel sor­ry for these peo­ple, but rather you do it out of love for them and the poten­tial that you see in them.”

Luis has actu­al­ly been the key play­er in this thing from start to fin­ish. He’s got a mar­gin­al role in the arti­cle, but Luis is the guy who set the ball in motion, hooked CEREM up with the Stan­ford class, and has gen­er­al­ly been push­ing to make it hap­pen!

Way to go, Luis! We’re proud of you: get­ting a Stan­ford class to design a Chris­t­ian min­istry cen­ter is an awe­some way to lever­age the gifts and oppor­tu­ni­ties God has giv­en you.

UPDATE: there’s anoth­er arti­cle on the Stan­ford web­site that cov­ers the project from a slight­ly dif­fer­ent angle. It also gives Luis a lit­tle more promi­nence (well-deserved, I might add).

Driving Through The Redwoods

Last week­end Paula and I were preach­ing up in McKin­leyville, CA (almost all the way to Ore­gon). On the way, we had a chance to dri­ve through the giant red­wood trees (lit­er­al­ly). car_drive_through.jpg

If you’ve nev­er seen the trees before, it’s hard to under­stand how large they are. They get to be over 350 feet tall, over 2,000 years old, and weigh up to 1.7 mil­lion pounds! car_by_trees.jpg

We even got some cool shots of us in some tree trunks. glen_in_tree.jpg

No, we did­n’t try to count the rings…paula_on_tree.jpg

Hanging With The Students

xa_officers.jpgLast night Paula and I had next year’s Chi Alpha offi­cers over for sup­per. It was great (both the meal and the com­pa­ny)!

We laughed–a lot. That’s a good sign.

Left to right: Nate, Shaowei, Nathaniel.

Stanford Passwords

Just ran across this: More than 4 per­cent of dorm res­i­dents’ pass­words are eas­i­ly guessed, accord­ing to a Stan­ford pilot study. Ced Ben­nett, direc­tor of infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty ser­vices, gives some high­lights: “user,” “beat­cal” and “four-let­ter-word-cal.” (source)

A Busy Season Winds Down

Whew–I spoke three times today and par­tic­i­pat­ed in a reli­gious dis­cus­sion group! I’m a lit­tle drained. Worst of all was that my first engage­ment was two hours away, and I only had about two hours between my first and sec­ond appoint­ment (which was back here at Stan­ford)! We real­ly had to book it.

For­tu­nate­ly, we’re at the end of a busy sea­son. Last week­end I was in Spring­field help­ing to script a minis­eries (no, real­ly) that Chi Alpha is going to burn onto CDs and dis­trib­ute to col­lege stu­dents all across Amer­i­ca. I got back and went to preach in Modesto that Sun­day. Mon­day Paula and I drove up to the Lake Men­do­ci­no sec­tion­al fel­low­ship, and today I had all those speak­ing engage­ments… *whew*

That makes it almost two months that Paula and I have been run­ning around like chick­ens with our heads cut off. It was real­ly start­ing to affect my speak­ing: I’d say that none of the pre­sen­ta­tions I gave today were A‑quality. They were all B‑range. Soon I should be able to recharge and do bet­ter.

I feel kind of guilty. I should be a bet­ter mod­el for my stu­dents, but this sea­son of hec­tic activ­i­ty was pret­ty much nec­es­sary… *sigh*

Oh well, at least it’s over (I think).

Jesus, Ethics, and Us

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”

Great Day!

Today I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go and just spend some time on cam­pus watch­ing stu­dents in their nat­ur­al habi­tat. I was expect­ing to just sit down and set up my lap­top and work on ser­mon prep and mak­ing some phone calls all day, but instead I bumped into stu­dents I knew every­where I turned around!

Kwasi biked by after I set up, and then I bumped into Shaowei upstairs, and short­ly after that I bumped into Jim­my and a friend of his named Winona I had­n’t met before. Jim­my and I talked for sev­er­al hours about all sorts of stuff, and then Song showed up.

Song and I talked about dif­fer­ent ways to raise mon­ey for missions–he’s plan­ning to bike across Amer­i­ca this sum­mer. I hope it works out, ’cause it sounds real­ly cool.

Yet Another Christian Nobel Laureate

Charles Col­son just brought anoth­er Chris­t­ian Nobel Lau­re­ate to my atten­tion: Arno Pen­zias. Dr. Pen­zias won the Nobel Prize in Physics for co-dis­cov­er­ing cos­mic back­ground radi­a­tion.

Dr. Pen­zias says, “The cre­ation of the uni­verse is sup­port­ed by all the observ­able data astron­o­my has pro­duced so far. As a result, the peo­ple who reject the data can arguably be described as hav­ing a �religious� belief.” That is, peo­ple who refuse to con­sid­er the evi­dence because it con­flicts with their pre­con­ceived ideas are fol­low­ing a “dog­ma” in the most stub­born sense of the word.

In an arti­cle in Per­spec­tives on Sci­ence and Chris­t­ian Faith, Pen­zias told Dr. Jer­ry Bergman of the Amer­i­can Sci­en­tif­ic Affil­i­a­tion, “I invite you to exam­ine the snap­shot pro­vid­ed by half a century�s worth of astro­phys­i­cal data and see what the pieces of the uni­verse actu­al­ly look like.… In order to achieve con­sis­ten­cy with our obser­va­tions we must … assume not only cre­ation of mat­ter and ener­gy out of noth­ing, but cre­ation of space and time as well.”

Pen­zias, a Nobel Prize win­ner, added, “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 the rest of Col­son’s com­men­tary…

I’m updat­ing the list of famous sci­en­tists who believe.