Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
In my post about the father blaming Richard Dawkins for his son's suicide, I argued that such tales are in some circles of the religious right to inoculate young people against learning. I came across a perfect example in an Al Franken book, in a chapter about a visit to Bob Jones University (a chapter that was, oddly, reproduced at National Review Online). He spoke of three letters on the Bob Jones University website that fit perfectly in this genre. Those letters are no longer on the website, but after some searching I found them. They're really quite funny. It's actually one letter with three stories in it, all about the dangers of secular education. It's pasted below the fold.
Three College Shipwrecks by Dr. Bob Jones Sr., D.D., LL.D. (1883-1968)Founder of Bob Jones University
If you will read the story of three college shipwrecks and will keep in mind that as an evangelist I have had many such experiences, you will understand why I felt it was my duty and took upon myself years ago, when I was in the prime of life, the heavy burden of founding Bob Jones University.
I have met many young people who went away from Christian homes to colleges and universities and came back not only with their faith shattered but sometimes with their morals wrecked. Being an evangelist conducting large union campaigns, I was in very close touch not only with religious leaders and educators but also with the masses of Christian people. I knew what was going on.
Between my evangelistic campaigns I went from place to place up and down the country giving a special lecture sermon on "Perils of America--Where Is This Nation Headed?" I saw the trend. I knew we were going to have broken homes and juvenile criminals and that a wave of moral looseness would sweep over this country.
I not only felt it was my duty to found an educational institution that would have high academic standards and that would have emphasis upon culture and a down-to-the-earth, practical, Christian philosophy of self-control. but I also realized that if God was going to use the institution for the carrying out of his purpose in the school, it would have to be made a base not just of fighting orthodoxy but also of sane, fervent evangelism. I knew what I was up against. I had counted the cost, but I made up my mind that whatever it might cost it was worth the effort.
I knew it would not only be difficult to start an educational institution of the type that we felt led to found, but it would also be hard to keep it right after it was started.
During the second year of the school, we had to have a house cleaning; and then we realized more than ever it was necessary to hedge Bob Jones University about with walls not only of spiritual protection but also of legal authority. The spiritual lives of many young people are being sacrificed on the altar of what men call academic freedom. We have bylaws that make it legally mandatory that Bob Jones University be kept as it is or the institution must be closed, the property sold, and the money used for the spread of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Under our system of government, we not only have the privilege of running an old-time orthodox, Christian school, but under our bylaws and charter, we are charged with the spiritual and legal obligation to run that kind of school or close it down and get out of the educational business. Bob Jones University year by year has not only grown stronger but has also grown more spiritual. It is in better spiritual condition now than it has ever been.
We are asking Christian people everywhere to pray daily and to pray earnestly that the institution may be more and more blessed of God in its effort to be consistent and to give a faithful, orthodox, evangelistic testimony. We are asking you to help us select the right kind of Christian young people for the right kind of Christian leadership in this day when it takes real Christian character to stand. We are also asking you to invest some of the Lord's money in the work of the University. When you have read this little booklet, you may put it in the hands of some parents who have children to educate or in the hands of some Christian young people who are planning to go away to school. Thank you and God bless you.
Three College Shipwrecks
I. His Only Daughter
I spoke to a great Southern audience. I pictured the atheistic drift in the educational life of America. A man sat on the front seat and followed my every word with an expression of agony I have rarely seen on a human face.When the service was over, his pastor said to me, "Did you see that man who looked like the incarnation of agony? He is a member of my church. He is one of the truest Christians I have ever known. He is on my board. He had one daughter. She was a beautiful child. She grew up in the Sunday School and church. She finished high school.
"He sent her off to a certain college. At the end of nine months, she came home with her faith shattered. She laughed at God and the old-time religion. She broke the hearts of her father and mother. They wept over her. They prayed over her. It availed nothing. At last they chided her. She rushed upstairs, stood in front of a mirror, took a gun, and blew out her brains."
II. The Pride Of His Mother
Let me tell you another story, and I could tell you many of them, for I have had to deal with the souls of many men and women; and I know what is going on. I was conducting a revival campaign in the shadow of one of the great universities in a northern city. One night I dismissed the crowd and started downtown. A young fellow followed me down the street, out of the shadow into the light, out of the light into the shadow. I didn't like to have him stay behind me like that; so I turned around and said, "Jones is my name. Do you want to speak to me?" I noticed that the young man was crying; so I put my arm around him and took him up to my room in the hotel. We sat down.
I shall not tell you about the preliminaries of our conversation, but at last he told me this story: "My father died three months before I was born. All he left me was his good name, and all he left my mother was the memory of his love. My father had been well-to-do. He lost all he had just before he died. The home where I was born was sold under mortgage. My mother was a plucky little woman. She got a little house on a back street and a job to support herself and take care of me.
"I grew up in Sunday School and church. I am not bragging about it, but I had the reputation of being the brightest boy that ever graduated from the high school in our town. I shall never forget the day I finished. The little auditorium was full. My mother was sitting back there. Her face was beaming. I received every honor that it was possible for a boy to get. I won the medal for being the best athlete. I got the scholarship medal. I got a medal for being the most popular boy in school. It was a great day. They gave me honor after honor, and my mother sat back there and smiled at me through her tears.
"The exercises were over, and I made a break to get to my mother, but the crowd flocked around me to congratulate me. Mother is a timid woman, and she slipped out so people wouldn't see her crying. I ran down the street to the little cottage, and Mother was sitting there with tears flowing down her face. She was smiling through her tears. I put my diploma and the medals in her lap. I leaned down and kissed the tears away.
"'What are you going to do now, Son?' Mother asked me. 'I am going to go to work and support you, Mother, and you are never going to do another thing. You are such a sweet mother to me.'
"Mother smiled and said, 'You are going to college this fall.'
"'Why, how am I going to college?' I asked.
"'I am going to send you,' Mother replied. 'All your life I have saved a little money each week, sometimes two dollars, sometimes three dollars, but always one dollar. I have the money in the savings bank. I have enough to send you to the leading university of this country!' My heart leaped for joy.
"Last fall my precious mother packed my trunk, and she put her own Bible in the tray of the trunk, the Bible she had marked, the Bible she had prayed over, and over which she had wept. Mr. Jones, I am a boy; but when I came to this school, I was pure as the purest girl who ever lived. I entered the dormitory and took my mother's Bible out of the tray of the trunk and laid it on the table.
"The students flocked around me, calling to the other students to come see my Bible. 'We have a country boy come to town, and he has brought a Bible with him!'
"'He will get over that,' someone said.
"'Just give him time. Let him get in biology. The biology prof will fix him. The Bible is all right for country people and for ignorant folks, but we have outgrown that.' I paid no attention to them. I read my Bible. I said my prayers. I went to Sunday School and church.
"At last I got in the biology class. You have got to hand it to that teacher. He was a better psychologist than he was a biologist. He dropped doubts in my mind every time I went to class. Little by little he broke down my religious resistance. After a while I lost my faith. I didn't believe in my Bible. I didn't believe there is a God. I was miserable, but I tried to be decent for my mother's sake. I do love my mother.
"But I couldn't be decent. I had lost the inward urge. I had lost the power to be good. I hate to tell you this, Mr. Jones, but one night I went out with the boys. I have lived in awful sin. I have gambled away the money that Mother saved. I have gone with wicked women, and my faith is all ruined.
"Today I had a letter from my mother. She will be here tomorrow. I can't see her. I couldn't look at her. She thinks I am pure. She thinks I am the same boy that I was when I left her a few months ago. I couldn't stand to look into her eyes. If I did look at her I couldn't kiss her, for I have an unspeakable disease. I am going downtown in the morning before Mother gets here and buy a gun and blow out my brains. If there is a hell, as my mother's Bible says, it isn't any worse than the hell I am in."
III. The Son of An Aged Minister
I was in a city in the Northwest conducting a revival campaign. One night I dismissed the crowd and started out of the building. A feeble old man came down the aisle and took me by the hand. "I would like to speak to you a minute, Brother Bob," said the old man, with trembling voice.
"All right," I replied, "I will be glad to talk with you."
He looked at me a minute and then said, "Let me get where I can prop against the wall, for I am feeble and old and trembly in the knees." We walked down the aisle toward the door, and he leaned his old stooped shoulders against the wall.
"Brother Bob," he began, "l am an old superannuated minister of the Gospel. I came to the great Northwest as a missionary. It has been nearly sixty years now since I arrived in this country. When I came here I brought my bride. Oh, how happy we were! We were young and everything was beautiful. We were happy in God's work.
"After I began my ministry here in the Northwest, it occurred to us that my denomination had no school anywhere in this section of the country. We preachers had a conference. We said, 'We must build us a church school so we can educate our own children.' We perfected the plan. I subscribed a hundred dollars a year. You know I never made over a thousand dollars a year preaching. My dear, sweet wife made her pledge; and though she wasn't strong physically, she did her own washing and saved the money to give to the school. We never had but one child. He was a boy."
The old man's face lighted as he continued, "He was a great boy, bright, clean, obedient, Christian. He graduated from high school with honors. We were proud of him. He was president of the young people's society in my church. He prayed in public. Everybody said he was an ideal preacher's son.
"The day came when he was to go to college. It was the happiest day of my life. Wife and I stood on the front step and kissed our darling boy good-by. We both cried. We didn't cry because we were sad. We cried because we were proud of our boy. He looked so manly and clean as he went out the gate; and his shoulders were so broad, and he was so erect. That night Wife and I got ready to retire. We knelt together by the bed to say our prayers. I put my arm around her, and she put her little frail arm around me, and I prayed a prayer something like this: 'Our Father, we thank Thee that we have a safe place to educate our boy. We don't have to worry about him. He is all right. He is in a Christian school, and we know he will come back to us as good as he was when he left us.' "
Then the old man, straightening up, threw his shoulders back like a soldier on parade; his eyes flashed fire, and he set his jaw. "Brother Bob, while I had been preaching to my country churches, the devil had been sowing tares in the college. A skeptic had got in the Science Department. At the end of four years my boy came home with his degree; but he came home an atheist, laughing at my religion, at the Gospel I preach, and at the faith of his mother. My son is a middle-aged man now; but he is a drunken, atheistic bum. Brilliantly educated, he writes letters to the papers and signs these letters 'Atheist' and laughs at the Gospel I have preached for sixty years and makes fun of his old mother's faith.
"Brother Bob, Wife and I are old. You are a young man. Go up and down this country and tell this story, and warn the people that the educational drift of this nation is atheistic. Tell the people to awake or this nation is gone."
Politics
Comments
I can't help but notice that pretty much every modern Christian parable 1) contains the most unrealistic characters this side of slash fiction and 2) has a plot that makes no sense whatsoever from a logical standpoint.
Also, I can see why that letter disappeared from the university site. Jones Sr. was an awful writer.
Posted by: schism | November 25, 2008 9:45 AM
Standard sermon storytelling about the evils of outside knowledge.
However, one statement caught me:
Doesn't that mean that as soon as they "stopped" openly discriminating about race, the place should have been shut down? Tsk. You'd think they were in it for the money, or something.
Posted by: Ranson | November 25, 2008 9:54 AM
I got as far as:
...and couldn't read any more. The girl's parents treat her like an outcast for having grown a brain, and then blame college when she kills herself. Urge to smack Bob Jones with a 2x4 is strong.
Posted by: WScott | November 25, 2008 10:07 AM
My "born again" parents have a house full of this type of evangelical propaganda.They sent my youngest sister to a Christian school and college and now that sister home schools her children.
It makes you wonder how fragile is there "faith" that they can't risk mainstream interactions. They insulate themselves from the modern world in a kind of fingers in the ears self imposed isolation.
On holidays I have to bite my tongue when the conversation inevitably drifts to the alleged moral and physical decline of America because of "secularism".
The most amazing thing is the level of cognitive dissonance that they can tolerate. They surround themselves with evangelical Christian television and books but they still have to interact with the real world.
In their view they are pillars of righteousness in a wicked and declining world patiently and reverently awaiting the return of the messiah. They almost act as if they are double agents for the Lord; they interact on a daily basis with the damned while secretly knowing they are "saved". They hope to pick up a few converts here and there but mostly they are smugly self-satisfied that they will be with Jesus while the rest of us sinners will burn in hell.
While they will never admit it, they are secretly comforted by the idea that we nonbelievers, that torment them with our relentless reason, will get what's coming to us in the here after.
Posted by: Lance | November 25, 2008 10:07 AM
I like the repeated assurances that he, "knows what is going on." Listen, if you have to repeatedly tell your audience that you're credible, odds are you're not. I should know. I've been around the block a few times.
Posted by: Abby Normal | November 25, 2008 10:09 AM
Well, I guess that answers the question about what a Jack Chick tract would look like without the pictures.
Posted by: Dave S. | November 25, 2008 10:11 AM
Am I the only one that reads stuff like this and immediately thinks of the Oingo Boingo song "Mary"?
Posted by: Chris Berez | November 25, 2008 10:18 AM
Preacher-types are known to embellish their stories. As a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever heard one that was true.
Posted by: Deepsix | November 25, 2008 10:30 AM
Can we say "fake"?
Posted by: libarbarian | November 25, 2008 10:40 AM
Its right there at the beginning of the Bible. The Tree of Knowledge is equated with sin. Knowledge is not something proscribed by Genesis and it is equated with the downfall of man.
Posted by: James Taylor | November 25, 2008 10:42 AM
I became an atheist after studying Philosophy in college. It's true.
But my brother, his wife, my best friend, my co-workers, they are ALL religious Christians. And they all went to college.
How is it that they dodged this brainwashing that occurs in mainstream colleges?
Posted by: DuggleBogey | November 25, 2008 10:45 AM
Er, in the second story... it ends before the end... did he just let that poor kid go and get a gun? Did he have the kid hospitalized immediately as a potential danger to himself? DID HE GET THE KID HELP?!
How is that NOT an intrinsic and essential part of the story (if only to blow his own horn about what a great guy he was)? How can he just continue on to the next story without something further?
Posted by: kodiak | November 25, 2008 10:47 AM
The Al Franken excerpt (oddly) posted at NRO is definitely worth reading, though.
"As you can see, we started putting way too much thought into the back story, and way too little into the fact that I have been on television for nearly thirty years."
Posted by: Andrew T. | November 25, 2008 10:52 AM
"We have a country boy come to town, and he has brought a Bible with him!"
Who talks this way?
Anecdotal story:
Over twenty years ago I had a friend in my collage dorm who was from a very small down and did have a large Bible on his book shelf. Nobody teased him about it or talked about how a biology class would set him straight.
Posted by: namowal | November 25, 2008 10:56 AM
That first story in particular is absolutely absurd. First, they "chide" the poor girl to the extent that she is suddenly driven to suicide, and don't seem to think that it's the chiding instead of acceptance that has anything whatsoever to do with it.
Secondly, she stands in front of a mirror; she then manages to grab a gun and shoot herself. *Where the hell did she get the gun from?*
And last, but most certainly not least, who the hell does the pastor think he is telling a complete stranger a very private story about one of his parishioners.
Surely if you're going to make stuff up, it should at least reflect the message you're trying to convey, instead of, "Have nothing to do with christians, they're basically rotten to the core."
Posted by: Armchair Dissident | November 25, 2008 10:56 AM
Er, in the second story... it ends before the end... did he just let that poor kid go and get a gun? Did he have the kid hospitalized immediately as a potential danger to himself? DID HE GET THE KID HELP?!
It would have been no use at that point. He had gone out with the boys. Gone with wicked women. Frankly, it would have been better if Jones shot the kid on the spot and put him out of his misery. And after all his mom did for him to squander it away like that.
Posted by: Odie | November 25, 2008 11:05 AM
If Bob Jones had countless stories like this I'm surprised the police didn't pick him up. He sounds like that old biddy on 'Murder She Wrote' who happens to coincidently come across a murder scene overy other week.
Posted by: Sigmund | November 25, 2008 11:09 AM
namowal,
Exactly.
These ridiculously contrived stories are at least triply bad.
1) They are lies or at least gross embellishments.
2) They make Christians look like idiots.
3) They present a false theology: No professor, not even Dawkins himself, can convert a believer into an atheist.
Believers have nothing to fear from exposing their kids to atheist professors. Go forth, I say, and learn what they have to teach.
Posted by: heddle | November 25, 2008 11:10 AM
Secondly, she stands in front of a mirror; she then manages to grab a gun and shoot herself. *Where the hell did she get the gun from?*
I think it's assumed that everyone in the audience thinks it quite reasonable to have mirrors throughout the house with holsters on the sides.
Posted by: Odie | November 25, 2008 11:11 AM
Kodiak
Not to worry. I have finished the story for you.
"I am going downtown in the morning before Mother gets here and buy a gun and blow out my brains. If there is a hell, as my mother's Bible says, it isn't any worse than the hell I am in."
And so I ministered to that boy who was once the pride of his mother. And I told him that while he had wavered, he still had the Holy Spirit in his heart. For if he did not, then why would he have sought me out?
And so it came to pass that we spoke of the Flame of Christ that still burned within his breast in defiance of the temptations to which he had temporarily succumbed. And of the love he had for his mother and the love that Christ had for him, and that they were the same.
And when the light of dawn broke through the window, he was healed and I myself was saved yet again.
After we parted on the sidewalk outside my hotel, it happened that we both turned after a hundred paces and, smiling, we gazed upon each other from afar. And I saw that in God's great and everlasting mercy, the Boy never saw the bus which ran him down.
Posted by: Gingerbaker | November 25, 2008 11:11 AM
Fundies love this kind of story. My favourite was the sad tale of George Powell (AKA George Asaf). He wrote the lyrics to "Pack Up Your Troubles" and then committed suicide! You got the impression that he finished up the song, threw his pen down and then blew his brains out. I'm not sure what the point was, other than writing cheerful songs instead of witnessing for the Lord will make you want to kill yourself. Anyway, the story is true. They just left out the part where Powell committed suicide 40 years after writing the song.
Posted by: T. Bruce McNeely | November 25, 2008 11:12 AM
Just to chime on the "embellishment" issue - the widowed mother saved a dollar, or two, or three a week. Let's be generous and make it five. Times 52 weeks a year, times 18 years. That's $4680. How long has it been since that would pay tuition, fees, books, and room and board for a full year of state college, let alone four years at the "leading university in the country?"
Maybe that just struck me hard because I'm currently trying to put my two sons through school. That amount would be about right for one SEMESTER for one student, at community college.
Posted by: BobApril | November 25, 2008 11:28 AM
Baloney, Dawkins can do anything:-)
That aside many, many atheists used to be believers so putting your head in the sand and pretending it ain't so isn't an effective argument.
Posted by: GH | November 25, 2008 11:38 AM
Idiots. Lovecraft totally NAILED this story arc decades ago. These emails and worldnutdaily stories simply can't compete w/ a tale about a man who starts off simply exploring the Antarctic who ends up in an asylum after discovering the source of life on Earth and seeing what has become of it.
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age."
To be fair to Lovecraft though, it generally takes a much larger dose of good old fashioned cosmic horror before the protagonist embraces suicide and even then they're usually polite enough to leave behind a record of why it is they're doing it.
Posted by: tincture | November 25, 2008 11:42 AM
Errrmmmm....
That's...disturbing. Especially considering how Mr. Jones places this conversation in his hotel room.
Posted by: Wes | November 25, 2008 11:45 AM
Posted by: llewelly | November 25, 2008 11:47 AM
"I had lost the power to be good. I hate to tell you this, Mr. Jones, but one night I went out with the boys. I have lived in awful sin. I have gambled away the money that Mother saved. I have gone with wicked women, and my faith is all ruined."
Oh, I know that song! It goes: "There is a house in New Orleans...". I never thought it was about a biologist.
Posted by: Christophe Thill | November 25, 2008 11:51 AM
Whoah. Bob Jones met Christopher Hitchens' father?
Posted by: Russell Stewart | November 25, 2008 11:59 AM
kodiak wrote:
The story does have an end, but not one the writer can admit. After being confronted by a kid who lost his morals and sense of decency when he lost his belief in God, the preacher felt honor-bound to pull out a book he'd been carrying around to revival meetings: Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Humanism by Paul Kurtz. After brandishing it about night after night as an example of what The Enemy was promoting -- morals based on human values, instead of doing what God says to do -- he had finally sat down in a lonely bus stop one night and read it. It wasn't bad, really.
"Here," the preacher said,"Maybe this will help."
The kid took it, and it ended up that he didn't blow out his brains. Instead, he changed his major to philosophy, is now working for charitable organizations, and his mother is so very proud of him.
That was left off, because it was considered too long, and didn't really fit with the stylistic flow.
Posted by: Sastra | November 25, 2008 12:18 PM
Still, a lot of the objections that people have to these stories do not so much indicate that the basics of the story aren't true- simply that it is a very, very old story. Who considers it a sacrifice to do your own laundry, or that it requires significant physical effort, for that matter? These stories are clearly from 1878.
Posted by: Becca | November 25, 2008 12:20 PM
I became an atheist after studying Philosophy in college. It's true.
Yes, but tell us the rest of the story, DuggleBogey - when did you blow your brains out in front of a mirror? We're dying to know!
Posted by: Moderately Unbalanced Squid | November 25, 2008 12:20 PM
How much strength of character did that suicidal daughter have, to be a devout Christian under her parents' roof, then change her ways while in the company of others, then do herself in upon being chided? I think the great worry for Evangelical preachers and teachers is knowing that they do not inculcate strength of character, therefore their kids are prey to scientists and anybody else with different ideas.
The Onion couldn't have created a better parody of Bob Jones than he himself wrote.
Posted by: Rod | November 25, 2008 12:21 PM
Whoo boy! Am I the only one who thought of Teddy Haggard at that point?
Posted by: John Pieret | November 25, 2008 12:30 PM
Funny how this contradicts my own experience. When I was very outspoken about being an atheist in the middle of my freshman year of college, people I barely knew and people that I did not think of as being devout started confronting my about my lack of faith.
In the mid eighties, I knew a guy who was a student at BJU. He had to keep hidden the fact that he listened to Amy Grant. Good thing he did not have to disclose he knew someone like me.
Posted by: Janine | November 25, 2008 12:32 PM
Surely someone else almost snorted their drink at that one?
Posted by: khan | November 25, 2008 12:33 PM
Yeah, sure, and Patrick Murphy really did punch Russell Crowe in the head.
Don't let the truth
Get in the way of a good story.
Though it does help matters some if it's a good story.
Posted by: Johnny Vector | November 25, 2008 12:35 PM
Surprisingly enough, this is the part that grabbed my attention the most:
The idea that Christianity is somehow intrinsically linked with morality - and even more ridiculous, patriotism - just seems downright batty to me. I'd like to know when ideas like liberty, justice and equality became synonymous with orthodox Christian principles - you know, talking animals, xenophobia, genocide, and stoning disobedient children.
Posted by: MisterDomino | November 25, 2008 12:39 PM
Am I the only one who finds the phrase, "sane, fervent evangelism," a bit... odd?
Posted by: Lynn | November 25, 2008 12:51 PM
I've read that the #1 reason people lose dogmatic forms of belief in college isn't conflict with academic subjects: it's being exposed to people who had hitherto been presented to you as if they were cartoon characters, simplistic "bad guys" with whom you would never, ever identify.
Instead, you become friends with the Damned, and it turns out they pretty much look and sound and act just like your friends who Aren't Damned. It's very hard to hold on to fictional stereotypes when you're surrounded by real live diversity. And it's also hard to believe that God couldn't or wouldn't come to the same reasonable conclusions as you did, about the complexity -- and ordinariness -- of ordinary people.
Posted by: Sastra | November 25, 2008 12:59 PM
Posted by: Bourgeois_rage | November 25, 2008 1:02 PM
How can anyone believe this rubbish?
Posted by: Valhar2000 | November 25, 2008 1:13 PM
According to at least some theology, thinking itself is bad:
To accept Christianity as true, you first have to stop trying to decide what is true and stop thinking for yourself. As soon as you 'bend the knee of your mind', you'll have it!
Posted by: benjdm | November 25, 2008 1:14 PM
Moral of the story?
Lock up your Farking guns!
Posted by: CommonSense | November 25, 2008 1:14 PM
There's ignorant, damned ignorant and then there's that particular kind of ignorant which is impossible to adequately describe.
Posted by: bonefish | November 25, 2008 1:15 PM
"There is no greater hatred in the world than the hatred of ignorance for knowledge."
-Galileo
Posted by: Robin | November 25, 2008 1:15 PM
The common thread running through all these stories seems to be that all 3 young people were woefully uninformed and incompetent in their analytical thinking skills before they went to college. Obviously, as depicted in Jones' tales, each of the students immediately manufactured a false dilemma in their minds between the religion they grew up with and the knowledge they received at University. Each of these students created an either/or conundrum which is illogical and totally unnecessary.
It's all the more reason why traditional logic, mathematics, and science must be taught to children as early as possible. The sooner kids can distinguish the analytical process from matters of faith and can realize that proficiency in analysis doesn't necessarily destroy faith, the better equipped they will be to learn at the undergraduate and graduate levels without this kind of ridiculous disillusionment.
Posted by: Fred | November 25, 2008 1:18 PM
so I put my arm around him and took him up to my room in the hotel.
As my daddy would have said: "I'm sure you did. heh. heh. heh."
Posted by: Graculus | November 25, 2008 1:28 PM
We certainly can fall away from God. It beggars logic to say that one could fall away, yet not be led away by one of us evil professors.
Posted by: James Hanley | November 25, 2008 1:34 PM
I stopped reading after the first story. I have never read anything so bad and that includes the time I helped my former English teacher put together a creative writing class as an elective at my high school.
The thing that got me thought was why did she stand in front of mirror to blow her brains out? It's not like she would have had to aim or anything. I wonder if this had a secondary meaning about vanity or something?
Oh, DuggleBuggy, but are they the right kind of Christian?
Posted by: Jeremy | November 25, 2008 1:41 PM
Benjdm:
Regards 'Freedom of Thought'.
In about 1832 the Pope issued a bull condemning the United States for permitting freedom of speech, which allowed FREEDOM OF THOUGHT! God forbid!
Also: I once went to a Quaker meeting with a girlfriend, curious as to that religion which was so much a part of the American colonies, and eager to hear some old fashioned fire and brimstone. To my surprise the 'service' was silence, just simply silence! However people thought or meditated was up to them, in other words they were free to think as they wished.
This makes me wonder what influence Quakers had on framing the Constitution.
Posted by: Rod | November 25, 2008 1:52 PM
James Hanley,
If Reformed Theology is wrong, and we can ultimately lose our salvation, the proof will not come from Hebrews 6. There the writer is making an if-then style reductio ad absurdum argument. This is not unprecedented in the NT; Paul makes the same sort of argument in a couple of places, including 1 Cor. 15:17.
If the resurrection did not happen, then our faith is worthless. But the resurrection did happen. Our faith has infinite value, amen.
The passage you linked to is:
A simple but accurate paraphrase of the passage is: If believers lose their salvation, then it is impossible for them to repent and be restored, because that would require another crucifixion, (because apparently Jesus did not anticipate and therefore did not pay for their latest sin--lest God be accused of double charging--so Jesus has to come back and do it again.)
The passage, at plain reading, states that if you lose your salvation you can never get it back. This is not only contrary to Calvinism, but to Arminianism and Roman Catholicism.
But not if it is reductio ad absurdum.
Sorry that you agree with Bob Jones that professors can deconvert people. I'll continue to argue that he is an idiot, and that we are impotent in our ability to do so.
Posted by: heddle | November 25, 2008 2:02 PM
Ahh a contradiction that is easily resolved by simply stating they where never 'saved' to begin with or it is being done to you not by you. Which actually has some traction with me as the better argument.
Posted by: GH | November 25, 2008 2:06 PM
Strange as it may seem, Bob Jones University has one of the finer art museums in the country, with a particularly fine Renaissance collection. Give it a visit next time you're in Greenville.
benjdm: I am not aware of any major Christian denomination that supports a theology of nescience. Lots of individual preachers and the whole Prosperity Gospel movement do, of course.
Posted by: kehrsam | November 25, 2008 2:11 PM
Why do websites say 'below the fold'? I hate it. It is as stupid as 'after the jump'.
There are no folds in websites.
In this case it was the exact next thing in the article - so no need to tell us it is "BELOW THE FOLD!!!"
Stop trying to sound all techie/trendy.
Posted by: Doug | November 25, 2008 2:13 PM
What's your beef, Doug? It's the accepted terminology. Ed didn't invent it. We also say "cut and paste" on computers, when no actual scissors or glue are involved... does that get your goat, too?
Posted by: Squiddhartha | November 25, 2008 2:17 PM
heddle, I think I agree with your take on the verses above.
However what your doing is simply pretending on the rest and people that have believed as fervently as anyone can believe have in fact deconverted and the internet is filled with such examples.
Posted by: GH | November 25, 2008 2:48 PM
@Rod: Thanks for pointing that out. Looking it up, I found Mirari Vos from 1832:
That thing is another treasure-trove.
Posted by: benjdm | November 25, 2008 2:54 PM
"Let him get in biology. The biology prof will fix him."
As if. My 100-level science class just turned in position papers on evolution -- graded on thoughtfullness, not orthodoxy. The breakdown among the students was: 8 pro-evolution, 17 creationist, 16 middle-of-the-road. So, even after a semester studying mountain-building, erosion, the formation of sedimentary rocks, 80% of the class still finds evolution too far-fetched.
Chris Berez: "Am I the only one that reads stuff like this and immediately thinks of the Oingo Boingo song "Mary"?"
I always thought that song was a metaphor for catching an STD. In the way that the acquisition of forbidden knowledge is a metaphor for catching an STD.
Posted by: Grumpy | November 25, 2008 3:03 PM
I am amazed at the cynicism of so many people on this blog for the fact that parents would be distressed that their kids abandon the values they raised them with as a result of going to college. Why do you look down your noses at such parents? They want their kids to have Christian values, its what they raised them with, so why shouldn't they be distressed when their kids are taught things that directly undermine their faith? Talk about being judgmental, you guys are doing it in spades. Wouldn't you be distressed if you spent around 20 years raising your kids a certain way and they abandoned it all when they went away to college? I'll tell you what, why don't you let Christian parents raise their kids they way they want? It's none of your business if said parents choose to shelter their kids from some of the philosophies out there. Simply being college educated does not mean you are smart and well-informed. Plenty of college educated people are almost not even literate. I read their term papers, so I know. The public school system in this country is a disaster, and many college educated people struggle even with basic math skills. College graduates even fail a basic civics test:
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/2008/conclusion.html
I know people who were homeschooled in a Christian home and they were light years beyond where their peers were all through their school years.
Posted by: mroberts | November 25, 2008 3:45 PM
A few points:
The bells at Notre-Dame went off in my head when I read the line about taking the boy up to his hotel room. Bet it was a YMCA.
Stories like these always take place in the distant but not quite forgotten past.
When I started college in 1967 the yearly tuition at my college was among the highest in the state. It was $2,000.
So going back in time, when cars and houses were given as door prizes at movie houses--my father told me this all the time--a $10-a-year tuition could be true.
"Cut and paste????" I have been doing it sooo wrong.
Posted by: wrpd | November 25, 2008 3:45 PM
Mr Roberts: once kids go off to college they are no longer kids.
Posted by: wrpd | November 25, 2008 3:48 PM
mroberts:
Define Christian "values" for us please. Does that include creationism and science denial? If so, how can you say home schooled kids would excel college educated ones?
Posted by: Draconiz | November 25, 2008 3:54 PM
Wow. Either this guy has no problem lying, or he is gullible and has believed the lies and hyperbole of people who talk to him.
Jones says, "I knew what was going on" (in the world), but because of his stunted view due to his ideology -- he has no idea what is going on.
Shame on him for wanting to indoctrinate (or maintain the delusions of) young people. I can't think of a more hideous thing to do for a living.
Posted by: JC | November 25, 2008 3:59 PM
Define Christian "values" for us please. Does that include creationism and science denial? If so, how can you say home schooled kids would excel college educated ones?
"Science denial"? Oh brother. Considering that the homeschooled friend of mine was pre-med, I hardly think he was a "science denialist". Was he skeptical of evolution? Yup. He also blew out the SAT (was well into the 1500s) and started college at age 16. So yes, I think home school kids can "excel" college educated ones.
Posted by: mroberts | November 25, 2008 3:59 PM
Posted by: H.H. | November 25, 2008 4:15 PM
Oh, mrroberts. First, homeschooled kids certainly can learn to compartmentalize. Who says otherwise? Second, are people really saying that? Or are they pointing out how the parents in these stories clearly did NOT raise kids competent to handle a differing opinion. And third - that "civics" quiz? So bogus, so ideologically driven, and so transparently so. You can "fail" it just by not being a market-worshiper.
Posted by: The Ridger | November 25, 2008 4:33 PM
The head of Texas science-denial board of education is also a dentist, being a premed or doing good on the SAT hardly proof your point MrRoberts.
Posted by: Draconiz | November 25, 2008 4:34 PM
H.H.
Oh hell! Why didn't you tell me that earlier. It would saved me years of potluck dinners. I have endured more rigatoni and green bean casserole than any one man should.
Posted by: heddle | November 25, 2008 4:37 PM
Besides, the article is about the knowledge of evolution destroying Christian values. that's why I ask you to define the word "Christian value" and its relationship to biology to me. You haven't answered that yet.
Posted by: Draconiz | November 25, 2008 4:40 PM
mroberts: I notice that, once again, you've had your idiotic assertions debunked in one thread, and have buggered off to another...
I am amazed at the cynicism of so many people on this blog for the fact that parents would be distressed that their kids abandon the values they raised them with as a result of going to college.
First, read the post again -- the issue is not "abandonment" of values; it's one kid's suicide, and how his parents' lame excuse for values failed to prevent it, and how said parents are now blaming Dawkins for something for which they themselves probably share far more responsibility. And second, did this particular kid "abandon" his parents' values? Or did he merely start questioning them in light of new information from the wider world, and not get decent answers to his questions? There's a difference, you know; and your apparent inability to see the difference diminishes your credibility.
I questioned my father's (RC) religion, and flat-out renounced all belief in any gods; but I did not "abandon the values he raised me with" (mainly because he had raised me with values that still made sense independent of any gods); and (probably) as a result, I was able to sort out all the conflicting information I got from life without freaking out and killing myself.
Why do you look down your noses at such parents?
Because they were either unable or unwilling to give their kid a set of values that could withstand exposure to the harsh real world and give him the strength not to kill himself. Even at their worst, my parents were a LOT more competent and responsible than these fools.
They want their kids to have Christian values, its what they raised them with, so why shouldn't they be distressed when their kids are taught things that directly undermine their faith?
Were the kids "taught" things that undermined their faith? Or did they merely get exposed to facts that undermined it? (And, as someone else has already pointed out, the guy who killed himself was not a "kid," he was a college-age adult, old enough to vote, join an army, sign contracts and read whatever he chose to read.)
Considering that the homeschooled friend of mine was pre-med, I hardly think he was a "science denialist". Was he skeptical of evolution? Yup.
Did he ever give a solid, fact-based reason for his "skepticism?" If not, then yes, he did indeed have at least one foot in the science-denialist camp. And no, the mere fact that he was able to complete a college course of study does not make him any less of a denialist. There are plenty of creationist engineers too -- not to mention an extremely ignorant and dishonest creationist neurosurgeon named Egnor.
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 25, 2008 4:40 PM
All the block quotes are the wisdom of mroberts and my questions or rebuttals:
Because fundie parents like those that convince their kids to go to BJU make an ardent effort to indoctrinate their children by hiding the best arguments against their beliefs from their children, including their and their churches flat-out lying to them, redundantly, week after week after week. That's why. Personally I view such indoctrination as child abuse, where the remedy is higher educational requirements for all children through grade 12 to increase the odds kids have equal opportunities in life in spite of how deluded or virulently ignorant their parents are. That of course won't help the BJU students since BJU is not really an accredited learning insitution but instead a forum for more advanced indoctrination.
Sure I would if I'd have indoctrinated my kid, but I didn't. I insured he was educated so he could make up his own mind based on the best available information. I treated him the exact way I would like to be treated. I have little patience for those parents looking to brainwash their kids, I feel sorry for the kids, not the parents.
Who says these parents don't have rights to teach them their religious values?
It is none of our business. However, the children also have rights, one is the right to be educated. The state has an obligation to defend the superior rights of children to be educated vs. the religious beliefs of parents that would deprive them of at least a minimal education; which is why there are educational standards even for home schoolers and private religious schools.
Given that only 25% of the states have mandatory standards to adequately teach human biology (evolution of humans), I find the state is far too concerned about the protecting parents' rights to indoctrinate their children than they are with insuring every child gets an education.
mroberts - my head is spinning. Please explain how the anti-intellectualism of fundamentalist Christians and other social conservatives is helping the cause of public education rather than being a primary detriment? Do you realize there are many organizations that exist purely to fight social conservatives who try and dummy down science classes along with pushing their regliguous agenda? That's the biggest case of projectionism I've ever seen this week.
How do children that are homeschooled for religious reasons fare in accredited secular universities? How many even consider all the educational opportunities available to them given 17 years of indoctrination? I know of zero home schooled kids who've ever graduated from a secular university and very few who've graduated from an accredited religious institution.
I'd like to see your stats mroberts. I am extremely skeptical that any significant number of kids that are home schooled due to the religious objections of their parents end up with a great education by the end of most kids undergrad years.
Posted by: Michael Heath | November 25, 2008 4:40 PM
"16. The Church has always taken action to destroy the plague of bad books. This was true even in apostolic times for we read that the apostles themselves burned a large number of books...."
Wow . . . and just think, Gutenberg hadn't even been born yet. Those evil scribes must've been busy, busy, busy.
Posted by: DonZilla | November 25, 2008 4:41 PM
Now that's what I like about Prof.Heddle :)
Posted by: Draconiz | November 25, 2008 4:43 PM
It would saved me years of potluck dinners.
Damn you Heddle! Now I have to clean my monitor.
Posted by: Josh | November 25, 2008 4:45 PM
Well, now you know. I'll save you a seat at the next heathen BBQ. How do you like your kitten done?
Posted by: MartinM | November 25, 2008 4:50 PM
I was told when I was young by people who had no reason to lie and had my best interests at heart that there was a God, and I went many years without questioning it. Looking back, my practice of dashing off a quick, formulaic prayer at night to save my soul from the fires of Hell if I died in my sleep, or my occasional thought that the best thing that could happen to me was to be hit by a truck immediately after leaving church in a state of grace might seem to be signs of psychological abuse, but I'm not greatly interested in self-dramatization. In the grand scheme of things, none of that was any more traumatic than getting up to sirens in the night in the late '50s and early '60s, going downstairs, and asking my parents if WWIII had started, and that doesn't seem to have left any scars, either.
So how did I come to disbelieve? When I was a student in a catholic high school, one of the brothers announced that he could prove the existence of God. That sounded neat. I had already studied geometry and known the thrill of a proof being demonstrated. Now I'd know it again.
Brother Peter patiently ran through the proofs -- Thomas Aquinas's standard five (at least he didn't try to run the ontological argument by me) -- and I said to myself: "That's it? That's the proof?" Having claimed that the question of God's existence was much the same issue as the question of Batman's existence, and having claimed he could prove it, and having failed, Brother Peter destroyed my faith. Luckily, I managed not to blow my brains out. Had I not been so lucky, would someone blame Brother Peter?
Of course, many of the people who buy this kind of crap wouldn't think Brother Peter was a "Christian" either.
Posted by: CJColucci | November 25, 2008 4:51 PM
It's none of your business if said parents choose to shelter their kids from some of the philosophies out there.
Actually, it IS our business: we, as a society, are responsible for ensuring that every new generation of kids gets the knowledge and values they need to function as free and responsible adults in the society in which we've created for them. For mostly practical reasons, societies tend to delegate this responsibility to parents first, who very often then delegate it to schools. If certain parents fail in their duties toward their children (and yes, they're DUTIES, not rights), then we, as a society, are obligated to find a remedy for the damage done to the children.
If your kid can't get a job because you gave him a crappy science education, and he therefore becomes a burden on taxpayers; or if your kid becomes a theo-fascist troublemaker because you didn't teach him how to function as a responsible adult, then that is indeed my business. Millions of Americans grew up with twisted, ignorant religious values, and they voted for a party of morons who spent the last eight years destroying MY country and getting thousands of good Americans killed for no good reason. That is my business.
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 25, 2008 4:53 PM
The public school system in this country is a disaster...
So, mroberts, what's YOUR excuse for being so ignorant of just about every subject on which you come here to bloviate?
Ever notice that the worst jeremiads against public schools tend to come from people who never manage to demonstrate any superior knowledge of their own, and who have absolutely no factual or statistical backup for their assertions?
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 25, 2008 5:00 PM
Bee: You might want to back off on the caffeine a bit, my friend.
Posted by: kehrsam | November 25, 2008 5:12 PM
Um, yes, that is denying science, actually.
Posted by: Skemono | November 25, 2008 5:24 PM
No problem, Heddle. I try to help wherever I can. When I see someone making absolutely ridiculous and empty assertions like that, I like to correct them. Pull them back into the reality-based community, as it were. Who knows what would happen if we allowed insanity to go unremarked upon and unchallenged. People might start actually believing it.
Posted by: H.H. | November 25, 2008 5:32 PM
Posted by: Herod the Freemason | November 25, 2008 5:39 PM
Re mroberts
Here's something for Mr. mroberts to contemplate. How many Nobel Prize winners in Physics were home schooled? I challenge Mr. mroberts to name 1. On the other hand, the Bronx School of Science, one of those public schools that Mr. mroberts likes to denigrate, has graduated 7 such individuals.
The answer to those born agains who complain that their children are losing their religion by attending secular schools is very simple. Don't send your kids to such schools. There are plenty of schools like Bob Jones Un., Regent University, Liberty University, etc. which they can attend with no fear of such an outcome. Of course, the education they receive at such institutions is 4th rate but since critical thinking is irrelevant to the mroberts of the world, that should be of little concern.
Incidentally, on another thread, Mr. mroberts complained that other commentors on this blog were being beastly towards him. If he finds that offensive, I suggest that he vote with his feet and go elsewhere.
Posted by: SLC | November 25, 2008 5:56 PM
SLC,
Pierre-Gilles_de_Gennes
Disclaimer: I have no dog in this fight. Being in conservative churches for some time, I know plenty of well-adjusted home-schooled kids, a few of whom attend[ed] Ivy League schools and quite a few who attend[ed] elite Virginia schools (U Va, W&M.) I know others who could, but have (alas, in my opinion) opted for Christian colleges. Personally, however, I prefer public schools. Though not like the one I attended in Pittsburgh, which was like a war zone.
Posted by: heddle | November 25, 2008 6:27 PM
Ah, heddle, you get to quote a single verse to make your claim, but shit upon me when I do. I was rather expecting that.
But your interpretation of the verse I cited is astoundingly illogical. Why would the author of the Epistle write such a reductio ad absurdum, and where is the evidence--you present none but your claim--that it is such?
The plain meaning of the verse is that people can fall away from God. I notice that each time I cite a verse that undercuts reformed theology, you place the least obvious interpretation upon it, and provide no compelling argument for using an argument that is most removed from the facial reading.
So far you've only managed to convince me that the reformed reading of the Bible is highly selective and consists mostly of special pleading. Out of deference to others here, I won't further hijack this thread with the argument we've gone over so thoroughly before. But as you feel free to throw repeated references to reformed theology out--as though it were gospel truth--I believe I am no less justified in continuing to make reference to free will theology.
Posted by: James Hanley | November 25, 2008 6:42 PM
James Hanley,
Shit upon you? My goodness, are you that thin skinned?
I made a polite, non-snarky, non-sarcastic defense from a Reformed Theology perspective. Tear it apart if you like--but why you would characterize it as "shitting" upon you is beyond me.
Posted by: heddle | November 25, 2008 6:51 PM
I find it perfectly understandable that they're distressed that their (adult) children have grown up to disagree with them. What I can't understand is the desire to keep their (adult) children from certain aspects of their education to prevent them from disagreeing.
The idea that people in their late teens and early 20s are not equipped to read Bertrand Russel without blowing their brains out is what I find laughable. If you can't survive a lower division philosophy class at a decent university without melting down, I don't think that it's legitimate to blame the university or the pool of human ideas. I'd blame whoever raised an adult who can't handle a critical evaluation of their own worldview.
I hope you're using "kids" in the sense that my mother is my grandmother's "kid" and not in the "wee little children who must be protected from critical thinking" sense. What do you think people should be intellectually prepared to deal with by the time they're in college?
A college education doesn't mean you're smart or well-informed, but you don't make it any better by limiting the materials studied to what people with a fragile worldview can handle. If a student whose family denies the germ theory of disease has nervous breakdown halfway through medical school, the medical school may not be entirely at fault.
Posted by: Troublesome Frog | November 25, 2008 6:56 PM
What I want to know is, as a godless biology professor, how many Christians do I have to deconvert to get the toaster oven?
Posted by: Carlie | November 25, 2008 7:16 PM
"This is madness!"
"'Madness'.
THIS! IS! AMERICAAAAAH!!!"
;-)
We seem to have a contradiction here.
(OK, John 10:28-29 does not say it's impossible to turn oneself from grace -- but Romans 8:38-39 does seem to imply that, too.)
"Egnorant" is the word you're looking for.
"Done"? Hah! Live and fully conscious!
Posted by: David Marjanović | November 25, 2008 7:28 PM
James Hanley: Perhaps there is more than one "Gospel Truth" to be found in the Gospels. I have a lot of trouble with the Reformed approach, but if it is adequate to Heddle's salvation I have no complaint. In any case, yes, it is dangerous to base an argument on a single verse, and yes, David has criticized comments for this practice. Blogs are ephemeral, even though the text may be saved forever; perhaps the good professor has merely forgotten.
Posted by: kehrsam | November 25, 2008 7:36 PM
Re Heddle
I strongly suspect that Dr. Gennes was not home schooled by fundamentalist Christian parents who denied any scientific theories which they considered to be in conflict with their religious beliefs. I will ignore the fact that this occurred in France, considered degenerate by such fundamentalist Christian parents.
Posted by: SLC | November 25, 2008 7:40 PM
Off-topic: That's not the same.
I know several scientists who are very smart, very well-informed, and have real trouble spelling. The English orthography is the worst of any language that uses an alphabet or syllabary: worse than French, worse than Irish, worse than Tibetan, worse than Mongolian-in-the-Mongolian-script. To learn it, it actually helps to not be a native speaker! I'm talking from experience here. Every day on teh intart00bz, I see native speakers making mistakes left and right that I'd never dream of making.
Posted by: David Marjanović | November 25, 2008 7:40 PM
So, mroberts, what's YOUR excuse for being so ignorant of just about every subject on which you come here to bloviate?
LOL. Raging Bee calling me ignorant - hilarious.
Posted by: mroberts | November 25, 2008 8:29 PM
A college education doesn't mean you're smart or well-informed, but you don't make it any better by limiting the materials studied to what people with a fragile worldview can handle. If a student whose family denies the germ theory of disease has nervous breakdown halfway through medical school, the medical school may not be entirely at fault.
Fragile worldview? Hardly. It has lasted 2000 years, so I hardly think it is "fragile". And it's not about limiting worldviews either. It's about sending kids to a place where their moral views are intentionally undermined. I think a lot of Christian parents have a problem with that. College often seems to be about indoctrination as much as it is education.
Posted by: mroberts | November 25, 2008 8:32 PM
MrRoberts' comments remind me of the four-star general giving an interview about Iraq, and talking about the Green Zone being filled with young people out of places like Regent University, friends from the same fraternity, etc. They didn't have a flipping clue about what they were doing - they were so naive and two-dimensional that they thought Iraq was a country ripe for conversion to Christianity ("democracy"), filled with grateful savages, etc. He called this attitude "heroic amateurism." His other word for it was "disaster."
One can create all the cults one wants, one can create these alternative little Christian worlds, Christian colleges, Christian worker-bees in government positions, etc., but even these Christians should know that one cannot recreate the same world that they are called by their religion to reject and to separate from.
Posted by: Kristine | November 25, 2008 8:53 PM
Intentionally undermining morals? I can count on a single hand the number of profs I had that I know anything about what they think about something other than course material. Probably the only real blatant injection of a worldview came in a political philosophy class, where the prof seemed disappointed we didn't disagree with her more often (probably cause she missed the chance to indoctrinate us right?) But I suppose Boulder isn't one of those centers of liberal academia where this kind of thing would happen.
If a person's faith is weak enough that it falls apart after hearing a different viewpoint the way these stories seemed to portray I'd say their worldview was pretty fragile. And that has nothing to do with the fact that Christianity's been around 2000 years (assuming you can consider early Christianity and modern fundamentalism the same worldview which would probably be a little bit of a stretch).
Posted by: mcmillan | November 25, 2008 8:59 PM
kristine: It's no fair bringing the reality-based world into this, we were doing just fine without it!
Posted by: kehrsam | November 25, 2008 9:00 PM
Mroberts, you could probably call any education "indoctrination".
But I agree with mcmillan. I can't think of a single time I noticed a professor's political bent, or felt pressured to agree with them about anything. As a physics major with a lot of crusty old profs, I assumed that many of them were conservative. And that was at a huge state college in an enormously liberal place.
Posted by: Leni | November 25, 2008 9:06 PM
heddle,
You link me with Bob Jones and say you were not being snarky? I'm sure there are aspects of theology that you and he agree upon, yet I wouldn't stoop to publicly linking you with a despicable man like him, then make a pretense of non-snarkiness. You simply added dishonesty on top with your latter post.
But the "shit upon" comment in itself was directed at your habit of using a single verse in your own posts as though the verse was self-evident, but eagerly critiquing another's similar method by trying to demonstrate that their verse is not self-evident in the same way. It's a double standard--more dishonesty.
Posted by: James Hanley | November 25, 2008 9:32 PM
Incidentally, on another thread, Mr. mroberts complained that other commentors on this blog were being beastly towards him. If he finds that offensive, I suggest that he vote with his feet and go elsewhere.
I had to comment on this one. SLC, if you honestly think I lose even a wink of sleep, or are even the SLIGHTEST bit bothered by what you all say about me, you give yourself FAR too much credit. I couldn't care less what you say about me. I think it is sad that you and others can say some of the nasty stuff that you do, but I can't help but be amused because every time one of you goes off on one of your hateful diatribes, you prove once again what I have been saying all along: the hate on this blog is NOT coming from me. For all of you who don't know what we are discussing in this exchange, the following was from DuWayne and is an example of many posts that have been directed at me:
It's the nauseating bullshit you spew every time you rear your ugly, pathetic little shit hole.
No you fuckwit.
And it's not just this question, it's you. You're nothing but a fuckwitted troll who wants to piss people off and pretend to wonder why we're all nasty to you. You're a fucking ignorant piece of shit and a waste of fucking oxygen. Every goddamn thing you comment on, with few exceptions, you feel compelled to be a piece of shit. I don't like you because of that. And as long as you stick your vile little nose in around here, I am going to make that clear every time I feel the urge to respond to your bile.
Fuck you you ignorant piece of horse shit.
No, you just bring out the worst in people, with your own hatred and bile. Me, I'm not a tolerant liberal type - so fuck off and die you vile piece of shit. Seriously, go away - no one here likes you or really has any interest in anything you spew. All you ever do is derail reasonable and rational conversation and piss people off.
And I will note that I don't feel this way about most people I disagree with, not even folks I disagree with on this issue. Just trollish fuckwits like you.
On the same thread, democommie had this to say:
roberts: STFU, you racist homophobic piece of shit.
He followed it up with this, laughably (note he accuses ME of the hate):
I don't hate you, you shithead. I think you're contemptible and an idiot. If anything I pity you, but it doesn't mean I want to read your drivel or see others waste their time trying to debate someone like you who has nothing to back up his biased and prejudiced comments. You want hate, ya kinda gotta go to the side where you live, pal.
And more from DuWayne, who also accuses me of hate:
No you don't and that is the problem. You come to spew your hatred and then you wonder why people get irritated. Why does it bother me so? Because I would like to have a rational discussion with the people who choose to comment here and you derail it every fucking time you show up.
I challenge anybody to find a single post on this blog where I have said anything vaguely resembling the nastiness of this stuff. ONE POST. Please show me. I can dig up a dozen others from many of you.
Like I said, SLC, I really don't care what you all say about me. But I do find it amusing that every time you say something like what I quoted above, you just prove that the hate is coming from your direction, not me. You hang yourself on your own hypocrisy with every hate-laden post.
NEXT TIME YOU WANT TO ACCUSE ME OF HATE, AT LEAST TAKE A LOOK IN THE MIRROR. MAYBE TAKE AN HONEST LOOK AT THE BLACKNESS IN YOUR OWN HEART, FIRST. With his words a man gives away what is truly in his heart.
Posted by: mroberts | November 25, 2008 9:40 PM
No james, it's called duality. :p
Posted by: Draconiz | November 25, 2008 9:43 PM
Kehrsam,
"More than one 'gospel truth'"? You heretic!
Well, ok, my use of the phrase was meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek.
Posted by: James Hanley | November 25, 2008 9:44 PM
There are 7 billion human beings on this planet, and every one of us is a unique individual. There ARE real people like those in these stories.
And the fundies are making more of them all the time. The preachers terrorize parents with these horror stories, the parents rush to their children and try to brainwash them even harder, setting them up for ever more tragedies like this.
And that gives the preachers more horror stories to tell, terrorizing more parents. . . .
Posted by: Riman Butterbur | November 25, 2008 9:47 PM
Thank you for making me laugh out loud.
Posted by: James Hanley | November 25, 2008 9:49 PM
Posted by: David Marjanović | November 25, 2008 7:40 PM
Right you are.
I used to be an advocate of phonetic spelling, but lately I'm thinking we really ought to go for phonetic pronunciation.
Posted by: Riman Butterbur | November 25, 2008 9:52 PM
Roberts, I see you've ignored my posts on this on the other thread and came whining here instead.
When you spew your hatred, it's towards a broad category of people that you've never met, and translates into active opposition to their civil rights.
The hatred directed at you here has been personally earned by your behaviour on this blog. You don't have to use foul language to be rude and insulting. Constantly derailing threads with whining, displaying an utter disdain for logic, and making grand claims without evidence tend to achieve the same result. I can only hope you find it as cathartic.
Posted by: DaveL | November 25, 2008 9:52 PM
The hatred directed at you here has been personally earned by your behaviour on this blog. You don't have to use foul language to be rude and insulting. Constantly derailing threads with whining, displaying an utter disdain for logic, and making grand claims without evidence tend to achieve the same result. I can only hope you find it as cathartic.
Hilarious. It's not wrong to say nasty stuff to somebody as long as they are a conservative Christian. If any hate is directed at them, it is OK, because it was "earned".
mroberts, that you would quote that phrase from DuWayne, in a post where you are doing precisely what that quote says, is brilliant. One of the best unintentional self-parodies I've seen in ages.
Glad you found it funny Hanley. I don't see how proving my point - that I am not the hater - is a "self-parody", but whatever you say.
Posted by: mroberts | November 25, 2008 10:03 PM
Ok time for my US$0.016.
David Marjanovic - So did you learn Khalkha, Oirat or Barghu-Buryat? Is it harder to learn than, say, Mandarin or Cantonese?
Mr Roberts - As I posted elsewhere, it is the parents' stunting of their children's mental and moral development that is the problem. The children are (supposedly) unable to cope with the real world and fear their parents. No wonder they (according to 'evidence' above) kill themselves. Or perhaps it's that these (alleged) college students have figured out the cost of a bullet was much, much lower than the price of the education they would need to get a job cleaning toilets in McDonalds, so they took the cheap & easy way out. -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | November 25, 2008 10:05 PM
Not conservative Christians, roberts, you. Not Rush Limbaugh, not James Dobson, not George W. Bush, you.
They're talking about you personally, mroberts, not some broad category of people. How much clearer can I make it?
Now, which of the big mean leftists are campaigning to deprive you of your rights? You haven't even been banned from the blog, for pity's sake.
Posted by: DaveL | November 25, 2008 10:09 PM
I'm not the one suggesting that Christian beliefs are fragile. In fact, I think that a thinking young adult can go off to college and read all sorts of literature that challenges the philosophies that he or she grew up with and come out of it with a better understanding of the world. But I'm not the one suggesting that universities and the critical thinking that comes with them are somehow dangerous to young minds.
It's not? So, when somebody says, "Here's a copy of The God Delusion. I think it makes some compelling arguments that should be examined," they're intentionally undermining that student's morals? What they're doing is presenting a challenge to that student's worldview. The fact that parents don't like what they believe are the implications of that challenge doesn't make it any less a legitimate intellectual pursuit.
If the student or parents can't handle that, it's their own fault. n fact, if the student can't use that as an opportunity to grow by examining alternative points of view, maybe college is not the best thing for them.
I hear this a lot, mostly from people who are threatened by the results coming from research institutions. Don't like evolution? College is all about indoctrination. Upset by the latest trends in climate science? Those researchers are just out to brainwash everybody. Annoyed that economists agree that your tax policy is nonsense? It's OK. It's not like they're contributing to the body of knowledge. They're just there to push a worldview.
In my experience, a university is more of a place for de-indoctrination than indoctrination. You're forced to examine so many challenging and conflicting ideas that you can't help but reexamine the things you thought you knew coming in. I can see how that would be unpalatable to people who were taught that they had the absolute truth about the universe by the time they were twelve, but coddling people who already know everything is not what universities do.
Posted by: Troublesome Frog | November 25, 2008 10:12 PM
They're talking about you personally, mroberts, not some broad category of people. How much clearer can I make it?
Oh sorry, let me retype:
Hilarious. It's not wrong to say nasty stuff to somebody as long as it is mroberts. If any hate is directed at him, it is OK, because it was "earned".
Better?
Sorry, still sounds like the hypocrisy it is. Accusing me of hate yet choosing to spew it is HYPOCRISY. You have no moral ground to call me a hater - for whatever reason - when you willfully choose to be hateful yourself.
Posted by: mroberts | November 25, 2008 10:14 PM
Nonsense. When someone spits in your face, there's nothing wrong with being angry with them. What you're being called on the carpet for is an irrational hatred towards people you've never met who've done nothing to you.
Having displayed your ignorance and arrogance here for all to see, you can hardly claim equivalence. Further, in your case you actually oppose the civil rights of the group you irrationally hate, whereas no one on this blog has caused you to suffer any consequence other than criticism.
Posted by: DaveL | November 25, 2008 10:19 PM
If the student or parents can't handle that, it's their own fault. n fact, if the student can't use that as an opportunity to grow by examining alternative points of view, maybe college is not the best thing for them.
Believe it or not Frog, I agree with you on this. Anybody's - including the people on this blog- worldview should be strong enough that it can be challenged.
I hear this a lot, mostly from people who are threatened by the results coming from research institutions. Don't like evolution? College is all about indoctrination. Upset by the latest trends in climate science? Those researchers are just out to brainwash everybody. Annoyed that economists agree that your tax policy is nonsense? It's OK. It's not like they're contributing to the body of knowledge. They're just there to push a worldview.
Sometimes college IS about indoctrination. It is pushing a predominantly leftist, socialist worldview, and it very often cannot be questioned. Colleges are some of the most narrow-minded, bigotted places on the planet. Try criticizing affirmative action on a major college campus and see how things go for you. THAT is narrowmindedness, and it is a sign that colleges no longer seek truth, but seek to indoctrinate. Such garbage has no place on a campus where truth is truly sought. The same PC narrowmindedness shows up in the workplace. A guy in FL lost his job because he used the word "niggardly", which means CHEAP. Look it up on the net if you don't believe me. Some PC moron was offended and got him fired. That's the same PC garbage that is rampant on college campuses. Larry Summers of Harvard got fired for suggesting that women don't do as well in math and science careers because of innate differences in men and women. Agree or not, right or wrong, he should not have been fired over that. Incredible. The guy said he was referencing research when he said that, but apparently non-PC research results ought not be spoken about. Is Harvard a place where truth is sought and where free inquiry thrives? Apparently not. Anyway, this is why I say that colleges often are about indoctrination.
Look, my ONLY beef on this thread was how people looked down on Christians because they were distressed that college was undermining the values they taught their kids growing up. THAT'S IT. That's all I was posting about. Nobody has the right to look down on somebody else that is unhappy because their children walked away from the values they instilled in them. I would be distressed about that, and I would find it offensive that somebody would look down on me for that distress.
I have to go, but you all have a good evening.
Posted by: mroberts | November 25, 2008 10:28 PM
Like I said, SLC, I really don't care what you all say about me.
Yeah, that's why he keeps on coming back to try to get the last word and pretend our criticism is the same as his ignorant, irrational, insulting nonsense -- because he really doesn't care what we say...really he doesn't...NO HE DOESN'T!!!
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 25, 2008 10:31 PM
And off he goes, just like always
Well, reality has a well known liberal bias anyway.
Posted by: Draconiz | November 25, 2008 10:37 PM
And off he goes, just like always
Well, reality has a well known liberal bias anyway.
You forgot one thing though, World views must be strong enough to be challenged, but those who held it must be humble enough to change it if it goes against reality.
Posted by: Draconiz | November 25, 2008 10:39 PM
Colleges are some of the most narrow-minded, bigotted places on the planet.
Once again, a wild over-generalization about "colleges," without a single specific example, or statistically visible trend, to back it up. I've been hearing this mantra from the anti-intellectual far right since the 1980s: every place, town, country or institution that doesn't share their culture is "bigoted," "backward" and "isolated" from "Real America." Including Manhattan, 'cause it's an island, see?
Try criticizing affirmative action on a major college campus and see how things go for you.
Where've you been, boy? I've heard LOTS of criticism of AA, both in and out of college, since 1978.
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 25, 2008 10:40 PM
Michael Heath -
"How do children that are homeschooled for religious reasons fare in accredited secular universities? How many even consider all the educational opportunities available to them given 17 years of indoctrination? I know of zero home schooled kids who've ever graduated from a secular university and very few who've graduated from an accredited religious institution.
I'd like to see your stats mroberts. I am extremely skeptical that any significant number of kids that are home schooled due to the religious objections of their parents end up with a great education by the end of most kids undergrad years."
A good friend of mine has home schooled all 5 of their kids, and the first is out of a major university with excellent grades.
Posted by: Rich | November 25, 2008 11:14 PM
"...he should not have been fired over that".
That's your opinion. I think he should have. Sexism dressed up in pseudo-science is still sexism.
"Anyway, this is why I say that colleges are about indoctrination".
What does a guy getting fired for making a blatantly sexist comment have to do with "indoctrination"?
Posted by: daniel rotter | November 25, 2008 11:21 PM
Rich - you are aware of the difference between 'an anecdote' and 'statistics' right? -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | November 25, 2008 11:24 PM
And I know , quite literally, 50+ who have been consistently behind their peers in science and math. After 16 years in the classroom our district now generally starts these children 1 grade level below to allow them to catch up. In my years of teaching only 1-2 have been up to snuff.
The general practice around here is home school them till the 6-8th grade and then send them to public HS. It's an absurd practice that as mentioned typically has the kids behind their counterparts.
Posted by: Uber | November 25, 2008 11:30 PM
Exactly. I've been living in an officially atheist country (China) for three months. The folks here seem pretty moral, patriotic and all that other good stuff that being Christian supposedly confers on you. It's not like Jesus was really teaching anything radically new 2,000 years ago; it was just new to his part of the world.
I've been trying to write a blog post of my own about this Christian=morality meme, but so far it hasn't gelled.
Posted by: wheatdogg | November 25, 2008 11:53 PM
"A skeptic had gotten into the Science Department..."
One skeptic causing so much damage? And why the hell would a skeptic be teaching in a Christian college? He probably just meant a non-literalist Christian (although, I do know of a religion prof who was an atheist until she magically converted to Reformed three years ago, but my personal theory is that she badly needed a job).
But freethought can happen everywhere. I became an atheist at a very good Christian school (too "liberal" for those BJU-types though). I had never met an atheist until I came here, and once I "came out" I found a lot of others like me here too. Christian schools, for whatever reason, seem to breed apostates.
And mroberts, suck it. I've retained all the values my parents taught me; I love others, I have honor, integrity, I question everything and I read widely, I take care of the people I love and the good things I have. I just don't share their religious convictions. They still have trouble accepting it and worry about my soul, but they realize that I am an adult and will make my own decisions. Any parent who isn't a paranoid control freak will realize this as well.
And I agree with a poster up there somewhere who pointed out that these religious types are inoculated with tales of "those evil, demonic secularists who will try to destroy your faith" and so when they discover that those evil secularists are ok with their personal faith choices, don't try to deconvert them and are just as normal as your average church goer, they flip. I seen it a few times when a casual acquaintance finds out that I don't believe in God. "But, but you're a good person!!!" they protest. You can almost see the smoke coming out of their ears.
Posted by: Kaydon_the_dinosaur | November 26, 2008 12:01 AM
mroberts wrote:
If the lifetime of instruction preceding college was so flimsy that it could be undone with a few undergrad classes, perhaps it wasn't all that good to begin with.
Aside from that, adults make their own decisions, even college "kids", regardless of what their parents think. It might be distressing to some parents, but it is entirely par for the course. That's how it is. No amount of pissing, moaning, or self-indulgent complaints about the secular world will change that.
If they are the kind of values that result in some people being denied rights the rest of us have, then no, we don't have a "right" to look down on them- we have an obligation to.
Too bad. They aren't being looked down upon for being distressed, they are being looked down upon for believing the kind of self-indulgent, ridiculous crap from BJU that Ed quoted above.
Posted by: Leni | November 26, 2008 12:31 AM
"Nobody has the right to look down on somebody else that is unhappy because their children walked away from the values they instilled in them."
Yeah, we do. I happen to have a very low opinion of people who harbor disappointment over the fact that their kids decided to think for themselves.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | November 26, 2008 12:35 AM
"Rich - you are aware of the difference between 'an anecdote' and 'statistics' right? -DJ"
All the same to me... actually I was reacting to the "I know zero" comment, but more importantly it may be true that home schooled kids do poorly overall. I just have not seen any of those statistics.
Posted by: Rich | November 26, 2008 12:59 AM
Really? Have you tried? Where are you getting this idea? I've seen vigorous and interesting disagreements between faculty and students. I've never seen a student simply shouted down. I hear this sort of thing talked about in a very general, hand-wavy sort of way, but examples are rare and almost invariably bizarre outliers.
Have you tried that? I've seen it done, and I went to college in crazy California (and did one of my majors in a social science, no less!). In fact, those sorts of discussions happened all the time because they're valid public policy discussions with important implications. Don't confuse the fact that the professor disagrees with you with the notion that discussion is unwelcome or you're somehow persecuted.
I don't know about Florida, but I do know about the case of the aide to the DC mayor. That wasn't a university.
Larry Summers wasn't fired from Harvard. He stepped down as interim President. In fact, he's still on the faculty at Harvard even though he has a tendency to say things that get him in trouble (which should be interesting when he goes back into politics next year). Frankly, I think that his statements were blown out of proportion, but when you're a university president, you don't get to say controversial things. Such is life.
And that's NOT what people are looking down on. People are looking down on:
1) Absolutely ridiculous, fabricated stories intended to dramatize something that should really be a non-issue. That stuff is *funny*.
2) The bizarre persecution complex that some Christians, for all their history of survival through truly tough times, manage to carry with them.
3) The fact that if those stories were actually true, the people they describe are idiots.
4) The notion that when a student comes unglued because his preconceived notions about the world are challenged, that the problem is the challenger and not the sheltered bubble that left him that ill-equipped to deal with the real world.
Be distressed all you want. That's fine and understandable. What's not understandable is failing to realize that the problem is not the fact that the kid was taught stuff, but rather that the case for your side of the argument was insufficient to convince him.
Posted by: Troublesome Frog | November 26, 2008 1:40 AM
I remember the story of the girl who reads inappropriate books, looses her faith, and commits suicide. It is reported in "Memoirs d'une jeune fille rangee" by Simone de Beauvoir, and she was told it in (a catholic) school.
Funny how some things don't change over time: SdB would have turned 100 in 2008.
Posted by: estraven | November 26, 2008 3:12 AM
Sometimes college IS about indoctrination. It is pushing a predominantly leftist, socialist worldview, and it very often cannot be questioned.
A sure sign of a bigot is the insistence that "those people" all look alike to him and cannot be distinguished from one another. Does mroberts really believe that of all the thousands of different colleges all across this huge country of ours -- community colleges (including in the Deep South), state universities (including in the Deep South), private secular colleges, religious colleges (Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, etc.), trade and technical schools, military academies, "Great Books" schools, the Ivy League, etc., etc. -- all uniformly share a "predominantly leftist, socialist worldview?" If so, then we've all overestimated his intelligence. Cal Berkeley and Princeton, maybe...but which others?
(And how many times has anyone heard ACTUAL LEFTIST IDEOLOGUES praising any American college or university for its "predominantly leftist, socialist worldview?")
Right-wingers and fake-libertarians have been callling American higher learning "leftist" and "socialist" since the 1960s, and they've never backed their name-calling up with anything resembling proof. mroberts only gave us TWO count-em TWO specific examples of a "predominantly leftist, socialist worldview" in action; I don't have to take a statistics class to know that's not a representative sample.
(Oh, and Summers apologized for his remarks and admitted he had chosen his words poorly; and colleges aren't the only places where people look askanse at any word that sounds like "nigger." So even those two examples are lame in themselves.)
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 26, 2008 8:57 AM
Re mroberts
As I previously stated, if Mr. mroberts doesn't like secular colleges, he is perfectly free to send his children, if any, to places like Bob Jones Un, Liberty Un., Regent Un., or others of their ilk. He will not find Christian bashers there. AFAIK, there is no law requiring Mr. mroberts to send his children to Harvard or Berkeley.
Posted by: SLC | November 26, 2008 9:00 AM
RB,
I wouldn't use the word socialist, but certainly they lean left. (And my personal opinion is that anyone who would deny that is blinded by the tard.) Before looking up the data, I'll bet you $10 to be pay-paled to a charity of the winners choice that over, say, the last eight presidential elections college and university faculty at public institutions have voted more, in a statistically significant sense, for the Democratic candidate than did the public at large. I would think that is a reasonable definition of leaning left.
Posted by: heddle | November 26, 2008 9:06 AM
I like the idea that college is about indoctrination and so the best thing to do is to send your children to a place where if they believe the wrong thing, they will be expelled!
Posted by: Donalbain | November 26, 2008 9:19 AM
First, given the caliber of Democratic nominees since 1980, I really can't consider voting Democratic a "left-leaning" thing to do -- especially this year, when so many lifelong conservatives like Colin Powell publicly supported Obama.
Second, I went to U.Va., whose International Relations department had, in addition to career academics, a former Assistant Secretary of State and former Ambassador to Peru (under Reagan), and a veteran (Korea, Vietnam, nuke assembly, who, strangely enough, was one of the most "left-leaning" profs in that department). And they were definitely NOT "left-leaning." The History department was a bit more "left-leaning," but part of the reason is that...how do I put this?...the facts have a liberal bias: they recognized that history is about changing class relationships, as Marx said, and that lots of bloodshed tended to result from ignoring the human needs that "left-leaning" people tend to go on about. And quite frankly, I really think U.Va. is far more representative of American colleges in general than the (possibly) more hard-left examples of Berkeley and Princeton. (And I only mention Princeton because it's where Noam Chomsky "works;" truth is, there's little evidence other profs there share his position.)
Third, "leaning left" relative to the general US population is NOT a "reasonable definition of leaning left;" it's just another typical Republican dodge: call your critics "leftist" in order to avoid listening to what they actually say.
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 26, 2008 9:27 AM
RB,
You actually are the one making the dodge. I didn't say one way or another as to whether the leftward bias in academia was defensible or not. Perhaps it's true smart people tend to lean left, professors tend to be smart, ergo...
I merely posited that professors are more left-leaning than the public as a whole. Just a simple, non-judgmental claim. One that should be easy to confirm or refute.
Are you disputing that claim?
Posted by: heddle | November 26, 2008 9:34 AM
Yes, I am disputing that claim, at least when it's made about "professors" in general. The only way such a claim can be defended, is by defining "the middle" to mean the uneducated conservatism of ordinary people, who try to cling to what they have because they fear the consequences of change, and then defining anyone who questions the status quo as "left-leaning." If you want to use that definition, then your claim is correct, by that definition; but I maintain that that definition is so broad and vague as to be useless. "Leftist" used to mean something more specific, and the term was thus more useful then than now.
The truth (as I've observed it at least) is that calling professors "left leaning relative to the general population" really isn't saying much: one does not have to advocate any specific "leftist" or "radical" policies (such as nationalized health-care or destroying the bourgeoisie) to fit that "definition" of "left-leaning." There are plenty of moderate and conservative professors who would fit that definition, without saying anything controversial. Example: the Central American history professor, who explained the ideological struggles and civil wars of that region with a distinctly Marxian outlook, without actually hinting that he agreed with any of the leftist regimes' or parties' platforms. The minute he explained WHY those leftists did what they did, he crossed into "left-leaning" territory, merely by acknowledging that some people in some situations had good reasons for supporting a leftist party.
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 26, 2008 9:56 AM
Clarification: when I say "distinctly Marxian outlook," I mean one that saw and explained historical events as being driven mostly by evolving class interests and struggles, without judging which class is "right" and which "wrong."
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 26, 2008 10:00 AM
mroberts:
Please ignore the big CAPITALIZED WORDS folks, mroberts wasn't intending to convey any special emphasis with them. They're entirely random - and the result of a computer virus he has no control over.
Posted by: llewelly | November 26, 2008 10:44 AM
The ironic thing, for me, is that I was an atheist until I went to college and met people who could actually make a rational argument for theism.
Of course, I've since recovered, but it was touch and go for a few years.
Posted by: Gareth L Owen | November 26, 2008 1:51 PM
The funny thing about being a college professor is how hard it is to indoctrinate students. If it was easy, I'd have a zillion libertarian acolytes running around right now, but my only libertarian students are ones that came in that way.
The resistance to "indoctrination" (I'd say "learning") became evident to me early on, in a class where I'd purposely assigned both conservative and liberal readings on certain controversial issues. On my evaluations, I read both that I was a "fascist capitalist American hegemonist" and "just another damn left wing commie professor."
Posted by: James Hanley | November 26, 2008 4:31 PM
RB, I fail to see how a description of a historical event where one side was influenced by Marx (including an explanation of that side's motivating beliefs) is inherently "left-leaning" in the sense that Heddle is suggesting. It would be precisely the moral evaluation that would really the professor into that territory.
James, I'm not too surprised at that; I think there is an expectation that teachers will work to instill their own political values in their students, and so some students may respond accordingly. (As a result, my stance is to never let my students know my political leanings; I've had several teachers who took this stance, and I admire anyone who is willing to entertain any position that is well thought out and rationally defensible.)
And to your statement about indoctrination: I've heard others suggest (and I agree) that indoctrination often carries the connotation of "education I don't approve of."
Posted by: The Christian Cynic | November 26, 2008 4:43 PM
Re: mroberts; what a complete waste of time it is to read any of his comments. I read some of the rebuttals and always know what he's on about without reading his comments. What a windbag.
I find it interesting that he loses no sleep over being called names and yet was able to produce that stuff DuWayne said about him, what? three weeks or so ago?
Posted by: democommie | November 26, 2008 4:51 PM
Point of information: Noam Chomski is a professor (emeritus) of linguistics at MIT, not Princeton.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomski):
Posted by: Allen MacNeill | November 26, 2008 10:49 PM
Allen: Oops, thanks for the correction -- but why is Chomsky's name linked with Princeton in my mind? Is his house near Princeton?
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 26, 2008 11:19 PM
Raging Bee, were you thinking of Krugman? He's at Princeton.
Posted by: Jonathan | November 27, 2008 1:44 AM
@Rich:
Did they home school "for religious reasons". That was the point of the comment to which you responded.
Posted by: Robin Levett | November 28, 2008 7:53 AM
Robin Levett:
Follow-up question to yours:
Was the "major university" degree in the sciences?
Second follow-up question:
Does this major university have a name?
Posted by: democommie | November 28, 2008 10:37 AM
Whew! Just finished reading through all the comments. My $.02:
First, I flat-out cannot believe the stories about the three kids who lost their faith and came to a bad end. They sound too much like the stories in the "Pulpit Helps" magazine I used to get when I was in the ministry. Manufactured from whole cloth, and many of them (with slight modifications) from the 1800's. To promulgate them as personal experience is despicable.
Second, I went to a fully accredited, church-affiliated college in Tennessee. (It was considered too liberal by many of the churches in the denomination, which preferred "bible colleges" that were more doctrinally pure.) It was a fine school and I got a good education.
But being a Christian college, there were rules: no alcohol, no opposite-sex visitors in dorm rooms, stuff like that. This being tobacco country, smoking was allowed (back then) and I happily smoked my way through college.
But some kids fell apart in even that little bit of freedom. They were frequently drunk, and we had to help them up the stairs, clean them up and tuck them into bed. Mostly, they were pastors' kids. They had never been allowed to make a moral decision in their entire lives up to that point and had no practice at it. That is doing a tremendous disservice to a kid.
I became an atheist years later and let me tell you, the transition was no picnic. And yes, my Christianity fell apart on contact with science. To quote Arthur C. Clarke, "A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth isn't worth many regrets."
Today, I work in a state university. The professors include right-wing bible thumpers, secular humanists, liberals, conservatives, and who know, maybe a Rastafarian or two for all I know! The point is that there's a diversity of viewpoints. It is simply nonsense to say that it's all liberal, socialist, etc.
mroberts: if you act like an ass and people hate you for it, that isn't prejudice.
Posted by: george.wiman | November 28, 2008 10:51 PM
You know, ever since you called out Mr.Roberts for being emotionally involved in this discussion, he's been markedly absent. Just an observation.
On the same note, I love whoever said that Christian values and beliefs are the same as they were 2000 years ago. A little under 500 years ago, the Christian faith fractured into several different sects because of an argument on what the real Christian values are. And it then fractured again about 150 years ago, as another large group of Christians added their own book to the scripture.
At the base, there's perhaps two values that remain the same from 2000 years ago - one being love thy neighbor, and the other learn to forgive thyself. Other than that, anything else has been slowly added to the faith over the last 2000 years to the point that what people think are Christian values are really additions amended to religion through influential parties with certain motives (whether they be good motives or poor motives).
Furthermore, it slightly unsettles me that the people claiming their children have "lost their faith" are probably more or less embellishing. The child probably returned home to say, "Hey, you know, evolution isn't detrimental to our faith," and his parents probably went absolutely bonkers over that one statement, thinking their child was possessed by the Devil. I mean, that's normally what I see on a daily basis - coming to terms with scientific fact somehow means, to fundamental Christian parents, that the child is now an Atheist. Even if the child still believes in Christ and God.
Posted by: McClaud | December 5, 2008 4:43 AM