The past 30 years or so have been an age of endarkenment. Marked by a retreat from common sense and reason where people are aggressively proud of their ignorance. It has been a period in which truth ceased to matter very much, and dogma and irrationality became once more respectable. This matters when people delude themselves into believing that we could be endangered at 45 minutes' notice by non-existent weapons of mass destruction. ( The Guardian)
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Enrique Gili is a freelance writer covering Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS), issues for regional magazines in the Southland and beyond. I live in Ocean Beach, San Diego the coolest beach town around.
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The Age of Endarkenment
Category: Commentary
Posted on: August 15, 2007 4:31 PM, by EJGili
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I mainly agree with what is said in this article. I am deeply unhappy about many universities that are creating new courses in more or less unfounded 'scientific' or pseudo-scientific 'disciplines'.
One should not forget that presently universities need to make money, and they want to provide their students/customers with what is in general demand. This is the old story of supply and demand. Of course, there is the question of how pressure groups generate and manipulate this.
Universities are on the verge of becoming business enterprises with managers in leading positions, and students are renamed to customers. One should think that other rules apply to places of knowledge (research, distribution, dissemination of knowledge) than to business. Witchcraft, homeopathy, astrology, fringe medicine, religion, etc. are seen as part of our cultural heritage. Ideally this would be discussed in Arts and Humanities, in cultural studies, social history, theology, etc.
Superstitious belief systems have always had a place in universities and leaked into science education. It is regrettable that this has become more mainstream now.
Following quote gives me the chills: "The Rev John Richardson, a member of evangelical pressure group Reform, wrote on the Thinking Anglicans website: "Once the universities were bastions of Christianity, now they accept the ethos of a Christian education only grudgingly.
As to the 'liberal ethos', that phrase is enough to give me cold chills."" (Stephen Bates, Oxford gives warning to theological college, The Guardian, 14 August 2007)
Posted by: Gudrun Bielz | August 16, 2007 06:05 AM