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At this very moment on the Low Steps, the Veritas Forum is doling out chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies! Except first you have to respond to this query: “What Are Life’s Hardest Questions?” Get your cookie fix til 4pm, but remember, the mind can never be sated…

Enticement via Wikimedia

Last night curious students packed into Lerner Cinema to see Princeton professor and celebrity Cornel West talk on “how we can engage in activism that is characterized by faith, perseverance, courage and hope” in Haiti. Bwog’s Semi-Secretly Christian Organizations correspondent Derek Huang reports that students got more consideration of spirituality than of Port-au-Prince.

In a time when American mainstream media portrays human tragedy fleetingly, the Veritas Forum and Intervarsity Christian Fellowship invited Dr. Cornel West, professor of African American Studies and Religion at Princeton University, to discuss how to positively engage in humanitarian activism. Even though the lecture was originally titled “After the Headlines: Remaining Engaged in Haiti,” West primarily spoke about the reason for engaging in humanitarian aid and offered his thoughts from a Christian perspective. The program began with a presentation from Gabrielle Apollon (CC ’09, SIPA ’10). After showing the audience a video documenting her experiences in Haiti during the earthquake, Apollon introduced the issue of faith to the discussion, talked briefly about how she viewed her experience through the lens of Christianity, and invited West to the stage.

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If you were all hyped up for the “conflict” part of last night’s Veritas Forum “Faiths in Conflict: Searching for a Common Space,” you may be disappointed by the friendly banter between secularist Heyman Center Director Akeel Bilgrami and Sri Lankan theologian Vinoth Ramachandra. Bwog correspondent Sarah Ngu reports on their discussion of how to build foundations for tolerant, mixed-faith communities.

Akeel Bilgrami wanted to avoid a “polemical evening,” so the first thing he did was distance himself from staunch atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. He called the pair “some of the most distasteful people on the intellectual scene today” and compared them to religious fundamentalists. You’ll only get the intellectual play if you know that both men claim that labels like “Muslim,” and “Christian” can only be used to describe extremists. If you go to church and say your prayers at night, you’re either a heathen or an atheist in denial

Ramachandra expressed brief sympathy for “militant atheists” like Hitchens and Dawkins, noting that, if only exposed to televangalism early in life, he would not be a Christian today. He then lamented with Bilgrami the dearth of serious books on religion in bookstores and picked a bit of a fight with what he calls “American tolerance.” Since Americans who disagree with each other are so content with their own beliefs, they don’t engage with each other on religious questions and don’t leave their own beliefs open to revision.

True tolerance is what Ramachandra calls a “political secularism”: Cultural groups must, without surrendering their core values, challenge their members to be self-critical and practice an empathetic appreciation for others. A group managing this may contribute to public wellbeing, religious diversity, and global peace. According to Ramachandra, faith can provide the proper grounds for a “politically secular” space even for the marginalized. To him, the core message of Christianity is that God identifies with the marginalized. Thus Christians ought to care for “the dregs of the world,” as he says they have done in the past, leading the abolition and labor movements.

Professor Eisenbach, moderating, asked a blunt question of the speakers – “Where do human rights come from?”

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-Photo from Ariel Moger

For the final installment of this week’s Veritas Forum,whose symbol looks bizarrely similar to the Mac Wireless sign, the group hosted a screening of Justin Dillon‘s film Call and Response and brought Matisyahu, the greatest Jewish reggae singer of all time, for a performance that can only be described as “kick-ass.”

Call and Response, an anti-slavery documentary/concert film, mixed its message about eradicating modern slavery with great performances, including one from Talib Kweli. Dillon spoke for a few minutes after the screening, urging the audience to join in his cause.

The night really heated up, though,  when Matisyahu took the stage. The concept of a Hasidic reggae star may seem strange, but the man is no one-hit wonder, especially with his beat-boxing. For his roughly hour-long set, Matis brought down the house, improvising almost his entire performance. During his dazzling beat-boxing, he would flick his finger through the air, conducting his otherworldly beats for himself. His set was interrupted when a microphone shorted out, but he won over the audience despite the technical glitch, and they ended the night on their feet, bowled over by the performance.

- DJB

- Photo by CEE

Bwog Theism Bureau Chief James Downie grabbed a stiff plastic chair in Roone Arledge for the first Veritas Forum event. The second event will be tonight at 8:00 PM in Miller Theater.  The third event, which includes Matisyahu, will take place tomorrow at 7:00 PM in Miller Theater. 

The evening began on an odd note, after the moderator, Professor David Eisenbach, remembered that he had a new television show coming out. Called “Beltway Unbuckled,” and appearing on the History Channel in March, Eisenbach asked the attendees to watch the pilot,  promising that “you’ll never look at Abraham Lincoln the same way again.” The audience groaned at the image.

The evening’s question was “Is God Necessary for Morality?” and the first speaker, Yale philosophy professor Shelly Kagan, argued no. Kagan instead posited that a self-sufficient morality can be constructed from basic rational desires, such as helping rather than harming others. As to why the belief that evil is wrong is so strong, and where that strength comes from, he admitted that atheist philosophers disagree on answers. Some believe in social contracts between people, others suppose a veil of ignorance, but, more importantly, there is some rational basis under all of it – “the rules of morality are an objective fact, what philosophers refer to as categorical.” Contemporary Civ references would only increase as the night went on. Read more…

Bwog has noticed that over the next week or so there will be a smorgasbord of learning opportunities for those who are not going home to spend their magnificent four days of fall break.  Whether you are interested in theater, bioethics or academic freedom, there’s something going on that’s right up your alley.

Human Genetic Complexity: What We Know–Legal, Historical, and Evolutionary Perspectives

October 29th at 8 pm

417 IAB

This talk features philosophy professor Phillip Kitcher, biology professor Robert Pollack and NYU law professor and Nation columnist Patricia Williams (who is no stranger to this campus).  While the discussion  supposedly will center around themes from the Core, expect philosophy more contemporary than CC and science more general than Frontiers.

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Procrastination doesn’t have to mean venturing far.  Lectures, laughs, and lame ledes, all on campus.

Sunday

Photo Scavenger Hunt: Run around campus with photography nerds and try to take the most super-awesomest pictures to win an unspecified prize!  4:00 PM.

Monday

Elections and the US Media: An international panel of journalists discusses the coverage of the 2008 elections by American media.  7:00 PM.

Tuesday

The Secret Life of Bees: Free screening in Lerner Cinema.  Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson, and Queen Latifah!  Director Gina Prince-Bythewood will be there for a post-show Q&A.  2:00 PM.

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By the time the second installment in the Veritas Forum commenced at 8:00 PM last night, Miller Theatre was packed, as packed as it had been, maybe, since the first Frontiers lecture of the semester.  The near-capacity crowd greeted emcee Jonathan Walton, CC ’08, with thunderous applause as he took the stage to explain, in a poetic jive, Veritas’ raison d’être—broadly, “to get better at this thing called life.”  After exhorting the audience to give to indigent children in the manner of a telethon, Walton concluded his preamble and introduced the principal panelists of the evening: Martin Bashir, 20/20 and Nightline anchor and atheist; and Timothy Keller, impresario of Manhattan’s Redeemer Presbyterian Megachurch and author of The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism.

      Seated upon plush chairs in the center of the stage, Bashir and Keller sustained a conversation for the next hour that was at once cordial and tense.  Bashir, bedecked in a cosmopolitan combo of blue shirt, tie, and goatee, prodded Keller into an apologia for his faith and book by asking the sort of questions typical amongst skeptical fifth graders directed at their more credulous parents or peers: Why do you believe in God?  Is everyone else going to hell?  What proof is there of the Bible’s validity?  What’s so special about Christianity?  And so on.  Keller, for his part, defended himself gamely and logically, knocking down Bashir’s straw men with a deft and gentle wit that prompted laughter from the sympathetic audience, and sticking to his premise that Christianity was no less a rational choice than atheism.

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Tuesday was super. 

The Glass House rocked, didn’t rock. 

Elementary schoolers were adorable. 

Religion and politics didn’t mix.  

A Columbia sports team actually won a game…

… even though Coach Joe Jones was splitting his time between the court and his on-the-side puppy transport business. This one is maybe not so obvious.

Bwog Lecture Hop editor Pierce Stanley observes as religion is reconciled with just about everything, for once.

Coming on the heels of a Super Duper Tuesday that saw former Arkansas governor turned evangelical preacher Mike Huckabee decisively win five Republican primaries in the South and the recent dropping out of Republican contender Mitt Romney—a figure previously under the heavy scrutiny of the public eye for his devout Mormonism—the intersection of religion and politics has never been more apparent than in the current election cycle.

Yesterday’s nationwide Veritas Forum proved to be a well-timed and informative event for the throngs that showed up in Roone to flesh out the tensions between religion and politics. Washington Post columnist Dale Hanson Bourke led Columbia professors Andrew Delbanco (director of the American Studies program) and Religion and Humanities professor Mark Lilla, as well as the Senior Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church Timothy Keller in a discussion about the tensions between religion and pluralism.

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Veritas Forum subjects: infinitude of knowledge, the Almighty, plagiarism

Message of a loving God creates schism, property rights issues, “trouble”

Surprise! Noam Chomsky is anti-war!

Poverty = another reason to worry about Global Warming?

…never fear, J-Sachs’ anti-squalor sustainability squad is here!…just don’t ask too many questions.