Stanford Student Wins Jeopardy Collegiate Championship

One of those quirky lit­tle things you can’t help but be proud of!

A friend just informed me that Stan­ford stu­dent Vini­ta Kailasanath won the 2001 Jeop­ardy Col­le­giate Cham­pi­onship.

I searched long and hard online for infor­ma­tion about the 2002 win­ner, but I could­n’t find any info. I can only sur­mise they’ve not con­duct­ed the 2002 con­test yet. I’m sure the Car­di­nal will emerge vic­to­ri­ous again!

A Failure to Internalize Faith

One of the great­est chal­lenges we face as believ­ers is liv­ing authen­ti­cal­ly Chris­t­ian lives. It’s very easy to be spir­i­tu­al on Sun­day and at offi­cial reli­gious func­tions, but it’s much hard­er to study in a Chris­t­ian way, to work with a Chris­t­ian work eth­ic, to con­duct our­selves at the din­ner table in a man­ner that pleas­es Christ.

But such things are the very essence of our faith.

If our faith does not man­i­fest in the small things, it’s vir­tu­al­ly irrel­e­vant how it man­i­fests in the big things.

Why all these thoughts on holis­tic Chris­tian­i­ty? This blog entry dis­cussing ethics among Chris­t­ian busi­ness­peo­ple. You ought to read it.

And then you ought to ask your­self whether or not you’re dif­fer­ent as a stu­dent because of your faith in Jesus. If you’re not, then you’ve not ful­ly inter­nal­ized your faith.

What do I mean? Here are some off-the-cuff reflec­tions on what it means to be a stu­dent to the glo­ry of Jesus:
* You actu­al­ly seek to mas­ter the mate­r­i­al.
* You love truth and seek it pas­sion­ate­ly, even going beyond the bounds of an assign­ment to acquire it.
* You do assigned work whether your pro­fes­sor will check it or not.
* You seek to make knowl­edge prac­ti­cal (turn it into wis­dom).
* You’re a plea­sure to have in class (both for the prof and oth­er stu­dents).
* When you dis­agree with the prof you do so in an agree­able way.

There are tons more, but these are a few that pop into my head…

Pray For These Incoming Freshmen!

A list of incom­ing fresh­man and some spe­cif­ic prayer requests on their behalf.

Stan­ford has giv­en us a list of incom­ing fresh­men who are inter­est­ed in get­ting involved in a group sim­i­lar to Chi Alpha. I’ll be con­tact­ing each of them and seek­ing to help them tran­si­tion smooth­ly. I’ll also be pray­ing for them dai­ly: could you join me in pray­ing specif­i­cal­ly for each one of these things?


  1. That God would pre­pare them for the oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges that are about to be laid at their feet.
  2. That God would make His pur­pose in bring­ing them to Stan­ford clear to them.
  3. Most of all, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glo­ri­ous Father, may give [them] the Spir­it of wis­dom and rev­e­la­tion, so that [they] may know him bet­ter… also that the eyes of [their] hearts may be enlight­ened in order that [they] may know the hope to which he has called [them], the rich­es of his glo­ri­ous inher­i­tance in the saints, and his incom­pa­ra­bly great pow­er for us who believe.” Eph­esians 1.17–19, NIV

If you’d like to pray for them by name, here they are: Aaron, Aki­lah, Albert, Alfre­do, Ali­na, Aman­da, Arin, Ben, Bran­don, Camille, Casey, Charles, Chioma, Chris, Chris, Chris­t­ian, Chris­tine, Chuck, Collin, Cyn­dy, Cyrus, Dan­ny, David, Dena, Diana, Didi, Dominique, Ean, Eden, Eleazar, Emi­ly, Eric, Jamelia, Jamie, Janine, Jes­si­ca, Jes­si­ca, John, Julia, Julian, June, Jus­ton, Karen, Karen, Katie, Kevin, Kirsten, Lau­ra, Lau­ren, Lau­ren, Lin­dell, Lisa, Lisa, Maria, Mark, Michael, Michael, Michelle, Naima, Natal­ie, Nathan, Nathaniel, Nico­las, Nico­las, Ochuko, Omorin­so­la, Paul, Quyn­hanh, Rachel, Richard, Saman­tha, Steph, Stephanie, Stephanie, Stu­art, Suhan, Tama­rah, Tay­lor, Tim­o­thy, Vic­tor, and Yoko.

Charles Taylor on “What It Means to Be Secular”

Not­ed philos­pher Charles Tay­lor (who seems to be a Chris­t­ian) has just been inter­viewed in Books and Cul­ture on What It Means to Be Sec­u­lar.

It’s pret­ty inter­est­ing stuff. For exam­ple

To say we live in a sec­u­lar civ­i­liza­tion is to say that God is no longer inescapable. It does­n’t mean that we live in a soci­ety from which God has been expelled. I don’t think we ever will live in such a soci­ety for very long; the Com­mu­nists tried that. But the nature of this mod­ern sec­u­lar soci­ety is that it’s deeply plur­al. We have to accept that the ulti­mate ground­ing of the civ­i­liza­tion we share in com­mon is up for grabs.

and lat­er on

There is an alter­na­tive reading—namely, that we’re mov­ing to a soci­ety where more and more the con­sen­sus will be around an unbe­liev­ing vari­ant of the mod­ern social imag­i­nary. But to me this seems to be just a dream. It’s a dream that aris­es among those who are deeply into an athe­ist or non-believ­ing posi­tion and are con­vinced as a mat­ter of faith that reli­gion will grad­u­al­ly dis­ap­pear and every­one will think as they do. For them, the sec­u­lar world is one in which we all end up agree­ing fun­da­men­tal­ly that there’s no God, and that agree­ment is the basis of every­thing. That’s an impos­si­ble sce­nario, and the more they think like that, the worse it’s going to be.

Objections To Objectivism: A Brief Critique of Ayn Rand’s Ethical Egoism

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.

ChiAlpha.com Gets an Upgrade!

One of life’s lit­tle plea­sures: recod­ing a web­site with ele­gance.

One of the weird­er (but prob­a­bly more strate­gic) min­istry tasks that I’ve had for the last few years is main­tain­ing the Chi Alpha nation­al web­site and the Reach The U web­site (the lat­ter being the more sig­nif­i­cant).

Today I had some time to tack­le a fea­ture I’d real­ly been want­i­ng to revise: the chap­ter direc­to­ry.

I think it’s a lot slick­er now, and the clean code­base means that I can add new func­tions with­out a lot of has­sle. Huz­zah!

Ulti­mate goal: to cre­ate a user login sys­tem so that each local cam­pus min­istry can own it’s data and update it when­ev­er some­thing changes.

Speak­ing of site upgrades: I final­ly man­aged to quash a very annoy­ing bug on my blog. The page kept get­ting cut off! If you’re hav­ing sim­i­lar trou­ble, read this help­ful thread.

Where Are All The Smart Pentecostals?

Today I received from the Stan­ford Office for Reli­gious Life the names of all three of the Assem­blies of God stu­dents plan­ning to attend Stan­ford next year. That’s right–three. Out of around 1,400. There was also a Foursquare stu­dent and a few from inde­pen­dent charis­mat­ic church­es. Let’s say there are about 10–15 Pentecostal/charismatic stu­dents in total.

Even giv­en that only 4% of teens attend a Pen­te­costal or Charis­mat­ic church, that’s pret­ty sad. If even 4% com­ing to Stan­ford were Pentecostal/charismatic that would be over 50 incom­ing fresh­men. That’s a dis­crep­an­cy of 70% (in oth­er words, 70% few­er stu­dents are Pen­te­costal or Charis­mat­ic than you would expect)!

That does­n’t both­er me for the rea­son you might think. Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is pri­mar­i­ly an evan­ge­lis­tic orga­ni­za­tion. While we do want to take care of incom­ing Chris­t­ian stu­dents and help them mature in their faith, we’re pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with reach­ing the major­i­ty who have no reli­gious back­ground at all (much less a Chris­t­ian one).

It’s not so much that I wish there were more stu­dents to plug into our group as I won­der why more com­ing in aren’t believ­ers. These num­bers, while only direct­ly reflect­ing on Pen­te­costals are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of what the oth­er min­istries are receiv­ing.

There’s been a mas­sive renais­sance in youth min­istry over the last decade, and there’s tons of arti­cles on the bur­geon­ing evan­gel­i­cal intel­lec­tu­als: so why aren’t there more arriv­ing at Stan­ford? Is it that we strong­ly dis­cour­age our gift­ed youth from attend­ing sec­u­lar schools or is mere­ly the sad fact that most “Chris­t­ian” stu­dents can’t wait to escape from their youth group?

In any event, if the oth­er elite schools are see­ing sim­i­lar trends the intel­lec­tu­al future of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty isn’t look­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly robust…

A Bizarre Case Study In Ethics…

Check this out on CNN: A Pornog­ra­ph­er Hacks An Al-Quae­da Site. This is one of those bizarre lit­tle sit­u­a­tions in which some­one we thor­ough­ly dis­ap­prove of does some­thing we great­ly approve of.

Evi­dent­ly his exper­tise in run­ning a smut site was imme­di­ate­ly applic­a­ble to the chal­lenge of hack­ing a para­noid and ruth­less orga­ni­za­tion’s com­put­er. Mess­ner, using the aggres­sive tac­tics he’s employed to run his adult site, said he “hijacked” Al Neda for five days It kind of makes you won­der exact­ly what skills porn site oper­a­tors pick up… One more good rea­son to avoid porn like the plague–some of these guys are ace hack­ers!

I found the fol­low­ing excerpts sad: “I bought a dig­i­tal cam­era and con­vinced my wife to get naked for the Inter­net.” … His Porsche and its “WIVES” van­i­ty plates memo­ri­al­iz­ing his suc­cess in adult enter­tain­ment are, he believes, a tes­ta­ment that he and his fam­i­ly are liv­ing the Amer­i­can dream. And, in his own way, Mess­ner said, he is fight­ing an Amer­i­can war.

In the entire CNN arti­cle there’s not a hint of appro­pri­ate moral indig­na­tion that this man is both destroy­ing the sacred­ness of his own mar­riage and entic­ing men across the world to vio­late their mar­riage vows. I’m will­ing to bet that it did­n’t even cross the jour­nal­ist’s mind… *sigh* Does no one see how destruc­tive pornog­ra­phy is?

Assemblies of God Leaders Who Endorse Glen and Paula Davis

A list of lead­ers who believe in us and in our min­istry.

Here are some Assem­blies of God lead­ers who believe in us
and in our min­istry: I would like to par­tic­u­lar­ly direct your atten­tion to the
fact that both our cur­rent and our for­mer pas­tor are on this list. We believe
in the Assem­blies of God, we’re com­mit­ted to the pri­ma­cy of the local church,
and we’re team play­ers!

“I had Glen & Paula do a mis­sions win­dow in my church and they
did a fab­u­lous job! God has called them to a tru­ly strate­gic mis­sion field,
and James Riv­er is proud to be invest­ing in it. I encour­age you to book
them for a ser­vice or a mis­sions window—you won’t be dis­ap­point­ed.”

John Lin­dell
Senior Pas­tor
James Riv­er Assem­bly of God (Spring­field,
MO)

“Penin­su­la Chris­t­ian Cen­ter is hon­ored to serve as a cov­er­ing
for Stan­ford Chi Alpha, and I’m delight­ed to serve on the advi­so­ry board
for this min­istry. I believe God has raised up Glen and Paula Davis to
reach Stan­ford for Christ, and I encour­age your church to sup­port them
in this strate­gic min­istry.”

Jeff Langskov
Senior Pas­tor (and Glen and Paula’s pas­tor)
Penin­su­la Chris­t­ian Cen­ter (Red­wood
City, CA)

“Being a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Calif. in Berke­ley, I appre­ci­ate
what it takes to reach sec­u­lar uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents in the Bay Area. Glen
and Paula Davis have the spir­i­tu­al pas­sion, min­istry and peo­ple skills,
intel­lec­tu­al integri­ty, and proven expe­ri­ence to devel­op a viable Chi
Alpha min­istry at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. They mer­it your prayer and sup­port!”

Dr. Steve Lim
For­mer Bay Area Pas­tor & Sec­tion­al Pres­byter
Chair­per­son of the Prac­ti­cal
The­ol­o­gy fac­ul­ty at AGTS

“As a 10 year vet­er­an of the cam­pus­es in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia
and a stu­dent of effec­tive cam­pus min­istry nation­wide I endorse Glen and
Paula Davis enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly to serve as mis­sion­ar­ies to Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.
They poss­es the tools, both intel­lec­tu­al­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly, to lead a
tru­ly fruit­ful min­istry on this most strate­gic cam­pus.”

Curt Har­low
Vet­er­an North­ern Cal­i­for­nia Cam­pus Min­istry Pio­neer
Chi Alpha Nation­al
Lead­er­ship Team

“Glen Davis is one of the new gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers God is rais­ing
up in the church. He blends a won­der­ful com­bi­na­tion of qual­i­ties in that
he is both spir­i­tu­al and strate­gic, both hum­ble and vision­ary, a both
a team play­er and a true leader. He is one of the peo­ple I con­sid­er a
true friend and I look to him for cut­ting edge insights into this gen­er­a­tion,
con­tem­po­rary soci­ety and tech­nol­o­gy. He is a great com­mu­ni­ca­tor, first
class leader and true min­is­ter of the Good News.”

Dr. J. Melvyn Ming
Lead­er­ship Coach, Divi­sion of Pas­toral Care and Devel­op­ment
North­west Dis­trict Coun­cil of the Assem­blies
of God

“Glen and Paula Davis will make a dif­fer­ence. As a for­mer pas­tor,
these are the kind of peo­ple I would want my church to sup­port. They are
mis­sion­ar­ies in the truest sense, liv­ing with­in an almost com­plete­ly unreached
cul­ture to bring the mes­sage of God’s love in Christ. I have known Glen
and Paula, and their min­istry, for years and find it a joy to rec­om­mend
them to you.”

Dr. Earl Creps
Direc­tor of the Doc­tor
of Min­istry Pro­gram, Assem­blies of God The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary

“Glen is one of my favorite com­mu­ni­ca­tors. His teach­ings are
thought-pro­vok­ing because he is a thinker; they are bril­liant­ly illus­trat­ed
because Glen is both rel­e­vant and schol­ar­ly. I believe that God will awak­en
a new gen­er­a­tion through ser­vants like Glen and Paula Davis.”

Ali­cia Chole
Speak­er, Author (shared at
2001 Gen­er­al Coun­cil and Cel­e­bra­tion 2000)

“I have known Glen and Paula for many years and am pleased to
call them friends as well as co-min­is­ters. There is no doubt in my mind
that they are going to be might­i­ly used of God on the Stan­ford cam­pus.
Whether in the area of evan­ge­lism, teach­ing, lead­er­ship or hos­pi­tal­i­ty,
Glen and Paula are equipped to car­ry the gospel to the stu­dents of Stan­ford
Uni­ver­si­ty.”

Antho­ny Sco­ma
Dis­ci­ple­ship Pas­tor
James Riv­er Assem­bly of God (Spring­field,
MO)

“As Glen and Paula’s for­mer pas­tor, I whole­heart­ed­ly endorse
their min­istry. Glen is an great preach­er and has filled our pul­pit on
a num­ber of occa­sions, Paula has been an out­stand­ing board mem­ber, and
they are both excel­lent lead­ers. Please book them for ser­vices and pick
them up for month­ly sup­port!”

Cal Swen­son
Senior Pas­tor (and Glen & Paula’s for­mer pas­tor)
New Life Church (Spring­field,
MO)

“For five years I was blessed to have Glen and Paula on my staff
at Chi Alpha — South­west Mis­souri State Uni­ver­si­ty. Their vision and cre­ativ­i­ty
has played a vital role in mak­ing our pro­gram cut­ting edge and effec­tive
in gen­uine­ly reach­ing into the nonChris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty of SMS. I can think
of no oth­er cou­ple that is more capa­ble to pio­neer Chi Alpha at Stan­ford.”

Joe Zick­afoose
Vet­er­an Cam­pus Pio­neer
Chi Alpha Direc­tor at South­west Mis­souri
State Uni­ver­si­ty

A Deist Contrasts Islam and Christianity

I ran across a very inter­est­ing rant com­par­ing Islam and Chris­tian­i­ty by a blog­ger I’d nev­er heard of called James Lileks (I found the link on blogdex).

At one point, Mr. Lileks iden­ti­fies him­self thus­ly I am a Deist, which means EVERYONE dis­agrees with me.

Trans­la­tion: a lot of his under­ly­ing assump­tions will dif­fer from yours, but you should still read the piece. He puts some very impor­tant points in a very direct way.

Here’s his open­ing state­ment:
There are two ways for a reli­gion to approach life:

A) Every­thing is per­mit­ted except that which is for­bid­den; over time, we work out the details as the sit­u­a­tions arise.

B) Every­thing is for­bid­den except that which is per­mit­ted, and we will work out the details in advance.

After an open­ing like that, how can you not read the rest?

(there’s a sim­i­lar dia­tribe at Lit­tle Green Foot­balls, although it’s not as reflec­tive it does have the virtue of a very active com­ments sec­tion)

I added this next bit on 8/9/2002
Ever won­der what an Epis­co­palian ter­ror­ist would look like?