I am a long-time Christian, but made a significant lifestyle change a
year and a half ago when I cut back my schedule at Silicon Graphics. I
am a co-founder and Chief Scientist for SGI, but have only worked
half-time for the company since September, 1995 when I made my change.
I spend the remainder of my time pursuing significance, as opposed to
success (ala Bob Buford's book "Halftime", which BTW I highly
recommend), and being an active dad and husband for my 3 kids and my
wife, Diane. My non-SGI roles these days include Chief Engineer for
Highway Productions, a non-profit video production studio producing
Christian content, board member for Creative Arts and Multi-Media
Ministry, another non-profit spun-off from Western Seminary, and
positions on technical advisory boards for the Sierra Club Legal
Defense Fund, The Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose, and Purdue
University.
As you might imagine, I get quite a few calls from folks who have heard
I am available for non-profit work. :^)
One of the projects I've been working on the past couple of months is a
lecture/seminar series here in the SF bay area on the general topic of
science and Christian theology. I've been meeting with a couple of
other interested people and we have tentative funding for the project
from the Altos Foundation, a non-profit foundation associated with
First Baptist Church of Los Altos. We are considering a monthly
seminar probably meeting on Stanford's campus in one of the
auditoriums.
Over the last year I've done quite a bit of reading on the topic and
have come to appreciate the valuable perspective to be gained by a
knowledge of the major historic events and figures associated with
these issues. Based on this, we are currently considering a format
where each monthly speaker will present an historic Christian thinker
and then after presenting the history engage in a bit of speculation as
to how this historic figure might respond to one particular
controversial current issue, eg. evolutionism, abortion, cloning of
humans, etc. The thinkers we had in mind are mostly well-known
Christian scientific figures, such as Galileo, Pascal, Kepler,
Copernicus, Newton, and Faraday, although we are leaving open the
option of including non-scientists who have expressed opinions on the
relationship between nature and the Bible, such as Augustine. It's
possible we may back off on the speculative half of the presentation
and rely on the audience to make their own applications.
I would love whatever help you could provide, especially feedback on
the general idea and suggestions on possible speakers or research
material. We would like to put on a high quality production, utilizing
speakers with world-class knowledge of the subject area as well as
world-class communication skills. We are currently shooting for a
September beginning for the series.
Thank you in advance for whatever help you may be able to provide, and
thank you as well for the stimulating discussions I've been able to
eavesdrop on over the last several months.
Rocky Rhodes
rhodes@sgi.com