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.

Wow, It Really Is Getting Harder

Stay­ing sex­u­al­ly pure in a pol­lut­ed world seems to be get­ting hard­er and hard­er. At least, that’s the impres­sion any­one speak­ing with Chris­t­ian col­lege stu­dents would get…

Turns out they’re right.

Then there’s the inter­sec­tion of biol­o­gy and cul­ture. Over the past 150 years, the aver­age for menarche—a wom­an’s first period—has dropped from near­ly sev­en­teen to twelve years of age with no signs of stop­ping. (Among African-Amer­i­cans in par­tic­u­lar, the fig­ure is clos­er to eleven!) His­tor­i­cal data for males is hard­er to come by but, with­out being too explic­it, Amer­i­can males, on aver­age, are “sex­u­al­ly func­tion­al” by twelve years of age. (Once again, the fig­ure is slight­ly low­er for African-Amer­i­cans.) At the same time the aver­age age for puber­ty and menar­che has been going down, the aver­age age for first mar­riage has been going up: from 22.8 for men and 20.3 for women in 1950 to 27 and 25 today. For the college-educated—the sta­tus to which most Amer­i­cans aspire, both per­son­al­ly and for their kids—the aver­age age is near­ly two years high­er. (Between 1970 and 1994, the per­cent­age of women aged thir­ty to thir­ty-four who had nev­er been mar­ried rose from 6 to 22 per­cent. For men, the fig­ures were 9 and 30 per­cent, respec­tive­ly.)

The bot­tom line of all these num­bers is that young Chris­tians are expect­ed to remain sex­u­al­ly con­ti­nent for a longer peri­od of time than prob­a­bly any gen­er­a­tion that has pre­ced­ed them. And they’re sup­posed to do this while liv­ing in the most sex­u­al­ly charged cul­ture ever seen.

Read the whole arti­cle at Break­point

You might be inter­est­ed to read the thoughts which prompt­ed Break­point’s arti­cle:
* There’s No Such Thing As Pre­mar­i­tal Sex launched it by claim­ing that once two peo­ple sleep togeth­er they’re mar­ried and seeks to sup­port his posi­tion from the Law of Moses.
* A Horse­less Car­riage rebutted the charge. She did an out­stand­ing job, and used a very per­sua­sive anal­o­gy: To cite the Exo­dus ref­er­ence requir­ing a man to make right his seduc­tion of a vir­gin (which, inci­den­tal­ly, falls in a long list of ways to make ret­ri­bu­tion when bad things hap­pen) as evi­dence that the act of sex, rather than a process of mar­riage and con­sum­ma­tion, made the two peo­ple mar­ried, makes about as much sense as argu­ing that a law requir­ing a thief to pay for the pie he has already con­sumed real­ly means that the pie was right­ful­ly and beau­ti­ful­ly his the moment the first bite crossed his lips. The author of the orig­i­nal arti­cle responds on the same page and clar­i­fies his posi­tion (and even makes a few inter­est­ing claims along the way).

All worth read­ing and reflect­ing on.

Another Unexpected Positive Impact of Christianity

This BBC report caught me off guard: A decline in Chris­tian­i­ty is tak­ing its toll on the num­ber of peo­ple will­ing to donate their organs for trans­plan­ta­tion, accord­ing to a doc­tor.

Evi­dent­ly the Chris­t­ian belief that this body is tem­po­rary com­bined with the Chris­t­ian eth­ic of doing good cre­at­ed many organ donors. Take either of those away and the pool shrinks rapid­ly.

Read the whole arti­cle…

Had A Great Birthday

I had a great birth­day, thanks every­one!

birthday_party_010.jpg
I had a great birth­day, thanks every­one!

I was one whipped pup­py after what felt like a month on the road (actu­al­ly, it was­n’t too far shy of a month). Tomor­row Paula and I head to Sacra­men­to and Wednes­day I fly to Vegas for a quick speak­ing engage­ment and then I’m home!

Any­way, we had a group of friends over to cel­e­brate and we had a great time. I think one of the parts I enjoyed most was watch­ing the ladies-only round of Halo on the XBox. It was pret­ty funny–I think only one of them had ever played before.

Speak­ing of XBox, I got XBox Live for my birth­day. If any of my friends are curi­ous my GamerTag is GTD. The only Live game I own is MechAs­sault.

I think that’s about it… I’ve caught up on the over 500 email mes­sages (most­ly junk) that I had wait­ing for me, so if you haven’t heard back from me yet it’s pos­si­ble that I delet­ed your mes­sage by mis­take.

Home Again!

If you’ve emailed me in the last three weeks I almost cer­tain­ly haven’t replied. Sor­ry about that, but I real­ly haven’t been able to keep up with my email del­uge. I should be get­ting caught up over the week­end and by the ear­ly part of next week I should be done.

I just returned from the North­ern California/Nevada Dis­trict Coun­cil of the Assem­blies of God. My hec­tic trav­els are near­ly com­plet­ed now (I do have to fly into Vegas next week, but it slows down after that for a while).

If you’ve emailed me in the last three weeks I almost cer­tain­ly haven’t replied. Sor­ry about that, but I real­ly haven’t been able to keep up with my email del­uge. I should be get­ting caught up over the week­end and by the ear­ly part of next week I should be done.

I might take tomor­row off, though. It’s my birth­day!

We’re Back…

We’ve returned from Springfield–it was a nice flight.

We’ve returned from Springfield–it was a nice flight (even if our flight path was a lit­tle odd–east from Kansas City to St. Louis and then back west to San Jose).

A severe thun­der­storm tore through the Spring­field area and both Kansas City and St. Louis were quite over­cast when we left, so we were real­ly look­ing for­ward to return­ing to sun­ny Cal­i­for­nia.

We got here and every­thing was wet. Evi­dent­ly there had been some pret­ty heavy rains just a lit­tle while ago.

I just found that fun­ny.

Reading List For New Students

note for every­one who’s not a new stu­dent: there’s a new stu­dent ori­en­ta­tion thingee hap­pen­ing today and on our pro­mo pieces I promised them that we’d have some read­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for them

So you’re com­ing to Stanford–that’s great! I know you’ve got a lot to read and do before you arrive, but I’d like to sug­gest some books you real­ly need to check out.

How To Stay Chris­t­ian In Col­lege by J. Budziszews­ki. If you only read one book from this list, make it this one! The author lost his faith while an under­grad and regained it after attain­ing his doc­tor­ate, and he’s packed this book full of extreme­ly prac­ti­cal advice!

The Diver­si­ty Myth by Peter Thiel and David Sacks. This book is all about Stan­ford and its agen­da when it comes to reed­u­cat­ing stu­dents (writ­ten by two Stan­ford grads). I need to pref­ace my rec­om­men­da­tion with sev­er­al dis­claimers: you should keep in mind that these guys have a huge ide­o­log­i­cal axe to grind and that there are always two sides to every sto­ry. In addi­tion, the book is about a decade old, and so some of the details are no longer accu­rate. Final­ly, they’re not writ­ing from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive. Even after all those qual­i­fi­ca­tions, I rec­om­mend that you read this book before you show up for your first day at Stan­ford. In case you’re curi­ous, the title comes from the authors’ con­tention that there is no true diver­si­ty on cam­pus.

Final­ly, con­sid­er read­ing The Spir­it of the Dis­ci­plines by Dal­las Willard. This is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Some peo­ple find it dense, and if you fall into that cat­e­go­ry I rec­om­mend The Life You’ve Always Want­ed as an alter­nate. Either of these books will help you learn a life-chang­ing lesson–that there’s a dif­fer­ence between try­ing to be like Jesus and train­ing to be like Jesus. If all you do is try, you can kiss your faith good­bye once you go to col­lege. If what do now is begin to train, you can thrive spir­i­tu­al­ly at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty!

You might also want to check out pre­vi­ous posts we’ve made on Tips for New Stu­dents, Becom­ing Wise In Col­lege, and Books Every Edu­cat­ed Chris­t­ian Should Know.

At Least The Mudhouse Is Not The Doghouse

Once again, I find myself sit­ting in the Mud­house (Spring­field­’s coolest cof­fee shop) typ­ing away on a lap­top (bor­rowed, this time, from Ste­fanie Chappell–future Chi Alpha mis­sion­ary to the Wash­ing­ton, D.C. area).

Once again, I find myself sit­ting in the Mud­house (Spring­field­’s coolest cof­fee shop) typ­ing away on a lap­top (bor­rowed, this time, from Ste­fanie Chappell–future Chi Alpha mis­sion­ary to the Wash­ing­ton, D.C. area).

I’m sit­ting here with Paula, Joe Zick­afoose, Sarah Her­man, Ste­fanie Chap­pell, and Noble Bow­man, and Ste­fanie is urg­ing me to blog some­thing per­son­al. To, in her words, “let out my deep feel­ings.”

Hmmm…

I am deeply hap­py to vis­it Spring­field, and I am deeply hap­py not to live here any­more. Sat­is­fied, Stef?

By the way, if you live in Spring­field and Paula and I haven’t got­ten togeth­er with you yet, call us soon–we’re leav­ing Fri­day morn­ing!

Back in the Mudhouse

meet­ing with yet more peo­ple

Wow–what a whirl­wind of activ­i­ty! We’re see­ing every­one we pos­si­bly can, and we’re hav­ing a great time doing it

I’m still not access­ing my email all that fre­quent­ly, but I’m check­ing as often as I can. If you don’t hear from me, don’t assume I’m brush­ing you off.

Dis­trict coun­cil starts tomor­row…

At the Mudhouse

Paula and I are sit­ting in the Mud­house in Spring­field, MO typ­ing away on our lap­tops. We flew in a lit­tle ear­ly for the South­ern Mis­souri Dis­trict Coun­cil and we’re con­nect­ing with old friends and col­leagues.

Paula and I are sit­ting in the Mud­house in Spring­field, MO typ­ing away on our lap­tops. We flew in a lit­tle ear­ly for the South­ern Mis­souri Dis­trict Coun­cil and we’re con­nect­ing with old friends and col­leagues.

So far it’s been great–we’ve got­ten togeth­er with Levi Augur (an alum­nus from our min­istry back at SMS), his par­ents (who gra­cious­ly allowed us to stay at their house), Joss Wal­ter (the first pas­tor to ever book us for a ser­vice), and Rich Avi­la (anoth­er pas­toral-type per­son we know). We’re stay­ing with Joe and Jayne Zick­afoose, who are cur­rent­ly prepar­ing to go estab­lish uni­ver­si­ty min­istry in Scot­land. It’s great!

While we were in the air our stu­dents back at Stan­ford orga­nized and led the week­ly wor­ship ser­vice by them­selves. I can’t wait to hear how it went–Paula and I are very excit­ed at the lev­el of pas­sion and own­er­ship they’re dis­play­ing!

My wife just informed me it’s time to go grab lunch, so I’m sign­ing off. I may edit this lat­er to add more details and cor­rect any spelling/grammatical errors.