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

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

Tuesday was super.

The Glass House rocked, didn't rock.

Elementary schoolers were adorable.

Religion and politics didn't mix.

A Columbia sports team actually won a game...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Surprise! Noam Chomsky is anti-war!

Poverty = another reason to worry about Global Warming?

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