Huh. I'd been wondering why I've been getting so much complaining email lately, defending Pensacola Christian College.
Pz Myers,
I'm A Christian. I came across your blog when searching for PCC in Pensacola FL. This web site was the first on the list. I of course disagree with you, but I do know why you as a "professor" at a University can not understand why someone would go to that college. I mean think about it? no fun, not accredited, religious? What sparks the endurance for a average 18 year old to go were the rules are so strick? Is it their parents? the answer is no. Is it the society? the answer in no. Is it the higher level of education? no. What is it then? If your a Professor at the Univeristy of Minnesota, then it likely to believe that you a never been inside the college, Your information sounds accuracted, but I bet you never been there. I'll will go on and further say you will never go there to see this "jail" yourself. You in my book are thoughtless on this topic. You can not judge what you not seen. I think you need to be educated on why Christians do the things they do. Search it out, If you have any questions write them to me at redacted, Any logical person would examine both sides. Remember a three letter word make you and me different. GOD!
Nah, it's an eight-letter word. LITERACY!
I've got to admit, though, that this fellow's letter was one of the better written ones coming from these PCC wanna-be pseudo-collegiates.
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So there are reasons Christians choose to attend this school, after all. They are also, apparently, secret reasons.
Is this a college or a madrash?
Being an amateur grammar and spelling nazi, I couldn't help but cring throughout reading that. Although, it is at least on par with many of the papers written by my fellow students at PSU, if the small sampling I've had experiences with are in any way indicative.
There is an overarching problem with literacy among my peers, regardless of where they are going or went to college. However, I'm all too happy to join you in making fun of these people as well.
Faux collegiates are really silly. Why don't you sleep in a church for four years, make up a pretend degree and sign it? It'll be just as good from a job standpoint, considering you're probably going to join the workforce in a seminary.
Yeah, well. What do you know. You're just a "professor".
Probably at a "University".
Hey, PCC is an intellectual powerhouse compared to Peter S. Ruckman's unaccredited "Pensacola Bible Institute."
"cring" huh?
Skitt's law in action, I guess. (Also, your "throughout" should have been "while". Let's see if I can avoid Skitt myself, pesky little fellow that he is.)
PZ, please post more of these. It would make me so happy. If you don't want to clutter up your blog you could just creat a blogspot blog to paste them into and we could mock them there. It would be fun.
Well, Peter Ruckman is the bloke who says that the King James Version is more inspired than the original Greek and Hebrew. Even other people who say that the KJV is the best Bible translation to use think he's giving them a bad name. In other words, he is a nutjob among nutjobs and a loon of loons.
He's also a shoddy scholar and a through-the-teeth liar, but that's par for the minigolf course.
Another student from PCC left this comment in the original thread:
(bold mine). I guess it's the fear of the real world which drives young folk to attend schools like this. But then, why go in the first place? Mom's basement is probably just as fun and educational.
Yeah, that person really needs a lesson in reading comprehension. Nobody believes they are literally making babies by ogling each other; we were laughing at the fact that they thought staring into someone else's eyes was daring.
It's revealing, too, that he thinks other universities have a "beer soaked condom crazed drugged out atmosphere." Even if they do, all you have to do is not drink, not use drugs, and not use condoms...ummm, I mean, don't get into situations where you need a condom. That's the thing about these letters: the writers are not only poor at it, but they're confessing to being incredibly weak, and needing to be policed or they'll go sex, drugs, and alcohol crazy.
In addition to math (another thread) I'd like these jokers to understand the function of the 'return key', labelled 'Enter' on most computers. Using it at strategic intervals results in something called 'paragraphs'. It's a way of breaking the gibberish up into bite-sized chunks.
argystokes wrote:
Mom's basement is probably just as fun and educational.
If my string-theory-addled brain recalls properly, Mom's basement was where the Debate Team got royally stoned every Friday night through eleventh grade. If that's not fun and educational, I don't know what could be.
"cring" huh?
Skitt's law in action, I guess. (Also, your "throughout" should have been "while". Let's see if I can avoid Skitt myself, pesky little fellow that he is.)
heh, I didn't lie when I called myself an amateur. I'm an Engineering major who dabbles in Science, do you expect any better?
Oh, and PZ, I wholeheartedly agree. Like I said before, I go to Penn State Main, and rarely got drunk till I was 21 and even then maybe twice a month. It's all about exercising personal restraint, something a lot of religious people seem to be afraid that they can't do.
"Eviloution says that there is no higher moral compass; what's to prevent us from all becoming cannibalistic spider monkeys?!?!?!?"
I'm pretty certain that beer consumption occurred among certain of my classmates during my undergraduate years at Caltech, but I don't recall any heaps of condoms. Perhaps our lessons on godless science and math occupied too much of our time. Those damned accredited schools are always being fussy about standards and stuff.
By the way, at Caltech everyone knows that "PCC" really stands for Pasadena City College.
Not that it isn't hilarious, but I'm inclined to think that PZ's interlocutor there simply doesn't speak English as his primary language. I've fielded plenty of email from the borderline illiterate, but the mistakes of spelling and usage they make tend to be of the AOL Instant Messenger school. This one doesn't have a LOL or a "U C" (you see) to be found.
Something about the "it likely to believe" construction makes me want to think that this is a native speaker of an east-asian language (Korean?), but I'm sort of stabbing in the dark there. PZ, can you disclose a last name without compromising this poor person's privacy?
Have these people never heard of paragraphs?
I'm not really surprised by this. I went to Pepperdine University for a semester (before I decided it was by far the dumbest decision I'd ever made in my life), and this kind of ignorance and borderline insanity was pervasive. Except, it was the RICH fundamentalist nuts who went there. You know, the ones who will snort coke on a Tuesday night, then remind you that you're hell-bound Wednesday morning.
I can't even imagine the atmosphere at a non-accredited Christian college. It was bad enough at Pepp. I left because of our "convocation series" (i.e. sit around and praise Jesus for credit) - which I failed - as well as their banning of Students Against Homophobia on-campus. Well, that and the fact that the only "liberal" person I knew on campus believed in ID.
Poor disillusioned fools.
Argystokes, I think it's the fun of "making blather babies" that drives people to go to schools like that. What an easy A, making babble babies. ("On your final exam, boys and girls, just write anything that begins with 'Jesus says,' and ends with 'hiring strippers at Lacrosse parties.'")
Here's a good calibration point on how loony PCC is: even Kent Hovind thinks they're too strict and dictatorial.
http://web.archive.org/web/20031001100511/http://www.geocities.com/drhovindonpcc/
Wow. I guess they don't teach any kind of writing at PCC. He makes a big buildup to supposedly reveal the truth of why kids go to PCC or why a "professor" at a "university" would not get it, then suddenly turns around and pulls out the Ken Ham "were you there?" defense.
The insistence among these people of first-hand knowledge is...bizarre. Almost SKEPTICAL. It makes me wonder, does this mean that all these people actually experience this revealed knowledge? If so, where and when? I went to church for 18 years, and all I ever saw there was someone telling me stuff about Jesus. They never let me in the Biblical time machine.
Or are they just incredibly disingenuous?
(oh yeah this "radical fundamentalist" is quoting the Bible, don't get your panties in a wad, just read it and ackowledge that the verse is true...ok?) "Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out: so where there is no talebearer, the strife ceaseth."
Oh okay then, duly acknowledged. 1) Fire goes out where there is no wood. 2) Strife ceaseth where there is no talebearer.
Those are some wise words indeed. So true, so true. You can't get any truer than that, folks. No siree.
OK, so I have wall-eyes. What kind of eye-babies would I make? Eww!
I wonder if the students who attend PCC are also involved in "Battle Cry." There's an interesting article on truthdig.com about the latter group, and the tenets for their interns are eerily similar to the PCC Standards of Conduct. I guess I'm not really surprised, though. They're just two varieties of the same Christian fundamentalist species.
http://www.pcci.edu/CampusLife/Miscellaneous/StandardsofConduct.html
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060511_battle_cry_theocracy/
To summarize: sex = bad, secular music = bad (probably because deep down it is about sex), movies = bad (again, sex), short skirts = bad (duh, sex!). If you wonder what happens when you withold sex from hormone-driven young adults, look no further. Apparently it destroys any hope of rational, logical thought. They just need to have some good old-fashioned guilt-free intercourse. Perhaps that'll open their minds.
From the reply quoted in one of the comments:
So, ignorant and a bigot. Unless "grease monkey" means something else than I think.
Also, I like the fact that it seems like he is implying that if "students" don't go to PCC, then their parents are encouraging them to have irresponsible sex.
Well, classist anyway--"grease monkey" means an automotive mechanic; no particular ethnicity is implied.
From extensive presence in Yahoo chat rooms, I've observed what appears to be a statistically-significant inverse relationship between religiosity and education.
The most fervent godders in chat rooms are almost invariably incapable of writing complete sentences, or of spelling. Too much of the time, they're not so hot on thinking, either.
I'm sure the effect is more widespread than just Yahoo chat rooms.
Here's an idea, genius: raise your daughters so they have sense enough not to have a sexual relationship with ANYONE looking for a free ride (I don't have anything specific against mechanics or other labor positions, which he may or may not mean by "grease monkey").
Come to think of it, maybe raising daughters (and sons) with the proper instruction, examples, and parental involvement to keep them from making stupid decisions even without rules preventing it would be a good idea...
Of course, that requires not lobotomizing them, which will have a significantly detrimental effect on fundie-church attendance rates...
PS: PZ, until they fix the fucking Typekey authentication thing so the "stay logged in for two weeks" (or at least more than 5 minutes) actually works, I wish you'd disable it... :/
"From extensive presence in Yahoo chat rooms, I've observed what appears to be a statistically-significant inverse relationship between religiosity and education."
This has been studied. The correlation is exactly what you would expect, and goes even further. It's strongest with the more convervative religions.
my favorite part of the inline letter above:
The fact that their rules are antiquated is justification for their existence? Do they teach geocentrism too? What about the miasma theory of disease? Spontaneous generation? The four humors? By Todd, people, this is the 21st century, let's act like it.
I have heard it used to refer to Mexicans, but that might have been a misuse of the person who used it.
For those, like me, who wants to refresh their memories of PZ's orginal post about the "university" - it can be found here
I dunno about the others, but the "four humors" model retains some modern influence, at least among science reporters and some pop psychologists, who tend to ascribe gender differences in measured abilities and behavioral tendencies uncritically to the direct and simplistic influence of sex hormones on the brain...
So much repression. The limbic system will NOT be so easily restrained.
I would imagine the most popular activity among males at PCC is masturbation (or do they call it "making hand babies"?) It's probably pretty hard to get that copy of Playboy, you know, the one with "Women of TBN".
I bet if you walked around campus at PCC, the senior males have one arm that looks like it belongs to Popeye and the other arm looks like it belongs to Olive Oyl.
The rules facilitate an atmosphere of learning, rather than most of the beer soaked condom crazed drugged out atmosphere of many Floridian colleges.
Hey now - as an alumnus of two of those beer-soaked, condom-crazed Florida colleges, I resent this nitwit's implication that one can only find an "atmosphere of learning" at PCC.
I learned a lot at Beer Soaked State U of Florida . . . oh, man, did I ever.
Blasphemy! It hurts me to read someone smearing minigolf that way.
The authentication works just fine. It's just that Pharyngula, unlike most of the other scienceblogs using Typekey, also requires that you share your email address, which requires an extra step.
Having set my two-week option to "yes", I can immediately post at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. When I come to Pharyngula, I see the request to sign in, but as soon as I click it, the box for email verification pops up, and then I can post.
It's a stupid, annoying system, but it does function. Sorta.
We had a neighbor's son who went to one of these bible mills. I was amazed at the number of courses he was NOT required to take -- things like history, some form of math and some form of science. He was required to take a course that taught him how to respond to the heathen nonbelievers who would question his faith.
He would dare me and when I played along and when he was backed into a corner it ended: It's faith; I feel sorry for you; you'll spend eternity in hell; I'll pray for you and, my favorite, aborted babies and all other dead babies who had not accepted Jesus would be in hell with me.
We haven't seen or heard from him in years and I think he has a small store-front church and is spreading the word and the faith.
This was my favorite quote from the second PCC letter above in the comments:
"However revolting the tendency for PCC students to ogle each other fondly may be,"
Looking at another student is revolting? I can picture this dour person, stomping through campus angrily yelling "Stop looking at me!" at everyone he/she sees.
These people are scary.
Dwimr--From what I can see, privacy is hard to come by at PCC, in no small part to discourage that sort of thing. So, not mismatched forearms. Try chronic blue balls and its female equivalent.
To any PCC students reading this: Even PCC's library may have a copy of The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. It's short--you can read it in a sitting.
Do so.
I second the call to please, please provide the emails you've been getting from PCC folk on some kind of sidebar post. I'd love to see what they all have to say to defend their overlords, and in what tortured pseudo-language they speak.
Ebonmuse - You forgot to mention how much of Hovind's dislike of PCC stems from mutual accusations of tax evasion and PCCs attempts to "steal" Hovind's employees. Narcissism of minor differences, eh?
I highly doubt PCC owns a copy of Strunk & White. After all, E.B. White was involved in writing Is Sex Necessary? and not unequivocally concluding that it isn't.
There must be something about Pensacola, all right. My cousin from there felt it was necessary and appropriate to tell my mother--on her deathbed--that she was going to Hell for all the Sundays she spent making rounds in the hospital, instead of going to church.
I don't even have the words to describe that kind of depravity in the name of religion.
Wow. Just.... wow.
I am pessimistic, and assume it was your mother's deathbed, and not the cousin's.
Yes, you're right--when you're making assumptions about some of my relatives' bad behavior, it would be difficult to be too pessimistic. That incident is the reason I don't have anything to do with those relatives anymore.
In terms of families, though, I certainly married up--Mr. Raven's immediate family is one of the best groups of people I know, and--even though from a fundie background--wouldn't dream of doing anything of the sort that my cousin did. Nor would most people, I imagine, but the Pensacola branch of my family...wow.
Has anyone ever noticed that there's a certain type of Fundie who prefaces all their statements or writing with "I'm A Christian"? I guess they think that's going to make everyone take what they say extra seriously?
Always a bad sign when you see someone do that.
I bet if you walked around campus at PCC, the senior males have one arm that looks like it belongs to Popeye and the other arm looks like it belongs to Olive Oyl.
I understand that at the end of the week, all the top sheets in the men's dormitory get up and walk themselves down to the laundry.
Zeno:
Obviously you weren't in Dabney House :D
Not on my computer it doesn't. I have to re-sign in every...somewhere between 10 minutes and an hour.
To any PCC students trolling this blog --
I offer you some facts.
(1) I am father to a 20-year-old daughter.
(2) She attends a small liberal arts (accredited!!) college in central Kentucky with a mainstream church affiliation.
(3) There are some limitations on male-female visitations after certain hours, but they are being phased out. It has something to do with the administration trusting the students. So far, celebratory orgies have not taken place -- it's finals time.
(4) Drinking occurs on and off campus. There are parties at frats and sororities. Need I say more? My daughter does not drink, so she could care less. We did not impose this behavior on her, nor was it a significant portion of her religious upbringing. She came to the decision not to drink to excess on her own. I believe it is called "free will." It's also called being mature and intelligent.
(5) Her mother and I trust our children to make appropriate decisions, believing that the principles we taught them will enable them to do well in college and in adulthood, without constant adult supervision. All four have proved us correct, despite none of them being born-again Christians, regular church-goers, celibate, or straightedge. I would go so far to suggest that they are not unusual in this regard.
(6) Despite my visiting the blog of this godless liberal, I am not an atheist. Neither am I fundamentalist or Pentecostal, so perhaps in your book I may as well be an atheist.
If you believe that you are too weak, that you will give into temptation, that your parents and church are correct in assuming you are by nature sinful, then by all means stay at PCC. You will prolong your childhood by four more years, and perhaps in the interim become self-sufficient enough to not need a detailed codebook of acceptable behavior. Meanwhile, do not judge others who would rather enjoy a certain kind of freedom at age 18.
Damnit, posted too soon. Was trying to say "I always assumed they were trying to convince *themselves*."
jakobpunkt,
If you don't want to clutter up your blog you could just creat a blogspot blog to paste them into and we could mock them there. It would be fun.
Was that done on purpose?
What is it with Christian colleges these days?
5 Professors Quit Religious School
Oh... that, that..... atheist!
DOF and Molly: In re: "paragraphs"
It is a known fact that nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus ever speak of paragraphs. No, not even one time. And in the Old Testament, the prophets never speak of paragraphs either. So naturally those with proper Christian educations understand that it is wrong to indulge in the use of non-Bible sanctioned grammatical forms. If you went to PCC, you would know this.
Flatlander: Thanks for clearing that up.
* * *
It occurs to me that PCC students may be restricted from going off campus, not so much to protect them from all those occasions of sin available in the Big Bad World, as to protect the school from the possibility of the students interacting with graduates of other institutions and figuring out what a piss-poor education PCC is giving them.