Sanctum

Spring 2010

Leap of Faith
 Sanctum Staff
Stephanie Riederman
Editor-in-Chief

Josefina Aguila
Managing Editor

Learned Foote
Financial Manager

Ray Katz, Avishai Gebler

Senior Editors

Jody Zellman
Art Editor

Tamara Epelbaum
Layout Editor

Elana Riback
Copy Editor

Akiva Bamberger
Webmaster
Sanctum - Spring 2010
4 Editorial Note: Is Religion at War With Science?
Stephanie Riederman
8 Religion is

Carlos Blanco
14 Frontiers of truth: Science and the Talmud Working
Hand in Hand
Leah Greenstein
18 Professor Robert Pollack on Science, Reli-
gion, and the Missing Link
Interview by Shira Poliak

25 wall-e, the thorn in the side of Buddhism: A

Critique of the Dalai Lamas The Universe in a Single Atom
Reuben Doetsch
32 Gendered Scripture & Gendered Souls: The
Christian Debate on Heterosexuality
Sarah Ngu
39 Secular Age, or Secular Illusion? A Critique of
Charles Taylors Secular Age
Adam Sieff
44 All Things Considered: Religion, Ethics, and the Mis-
sion of the University
Lynne Foote

Cover Graphic by Jody Zellman

Editorial Note:
Is Religion at War with Science?
Stephanie Riederman

Prepare to believe, beckons the homepage of The Creation Museum, a self-proclaimed Mecca of
biblical history and proponent of creationism, located in Petersburg, Kentucky. Here, visitors will find
well-known characters in familiar settings: Adam and Eve live in the Garden of Eden. Children play
and dinosaurs roam near Edens Rivers. The serpent coils cunningly in the Tree of the Knowledge of
Good and Evil...1 The museum, prominently featured early last year in Bill Mahers film Religulous,
has been vilified by many non-believers as a complete mockery of reason. Yet at the same time, they
must still take noticeit logged over 100,000 visitors in its first eight weeks after opening.2
Early on, I too was introduced to theistic explanations for commonly held scientific assumptions.
The Israeli physicist and author of The Science of God and Genesis and the Big Bang Gerald
Schroeder was invited to speak at my Jewish high school to introduce some of his own. Offering
evidence from the fields of biology, paleontology, and cosmology, Schroeder attempted to highlight
parallels between the creation narrative of the Old Testament and modern science in order to claim
that the two accounts were not only reconcilable, but that remarkable parallels were present between
them. The texts mentioning of big sea monsters in the first chapter of Genesis for example, could
be a reference to dinosaurs and conforms to the fossil record, according to Schroeder.3
Though admittedly around half of his technical arguments went over my head, Schroeders attempt
to defend the Bible has been largely criticized by most scientists, despite its popularity in select religious
communities. Given this criticism, why do Schroeder and others put forth the effort to harmonize
the biblical creation narrative with the scientific one in the first place? Though the same people
who founded the Creation Museum most likely rely on scientists to introduce various technological
breakthroughs that constantly better our society, why cant they entirely trust scientists with science?
For literalist readers of the Bible, the Creation Museum and Schroeders work are recent examples of
longstanding efforts to reorient science to reflect eternal religious truth. From evolution to stem cell
research, climate change to medical testing, more than half of the American public believes that science
and religion are often in conflict, according to a July 2009 poll by the Pew Research Center.4

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Eugene C. Scott is the director of The National Center for Science Education, a non-profit that
works to incorporate evolution into public schools science curricula in the United States. When asked
why such strong resistance to evolution in particular exists in our country, she explained: Evolution,
more than any other scientific explanation, has consequences for the way people look at themselves
and their relationship to the rest of the world. Evolution therefore has consequences for religion.5 In
light of the various religious traditions that view homo-sapiens as the central actors in global history
and the human form as a reflection of Gods image, tracing the lineage of humanity back to monkeys
and the haphazard process of evolution is highly disagreeable. Thus, new discoveries in the realm of
evolution are often seen not as a vehicle towards universal truth, but rather as a threat to particularist
conceptions of humanity. Interestingly enough, the group of people most familiar with data on
evolution are statistically less religious than the reminder of our society; while eighty-three percent of
Americans profess a belief in God, only thirty-three percent of scientists do the same.6
In light of much of the countrys strong resistance towards accepting scientific data that might
refute religious claims, a plurality of approaches is available to address those unyielding believers.
Some, such as Bill Maher in Religulous, simply humorize and disparage them. Others, such as Sanctum
contributor Reuben Doetsch, explain how the new ways in which we understand the natural world
have complicated or invalidated beliefs held by certain religious traditions. In his case, WALL-E, the
Thorn in the Side of Buddhism details how advancements in artificial intelligence have undermined
Buddhist conceptions of the soul and consciousness.
However, a second path may still exist for understanding the roles of religious and scientific
knowledge. Towards the end of his life, Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientists to ever live,
became deeply interested in merging scientific and religious truth. His famously unrealized quest
to discover the theory of everything, and thereby explain the interwoven natures of all physical
phenomena, had a particularly discernible godly undertone. In a number of articles, Einstein
discussed his ardent desire to find this missing link and his growing dissatisfaction with the ability of
either science or religion alone to address human concerns more broadly:

For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain
value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. Religion, on the other hand, deals only
with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and
relationships between facts.7

In accordance with this late project of Einsteins, some scientists, such as Columbia Professor

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Robert Pollack, are less interested in disproving claims religion makes about science, and are more
interested in understanding the way in which both spheres of knowledge can help our world. Pollack
explains in an interview with Sanctum how the Center for the Study of Science and Religion (CSSR)
hopes to do just that. Lynne Foote echoes this sentiment in All Things Considered, as she details
how unregulated scientific advancement without the guidance of a moral compass has faltered, and
advocates for bringing these considerations into the university setting.
Whether you fall on the side of the Creation Museum or Gerald Schroeder, Bill Maher or Einstein,
religious and/or scientific sources of knowledge are foundational to our society and surely play a
central role in the way we all see the world. I sincerely hope that this issue of Sanctum, dedicated to
exploring the interplay between science and religion, makes some headway in addressing these crucial
issues. Who knowswe might even continue Einsteins work and take steps toward discovering the
universal theory of everything.

Until then,

Stephanie Riederman
Editor-in-Chief

Notes
1 About the Museum. The Creation Museum. Web. 11 Apr. 2010. <http://creationmuseum.org/
about/>.
2 Creation Museum Logs 100,000 Visitors in 8 Weeks. Fox News, 24 July 2007. Web. 11 Apr.
2010. <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290444,00.html>.
3 Revised Standard Version. National Council of Churches of Christ in America. Web. 12 Apr.
2010. <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/r/rsv/rsv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=1801>.
4 The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Leshner I. Dr Alan. Scientific
Achievements Less Prominent Than a Decade Ago. Survey Reports. The Pew Research Center for
the People and the Press, 9 July 2009. Web. 11 Apr. 2010. <http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/528.
pdf>.
5 Interview with Eugenie C. Scott: Safeguarding Science Education. Interview by Chuck Crumly.
University of California Press Blog. University of California Press. Web. 11 Apr. 2010. <http://www.
ucpress.edu/blog/?p=5276>.

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6 The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Leshner I. Dr Alan. Scientific
Achievements Less Prominent Than a Decade Ago. Survey Reports. The Pew Research Center for
the People and the Press, 9 July 2009. Web. 11 Apr. 2010. <http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/528.
pdf>.
7 Einstein, Albert. Science and Religion. Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium, 1941.
Web. 12 Apr. 2010. <http://www.update.uu.se/~fbendz/library/ae_scire.htm>.

Hand Painting Flowers by Batya Weinstock

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 Religion is
Carlos Blanco

Religion Is Another Language

At age three, I pronounced the word shoes as choose

though after four years of English as Second Language (ESL),
my Spanish accent is now eradicated. Religion is like learning an-
other language. Recall the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis:
Mankind unites to build a tower, attempting to reach God and
Heaven. Angered by their conceit, God divides humankind with
language barriers. So the Torah, the Talmud, the New Testament,
the Quran, the Vedas and all other religious texts are often linked
by faith and ideals, but not by language. One began in ancient Ara-
maic, the other in Hebrew, and one in Sanskrit. We can very well
argue that the outcome of the Tower of Babel accomplished its
goal: No tower could ever be built to Heaven without a translator
there to tell us how to mix mortar and cement in Taiwanese.
Religion is another language. On our quest to understand re-
ligion, we can get lost in a foreign tongue we have yet to master.
Sometimes, those who have learned English as a second language
have trouble recalling words others might easily conjure. Simple
words like chair or godmother escape our grasp. One of the
first effects of dementia is losing the ability to remember a second
language. The language of religion is difficult and elusive, escap-
ing us in an instant.

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Photo by Verneva Ziga

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Religion is a Subway Swipe

One of the new slogans of the revamped MTA market cam-

paign is, MTA: Your stop to wherever life takes you! With its
name plastered on bus ads, subway stops, and Metro Cards, the
Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York City is an omnipo-
tent power. It is an authority, taking you wherever life takes
you and supplying its followersor rather its riderswith a
route that leads to their goals.
Catholicism, as well as other major religions of the world,
argues that living a life according to the Bible of G-d will ulti-
mately lead you to Heaven. We are told that life is granted to us
by G-d, and, like a subway ride, it can be delayed, slow, abysmal
or awkward. But before we get the chance to ride the subway,
we have to pay $2.25. A subway fare, like a baptism or birth-
right ceremony, allows us to begin a trip to our final destination,
which is, arguably, oneness with G-d.
Religion is a subway swipe because it is the beginning of the
journey we must endure. When Metro fares were raised this year,
an uproar ensued. How could the poor afford a price hike? How
can those who have no access to religion afford finding G-d?
We travel in underground tunnels on the subway because, as in
a sojourn though purgatory, the end result is an ascent above
ground. It is a holy experience to ride the subway and feel the
machinery roar around you. Religion is an intricate mechanism
transporting adherents from one level of consciousness and un-
derstanding to another. By swiping in and willingly taking part
in the institution, people may find themselves on the other side
of a metamorphosis.

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Photo by Mara Kravitz

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Religion is Where the Wild Things Are

Max, the little boy in the famed childrens book Where the
Wild Things Are, is sent to his room without dinner because he
was misbehaving. He stumbles upon the Land of Wild Things.
Though initially scared, Max becomes king of the wild animals
before returning home from his imaginary world. We the reli-
gious are like Max. We stumble upon faith, maybe as a source of
heritage, maybe to fill a void, or maybe in a moment of utmost
clarity.
And so we each become king of the Wild Things. Driven by
devotion, we are bold and reckless with spiritual power. We probe
the depths of religious wisdom and examine faith from all angles.
And then we understand. Scholar upon rabbi upon priest upon
monkall claim to know the answer to Maxs undying question
of why he is in the land of Wild Things: Why am I here?
Religion is the Wild Thing itself. It can serve to scare people
or inspire them. And like one of the Wild Things in Maurice
Sendaks acclaimed childrens book, it gives us the license to at-
tempt to live our lives like G-d. By the end of the book, Max dons
the clothing of a Wild Thing, mimicking them while attempting
to emulate a supreme being. Yet in the end, we are all just as
frightened and powerless as a little boy, and we return to what we
know best: a land away from the Wild Things.

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Photo by Mara Kravitz

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 Frontiers of Truth:
Science and the Talmud Working
Hand in Hand
Leah Greenstein

Light Shaft by Jody Zellman

Ill be honest: I have never had an affinity for science. Much to the chagrin of my
parents bio-chemistry and physics majors, respectivelyI prefer to discuss philosophical
relativism rather than Einsteins theory of relativity. Of course, I never questioned the validity
of sciencescientists must know what theyre doing in their distant world of numbers and
figures. However, this spring Frontiers of Science came my way, bringing with it some new
qualms about science: The expansion of the universe causing galaxies to collide, be created,
or zoom away from each other? Stars 500,000,000 light years away? The word quark? In
the middle of an early recitation, one classmate leaned over and whispered, This is harder
to swallow than Hebrew School.
Admittedly, certain aspects of Hebrew school were pretty hard to swallow as well, especially
in light of modern science. Throughout my Jewish Day School education I intensely studied

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the Talmud, a dense legal work of oral law that was codified in the 5th-6th century CE and
contains the core of almost all traditions and laws practiced by Jews today. In addition to its
legal content, the Talmud is replete with extralegal stories, advice, and moral lessons. Jewish
scholarship for the past 1,500 years has centered around the often abstruse tomes of Talmud;
to be deemed a Torah scholar or wise man is in actuality to be deemed a Talmudic scholar.
This is because to understand the polemics of the Talmud is exceedingly difficult; the logic
often dizzying.
The rabbis of the Talmud, the Amoraim, are in a league of their own. They solve
contradictions, poke holes in arguments, and debate one another in a way that manifests their
philosophical and logical prowess. Esteemed to the point of reverence, their personalities
have developed in tandem with the expansive scholarship on their respective legal positions.
In the religious world I grew up in, mentioning the opinion of an Amora is no different than
name-dropping Homer or Hegel in the academic world. Like in many other ancient religious
traditions, their words are still immortalized and revered today. At the same time, some of
the ideas presented in legal arguments, especially concerning the realm of science, may seem
nothing short of ridiculous to contemporary readers. Many have been proven wrong in the
millennia and a half since the Talmuds completion.
Rabbinic medicinal advice, likely inspired by ancient Greco-Roman society and science,
provides a perfect example of the Amoraims affirmation of blatantly incorrect scientific
knowledge. They advise the sufferer of a migraine to bring a wild rooster and slaughter it
with a pure silver coin, positioning the rooster in such a way that the blood will trickle down
the aching side of the head. One potential cure for a nosebleed is to have a man write,
I, Papi Shila bar Sumki, a meaningless phrase, backwards. Another more complicated
remedy involves stepping over a canal that flows from east to west, placing one foot on each
bank and placing mud from under the right foot in the right hand. Then, the sages advise
twisting two strands of wool with the left hand, immersing the strands in the mud, and finally
inserting one strand into each nostril 1. This medical advice is found in the same volume
which describes marriage and divorce contractsboth of which are still used in many Jewish
communities today. In short, though the Talmudic legal discourse is logically brilliant, the
sagacity of the Amoraim seems to wane on the level of content in light of modern scientific
advances. How can enlightened religious Jews continue to admire the entire Talmud and its
personalities in the face of new scientific knowledge?
Today, rabbinical authorities have ruled that Jews are not obligated to adhere to Talmudic

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texts containing extralegal scientific advice. But that is not the pointI can figure out for
myself that its probably smarter to pop an Advil or two than to slaughter a wild rooster.
I believe the Amoraim were scholars of Torah, not medicine. Both science and Talmudic
study require a certain degree of emotional distance for precise analysis. Yet both call upon
their scholars to embrace their studies with genuine care and dedication. The scientist as
well as the Talmudist share a quest for understanding human existence and take the notion
of life seriously. Thus, they both seek to heal the sick and attempt to make sense of Earths
beginnings.
Religion is often described as a leap of faith, and, accordingly, the Talmud relies upon
tradition and a chain of rabbinic authority as its primary strength. Yet in a way, science is a
leap of faith as well, though some might argue a less drastic one. At the end of the day, I feel
that I take two leaps of faith, one in my Frontiers of Science lecture hall and the other in the
religious study hall, for infallible science will remain out of reach as long as we are hindered
by imperfect methodology for research and by the necessity to interpret results through the
filter of our own subjectivity. Science cannot hold all of the answers and so room exists for

Drawing by Amy Pollack for Professor Pollacks book The Fruit of Biology and the Biology of Faith

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another model of truth, religion, to work in tandem with it.

The rabbis of the Talmud did not work in a vacuum, and some of their ideas
therefore reflect the influences of their time, however wrong those influences may have
been. However, the inevitable presence of errors does not change the incredible insight I
believe Amoraim have into human nature and purpose. The brilliant intricacies within this
vast text, and the deep lessons it contains, merit respect regardless of the factual validity of
some select statements. I imagine the ancient rabbis, with their undeniable thirst for truth,
would have felt exceedingly comfortable in my Frontiers of Science class. With some more
studying, I hope to get there as well.

Notes
1 Babylonian Talmud (Vilna Edition). Tractate Gittin. Folios 68b-69b.

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Professor Robert Pollack on Science,
Religion, and the Missing Link
Interview by Shira Poliak

Courtesy of Columbia University

A biologist, former dean of Columbia College, professor, and author, Robert Pollack is the founder
and current director of Columbias Center for the Study of Science and Religion (CSSR). In 1999,
Pollack established the CSSR hoping to use the tools of both science and religion to examine the
natural world and our place in it. He sat down with Sanctum to discuss the Centers mission and work,
as well as his personal take on the ethical and moral dimensions of science.

What prompted the founding of CSSR (Center for the study of Science and Religion)?
A push and a pull. The push came from the historical fact that I had been the dean of Columbia
College from 82 to 89. A decade later I was the author of Signs of Life and asked to give a series

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of talks, which became Faith of Biology. I became aware that I was no longer satisfied with the fact
that my best contribution to science was going to be running a government-funded lab. Consequently,
I decided not to reapply for my grants once they ran out. That was the ultimate push: For me, the
important questions no longer lay within the lab.
The pull was another historical fact: At that time, Columbia was receiving tens of millions of
dollars a year in royalties from a patent held by a colleague at the Medical Center. That money, because
it was patent money, had a limited extension in time before it would end. The trustees would not allow
it to go into the base of the budget out of fear that upon its termination, there would be a deficit.
Instead, they gave it to the university provosts office to distribute for start-up enterprises that would
have a chunk of money up front and would then have to find outside funding. I conceived of the CSSR
as a justifiable use of that money and was able to get started with those funds. Jeff Sachs then arrived
from Harvard and started a reinterpretation of the Earth Institute. In a wonderful conversation with
Jeff Sachs, it became clear to us both that the obligations of global sustainable development were as
much an ethical and moral obligation as a political or scientific one.
We agreed that the CSSR should be one of the centers of the Earth Institute, which is anomalous.
Most places that are consortia of academic enterprises given over to global systems dont have anything
to do with established religion at any level. Thats why were in both places; that is to say that were, first
of all, in the academic science and social science side of things. And, because the Center was set up that
way, I discovered the great need, interest, and yearning of people working out of religious commitment
for facts about the natural world presented in an unthreatening way. So I began a series of courses on
DNA and on evolution, sustainability, and environmentalism, taught by me and my colleagues at the
CSSR. Now there will be a new Earth Institute undergraduate major (sustainable development), and I
expect that we will require an ethics course or two for that major.

What do you mean when you say that globalization demands us to explore these questions
on a moral, ethical level?
Let me see if I can be concrete. Last year, China produced more CO2 into the atmosphere than the
United States did and therefore became, in global systems terms, the biggest economy, not in terms of
money, but in terms of its consequences on the planet. A rational person would say that it is a problem
that China has now reached that point. Now a moral problem arises. A person says to himself, I meet
myself as a Chinese person and I imagine myself as that person, the same as me but from China. That
person tells me, We are doing the same thing as nations, but you are emitting five times more carbon
dioxide per capita than I am, than my country isWhy should I not want to be where you are? That

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is the moral question. We say that its bad for the planet, but we dont want to do our part. If we are
going to be honest about it, we need to say that well meet China half-way. That means managing with
half the carbon dioxide output as we now have. Try and find any politicians who say that. Why dont
they? Because they would lose their jobs. Thats the moral gap.
The easy solution isnt doable. It isnt doable, not because of ignorance, but because the facts are so
terrifying that people try to avoid confronting the reality. Among the people who stably, reproducibly
have the strength to confront this moral problem of our responsibility to the rest of the world are
religious people. Its not that scientists dont care, but it is difficult for them to confront the problem.
The religious path to that confrontation turns out, in my experience, to be a very useful thing to
understand and most scientists dont understand that religious path. They think of it as a competition,
but its not. Two people can have completely different motivations even though they wish to see the
same thing resolved, whether because its an economic optimization and social choice issue or whether
because its the right thing to do.

What do you think can be gained by studying the interaction between science and
religion?
I dont think we study the interaction. We use the insights of both to address the problems that
are otherwise apparently insurmountable. We need the tool kits provided by both ways of thinking in
order to get passed the paralysis of terror and denial.

According to the CSSR website, questioners must be willing to accept the burden of sharing
both objective knowledge and subjective experience with each other in order to examine the
issues lying at the boundary of the scientific and religious ways of comprehending the world
and our place in it. How is this balance achieved?
By living a self-conscience life and trying to be honest with yourself about your limitations, your
fears, your anxieties, your wishes, your competitive instincts, your terrified instincts, your happy instincts
and just knowing yourself. Thats a glib answer.
The larger answer would be that when looked at as a species, people are primates, and we share with
primates an advanced, complicated social independence. In us primates, social independence is most
marked by a period of extraordinarily delayed helpless infancy. Every one of us begins life with an
adult dedicating a vast amount of resources to keeping us, not only alive, but socialized, engaged. The
four-letter word for that is love. The same exact experience (of love) is what end-of-life care is about.
How do you bring love into those last moments? The paradoxical observation I would make of us as

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a species is that our unique emergence through this delayed infancy of a self-aware consciousness has
brought about the unintended consequence of a false abstraction: a non-biological, but real abstraction
of total autonomous free will as an adult. We cruise like billiard balls bumping off each other without
reflecting that caring for another person without any return is prerequisite to our mental state of free
will. Consequently, you get the answer by remembering, realizing, and accepting the vulnerability that
had to be part of your life for you to develop an open mind in the first place.

Do you think that we are trained to establish such a balance?

Training is not a good word. Any aspect of a persons life is a read-out of an enormously complicated
set of emotional interactions starting with infancy and birth. What language you speak and what you
think of as acceptable are historical factorsthey are not inherited in DNA, nor are they biological. In
terms of DNA, we are one species. Any two people differ in DNA sequence by no more than a tenth
of a percent. But we dont think of each other in that way. If you dont know someones language--and

Drawing by Amy Pollack, for a Frontiers of Science lecture by Professor Pollack

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there are thousands of languagesthey are not quite you. All of that is the late-onset consequence of
having the mental capacity for language. So how do you walk back through the maze of the success of
the species? Thats the work of the CSSR. How do you really understand yourself as a member of a
species? Does anyone you know think of themselves as a member of a group of seven billion people?
Not really.
In religious terms, a lovely, unexpected outcome is that any serious religion, however large or small,
has the core belief that what it has to tell is worth everybody knowing. It means that once you get past
the awkwardness of saying, If two different religions both think everybody should believe what they
say, and if they are different, then neither has anything to say, you realize that they say to everybody
that You may think of yourself as the most important person in the world because when you die
youre not there anymore, but nevertheless, mortality is an inherent condition of the species. You cant
get away from it. Therefore, if you dont want it done to you, dont do it to somebody else. Youre not
special. That may be believed by a billion plus Christians in the Sermon of the Mount, but its not
lived. It may be believed in Hillel-terms, but its not lived. Theres a Koranic equivalent, but its not lived.
Wheres the gap? Thats what Im interested in. Thats where developing a proper articulation of an
ethics of sustainability and ethics of enough is a non-trivial job that requires data and knowledge of
what religions have thought about this problem.

What issues or areas of study are you most presently engaged in?
What we will do in the next years is to try to make a public statement about the ethic of
sustainability. There are, however, very many serious religious voices that say this may not be done.
It is very interesting that in a major world religion there is a dispute about whether or not this
problem is in fact solvable whether there is a species-wide ethic of sustainability, or whether we
are so diverse, that suggesting it is just revealing a bias about the centrality of Western rationality.
To address that problem, we at CSSR have agreed that starting with the fall semester we will, in
our public events, address the deepest impediments to our global ethic of sustainability, not to
say exactly what it is , but to have different people speak about the impediments to the emergence
of one.

I thought your description of the similarities between scientific insight and religious
revelation in The Faith of Biology was very interesting, especially since the two concepts
are often perceived as being opposed to each other. What similarities do you see in these two
concepts, and how do the similarities inform your research?

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What they both have in common is that they emerge discontinuously without rational processing.
But they are not the same. In science, everything must immediately be subject to recasting as a
disprovable, testable hypothesis, or else it is useless. The other kind of emergent discontinuous insight,
religion, is put to a different test: its effect on other peoples lives. William James describes this test
brilliantly in Origins of Religious Experience. Religious experience, according to James, is a prophetic
experience, not out of worship of the prophet because of his own life, which is often quite full of
suffering and misery, but for its immediate utility to you in your life. James says, You know a prophetic
person by their fruits, not by their roots. This is not true of scientific insights.
Scientific insights are real so long as they cant be overturned by further experimentation. The great,
incredible discontinuous genius of both Darwin and Einstein is that what they said was so simple
that people couldnt believe it. It was so anti-intuitive, but it holds up a hundred years later. Its just
the way nature is. There is nothing in good scientific insight that requires subjective experience; yet
there is nothing but subjective experience that speaks to the validity of a religious insight. Thats the
difference.

Do you think religious beliefs should be considered when making scientific or medical
decisions?
A scientific decision, I assume, is, What do these data mean and what do we have to do next to
see if we are right? Since the natural world is shared by everybody, I dont think that a religious life
has much to say about what the next experiment should be. On the other hand, I think that a religious
life has a lot to say about what the overall priority should be of one line of questioning over another.
But inside a laboratory, inside an agreed-upon question and answer system through science, I dont see
where it plays out.
On the other hand, you have to ask yourself what the difference is between medicine and
science. If you make medicine into science, then we are the experimental objects and there
goes all human feeling. While science is necessary for rational medicine, medicine is not science
anymore than an orphanage is good parentingtheres no love in it, there cant be. But you need
love in medicine. I know the peer review group for science (I was in it and I decided to leave it),
and I know exactly how well it works in science, but not for the rest of life. When you face an
end-of-life issue, whos the peer review group? It should be dying people, not doctors. I would
be very happy to see a structure in which the scientific invention of a peer review group goes to
rationalize medical treatment, but I think that it is the people in need of the treatment, not the
people who give it, who are the peers. Medicine is the treatment of the sick person, not doing an

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experiment.
As someone knowledgeable in both religion and science, how do you think the fact that
religious beliefs cant be tested or justified scientifically affects their credibility or the way in
which they are received?
Credibility and way of reception are a matter of peoples inner lives and what it is that they think is
most important to them. How they receive religion depends on what they can bear to hear and what
it is they are most concerned about. It has nothing to do with provability; it has to do with insight and
help. Religion is much closer to medicine than it is to science, and the validity of the insight depends
on the response of the person, not anything else. Its not testable because people are different from one
another, and it shouldnt be testable because then a person who feels better would be deprived of free
will if you had a pill to take in place of the insight. You help someone decide to rethink their situation,
and thats not an experiment there is no hypothesis there. Its simply accepting your vulnerability,
someone elses vulnerability, and your capacity to alleviate that suffering from that vulnerability. Whats
the hypothesis? Nothing is being tested, nothing is being disproven.
Let me put it this way: A serious scientist is happy to acknowledge in his or her mortal state
that there are aspects of his or her life which cannot be dealt with through science, for which you
need other people, as people, as fellow humans. That human-to-human interaction is not subject to
testability, unless you want to attempt to build a robot to take the place of human interaction. Then
there would be an interesting question. Lets say you could, and the robot had no feelings, and yet the
person receiving the feelings felt that the robot did have emotions. Is it right to do? But thats not where
we are right now. Right now neurobiology is not at a point where it can do disprovable hypothesis-
testing on what a thought is, on what a memory or feeling is. So we are stuck with free will for the time
being, and for that we need each other, and religions predicate that needing each other is an obligation,
not a problem. And that is a very handy thing to lean back on.

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 WALL-E, the Thorn in the
Side of Buddhism:
A Critique of the Dalai Lamas The
Universe in a Single Atom
Reuben Doetsch

Photo by Jody Zellman.

The Dalai Lama serves as the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people and as a
spokesperson for Buddhism worldwide, and is also a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. His
book, The Universe in a Single Atom, attempts to reconcile claims made from scientific and
Buddhist positions in a constructive and cooperative dialogue. Given his intelligence, the Dalai
Lama could not turn a blind eye to the progress of science; nor, according to the Dalai Lama, can
scientific progress turn a blind eye to the spiritual progress of Buddhism. The Universe in a Single
Atom tries to legitimize Buddhism in an intellectual climate dominated by a scientific worldview.
In so doing, the Dalai Lama attacks scientific materialism and its adherents, going so far as to liken
science itself to a religion. Both approaches make philosophical presuppositions and metaphysical

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claims about reality. Are these metaphysical claims justified? How do these views hold up in light
of modern scholarship on the issues? Are science and Buddhism reconcilable?
I will map out the Dalai Lamas philosophy of the mind and explore his claims about the
natures of consciousness and metaphysical dualism. Then I will investigate the persuasiveness
of the Dalai Lamas metaphysical claims in light of recent scholarship. Finally, I will address the
consequences of the emergence of strong artificial intelligence with respect to his metaphysical
views, and the consequences on the Dalai Lamas own conception of scientific materialism.
Through the framework of the Dalai Lamas book, I will argue that the reconciliation of
Buddhism and science is impossible because of their fundamentally conflicting metaphysical
positions: Buddhism endorses a dualist metaphysical ontology (with mental and physical
substances), while the scientific method presupposes a united metaphysical ontology, or
physicalism. Substance dualism is the belief in two fundamental substances of the world, a
mental substance and a physical substance. Materialism and physicalism are synonymous in
todays philosophical lexicon, and both refer to a world view in which everything supervenes on,
or is necessitated by, the physical.1
Before I examine Buddhist metaphysics from this perspective, I will anticipate a common
objection: Logic cannot be used to undermine a metaphysical position. However, if a counter-
example to a metaphysical framework is given, either critics of such a logical explanation should
either change their framework of thought to account for the counter-example or abandon it
altogether. Let us consider a metaphysical belief abandoned because of science. Vitalism, a
widely held philosophy in the ancient world, held that animal and human life contained some vital
principle distinct from other substances. The concept of vitalism was discredited when scientists
understood the principles of genetics and how organic molecules are assembled differently for
plants, animals, and humans. The argument goes as follows: If simple organic molecules (which
have no vital substance) can be put together to create a simple animal (simple organisms), then
there can be nothing vital present in the animals.
Since metaphysical arguments are not immune to criticism, I will try to counter the
metaphysics of Buddhism on a logical level by demonstrating contradictions. I will begin by
explicating the Dalai Lamas two main objections against a scientific or materialist understanding
of consciousness: the lack of an objective framework to look at consciousness and the qualia
argument from knowledge.
The Dalai Lama first affirms that the object of our study is mental, that which examines it
is mental, and the very medium by which the study is undertaken is mental.2 The inability to

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look at consciousness objectively creates a problem for scientific inquiry into the mind, and for a
physicalist world view, since all arguments for dualism involve mental events and consciousness.
His Holiness raises the problem that modern science lacks a fully developed methodology
by which to investigate consciousness. The Dalai Lama seeks to understand the possibility of an
objective methodology for subjective experiences. Logically, even if consciousness can never be
fully explained in terms of physical activity, the mental can still be supervened by the physical. It
is possible that another body with all the same neurons and all the same physical structures could
replace an individuals physical self without changing his consciousness. The supervienience
relationship is defined as, A set of properties A supervenes upon another set B just in case no
two things can differ with respect to A-properties without also differing with respect to their
B-properties.3 Therefore, the Dalai Lamas objection fails to provide a basis for the belief that
there exists another fundamental building block of the human bodya mental substance. Instead
it only identifies the difficulties in wholly understanding consciousness and subjective experience,
while studying their underlying physical phenomena.
The Dalai Lamas next objection, rooted in his explanation of qualia, has been used extensively
by phenomenologists and philosophers of mind. The color red is the classic example of qualia.
Every single individual experiences red subjectively. These pure essences of experience are known
as qualia. The subsequent argument that the existence of qualia necessitates another metaphysical
substance is also known as the qualia argument from knowledge.4 To put the question another
way: How can experiences of something like the color red, which can be completely different for
every person, ever be understood in an objective framework? If they cannot be understood in
such a framework, then another type of substance (mental) must exist.
This reasoning is problematic because even if the experience of red cannot be codified in
purely physical terms, it does not necessarily mean that another mental substance must exist within
the human body. Physicalism is an ontological claim that there are no non-physical substances or
facts, but it does not claim to possess the ability to linguistically describe every feeling or object
in physical terms. Thus, none of these objections refutes physicalism or provides evidence for a
mental substance.
After articulating his critiques of physicalism, the Dalai Lama posits a counter-example and
begins to discuss the Buddhist philosophy of mind. Buddhism proposes a version of Cartesian
dualismnamely, that there are two independent substances, one called matter and the other
called mind.5 Buddhism suggests that there are three fundamentally distinct aspects of the
world in which we live: matter, mind, and abstract things. The reader glimpses the Dalai Lamas

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metaphysical assumptions when he asks neuroscientists if conceptually at least, we could allow

the possibility of both upward and downward causation?6 If both upward and downward
causation existed, two separate substances would have to exist as well. If A can cause B and B can
cause A, one cannot be fully dependent on the other.
The Dalai Lama seems genuinely interested in these various problems and acknowledges much
of the dependence of the mind on the physical when he states, Underlying this assumption
is the confidence that all mental states, both cognitions and sensations, can be correlated to
processes in the brain.7 The Dalai Lama, however, still hangs onto his metaphysical assumptions
when he says, I do not think current neuroscience has any real explanation of consciousness
itself.8 However, this admission implies that the Dalai Lama would allow for the possibility of a
physicalist explanation of consciousness in the future.
Now that I have countered the Dalai Lamas objections to the scientific nature of Buddhism
and extrapolated the Dalai Lamas own metaphysical views, I will try to put those metaphysical
views into question through the use of
scientific possibilities. Much in the same
way that DNA and a more thorough
understanding of biology led to the
demise of vitalism, I will attempt to
use the possibility of strong artificial
intelligence to undermine Buddhist
metaphysics.
WALL-E, the Pixar-Disney character,
thinks, feels, and even falls in love. What
do human-like robots and Buddhist
metaphysics have in common? The
existence of artificial intelligence (AI)
raises a host of interesting metaphysical
problems for a dualist metaphysical
conception and consequently for the
Dalai Lamas conception of Buddhist
metaphysics. AI is a branch of computer
science that works to program computers
Fruits Will Be Labeled by Tenzin Doma Lama with the ability to complete human-like

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cognitive tasks. There is an important distinction between strong and weak AI. Weak AI involves
programming a computer to do specific tasks. For example, Big Blue, the chess program which
beat the former chess grandmaster Gary Kasporov, is an example of weak AII; it was explicitly
designed to play chess. Big Blue could not have a conversation, make tea, or even play checkers.
On the other hand, strong AI enables a machine to successfully perform any intellectual task a
human being is capable of. WALL-E is a theoretical example of strong AI, since it can think,
feel, and do all tasks normally relegated only to humans. WALL-E exhibits meta-cognition, self-
awareness, and empathy. How does WALL-E, a fictional movie, pose a problem for philosophy?
Human-like robots are closer to reality than most people realize. Though no programs currently
exist that exhibit strong AI, with the large amount of research currently taking place, the invention
of strong AI seems certain in the future and very probable within the next twenty years. Todays
robots have been shown to mimic human facial emotions, identify human emotions based on facial
cues, answer basic questions, and understand simple commands. There are two approaches to
strong AI. One of them is to create intelligence, not by copying the structure of the human brain,
but by capturing its behavior. In this version of strong AI, the robot would have programs to
process visual stimuli, respond to stimuli, and understand language. Functions could be added to
process questions and formulate answers. This form of artificial intelligence understands the brain
as an aggregation of functions and has shown great promise in terms of actual implementation, but
it does not hold as much weight when used in a metaphysical argument.
The other approach to strong AI is to actually mimic the brain, neuron by neuron, in a process
called Whole Brain Emulation (WBE). Computers would simulate every neuron firing, receiving,
and interacting with all the other neurons. In his paper Whole Brain Emulation, Oxford professor
of science and philosophy Nick Bostrom concludes: If electrophysiological models are enough,
full human brain emulations should be possible before mid-century. Animal models of simple
mammals would be possible one to two decades before this9. Ray Kurzweil, another artificial
intelligence researcher, deduces in his book The Singularity Is Near that the computational power
of computers will be sufficient to simulate brain functioning within five to fifteen years.10 Scientists
have already simulated the neurons of our eyes and ears with computers. Small insects have been
simulated in labs and have shown to have similar behavior to their carbon-based likenesses. The
question is not whether or not WBE will happen, but when.
For Buddhists, mental processing is separate from the physical realm. How does one
demonstrate that only the physical exists and that the mental is dependent and supervened on
the physical? The Dalai Lama claims that Buddhists are substance dualists, but by replicating

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human life without any of its mental substance, artificial intelligence forces Buddhism to produce
a new argument for the existence of the mental substance. The formal argument proceeds as
follows: Computers contain no mental substance. Computers emulate the brain and act exactly
like the human brain, essentially acting as a digital human brain. A human brain needs no mental
substance, which contradicts the metaphysical position that the brain contains mental substance.
So where do we go from here? Artificial intelligence clearly raises metaphysical issues that
Buddhists and believers must contend with. The Dalai Lama himself explains:
Some view the brain in terms of a computational model, comparing it to artificial intelligence;
others attempt an evolutionary model for the emergence of the various aspects of consciousness. In
modern neuroscience, there is a deep question about whether the mind and consciousness are any
more than simply operations of the brain, whether sensations and emotions, are more than chemical
reactions. To what extent does the world of subjective experience depend on the hardware and
working order of the brain? It must to some significant extent, but does it do so entirely? 11
Artificial Intelligence clearly answers this question. The subjective experience is entirely
contingent on the physical, and there exists nothing mental. Rewinding to the second chapter
of The Universe in a Single Atom, the Dalai Lama explains the similarities between Buddhism
and science: So one fundamental attitude shared by Buddhism and science is the commitment
to keep searching for reality by empirical means, to be willing to discard accepted or long-held
positions if our search finds that the truth is different.12 Does his statement indicate that with the
emergence of whole brain simulation, the Dalai Lama must in fact become the materialist?
Though new advancements in artificial intelligence impel the Dalai Lama to adapt his
understanding of the human mind, the fundamental point that he advocates for in The Universe
in a Single Atomthe need for an ethical and moral system of sciencestill rings true. Even if
the metaphysics of Buddhism fall apart, the application of the study of the mind remains entirely
important. A Buddhist world view provides a useful methodology for alleviating suffering, while
meditative practices utilize the brain in ways yet to be understood by science. However, because
materialism is now a reality, Buddhists must attempt to operate from a more accurate conception
of the human condition.

Notes
1 Stoljar, Daniel. Physicalism, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , URL = <http://
plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/>.

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2 Lama, Dalai. The Universe in a Single Atom The Convergence of Science and Spirituality.
New York: Broadway, 2006. Print. 122
3 McLaughlin, Brian, Bennett, Karen, Supervenience, The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/
archives/fall2008/entries/supervenience/>.
4 Nida-Rmelin, Martine, Qualia: The Knowledge Argument, The Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/
archives/win2009/entries/qualia-knowledge/>.
5 Dalai Lama, 125
6 Dalia Lama 128
7 Dalia Lama 129
8 Dalia Lama 130
9 Dalia Lama 132
10 Sandberg, A. & Bostrom, N. (2008): Whole Brain Emulation: A Roadmap, Technical Report
#20083, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University81
11 Kurzweil, Ray. The Singularity Is Near When Humans Transcend Biology. New York:
Viking Adult, 2005. Print. 10
12 Dalia Lama 127

31
 Gendered Scripture &
Gendered Souls:
The Christian Debate on Heterosexuality
Sarah Ngu

Photo by Zahava. Mandelbaum

In the fall of 2009, members of the Westboro Baptist Church protested at Columbia University. They
held up signs that read God hates fags1 and Mourn for your sins. Children stood among their ranks.
Opposite them stood members of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship holding up counter-protest signs.
One sign read, God is love, and another, Speak the truth in love.
Pictures of the protest and counter-protest were quickly posted online as part of a Bwog article2,
eliciting a shower of harsh comments, one of them dismissively calling the Westboro protestors
assclowns. Another commentator wrote, I feel for the children who got sucked up into this clusterfuck
of irrationality against their will.
The debate surrounding the morality of homosexuality is much larger and subtler than this striking
confrontation between the Westboro Baptist Church and students from Columbia University. Yet the
debate is often treated in terms as unforgiving as the aforementioned Bwog comments. Any traditionalist

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Christian who believes that homosexuality is immoral is generally labeled as a hater who secretly (or
not-so-secretly) harbors an irrational homophobia.
This narrow view of traditionalists overlooks the many people who believe that though homosexuality
is immoral, one ought to love homosexuals.
Jacob Tadros, president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, says: Homosexuality properly
understood is a sexual orientation, and orientations per se are not inherently sinful. Unambiguously,
however, it is homosexual acts that the Bible clearly shows us to be sinful So how then should
Christians treat homosexuals? I would treat homosexuals no differently than I would treat heterosexuals.
Through following Christs example, I would serve and love and bless them no differently than any other
community on campus.
The reason that Christians can, as the phrase goes, love the sinner and hate the sin is that sin is
dis-identified from the person in Christianity. The distinction between sin and virtue is turned into the
distinction between natural and unnatural self. The Christian moral opposition to homosexuality is not
necessarily due to deep-seated, irrational hatred, but rather to theological principles that undergird the
Bible and Christian doctrine in its entirety.
This article does not analyze the key verses in the Bible that traditionalists argue are the most effective
evidence against homosexuality.3 That route requires an extensive historical overview and a brief crash-
course in Greek and Hebrew in order to make sense of the exegetical debates over the meanings of words.
Instead, I will stick to arguments made not from technical words but from pro-heterosexual principles
Imago Dei and Gods relationship with Manthat traditionalists make in their case for homosexualitys
immorality. I will then present revisionists critiques that point out that to be pro-heterosexual does not
necessitate being anti-homosexual, before synthesizing both sides and concluding which side is more
convincing. In this way, I hope to present the intellectual foundations of both arguments, paying respect
to each camp and avoiding emotional accusations.
The core of the traditionalist argument against homosexuality is not that homosexuality is immoral per
se. Rather, as the argument goes, homosexuality is unnatural to Man (natural defined as in accordance
with Gods design) and is consequently perverse and immoral. In response to those who argue that there is
a lack of conclusive evidence that homosexuality in and of itself has harmful consequences, traditionalists
often respond by saying that because homosexuals are not fulfilling their natural function in Gods design,
they are hurting themselves in that they are degrading themselves, much like a prostitute who feels no
qualms about her job is nevertheless still degrading herself. Why, then, is homosexuality not part of Gods
design? I will introduce two main traditionalist arguments to answer the question that are founded on the
concept of Imago Dei and the husband-and-wife metaphor for Gods relationship with Man.

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At the heart of the Christian debate over homosexuality is the debate over gender, since homosexuality
is labeled as a perverse mixing of gender categories. What does the Bible have to say about what gender is?
Traditionalists essentially claim that there are gender differences between males and females, although not
all revisionists believe so. The question of gender is another paper in itself, but the topic of what constitutes
masculinity and femininity is can be amply addressed through a Christian conceptual framework.
In terms of Imago Deithe image of Godin Genesis there are indicators of genders cosmic
parallels with Gods being: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.4 The implication of that verse is that it is through the perfectly fitted
union of male and female that the image of God is revealed. Ulrich Mauser, former dean of Pittsburg
Theological Seminary, wrote that the dark shadow cast over homosexual activity in the Bible can only
be understood as the contrast of the great light which is shed on the creation of male and female which
elicits the judgment very good by its Creator, indicating that in order to understand the immorality of
homosexuality, one must first understand the morality and goodness of heterosexuality at large.5
Note that the Imago Dei argument is not claiming that one must marry (someone from the opposite
sex) in order to complete oneself. The Bible does not claim marriage as a necessity, regardless of what
many romantic movies might have us believe. One ought to be complete and self-sufficient with God and
God alone. Paul, the author of all the verses in the New Testament about homosexuality, writes, Now
to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do.6 Furthermore, the
Bible clearly states that all Christians, single or married, are transformed into his [Gods] image with ever-
increasing glory,7 The male-female union may very well be the most complete earthly picture of God,
but that does not mean it is normative. The legitimization of singlehood in the Bible provokes questions
of how literally we must apply the concept of Imago Dei to our lives.
Imago Dei is grounded in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, and thus stems from Creation, the
beginning of the world. But how is this concept applied in Heaven or in the afterlife? In the afterlife, the
relationship between males and females also holds a cosmic parallel: the relationship between God and
mankind. In a letter to the Church in Ephesians, Paul writes:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves
himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as
Christ does the church for we are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave
his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is
a profound mysterybut I am talking about Christ and the church.8

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The analogy Paul makes is this: as Jesus is to the Church, so is the husband to his wife. Paul also
compares the Church to a virgin, and her husband to Jesus Christ9; Jesus does the same in a parable
about ten virgins in Matthew.10 The union of the Church and Christ occurs in Heaven. Physical union
sexual intercourseis a mere shadow of the spiritual union Christians await with Christ. So, does this
metaphor intend to communicate that heterosexual marriage provides an earthly glimpse into the mystery
of Gods relationship with Man? Or is its purpose to convey the trust and intimacy of the relationship
between God and His people to an audience that was primarily heterosexual, as Christine E. Gudorf
argues?11 After all, Jesus used many agricultural parables because his audience consisted largely of people
who worked the land.
Pauls choice to use gendered language to explain the profound mystery that is Christs relationship
with the Church is extremely telling, but there is a subtle twist: In Heaven, Christian males -are included
in the metaphor of the Church as the wife of Christ. From this twist, its clear that the husband-wife
metaphor cannot be interpreted on a purely literal level. Traditionalists do not expect a Christian male
to feminize himself in order to become a bride for Christ. But even more interestingly, the bride-and-
bridegroom metaphor parallels Jesus statement that at the resurrection people will neither marry nor be
given in marriage; they will be like the angels in Heaven.12 Jesus revealed that marriages among Christians
will be dissolved in Heaven, a statement that only fully makes sense in conjunction with Pauls statement
that all Christians will be married to God. As profound as a heterosexual marriage may be, the divine
marriage will supersede itit will pass away.
This begs the question: Does gender still exist in Heaven? Angels and God, heavenly beings, are
referred to with masculine pronouns in the Bible. So if gender does exist, what is its purpose? One
might argue that Pauls bride-and-bridegroom metaphor implies that while gender distinctions may exist
in Heaven, they might no longer be meaningful, given the fact that all Christians, male or female, are
grouped together as Christs wife. According to this revisionist view, gender is an earthly construct that
will pass away and lose meaning.
One might conclude from this revisionist perspective of marriage that earthly unions dissolve in
Heaven because there is no longer a need to procreate, since all individuals in Heaven live eternally.
Gender exists on earth for procreationand this is, in fact, what traditionalists claim in order to confine
moral legitimization to heterosexual marriages. Still, the revisionist argument has a point: What is the big
fuss about marriage on earth if its just going to pass away in Heaven? What is the purpose of an earthly
marriage?
One has to return to the story of Creation in order to explore these questions. Upon creating Man,
God realizes that it is not good for man to be alone, and so he creates Eve, a woman, to be a suitable

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helper for him.13 God intends for Adam and Eve to physically and emotionally unite. Sex, within the
context of a monogamous relationship, has Gods stamp of approval. What God has joined together,
let man not separate, Jesus remarks on marriage.14
A traditionalist argument deduces from this that the woman is created in order to expand the human
racein other words, a different gender was introduced for the purpose of procreation. After all, God
commands Adam and Eve to be fruitful and increase in numberto procreate.15 Procreation is the
ultimate act of fruition of the physical complementariness of male and female bodies. From there on,
the traditionalist deduces that only heterosexual, and not homosexual, marriages fit Gods design and are
morally approved by God.
But this attribution of marriages value to procreation, a biological and physical act, has some
immediately apparent warning signs. According to this logic, it would seem that an infertile couple cannot
marry because they cannot procreate. Furthermore, this reduction of the union of two souls to that
of two bodiesto the physical act of sexis not at all consistent with Christian doctrine. Husbands
are commanded in the passage about the husband-wife metaphor to love their wives as much as Christ
sacrificially loved the Church. There is no room for love between a monogamous couplewhose sole
purpose is not each other but rather to further the human race by begetting children.
Whats more, if procreation was the only reason for gender distinction, there would be no point
to marriage at all, since random sex, as long as it produced babies, would be completely acceptable.
Furthermore, God could have designed Man to reproduce asexually, like some plants do. Why did He
create the new category: of the female sex? Clearly the survival of the species, or procreation, cannot
be the sole reason for marriage.
To reject physical procreation as the source of value for marriage indicates that marriage in wholly
focused on souls, rather than bodies, and so we are still left wondering why God created another gender.
He could have created, as the joke goes, Steve instead of Eve for Adam to marry. The only way
to explain this reality is to understand the purpose of marriage as operating beneath the physical level,
beyond biological functions like procreation, and into the realm of the emotion and the mindthe soul in
its totality. Gender differences cant be merely physical because procreation, which is the only real result
of physical differences, does not sufficiently explain gender. In other words, there must be gendered
souls.
If there are indeed gendered souls, how does marriage fit into the picture, especially since it fades in
Heaven? It is not enough to point out that marriage will cease in Heaven; one must ask why. The very
limitations of earthly marriage cast light as to its purpose. I suggest that the union of oppositely gendered
souls in marriage is a way to understand, while on earth, the two most central concepts in Christian

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doctrine: the image of God (Imago Dei) and His relationship to man. Earthly marriage is, ultimately,
just a metaphor, a shadowy sign that points to these two divine realities. The happiness and intimacy in
marriage, which extends far beyond the physical pleasure of sex, is a shadow of the ultimate happiness
that arises when one meets ones Maker, when ones desires finally find their ultimate satisfaction in the
One who created our desires. If marriage is a helping tool to understand God and how He relates to
us, then clearly once we meet and relate to God, there is no need for such guidance, and marriage ceases
to exist. The purpose of gender, then, is very much bound up in the purpose of humanity, which is to
be with God.
Different genders, then, are created for the purpose of marriage, which is a God-given way to better
understand God and His relationship with Man. However, it is by no means the only way. If so, then
marriage would be prescriptive for all, and revisionists were right in pointing out that it is not. Leading a
single life is also another way to understand God. A musician may claim that he feels closer God through
music, and a photographer through photos. God provides photos and music as two different ways of
understanding Himone operates through visual and the other through auditory means. But they are
not contradictory methods, just as marriage and singlehood are different but not contradictory. Using this
logic, revisionists claim that a homosexual marriage is different but not contradictory to a heterosexual
marriage.
However, homosexual marriage cannot be categorized under difference. Singlehood is different
from marriage and not contradictory to it because it is not a misuse of Gods gift, but simply a non-use
and a pursuit of a different gift. A better analogy to homosexual marriage would be adultery, since that
is a misuse of Gods gift of intimacy and trust between a couple, a gift which reveals Gods intimate
relationship with his Church. Similarly, a homosexual union would be a misuse of Gods gift of gender
which revealswell, exactly what? If genders are truly distinct from each other, then there must be
something particular and unique to the interplay between two distinct genders that reveals great insight to
the nature of God and his relationship to Man. But what is this great insight?
To answer this question would require defining what masculinity and femininity are, and that (as
I previously stated) requires another paper. Still, I suspect we will never be able to perfectly understand
those categories. That is, perhaps, the beauty of humanity:We escape precise definition, leaving behind
only faint outlines to grasp after. If the Bible is true, gendered souls existthis is the outline that we have.
What is a male soul? What is a female soul? That requires coloring in between the lines. In the words of
Sarah Sumner, a female professor of theology at Azusa Pacific University:

Men and women are paradoxical mysteries that cannot be defined. Defining a woman

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is no more possible than defining a man or defining the Spirit of God. God is not a
definition. Neither is any person. People can describe someone; we can know someone.
But we cannot define someone as if a person could be reduced to a definition. No mystery
of truth can succinctly be defined. 16

This is the point where reason, which has led us so far, cannot enter and leaves us with just faith to guide
us and hold our hand.

Notes
1 Catherine Newhouse, Luke Udstuen. Westboro Baptist Church protests around Columbia. The
Maneater. 3 Oct. 2009. <http://www.themaneater.com/stories/2009/10/3/westboro-baptist-church-
protests-around-columbia/>
2 Westboro Protests at JTS. 24 Sep. 2009. <http://bwog.net/2009/09/24/westboro-protests-at-
jts>
3 Romans 1:25-26; Leviticus 18:22; 1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:9-10
4 Genesis 1:27
5 Ulrich Mauser. The Bible and Homosexuality by Ulrich Mauser. <http://www.godweb.org/
mauser.htm>
6 1 Corinthians 7:8
7 2 Corinthians 3:18
8 Ephesians 5:25-32
9 2 Corinthians 11:2
10 Matthew 25:1-12
11 Christine E. Gudorf. The Bible and Science on Sexuality. Homosexuality, Science, and the Plain
Sense of Scripture, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 131.
12 Matthew 22:30
13 Genesis 2:17-18
14 Mark 10:7-9
15 Genesis 9:7
16 Sarah Sumner. Men and Women in the Church: Building Consensus on Christian Leadership.
(Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 269.

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 Secular Age,
or Secular Illusion?
A Critique of Charles Taylors Secular Age
Adam Sieff

Central to any sociological discussion of modernity is a theory of secularization. Though some

theories of secularization focus on the quantitative and qualitative decline of religious belief,
or the extent to which religion has become privatized and insulated from politics, a discussion
of modernity is more closely engaged with the general idea that religion has ceased to function
as a master narrative. Indeed, the past century has seen religion denuded from all other spheres
of life in a manner unforeseen in millennia. Though the effects of this sort of secularization and
the subsequent emergence of value-pluralism (the condition of competing value-systems) have
proliferated into all facets of public and private life, perhaps most compelling is the extent to which

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secularization has changed the conditions for living meaningfully.

In his 2007 treatise on religion in modernity, A Secular Age, renowned Canadian moral philosopher
and devout Roman Catholic Charles Taylor echoes other theories of modernity and concludes that
there has been a shift in the conditions and experience of religious belief between the Middle
Ages and the present. As he articulates it, this shift constituted a change in the understanding of
fullnesswhich is to say, meaningfrom a condition in which our highest spiritual and moral
aspirations point us inescapably to God, to one in which these aspirations can be related to a host
of different sources. In other words, religious unbelief was inconceivable in 1500, but represented
an option in 2000. For Taylor, the difference was the development of an exclusive humanism that
provided an immanent (inner-worldly) alternative to transcendental fullness. The emergence of such
an immanent fullness and the resulting option of unbelief are the defining features of what Taylor
calls our secular age, and provide the basis for his conception of modernity.
Conspicuous throughout Taylors tome of nearly a thousand pages is the sense that he is
attempting to transcend Max Webers prominent theory of modernity. For Weber, modernity is the
product of rationalization, the human attempt to systematize and organize the social and physical
environment in a way that makes desired outcomes more calculable, predictable, and controlled. It is
in effect a quest for world mastery and the eradication of all mysterious incalculable forces.
However, rationalization produces not only a world that men can master, but also one defined by
nihilism and value-pluralism. It is nihilistic because rationalization, by making the world calculable,
reveals the underlying causal processes of observed phenomena and manufactures a fact-value
divide that deprives us of acting meaningfully. It is value-pluralistic because rationalization exposed
the irrationality of religion to the extent that it could no longer function as a transcendent value
binding together the various value-spheres of human experience. Though rationalization was
spawned in the sphere of economics, all the othersthe political, aesthetic, erotic, intellectual,
etc.were permanently released as separate, equal, autonomous, and unbridgeable value-spheres
as a result of rationalization.
The fate of our times, the essence of modernity, is thus, for Weber, the convergence of nihilism
with value-pluralism. To describe the situation more vividly, Weber makes the analogy of a return
to polytheism, of gods (value-sphere orientations) interlocked in an eternal struggle battling each
other for Mans allegiance. The individual can only bear the fate of the times as a man and decide
which is God for him, and which is the devil. Whether that means a life devoted to the creation or
appreciation of aesthetic beauty, a life devoted to the accumulation of capital, or even a life devoted
to Christ, it does not matter. All are equally valid life orientations, for a modern man can do nothing

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other than live with integrity according to the stipulations of his chosen deity.
However, what modern men cannot do nowas opposed to the previous thousand years,
during which men were blinded by the presumably exclusive orientation toward Christianityis
bear the pretense of absolutism. This point cannot be underemphasized. Men are commanded
in modern times to be agnostic, to struggle with the possibility of meaningless at all times. They
may find shreds of value in their existence, but they must always question them. If a man cannot
bear this and insists upon clinging to the illusion of truth in his chosen value-sphere, he makes an
intellectual sacrifice by returning to the open arms of his church, office, gallery, or lover.
While Taylor posits something similar to this rationalization thesis, the conclusions about belief
and non-belief that he derives for modernity are controversial and certainly cannot be called Weberian.
Indeed, his entire project seems to be an attempt to create an alternative narrative for modernity that
rescues absolutism from the depths of irrationality and intellectual sacrifice. Where Weber stands to
emphasize and embrace the discomfort of agnosticism as the principal fact of modernity, Taylor shrivels
away, fearing the dire anxiety and destabilizing consequences of the possibility of meaninglessness. His

Photo by Verneva Ziga

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 Sanctum spring 2010

book, in this sense, is the window-dressing for his own intellectual sacrifice.
To summarize, Taylors secularism is the condition of belief following the emergence of exclusive
humanism. It, like Webers theory of spherical differentiation, is characterized by a supernova
of fullness-orientations (value-spheres) competing for our allegiance. For Taylor, as with Weber,
religious belief is just one option in the constellation of non-axiomatic, non-absolutist orientations.
We can responsibly accept the conclusions he draws so far; however, Taylor soils his credibility with
the implications he draws from these conditions.
Above all, Taylor infers that only two types of fullness are available to us, and that both
presuppose the objective structure of theology. In this sense, modern men have only two
options for meaningful existence in this world: religious belief or exclusive humanism. The
latter can take the form of Kantian metaphysics, Hegelian phenomenology, or even Marxism.
But this binary is really a false conflation. Under it, absolutist religious belief and unbelief only
differ to the extent that the former places God outside of humanity, while the latter places God
within it. The subtle binary, lost within an extensive discussion of each of these essentially
theological orientations, wants us to believe that some god remains in all forms of life, even
in religious unbelief. The conflation, however, is a carefully crafted illusion designed to place
absolutist religious belief on an equal plane with all forms of unbelief. In fact, Taylor argues
that the absolutist religious belief of a secular age is actually a richer experience of fuller
understanding than the religious belief of the Middle Agesand even unbelief today
because it must now be chosen by the believer.
This false binary notably rejects a third possibility: that we can rise to the challenge of
selecting our own source of meaning without bearing the absolutist pretense of the infallibility or
righteousness of our convictions. This agnosticism is precisely what Weber emphasizes as the core
fact of modernity. Taylor, however, excludes such an agnosticism from his discussion, despite its
importance to Webers thought. He condescendingly addresses this argument only by referring to
the literary ruminations of Camus, a historical figure whose intellectual stature nonetheless pales
in comparison to Webers. In so doing, Taylor does not address the better manifestation of this
argument as it appears in Webers work. In effect, his disregard for all intellectual history after
Nietzsche serves as a convenient excuse to avoid engaging with this third possibility.
The closest Taylor comes to actually addressing agnosticism directly is when he brushes it aside.
By his account, agnosticism exposes us to a meaningless, hostile universe fraught with dangers
of isolation and loss of meaning. Alas, would that it were otherwise for us and Professor Taylor.
No summers bloom lies before us in modernity, but rather, as per Webers metaphor, a polar night

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of icy darkness and hardness. The fact that modernity commands us to accept an uncomfortable
agnosticism in all our convictions is no grounds to deny reality. In modernity, we can still endeavor
to do great things, build great monuments, and live rewarding lives of love, happiness, virtue, and
yesfaith.
We can only proceed with the understanding that the value-orientation of our actionsthat
which makes them rewarding or virtuousmay ultimately be unjustifiable, and that our actions may
have been in vain. Indeed, we modern men may become tired of life but never satiated with
life. For us there will always remain puzzles that we wish to solve, and, ultimately, what we seize
from this world will always be provisional, never definitive.
To the point, there is a place for religious belief in a secular age, but it is no more objectively
fulfilling than other forms of value-action, nor any more righteous, and it certainly cannot be absolute.
The modernity Taylor offers us is no secular age, but rather a secular illusion to quell his own
apprehensions. Given his conclusions, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Templeton Foundation
which donates millions to research that reconciles science and religionawarded Professor Taylor
for A Secular Age with its $1.5 million Templeton Prize for affirming lifes spiritual dimension.
Taylor may find modernity uncomfortable, but such is the fate of our times. The essence of our
existence is the struggle to embrace the anxiety of inexhaustible existential uncertainty. The question
is, will we bear it as men?

Notes
1 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2007, p. 26
2 Max Weber, Science as a Vocation, in From Max Weber, eds. Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright
Mills, New York: Oxford, 1946, p. 139.
3 Ibid, p. 139
4 Ibid, p. 148-9
5 Ibid, p. 149
6 Ibid, p. 155
7 Ibid, p. 13
8 Taylor, A Secular Age, p. 9
9 Taylor, A Secular Age, pp. 9, 52
10 Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation, in From Max Weber, p. 128.
11 Max Weber, Science as a Vocation, p. 151

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 All Things Considered:
Religion, Ethics, and the Mission of the University
Lynne Foote

Photo by Jody Zellman

For its first 100 years, Columbia had the mission of not only educating the intellect but also the
moral foundation of its students. In 1896, N.Y. mayor and Columbia alum Abram Hewitt asserted in
his address dedicating the new Columbia Morningside campus that the Universitys purpose was to
train a free people in the virtue and knowledge on which their liberty depends.1 Despite this oft stated
objective, Descartes theory of dualism between mind and body separated the intellectual realms of
science and the humanities from the seventeenth century onwards. The advent of the modern research
university widened this disjunction as science became the most legitimate path to knowledge.
Years later, however, Columbia students insisted that ethics be reconnected with the acquisition
of knowledge within the University. Students during the 1960s rebelled against traditional gender,
class, and race divisions, andperhaps counter-intuitively radical students at Columbia in 1968
insisted that the long-forgotten moral imperative of the University be reassumed. They contended
that Columbia had abandoned moral scrutiny of its role and mission.

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 Sanctum Spring 2010

The Universitys facility, faculty, and funding were being used in support of the governments
military efforts in Vietnam. Columbia was also in the process of building a gym on public land in
Morningside Park, at which local minority residents would have to use the back entrance. Students
saw both of these activities as fundamentally immoral. Columbias support of the military-industrial
complex was seen as endorsing and extending Americas colonial ambitions. Discriminating against and
exploiting its minority neighbors was perpetuating the ethnocentrism of white power. Demonstrators
denounced the separation of the Universitys intellectual output from an acceptable moral framework
and so, ironically, it could be argued that these radicalized students were calling the American university
to pursue virtue in its dialectics, and they were challenging the model of the research universitys
bifurcation of knowledge and moral considerations. Over forty years later, it remains an unanswered
challenge. The university has not yet found a way to bring the humanities and sciences into a cross-
disciplinary conversation that would challenge the presuppositions of each department and explore
the ethics required for an efficacious application of the knowledge arising at the academy.
Tracing the divorce of research from a moral scaffolding, Harvard professor Julie A. Reuben
explains in her article The University and Its Discontents that the trajectory of American institutions
since the late nineteenth century was based on the assumption that modern science would illuminate
and liberate society. New and unrestricted freedom of inquiry promised to unearth universal truths
through empirical methodology instead of religious and philosophical conjecturing; it had, however,
inherent fallacies and contradictions. Reuben observes:

Science was distinguished from less reliable forms of knowledge because it moved
consistently forward, beyond controversy to agreement. Designating consensus as the
mark of successwas a fateful move, a move that would push moral concerns out of
legitimate scientific discourse.2

In short order though, academics found less consensus than they hoped for across their disciplines.
They responded by narrowing their fields of study so that agreement could be achieved. Thus,
universities became the highly specialized places we know today.
Separated in this way, disciplines developed foundational assumptions that remained internally
logical but largely undisputed by perspectives from outside their respective narrow slices of academia.
Undisputed perspectives are actually undesirable in the realm of ethics because the values of moral
inquiries lie in their complex grappling with what is Good and what is True, and then continually
reevaluating new knowledge and information in light of those constants. Therefore, the university

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staked out the more unambiguous ground of evaluating information and correlating evidence and
disengaged from the often thorny search for the wisdom with which to examine the implications and
application of this information.
In the 1950s and 60s at Columbia, the departments of sociology, psychology, as well as the hard
sciences, were conducting experiments in everything from chemical defoliants and naval sonar systems
to the use of applied psychology in warfare. Departments were churning out useful research for the
government, and yet there were few asking if the application of this research was ethical, and there
was no agreed upon standard by which to make such evaluations. This was the crux of the student
protests they demanded moral accountability from their academic institution.
The information and answers provided by the scientific method are widely regarded as positive
because the method is viewed as unbiased and objective, therefore reliably advancing knowledge. The
absence of moral reflection within the disciplines has led to many discoveries and advancements whose
applications have created unexpected and undesirable consequences. There are myriad examples,
but take for instance modern and scientific farming methods, which have increased production and
simultaneously reduced the nutritional value and purity of our food. Likewise, advancements in
chemistry have created unparalleled commodities and methods of production but have polluted the
environment. When these advancements wreak havoc, we react by endowing the scientists and
their institutions to save us from the very problems they created. Research is mobilized to probe for
answers to problems that arise from the unscrutinized application of scientific discoveries.
While science remains a virtually unassailable means of understanding reality, religion and morality
are commonly viewed as inherently invalid forms of examination, and as cultural positions rather than
timeless truths that may valuably critique the scientific establishment. However, with the successful
bifurcation between moral inquiry and the disciplines of the academy, many fields now have equally
unchallenged assumptions. It is deeply ironic that the modern research university, with all its resources,
has in some ways limited the scope of inquiry and the examination of commonly held assumptions.
What else are we missing by not considering a wider, fuller view of reality?
There are personal, as well as societal, implications to this bifurcation of knowledge and morals,
for without any moral basis, personal autonomy often veers toward a gratuitous pursuit of happiness
in American society. In his 1978 commencement address at Harvard, Russian writer and dissident
Alexander Solzhenitsyn foresaw that a system of higher education lacking in moral inquiry would
produce citizens with no compelling motive to act ethically or selflessly. Solzhenitsyn, a recipient of
the Nobel Prize in Literature and best known for his works The Gulag Archipelego and A Day in
the Life of Ivan Denisovich, warned Harvards graduates that doctrines of the Enlightenment and

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Renaissance had captivated the West with the idea of humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and
practiced autonomy of man from any force above him.3 Man became intrinsically good and at the
center of his universe. This tenet, he thought, had taught the American psyche to regard self-sacrifice
and self-denial as an anathema to the founding ideal of the pursuit of happiness. Because we
answer only to ourselves, American materialism dictates as essential the gratification of our desires
over the good of others. Another legacy, then, of todays intellectual standards is that they yield citizens
complicit in a corrupt corporate culture and a broken political system run by special interests, in which
individuals are adrift in a haze of materialism.
Another unintended but logical result is Americas dependence on the Law as its best expression
of moral judgment. Solzhenitsyn observed that American jurisprudence had become the highest
form of compliance to moral behavior and had led to an emphasis on human rights rather than
human obligations.4 A belief in the humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is
no evil inherent in nature5 meant that
there was no restraint on selfishness,
no restraint based on the obligation to
anything higher than the Law. Without
a concept of a Supreme Complete
Entity6 there is no basis for serene
self-restraint.7 When Man acts as
his own moral compass, he deduces
that legal acts are ethical acts and can
therefore act in his own selfish interest
regardless of any larger consequences.
Mistakes leading up to the recent
fiscal crisis involved financial practices
that were entirely legal, though
with even the slightest inspection
unwise, unscrupulous, and driven by
unencumbered greed. No community
or societal consequences appear to have
been contemplated. A lack of ethical
consideration in education and reliance
Photo by Zahava Mendelbaum on the law alone have led to acquisition

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of knowledge for personal promotion, corporate gain, or national self-interest.

This great legalism leaves room for egregious self-absorption that does not encourage us to move
toward the illusive happiness we pursue, but rather toward a materialistic existence destined to leave
us in what Solzhenitsyn called a deep moral poverty.8 Boundless materialism and freedom from
religion and religious responsibility9 left America, he felt, with a frenzied, harried, and competitive
existence bereft of religious reflection or spiritual development. So too there is greater prosperity
in America today, even in the midst of recession, than most countries can fathom; yet there is also
profound depression, self-medication, self-mutilation, familial alienation, andironically increased
isolation in a media and Internet-connected culture. Many courses of study at Columbia endlessly
probe for reasons and insight into this spiritual malaise, and yet the common feelings of apathy
towards these questions at best, and outright hostility at worst, exclude moral inquiry from that search
for answers. Students are armed with unprecedented amounts of certain kinds of knowledge, but that
knowledge is likely to yield partially informed conclusions and scant help for alienation and spiritual
malaise.
This isnt to say that students at Columbia arent engaged in civic, religious, or altruistic activities.
A cursory look at campus extra-curricular opportunities and organizations speaks to the varied ways
students are looking outward. However, that is exactly the point. Religious and moral perspectives are
relegated to extra-curricular expressions rather incorporated into the curricular conversation.
The Progressive intellectuals of the 1930s were stunned when the most educated and scientific
country in Europe gave rise to fanatical nationalism and fascism. The bloodiest century also had the
most access to information and education. One conclusion may be that a bifurcated education,
which separates moral inquiry from intellectual pursuits, is impotent to fully engage with deeply
complex problems because students are given only part of the information needed for a more
holistic understanding of the world. It is unreasonable to think that including moral inquiry within
the curriculum of the modern university would yield answers to the complex ironies, paradoxes, and
conflicts of the world, yet it is undeniably a fuller, more nuanced approach.
The legacies of a truncated, purely humanistic view of reality have not served us well as individuals
or as a society thus far. Perhaps seeking fuller knowledge means we must engage with the messiness
of moral inquiry and truth-seeking in order to examine our assumptions with some universals. As
distasteful as such language currently is in the academy, most people do have some discernible line
in the sand of universal or absolute truth. Even amongst the most irreligious, secular souls on any
campus, there is something that each feels is a non-negotiable truth, even if the absolute is that
absolute truth cannot exist. There are many adamant proponents of the absolute essential nature of

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human rights, for example, yet the greater moral framework on which such an absolute claim can
be grounded (that each man is made in the image of God and is therefore of intrinsic worth) has
been discredited at the academy. What are we missing by not engaging with the inescapable universals
alongside other forms of knowledge? Though there are varied views about what moral framework is
valid, the conversation about such ideas should still be engaged in and is perhaps enhanced by wrestling
with competing views. Instead, the university is often a place, not just of scrutiny, but of mockery of
the long-accepted wisdom that universal truths exist and should govern the moral relationships Man
has with himself and his community and, many believe, his Creator.
In his 1944 treatise on education, The Abolition of Man, medievalist scholar and popular author
Clive Staples Lewis argued that engaging with and seeking objective truth is actually the goal of
education. He proposes that the ancient philosophers and each of the world religions embrace this
idea:
The Chinese speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the
Tao. It is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before
the Creator Himself. It is Nature, it is the Way, the RoadIt is
also the Way in which every man should tread in imitation of that
cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all activities to
that great exemplar.10

According to Lewis, there is a universal reality, or Tao, a fountainhead in which justice, human
dignity, love, mercy, veracity, faith, kindness, familial duty, and personal responsibility are sourced.
He says each of the ancient wisdoms of Confucianism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism
all understand this to be something outside and, in some ways, irrespective of mankind. A liberal
arts education is the very venue in which to wrestle with these intangible realities and examine how
to apply universal morals to the knowledge students come in contact with. To be wholly educated,
Lewis believes, means understanding the Tao because people tend to judge with complete uncritical
dogmatism, the whole system of values which happen to be in vogue; however, skepticism is only
used for other peoples values.11 This puts a modern, self-referential system like humanism at a
distinct disadvantage because its ability to analyze and judge is limited by the humans who devised the
ideology in the first place. Without outside universals by which to critique humanism, it is subject to
the whim of every passing generations fashion of thinking. Where, then, are students at American
universities to find a place for critically thinking about the current fashion of knowledge in light of
universal truths?

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 Sanctum spring 2010

Without such a space and universal principles with which to evaluate the knowledge acquired at
the modern research university, there are formidable consequences both for individuals and for their
societies: the harmful and unexamined impact when science is both the source of problems and the
only perceived valid solution to those problems, a humanistic view of man which frees him from
religious obligation and reflection but leads to materialism and self-absorption, a dependence on Law
instead of morality for human relationships, an individual and social malaise that results from a shallow
and solely material existence, and the impotence of information alone to address deeply complex
issues.
If our values are to be based, not on the whim of fashion, but on universal truths such as the Tao,
then universities must encourage their investigation before the pursuit of careers and the hurly-burlies
of life push it from view. The reigning ideas of humanism should not escape scrutiny merely because
they are the most accepted at American universities today, but ought to be subjected to rigorous inquiry
alongside the longer established views of Man.
Without a willingness to wade into the process of moral examination and universal truth-seeking
within the conversation of the university curriculum, we are unlikely to escape the legacies of many
unexamined assumptions about reality, about ourselves, and about our relationship to society. The
student radicals of the 60s protested for this kind of moral inquiry, but their courage was perhaps
undermined by some of the materialism and self-absorption that dominate in anthropocentric
American society. Maybe civic courage only goes so far without a more universal, metaphysical demand
on the life and soul of the radical.
How can universities, which are so often at the mercy of various religious and cultural minority
voices, engage with the multitude of claims about Truth? After all, our societal views are more
multicultural and diverse than when Lowe Library was inscribed with the words, For the advancement
of the Public Good and to the Glory of Almighty God. There are no easy solutions; however, the
conversation amongst academics might be most fruitful if it were framed by the ancient wisdom,
Love your neighbor as yourself, which would allow all voices at the table to be heard. Creative
work needs to be done to explore ways in which this moral conversation can be revived so that we are
challenged in our assumptions, our personal ethics, and our expectations for our institutions, and so
that we are engaged with the complexity of all reality, not just those parts which can be submitted to
scientific methodology.

Notes
1 A History of Columbia University, 1754-1904; published in commemoration of the one hundred

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and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Kings College. (New York, The Columbia University
Press, The Macmillan Company. 1904) 165.
2 Reuben, Julia A. The University and its Discontents. The Hedgehog Review. Issue 2.3. (The
Institute for Advanced Cultural Studies at University of Virginia. 2000) 74.
3 Alexsandr I. Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart (New York. Harper & Row. 1978) 47.
4 Ibid. 21.
5 Ibid. 47-48.
6 Ibid. 57.
7 Ibid. 59.
8 Ibid. 51.
9 Ibid. 53.
10 Clive Staples Lewis. The Abolition of Man. (New York. The MacMillian Company. 1947) 11.
11 Ibid. 18.

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Thank you to our sponsors:

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