…and this is a 
Wheaton is a weird place
Category: Academics • Religion
Posted on: April 30, 2008 8:08 AM, by PZ Myers
Wheaton has a good academic reputation, but man, it's the little things that make it frightening. I would not want to live in the theocratic world it represents. Hank Fox has a couple of stories about Wheaton.
The first is the blog of a recent graduate of Wheaton who determined halfway through his undergraduate education that he was an atheist. It sounds like it was rough. He's ended the blog, though, with a statement that "…now that I'm slightly closer to the real world, I just don't think it's that important whether you're an atheist or a Christian" — which is true. The differences are accentuated when you're wrapped up in a culture that makes religious belief central to everything; when Christians back off and don't make their ridiculous superstitions a prerequisite to participation in politics and everyday life, they are entirely tolerable. I think the anonymous student is a little bit optimistic in his confidence that religion won't intrude on him as much in wider American culture, but perhaps compared to Wheaton, that's also true.
The second is more disturbing. A professor of English at Wheaton got a divorce from his wife — which the university considers grounds for firing him. The college actually has staff people who assess faculty divorces to determine whether they meet "Biblical standards," and if they don't, pffft, you're gone. This isn't a guy who was doing substandard work, nor, as his comments reveal, did he abandon Christianity. Other faculty have lost their job for converting to Catholicism. This is just plain freaky: "Wheaton requires faculty and staff to sign a faith statement and adhere to standards of conduct in areas including marriage."
Has anyone noticed that our evil secular universities do not monitor the personal beliefs of their faculty, and do not consider going to the church of your choice grounds for dismissal? We even let our students believe whatever they want!
Education & Careers
Comments
But it's the poor, poor people of faith who find themselves run out of academia at every turn. It's true! Ben Stein told me so!
Posted by: Gene | April 30, 2008 8:12 AM
Therefore secular universities are seedbeds for evil.
Posted by: Dave Wisker | April 30, 2008 8:13 AM
Jazz hands!
Posted by: Moggie | April 30, 2008 8:26 AM
I'll give Wheaton a D- instead of an F for the divorce thing. Compared to all of the marriage hypocrites who loudly allege that they are Christian but tolerate divorce while attacking marriages by those they don't like, the Wheaton folks are paragons of consistency, if not virtue or kindness.
On the other hand, Wheaton is one of the most enlightened of the colleges which are still subjected to strong religious influence, so that doesn't bode well for the religiously influenced colleges who are a step above Bible colleges.
Posted by: freelunch | April 30, 2008 8:29 AM
To avoid confusion and unwarranted deprecation of a good college, I think it's important to always distinguish the fundie Wheaton of Illinois from the older, non-sectarian liberal arts Wheaton College in Norton, Mass.
http://www.wheatoncollege.edu/about/
Posted by: chezjake | April 30, 2008 8:33 AM
I bet when he tells that story at his next job interview they'll think he's trying to cover something up...
it's just too unbelievable.
Posted by: wazza | April 30, 2008 8:34 AM
Has anyone noticed that our evil secular universities do not monitor the personal beliefs of their faculty, and do not consider going to the church of your choice grounds for dismissal?
That's pretty much the definition of "secular", isn't it?
Makes you wonder who's really doing the *expelling*! I mean, it does if you're not blinded by fundy religion.
Posted by: Cheezits | April 30, 2008 8:35 AM
"The college actually has staff people who assess faculty divorces to determine whether they meet "Biblical standards," and if they don't, pffft, you're gone.
I hope they're rigorous and expelling people wearing mixed fibres. Wouldn't want to be selective with our Biblical standards now, would we?
Posted by: NC Paul | April 30, 2008 8:36 AM
i think a fair level of ridicule and censure of wheaton grads is justified here.
wheaton has, as you and hank say, a reputation for being academically respectable. and this is part of what allows them to continue drawing good students and good faculty.
but the fact is, no institution that practices this sort of mindless discrimination and thought-control is really an intellectually respectable place.
wheaton is getting away with a con, a misrepresentation: pretending to be intellectually serious when they fail the central tests of intellectual honesty.
so i think it's time that the rest of us stop giving them a pass. stop saying "but it's a pretty good school, academically," and instead say "it's really just another bob jones u. which has gotten away with it longer".
as their public image drifts down to reflect the reality of what they really are, they will find it harder and harder to attract good people, and accordingly harder and harder to screw over good people like the student and teacher mentioned in fox's post.
or, if wheaton grads want to keep saying that they went to a serious school, they should make changes in the administration to turn it into a serious school. most of the ivies began as clergy-training indoctrination institutes. they got over it, and turned into real universities. wheaton faces the same choice.
Posted by: kid bitzer | April 30, 2008 8:39 AM
Has anyone noticed that our evil secular universities do not monitor the personal beliefs of their faculty, and do not consider going to the church of your choice grounds for dismissal?
But that's just not true! After all, Secular Liberal Humanism -- the most powerful religion in America -- routinely expels from the academy brilliant scientists who belong to the tiny, powerless, despised Christian minority.
(Don't believe me? I know it's true because there's a documentary that says so. What -- did you think that's something I'd take on faith alone?!)
Posted by: Mrs Tilton | April 30, 2008 8:48 AM
I'm doing my PhD at a Catholic school. First time I've been in a non-public educational institution. It's a weird place. They adhere to state law and provide benefits to married same-sex partners, but they refuse to allow discussion of condoms in any type of HIV-prevention education. They cancelled a dance for gay students because it wasn't in keeping with the school's catholic purpose, but one of the sponsors was Hillel--which would also seem to not really be in keeping with that Catholic identity...
Religious schools are strange places.
Posted by: MAJeff, OM | April 30, 2008 9:01 AM
I think that cheating on your wife is grounds for me to fire you if I'm your employer. If your wife can't trust you, then I can't trust you. Nothing to do with Jesus.
Sadly, being in Mississippi, I've had the opportunity to witness GodColleges up close and personal. My wife spent some time at Belhaven College here in Jackson. She told them she was Jewish so they would quit hounding her to convert her all the time! She managed to 'opt out' of Bible classes (or prayer or whatever it was) by PAYING an extra FEE. A baptist version of Catholic indulgences. Math classes started with a thanks to God for inventing the numbers.
Enjoy.
Posted by: Tim Fuller | April 30, 2008 9:07 AM
I think that cheating on your wife is grounds for me to fire you if I'm your employer. If your wife can't trust you, then I can't trust you
So, as an employer, you think that my personal life is your business? You get my time and my work, not my life.
Posted by: MAJeff, OM | April 30, 2008 9:11 AM
I didn't know where to post this, put there is a great article title in Der Spiegel:
Wie ansteckend sind Selbstmord, Trunksucht und Christentum?
For non-German speakers
How contageous are suicide, alcoholism and Christianity?
Posted by: reason | April 30, 2008 9:13 AM
I'm not sure how anyone can make the Wheaton case out as a sort of reversed Expelled. About ten years ago I was encouraged to apply for a faculty job there. Part of the application contained a statement of behavior (I don't remember what it was called) but it included a promise not to drink alcohol--not just in public but at all, even in your own home. (I also don't know if they still require that.) Well I like my beer so I couldn't sign that, so I didn't apply. But if I had signed it, then I knew what I was promising, and would have no grounds to complain if I couldn't live up to it and were dismissed.
kid bitzer,
Wouldn't want to be sophisticated with our criticisms, now would we?
Whether they are or are not selective, your argument about mixed fibers is irrelevant. That is the same dumb-ass comment that, IIRC, the Brownian OM guy likes to make. I won't argue it here, but I just made a reply to a similar brain-dead comment on Brayton's blog. So if you want you can find it there: http://tinyurl.com/6ztztc
Posted by: heddle | April 30, 2008 9:16 AM
Sure, cheating on one's spouse might be sign of general untrustworthiness, but it might also stem from a source which is completely unrelated to one's job and doesn't affect job performance at all. Maybe the couple turned out to be sexually incompatible, and this has been causing frustration for years. I'd hardly be surprised if one or both partners "slipped" and had relations with somebody else; unless that somebody was a coworker, the affair would have nothing to do with either partner's job. The circumstances might not excuse the violation of trust, but they can explain it.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | April 30, 2008 9:16 AM
Expelled for not living up to some arbitrarily enforced moral code. I thought all divorce was a no-no biblically.
The real expelled.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | April 30, 2008 9:17 AM
MAJeff, OM:
Exactly.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | April 30, 2008 9:18 AM
I think that cheating on your wife is grounds for me to fire you if I'm your employer. If your wife can't trust you, then I can't trust you. Nothing to do with Jesus.
Tell it to the (secular) judge, because if you openly terminate someone for that reason, you're gettin' your *ss sued so fast it'll make your head spin. You do know you can't even ask someone if they're married in the first place when interviewing someone for a job, right?
Unfortunately for the Professor, it was a condition spelled out in his employment contract, so he's kind of S.O.L.
Hopefully he will find work again at a respectable, SECULAR institution.
Posted by: JJR | April 30, 2008 9:19 AM
The previous posts are indicative of intolerance. If you don't like the rules, don't work or attend. Seek employment elsewhere, but quit thinking your perspective is always correct and others are "wierd". Intolerance of intolerance is still intolerance. I don't claim to be tolerant, therefore I can't tolerate this.
Posted by: Mark | April 30, 2008 9:23 AM
I have a good friend who was kicked off the faculty at David Lipscomb University. He was married to a borderline-personality-disorder wife who decided he was evil, etc. and went whole-hog in trying to destroy his life. When she divorced him, he got fired from Lipscomb, plus he was also the preacher at one of the larger Church of Christ churches, so he lost that job too. Lucky for him he also had a small, side-line CPA firm with its bookkeeping and tax practice which he was able to pursue full-time and replace this income after a couple of tight years.
In the 20 years since she lied her way through court, tried to sever his relationship with his children and destroy his career, business and reputation, he's gotten re-married, he has great relationships with his four kids who hate their mother and won't talk to her, and his business is netting him more money than he ever made as a preacher/teacher.
And he's got a much healthier religious outlook. He's still Church of Christ, but he no longer is part of the hell-fire-and-brimstone crowd. Rather, he goes to the most liberal Church of Christ church in our city which is practically "moderate" by modern religious standards.
And while we butt heads on religion and politics, because he still has some blind spots when it comes to Republicans and just what the hell "regulated capitalism" versus "free market capitalism" really means... He's okay.
Posted by: Moses | April 30, 2008 9:26 AM
Tim, #12
"I think that cheating on your wife is grounds for me to fire you if I'm your employer. If your wife can't trust you, then I can't trust you."
Why ? Because the reasons which might lead one to cheat on one's wife are the same as the ones that might lead one to cheat on one's employer ?
Or because, if someone cheats ounce, he is a cheater for life ?
You got a very crooked and immature take on life my friend. Nothing personal, but honestly, just try to reconsider a little bit what you are writing.
Sorry.
Posted by: negentropyeater | April 30, 2008 9:26 AM
"So, as an employer, you think that my personal life is your business? You get my time and my work, not my life."
Yes, if your personal life indicates your character, by all means... it is my business. In your scenario, you are a different person at work then in a personal setting?
Posted by: Mark | April 30, 2008 9:27 AM
In your scenario, you are a different person at work then in a personal setting?
None of your business.
Posted by: MAJeff, OM | April 30, 2008 9:28 AM
Besides, the Prof's story didn't say he cheated on his wife. He prefers not to discuss his divorce publicly, nor does his wife, and I respect their rights to their private lives.
I never cheated on my ex-wife, she never cheated on me. It was simply a matter of irreconcilable differences. She was a control freak, and she returned to her fundamentalist upbringing's world-view. I never represented myself as anything other than an atheist, right up front; My Ex was an "agnostic" experiencing what I guess was a temporary "crisis of faith" when we hooked up. As her friend, then boyfriend, then fiancee then husband I tried to live by example and show her that an atheist could be a good, moral person, but she always had nagging doubts, too much cognitive dissonance. When her "crisis of faith" ended, hastened to a close, I have no doubt, by the movie Passion of the Christ, which I reluctantly agreed to watch with her, our marriage became at bottom untenable, and we went our separate ways.
I will only ever work for secular employers, even though I have considered and been considered for positions at Catholic institutions...Catholic schools are a little more tolerant and willing to consider employing Jews and even atheists if the specific job doesn't require adherence to dogma, and if the employee agrees not to publicly undermine the institution's mission. But now that I'm gainfully employed by a secular state-supported university, I'd like to keep it that way the rest of my career in academia.
Posted by: JJR | April 30, 2008 9:30 AM
According to Matthew 19, the only lawful grounds for "putting your wife away" is "fornication," presumably on her part.
Couldn't he have persuaded her to volunteer for adultery, like Woody Allen's wife did in one of his comedy bits?
I was a bit surprised to read this, since Protestants, even of the evangelical variety, are usually much more tolerant of divorce than Catholics, or at least I thought so.
Posted by: Virginia | April 30, 2008 9:32 AM
Can we separate the Wheaton college from the Wheaton city please? I live in the city of Wheaton which does contain the college. It's a good town and shouldn't be smeered by the petty actions of a college.
Posted by: Alverant | April 30, 2008 9:37 AM
You do that for cause and, depending on the State, you just may find yourself in deep doggie doo faster than the ex-employee's lawyer can file a wrongful termination lawsuit. And even if they don't win under a Breach of Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealings or an Implied Contract suit because At Will is so strong here in America it screws your moral and will cost you about $30,000 to defend.
Making it a Pyrrhic victory, indeed.
Posted by: Moses | April 30, 2008 9:37 AM
Can we separate the Wheaton college from the Wheaton city please? I live in the city of Wheaton which does contain the college. It's a good town and shouldn't be smeered by the petty actions of a college.
Posted by: Alverant | April 30, 2008 9:39 AM
Can we separate the Wheaton college from the Wheaton city please? I live in the city of Wheaton which does contain the college. It's a good town and shouldn't be smeered by the petty actions of a college.
Posted by: Alverant | April 30, 2008 9:42 AM
Can we separate the Wheaton college from the Wheaton city please? I live in the city of Wheaton which does contain the college. It's a good town and shouldn't be smeered by the petty actions of a college.
Posted by: Alverant | April 30, 2008 9:44 AM
MAJeff, OM
I am curious, how far you will take this point. In all these examples are there no grounds for dismissal?
1) A secretary in a synagogue is found to attend, after hours, meetings at a (pick one) virulently anti-Semitic organizations.
2) A receptionist at an abortion clinic who takes names and phone numbers of patients seeking information is found to attend, after hours, a militant anti-abortion organization.
3) A white fund raiser at the NAACP is found to attend, after hours, Klan meetings.
4) An editor of a biology journal is found to belong to several YEC organizations.
5) A male elementary school teacher is found to belong to NAMBLA.
And then imagine, as in the case of (private) Wheaton, the employees mentioned affirmed, as part of their job offer, that they would not engage in activities that are viewed as contrary to their employer's mission, and that they affirmed and would continue to affirm the basic beliefs of the private organization employing them?
Posted by: heddle | April 30, 2008 9:44 AM
Sorry about the triple post. My browser is acting weird.
Posted by: Alverant | April 30, 2008 9:46 AM
Mark #23,
Mark, oh, Mark,
please, what does "cheating on one's wife" (which by the way the article doesn't mention, but let's assume for the sake of the argument that he did "cheat on his wife") indicate about someone's character, and someone's ability to perform his job ???
Please be my guest ...
Posted by: negentropyeater | April 30, 2008 9:47 AM
Why do you think he was cheating on his wife? It doesn't say so in the article - in fact it says this:
"Many theological conservatives say the New Testament permits divorce only in cases of adultery or desertion."
So cheating is OK.
Posted by: reason | April 30, 2008 9:49 AM
Aren't there laws to protect employees from their employers' interference while they are off the clock? Separation of professional and personal lives, and all that ..... ?
Posted by: AJS | April 30, 2008 9:50 AM
I'm actually rather surprised that my hometown has taken this long to get noticed. I can remember back in high school at Wheaton North when they staged "Jesus Christ Superstar" and a whole ton of people got upset. So the next year the administration made sure to appease the upset fundies by staging the much more Gospel-friendly "Godspell."
Wheaton College also had a ban on dancing at any college sponsored event...unless it was square dancing, THAT was allowed. This ban was in effect until 3 or 4 years ago when the college rescinded the ban. One step at a time, I guess...
I can also remember the constant proselytizing by some students at school. Mind you, this was never IN class, the teachers were really good about keeping the focus on the lesson. Say what you want about Wheaton College, but the public schools were pretty good at keeping things secular. I got a superb education in Wheaton, and never was there a controversy over evolution that I can remember. I took biology my sophomore and junior years, and then zoology my senior year, and never was evolution attacked or creationism covertly inserted.
I can also remember going to to youth groups with classmates who were members of College Church,(Wheaton College's official church) and thinking to myself: "This is WAY weirder than Sunday school---both Catholic and Protestant!" (My mom is Catholic, dad is protestant, so we split time between churches, usually. It's probably why I had such a cosmopolitan view of religion from an early age.) The youth meetings were typical of most fundie meetings: submit to jayzuz, turn away from fornication (the nefarious "gay agenda" hadn't yet been discovered, so not much on homosexuality), beware of satan, etc. etc. It wasn't scary for me at the time, because I was still a Christian, but I was definitely weirded out.
But now that I think more about it, Wheaton isn't that bad a place. It's clean, has a low crime rate, good schools, and if you don't mind seeing a Church on every corner (Wheaton has more churches per sq. mile than anywhere else in the nation, or so it goes) than you probably won't think it's anything more than a typical suburban community.
Just don't get pulled over by the cops and don't talk politics. They like their conformity...
Posted by: William Cowan | April 30, 2008 9:52 AM
Wheaton will fire you for not believing a talking snake caused Western Civilization. Or for teaching anthropology from a nonbiblical perspective. You know, all that nonsense about Home erectus, Lucy the Australopithecine, stone age, H. habilis, and all the rest of those fake fossils planted by satan, Dawkins, and Myers.
They did just that to Dr. Bolyanatz, details below. Wheaton is a fundie Death Cult doublethink tank. The constant interrogations and firings are normal. For a totalitarian regime of fanatics, purges are standard operating procedure. Bolyanatz was luck, he wasn't tortured, exiled to the Gulag, or shot. They're working on it though.
Posted by: raven | April 30, 2008 9:52 AM
This morning Reddit had a pointer to a blog entry listing a hole bunch of similar stories that occurred at Christian schools around North America, including Wheaton.
http://www.sunclipse.org/?p=626?
Posted by: N'Mom | April 30, 2008 9:53 AM
And who says he was cheating on his wife? What if his wife was the one cheating on him? What if they were simply incompatible? Mark is perilously close to the viewpoint that all divorce is bad, ever. So, Mark, would you refuse to hire someone who had ever been divorced? What about someone who had never been married, but had gone through a string of bad relationships? Are you, Mark, as an employer, going to call every person an interviewee has ever been in contact with to make sure they had never treated anyone badly?
Posted by: Carlie | April 30, 2008 9:54 AM
Apropos to your Pee Wee Herman post, I wonder if they fire faculty for whacking off?
Posted by: PhysioProf | April 30, 2008 9:55 AM
My brother went to Wheaton. He still lives there and is homeschooling his kids. I give my nieces and nephews dinosaur books for their birthdays.
Posted by: gir | April 30, 2008 9:57 AM
No, it isn't.
Posted by: Armchair Dissident | April 30, 2008 9:59 AM
Ah yes, the Thought Police. I assume they also have an equivalent to the KGB or Stasi as well. Too bad the laws in the USA prevent waterboarding and private Gulags or Wheaton would be well on its way to Orwell's 1984.
Oh that is right, waterboarding is legal. Well, one down and one to go. The fundie Death Cults want to turn the USA into a toxic swamp of ignorance and persecution just like Wheaton.
Posted by: raven | April 30, 2008 10:04 AM
Somewhat ok, They get an F for not understanding fully the passage they pretend to understand. Lanquage scholars Al Maxey, Olan Hicks, and a host of other have laid the above take bare. This has got to be one of the most missused biblical passages.
Thats just stupid. What does a personal relationship have to do with work performance? Why would it be your business in any event?
No it isn't. And yes you can be an excellent employee and piss poor as a mate. They are not mutually exclusive. And as one commenter said cheating once does not mean it will happen again.
Posted by: JimC | April 30, 2008 10:07 AM
This is fucking amazing, amazing. You americans never stop surprising me.
For god's sake, we French had a PRESIDENT (Mitterand) who was CHEATING ON HIS WIFE, he even had a child with that woman (ooooh how baaaad), and you know what, nobody cared. Everybody knew. Noone cared.
Did we think ? OOOH he can't be trusted, he's a cheater, he's a baaaad president. Nope.
Because the reasons why love relationships get broken have absolutely no bearing on the professional compentency of the individuals involved.
Posted by: negentropyeater | April 30, 2008 10:11 AM
Intolerance of intolerance is still intolerance.
Your comment comes across as a completely silly piece of nonsense. Tolerance does not require you to tolerate everything. It does not force you to treat lies with the same respect that you treat truth. It does not force you to equate the moral worth of a mass murderer with that of Albert Schweitzer.
Posted by: freelunch | April 30, 2008 10:15 AM
I guess our friends Tim, Mark and of course good old Muddleheddle will be voting for the happily married, Obama and not for the serial adulterer McCain, who ditched his first wife for a rich heiress with whom he took up while still married, and married within months of his divorce. Right?
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | April 30, 2008 10:15 AM
At 13: Tim - if you stopped fucking your employees, I think this issue of the lack of trust might disappear for you and you can then judge them solely on how well they do their jobs.
Hope this helps.
Posted by: BaldySlaphead | April 30, 2008 10:16 AM
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | April 30, 2008 10:16 AM
raven,
You do not know what you are talking about. They do ask you to affirm what they consider core beliefs, and that probably includes affirming the historicity of Adam and Eve, but they do not ask you to affirm YEC-ism or a literal interpretations of Genesis (talking snakes.) I know faculty at Wheaton who are public about their non-literal view of Genesis.
Are you just pulling this stuff out of your ass?
Here is a good friend of mine, a fellow nuclear physicist and the chairman of the physics department, arguing for anon-literal interpretations of genesis: http://tinyurl.com/5ldy9v
You can and will disagree with what he writes, but it disputes your claim.
Posted by: heddle | April 30, 2008 10:17 AM
Exactly 100% correct. What form of deluded individual thinks I have the same level of relationship with my employer as I have with my wife?
Posted by: JimC | April 30, 2008 10:18 AM
negentropyeater-
We Americans, on the other hand, have a total idiot as president who never tells the truth when he can lie, who never does anything competently when he can screw it up completely but he has never been accused of cheating on his wife.
Posted by: freelunch | April 30, 2008 10:20 AM
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | April 30, 2008 10:20 AM
Steve LaBonne,
Yes I am voting for Obama. A rare sound deduction on your part.
Posted by: heddle | April 30, 2008 10:20 AM
Well, good for you. And I mean that completely sincerely.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | April 30, 2008 10:22 AM
These alleged Christians at this college don't know the first thing about Jesus. They are a legalistic as the people Jesus railed against. They set up little tribunals to judge this man reasons for getting a divorce rather than offering forgiveness and allowing him to heal.
They have made his yoke heavy and not light as Jesus intended. They have quite literally bastardized the very intent of what he tried to do.
I guess they prefer marriages without love- a virtual prison, a hell on Earth - to redemption and a fresh start.
Could the devil do worse than people like this?
Posted by: Che-Taylor | April 30, 2008 10:26 AM
Has anyone noticed that our evil secular universities do not monitor the personal beliefs of their faculty ...
Really? I think Dr. Willian Gray might beg to differ on that one.
Posted by: TomJoe | April 30, 2008 10:26 AM
Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | April 30, 2008 10:27 AM
Does not follow. Does not follow at all.
For example, you have not even contemplated the possibility that your wife, not you, might have run away. Nor have you considered the fact that your relationship to your employer is (hopefully) not the same kind of relationship as that to your wife.
I smell stupid oxide. Learn to think things through.
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | April 30, 2008 10:29 AM
For reasons other than the above I hope.
Posted by: Che-Taylor | April 30, 2008 10:29 AM
TomJoe- how hilarious that you evidently didn't read the article you linked to, whose subject flatly denies exactly what you're insinuating.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | April 30, 2008 10:30 AM
Good grief man they make you say you think Adam and Eve where real people and you cling to the talking snake comment? Hell a literal interpretation makes more sense than trying to morph it all together later.
Good to hear you find the bible inaccurate on this point after all your apologetics everywhere. So the talking serpent didn't exist and was just 'metaphor' huh?
Posted by: JimC | April 30, 2008 10:34 AM
JimC,
What I believe is not relevant. The point was that raven #38 was incorrect in claiming that Wheaton would fire you if you did not take a literal view of Genesis.
Posted by: heddle | April 30, 2008 10:39 AM
Steve, I read it. I can link you to several articles right now which discuss the situation and how Dr. Gray obviously felt (still feels?) that CSU is reigning him in based on his views on global warming. CSU has placed several stipulations on continuing to report his forecasts, and one can imagine that part of that would be that Dr. Gray retract some of his more "volatile" rhetoric on the whole situation. Or does that never happen in real life?
Posted by: TomJoe | April 30, 2008 10:40 AM
I think raven #38 is more right than wrong. Adam and Eve as real people is certainly literal. One literal aspect for certain but literal. You can't have one part literal and another metaphor.
Well I guess you can do anything but it wouldn't be sensible or reasonable to pretend the writer wanted magic making people appear but no magic for talking snakes.
It's a matter of consistency.
Posted by: JimC | April 30, 2008 10:42 AM
I can read. I'm not into denial, twisting the truth, or defending ignorant fanatics. Dr. Boyanatz was Expelled, fired by the Wheaton Thought Police for being an evolution acceptor. It is public knowledge and has been written up many times. Just the facts reposted below.
Hard to teach physical anthropology if one has to ignore 6 million years of the fossil record. Bolyanatz was fired for not being willing or able to do that. Another victim of fundie persecution, one of over a dozen.
Posted by: raven | April 30, 2008 10:43 AM
[QUOTE]I think that cheating on your wife is grounds for me to fire you if I'm your employer. If your wife can't trust you, then I can't trust you. Nothing to do with Jesus.[/QUOTE]
You would have 'fired' Einstein then. Good call!
Posted by: Steven Sullivan | April 30, 2008 10:46 AM
You think Wheaton is bad. I spent 4 long years at BIOLA UNIV. in California. No Dancing, No Alcohol, No Masturbation, No Homosexuals, No questioning the inerrancy of the Bible (I tried; believe me!).
I even got an F in a class because I refused to go out "witnessing" to strangers!
I went in at age 18 "questioning my faith"....I left that institution a 22-yr-old staunch atheist! Well, I was actually told to leave after my adviser found out I was drinking alcohol (I was over 21!) and smoking marijuana (yet still going to class and turning in my coursework)
Posted by: newseamus moore | April 30, 2008 10:56 AM
My father did his undergrad (B.S. Chemistry, B.S. Geology) at Wheaton in the early 60's. He is a fundie Nazarene, YEC kook, and passionate AGW denier, having been married and divorced three times. So that turned out well.
It might be humorous, at least in this case, if Wheaton policed their former students' lives, too, and rescinded degrees for marital dissolutions.
Posted by: ennui | April 30, 2008 10:59 AM
Look, the thought patterns of real people in the real world, especially for us truth-accepting materialists, emerge from biochemistry (rendering so much of the soc and psych of the last century unimpressive). Zygote initialized with genes; embryo influenced by the developmental environment -- mom's eating, drinking, anxiety, etc; early childhood driven by a zillion influences -- the maternal gaze, exposure to talk, parental anxiety, etc.
Likewise, for a young adult, college is a kind of cocoon (as the workforce is for an adult). The watchfulness, explicit expectations, stern glances, reprimands, etc. of the people around her comprise a neurochemical environment. It's only in theory, i.e., the land of wishful thinking, where students are predominantly on a self-motivated journey for knowledge and understanding. In the reality of entertainment/consumer culture, there is intense distraction and temptation. Enlightenment-individualism-secularism's bold abandonment of magic stories has not been without consequence; it's capacity to construct an effective, sustainable hive has yet to be fully demonstrated. The mental wall that the religious build up, the one that keeps out conceiving reality as undesigned, without a plan, and without ultimate reward and punishment, is also a protective wall that favours practicing commitment to the hive, self-control, delayed gratification, internalizing abstractions of fairness and justice. One does not have to want this to be the case in order to reflect on whether it is largely in accord with reality.
Posted by: Neil Schipper | April 30, 2008 10:59 AM
You can and will disagree with what he writes, but it disputes your claim. - heddle
I do urge everyone to follow heddle's link - the best laugh I've had in a week! I had thought perhaps heddle was a little nearer rationality than most of this blog's Christian visitors, but the fact that he admits being a friend of the fruitcake at the other end of the link, and apparently takes the vapourings therein seriously, have disabused me of that notion.
Posted by: Nick Gotts | April 30, 2008 11:00 AM
Bitterman was fired for not teaching about the talking snake theory of the origins of Western Civilization. This is a common fundie belief. In one believes that the earth is 6,000 years old, the smart ass snake is responsible in part for apple eating from the Tree of Knowledge and thus of "good and evil". And here we are, the 21st century.
Of course about this time, the Sumerians were inventing glue and beer and agriculture was 4,000 years old. Trying to squeeze a 13.7 billion year old universe into a tiny 6,000 year old hole can be difficult.
Posted by: raven | April 30, 2008 11:01 AM
Neil, what you don't get is that I have no desire to live in a "hive". Go hang out with ants if that's what you're into.
And if you think college students were more serious and better-behaved in the "good old days" and had less "distraction and temptation", you understand nothing at all of college life in the pre-meritocracy days of the "gentleman's C".
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | April 30, 2008 11:06 AM
I think that Scotts (the fertilizer/lawn people) fire you if you smoke (not just at work, but anywhere). Cleveland Clinic, I believe, will not hire smokers (I do not know if they went so far as to fire them if they already worked there and refused to stop smoking). Both have presumably claimed that the savings in health care costs justifies their decisions. I don't think they have been prevented from doing this or sued for doing so. I really don't like it at all - they want added control over their employees' activities but aren't willing to compensate for it (kind of like what employers would like to do in general with health care - make the employees pay for it but not raise their pay enough to do so, if at all). My employer does have certain control over my activities - I can't speak out for my employer, or develop competing products, for example, but I think there are certain rights I can't give away (an employer can make me, but if they try to enforce them, the will likely not be able to - general noncompete clauses, for example). (IANAL, though). I don't think what isn't explicit covered by my work agreements (and, where it conflicts with law, some things that are) is within my employers purview - they shouldn't punish me for what I might do, only for what I do do. I don't think this would wash for employers if I committed violent acts, though - the possibility of such (since I've already done it) might make them at risk enough to fire me preemptively, and I'm not certain how wrong (if at all) I think that would be.
#12: your statement would (perhaps) be fair if you treat your employees as if you were married to them. Since almost no employers do so (many treating their employees like condoms - use once, then discard), the expectation that an employer should have such substantive input into the lives of his employees seems hypocritical - you want the power over their behavior, but are unwilling to accept the responsibility that comes with it.
Posted by: Hap | April 30, 2008 11:07 AM
News flash! Religious institution does things in a religious manner! (Carefully doctored) Film at 11!
Seriously, slow neas day, PZ? ;-)
Posted by: Quiet_Desperation | April 30, 2008 11:15 AM
You must be a newbie. He spins the most amusing apologetics all over science blogs. He became detached from rational thinking some time ago.
Although the fact that he likes the Steelers keeps him on my good side. That and I actually agree with him about once a year. He and I chew the same theological dirt so to speak but I find his understanding of his religion to be in it's infancy. He hasn't matured yet. I think he was a late convert. I think/hope he'll emerge somewhat embarrassed by the arguments he currently persues.
Posted by: JimC | April 30, 2008 11:22 AM
raven,