Look at this chart: it purports to show the percentage of 'born-again' Christians who abandon their faith after attending various categories of colleges. My first thought was, "Good, now how can we get those numbers higher?"; I'm sure that most fundies feel what the author of the chart intended, absolute horror at the idea that sending kids to college is the equivalent of shipping them off to an eternity of hellfire.
But wait…the graph actually says nearly nothing at all about the state of secularism in our universities. It's missing too much information, and it's been selectively skewed. The first thing they did was start with a population of "born-again" Christians, and ask how many were still "born-again" when they graduated: that's a number that can only go up. For all we know from these data, 5% of the students enter public universities as "born-agains", a quarter of that cohort goes apostate (the only figure that is plotted), but another 95% of the godless freshmen become Southern Baptist seniors. That's not likely, I know, but it means this chart can't be used to make the argument that university educations convert people to freethinking secularists.
It's a meaningless scare graph designed to finagle the data and worry people. I have to wonder about a religious organization (this is from Focus on the Family) that makes such an effort to convince the faithful that getting a higher education imperils their soul—it's almost as if they want to keep their donors and supporters ignorant and stupid.
The article is also loaded with anecdotes, of course, all to support their contention that universities are hotbeds of sin and temptation. This was funny, in a gross and icky way:
[T]he modern university, having lost its moral convictions, has attached itself to relativistic doctrines such as tolerance and diversity, which mean, in practice, tolerance of anything but Biblical faith and traditional morality.
So, learning that some people think differently than you, and that you should let those people exist, is the same as learning to hate the Bible and its traditional morality. Isn't that a sign that there's something wrong with your religion when threats to your reality consist of a) learning that lesbians, for instance, exist, and that b) no, you don't get to beat them up or deprive them of their civil rights? I say any religion that remote from reality is best abandoned, anyway.
I was wondering how my university was specifically causing this hypothetical and so far unsupported abandonment of religious principles, aside from just being unbiblically diverse and tolerant. It's particularly appropriate to learn about our nefarious plans since freshman orientation starts next week.
"The trial everyone has heard about — but most people underrate — is the sheer spiritual disorientation of the modern campus," wrote J. Budziszewski in a Focus on the Family magazine article.
"Methods of indoctrination are likely to include not only required courses, but also freshman orientation, speech codes, mandatory diversity training, dormitory policies, guidelines for registered student organizations and mental health counseling," Budziszewski added.
Oh, no—required courses! We've got lots of those in biology, and it's true that we do hammer on unbiblical evolution a lot. I've attended freshman orientation: they get speeches like, "Work hard, but don't forget to enjoy extracurricular activities!" I guess that's unbiblical, too. Dorm policies do things like proscribe food fights and set study hours where everyone is expected to be quiet—if God tells you to flick a spoonful of applesauce at the RA, or to crank up that Creed album at 11pm, I suppose it would be isolating you from the Divine. I'm not a fan of speech codes—they tend to be restrictive and channel people into rather narrow modes of expression—but they don't afflict Christians at all, unless your idea of Christianity involves damning the aforementioned lesbians to hell.
Mental health counseling, though, I can see as dangerous to born-again Christians. It might make them sane.
The article makes much of this poor Christian student who gave an opening convocation that elicited many letters of protest. See if you can guess what is objectionable about his attitude.
"So in talking about that I couldn't help but talk about Christ. … [and] living for Him and knowing what our purpose as humans is," he explained. "[After all], what is the purpose of education, if not to use it for Him?"
At a university, he's free to say that kind of thing, and he did. And people are free to disagree with him, and they did. That people complained about the stupidity of his position, though…definitely unbiblical. No wonder colleges scare fundies, if they're places where someone can make the kind of fact-free, illogical, goofy assertion that they're used to making every day in church, and some danged atheist or Jew or Muslim or Buddhist or other such heathenish hellbound pagan is going to disagree with them.
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What these Christians are complaining about is what my mother used to call "basic polite behavior". You don't say nasty things about other people, you definitely don't threaten or intimidate other people, and if you can't say something nice don't say anything at all. And my mother never knew she was a force for evil.
I wonder Catholic Colleges do to their born-agains? May be we could learn from them.
Did anybody else think of scientology reading the mental health counseling reference?
I guess I would say I made the transition from Protestant Christian to what-ever-the-hell-I-am now after moving away from home to attend University, although I was already moving in that direction beforehand. The thing that changed my mind was that all the people I met who engaged in binge drinking, sex and general fun weren't the as evil or desperately lost as Church had told me they would be.
I was sitting in church listening to a AiG guy give similar stats about the number of young christian people who lose their faith at university. I quite liked what he had to say at first, because he suggested that the church needs to tell it's young people the truth about the world. However, his version of the truth was that Genesis was scientifically accurate...I was thinking more along the lines of the allegorical/mythical content of scripture..oh well.
This is funny! Looks like Notre Dame and BC are helping to lead the Fight Against Fundies too. Christ these people are stooo-pid. I would say pig ignorant, but that insults the pig.
Ideas that can't survive exposure to fresh mental air don't deserve to live.
Horrors! If only we could get rid of this pesky mental health requirement, maybe some of these kids would commit suicide before they got a chance to reject God!
The article also confuses categories wildly, saying 'left' when it apparently means 'secular' as well as left when it means gay and similar stupid transpositions. No doubt that's standard for fundy types, just bunching together everything they hate and then mixing the terms at random.
"It is obvious that the Left has a prominent place on public, private, secular and Christian campuses and is so convincing that some Christians are denying their faith while other students are forming a personal set of beliefs for the first time."
The Left has a prominent place and is convincing therefore some Christians are denying their 'faith' - as if 'left' were simply the same word as atheist or skeptic. As if there were no religious leftists or leftist religous people, and also as if there were no atheist conservatives or conservative atheists. But of course that's a reality-based comment, therefore irrelevant.
Come on, didn't you know that christians are being persecuted in this country and that the graph just proves it! ::snark::
Great blog BTW, been readin it for years, just thought I'd start commenting...
Dennis, suicide is a sin! Only God has the right to decide whether people live or die!
Yes, but Jesus will forgive suicide. The only thing that he won't forgive is if you deny the Holy Spirit. Upstanding Christian parents ought to see the suicide as preferably. Praise the LORD!
How many of those "born-again Christians" wind up still believing in God and still belonging to/attending a church of some sort -- and only "abandon" the literalism, the anti-intellectualism, the authoritarianism, etc. frequently associated with "born-again Christianity"? Funny how the chart doesn't address that.
I teach philosophy. I can't help but laugh every time I hear these people going on and on about the dread spectre of relativism -- I mean, jeez, we spend an awful lot of time talking about Socrates and Plato, who between them pretty much invented objectivism (and I don't mean the Randroid sort). We discuss any number of philosophers who not only believed in God but also sought to rationally prove that God exists. When it comes to ethics, we spend most of our time talking about philosophers who argued that there are objective moral truths and values -- and we investigate the reasons they put forward in support of their views.
I guess where we go wrong is that we don't just pull quotations out of the Bible that tell us what we want to hear and stop there. Shame!
So I guess we can say that advanced education is pretty much working as intended -- allowing intelligent humans to shuck their security blanket of superstition and engage the world at face value. It's not very efficient though -- those numbers are too low for my tastes by far.
Go Catholic schooling though!
So a second's thought suggests that the chart's odd peak for denial of "born-again" Christian identity found among students at Catholic colleges must be denial of the "born-again" part, not the Christian part (though I know two local Catholic colleges are pretty secular, I'm guessing that's a bay-area thing -?).
And in the linked article, there's this from a conservative columnist:
... such as? (beyond the obvious possibilities like CS Lewis and Kierkegaard)
Brainwashing and indoctrination, the essence of any healthy religion, requires lots of maintenance. Thoughts need to be shrouded and constantly policed. The fear/hatred of new ideas not coming from religious authority must remain paramount.
They cause me feelings of contempt, pity, and fear.
Such as the Bible, the Word of God!
PZ, you had pretty much the same reaction to this thatI did. Reading that article this morning made my brain hurt, I just hope I can recover from it.
Think how different the world might be if Jesus had gone to college.
I was a Roman Catholic in high school, and my faith began to erode in my first year in college until I lost it completely. But after becoming a leftist, I swerved sharp right ideologically for many years. Ever since the Bush Administration, I have started to become more liberal again.
I'm just curious about the mechanics of becoming un-born-again. Do you head back up the spiritual birth canal?
Ancient men wrote and compiled the bible. They were ignorant. They didn't know about germs. They belived in witches. You obviously don't have any idea how stupid you sound, so I'll help. You sound really stupid with your assertion. Your ancient book of falsehoods and fables is no more the word of god than the Koran, or Snow White. In fact, the statement makes no sense. Only your imagination gives it any meaning. Your concept of god is bereft of any real value. It's great at causing fear, pain, suffering, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance though. Child.
Guess what, everyone, I've decided to accept Jesus into my heart. Yes, that's right. Atheism, good-bye! And now I see persecution everywhere! They were right!
I mean, what is there about this cake mix that is uniquely Christian? Am I the only one with the guts in this grocery store to ask this question? Hey, you, at the cash register--don't you make that evolution face at me, missy!
I wonder if my cats are unsaved? Does anyone know how to witness to pets? You'd think PETA would work on this important question.
This light switch is obviously godless. I won't touch it (and that's good, because all of my books are now evil to me anyway). Obviously I'm not going to grad school now. I'll just sit here in the dark, seeing the Light. Good enough for me.
You're all jealous--I can tell.
Is this air that I'm breathing Godly? Maybe I shouldn't breathe it. Maybe I should just hold my breath and...
[big thunk and sound of cats fleeing room].
My previous post is meant for J the troll.
"Ever since the Bush Administration, I have started to become more liberal again."
The political compass has veered quite a bit.
The Catholic figures would fit with intent if the students are leaving as Catholics (note, though, that anyone who's been baptized is nominally "born again"). But, back to earth: what are they really leaving as? Moderate unaffiliated protestants? Agnostics? Atheists?
My experience with Catholic secondary education that the actual effect is to make it very hard to believe in Christianity without heroic levels of cognitive dissonance. Good Catholic high schools turn out good writers if nothing else (or did so back in my day), and this is done by reading a wide range of literature and writing thoughtful, critical essays largely independent of religious assumptions. Even the religion classes require a kind of critical thinking, though weirdly circumscribed, since there are things you cannot question. Writing "Jesus is my favorite political philosopher" would get you at best a C- in the kind of school I'm thinking of and would not exempt you from saying something coherent about John Locke.
I've often felt that Catholic education is almost an innoculation against the excesses of fundamentalism. I grant that when you have these nuts out there like Bill Bennet and Opus Dei, this experience is not universal. But I'm gratified by the figure posted in the chart above.
An essential bit of information left out here is how many 18-year-old 'born again' christians abandon their faith after 4 years with no college. A negative control, in other words.
Think how different the world might be if Jesus had gone to college.
how do you know he didn't?
there were all those "missing" years, ya know.
maybe the whole thing was a frat prank gone awry?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate idly about why Catholic colleges actually convert more fundies away from born-again Christianity. If anyone read Sara Robinson's guest posting at Orcinus, they'll know what I'm talking about.
The Catholic universities are "safe zones" for the fundies: Christian, but of a different stripe. It challenges their illogical, rejected-by-the-professors theology without forcing them to jump immediately to atheism or even agnosticism. The mandatory theology courses at Notre Dame, for example, really rip apart Biblical literalism. Once they begin to question these previously deeply-held beliefs [with the held of "respectable" authorities], it becomes easier to move away from fully. I saw the same process in my roommate last year [he was a Catholic, not a fundie, but the same principle applies].
Anyway, those are my $0.02
I was once told that the parents of bright Baptist kids in the Carolinas were once told NOT to send their kids to the foremost Baptist university in the area - Wake Forest - and especially NOT to let them take religion classes there. They would find out what the Bible really said and find out the history of the Bible and lose their faith in the hokum they were raised with.
The political compass has veered quite a bit.
are you the one who manages that compass? what about the political pendulum?
if so, I have a few bones to pick with you, like:
could you possibly make it so that when the pendulum swings either way, it doesn't tend to leave such permanent damage?
like, if the pendulum swings one way, we get a major war, natural reserves sold off for timber, oil, and mining rights, etc.
these things just don't bounce back to normal when the pendulum swings the other way; the ecosystems never look the same again, the folks who died in the war don't spring back to life, etc.
take care of that, would ya?
thanks
I was being sarcastic. I thought the overuse of exclamation marks was a clue. But I can see how you might have mistaken it. That's actually amusing; t's not that difficult to imitate a troll after all.
[Peter]:
I definitely thought of the Scientology comparison... Evangelicals railing against higher education reminded me of Tom Cruise railing against Brian Williams and Brooke Sheilds and the evils of psychology.
The political compass only points towards magnetic truth not true truth.
Ichthyic pleads, "these things just don't bounce back to normal when the pendulum swings the other way; the ecosystems never look the same again, the folks who died in the war don't spring back to life, etc. take care of that, would ya?"
Sorry, guy. I'm just an ABS on this ship. I'm not allowed to touch the helm, much less swing the compass. But given the way things are going on this leg, I'm ready to join the mutinee.
"Ever since the Bush Administration, I have started to become more liberal again."
The political compass has veered quite a bit.
Well, since the compass of logic generally points towards the cold wasteland of bullshit, wouldn't it work more or less like a real compass? You drop a large pile right next to it and instead of pointing north it starts pointing at the pile. ;) lol
I missed an "i" on "it's" in my previous comment. Ugh. I can't stand typos.
It would be interesting to see Pete's negative control numbers. If the effect size for Catholic theology is really that high, it contradicts PZ's idea that rabid atheism is tactically the best option to promote secularism. We'd need to see more comparative studies, though. We especially need to know if it's a random sample of fundies going to Catholic colleges.
Hey: the best way to fight for secularism is an empirical question! Cool.
Damn it J,
You almost caused me an aneurism. I withdraw my vitriol I cast upon you.
Nice one.
The process of becoming "un-born again" boils down to, "Holy fucking shit, I've been lied to repeatedly about everything and I was too naive to know better. Now I have to unlearn and relearn absolutely EVERYTHINg. And I'm totally spanking it."
Or thoughts to that effect.
"I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate idly about why Catholic colleges actually convert more fundies away from born-again Christianity. If anyone read Sara Robinson's guest posting at Orcinus, they'll know what I'm talking about."
I was going to post the same thing. I recommend everyone go there and read "Cracks in the Wall" I - III.
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/
"...it's almost as if they want to keep their donors and supporters ignorant and stupid."
What do you mean almost! A high-school math class might ruin their faith in bogus bar graphs.
No Nym:
I've been saying this about Catholic education for years. It's not the theology, but just the fact that the schools are often quite good in other areas and turn out people who can think.
But for all that, I still cannot explain nutcases like Bill Bennett. He is allegedly Catholic, right? Did he have a Catholic education? What happened? There are also tons of American Catholics basically indistinguishable from members of mainstream protestant denominations, but I think that any Catholic who has gotten to the point of trying to understand their faith deeply is either headed towards apostasy or severe cognitive dissonance.
University of Destruction sounds like a good slasher flick.
The statistical graphic is a mess, it only shows percentages, no sample sizes, no error bars, etc etc. Of course, it's no worse than the sort of statistical graphic that regularly shows up in the secular press. How to Lie With Statistics and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information should be required reading.
"Methods of indoctrination are likely to include not only required courses, but also freshman orientation, speech codes, mandatory diversity training, dormitory policies, guidelines for registered student organizations and mental health counseling," Budziszewski added.
Maybe Mr. Budziszewski should add that the biggest method of indoctrination is when the kids find out that people have been filling their heads full of malarkey. J. Budziszewski: Discovery Institute Fellow, and a darn good beer!
Someone has already pointed out that that graph needs a control group of non-college-attending fundy kids for comparison. But the other stat missing is: how many non-fundy kids get "born-again" while at college? Given that groups like Navigators, Campus Crusade etc. are active at most major schools, that number is non-zero -- in fact, I used to hang out with plenty of such converts, back in my day -- though I don't know how it compares with the total going the other way.
There is another massive oversight in this study, the longevity of the effect.
I am 30 years old, and I have a slew of friends who are in the midst of their first children, marriage, etc. These folks were nominal Christians, at best, after the craziness of college and the drinking, sex, etc. They stay the same way for most of their twenties.
But get a baby, and BOOM!; these folks get God again. Most of my friends have returned to their fundy roots so as to properly indoctrinate their children (sickening). While my point is anecdotal at best, I'm sure many of you have seen similar "born again-again" experiences of young folks starting their families.
Going from Fundy to Moderate to Fundy again is no improvement.
It's fascinating to see these reactions - "if you get educated, you'll stop believing what you believe now, so panic" is really the height of intentional ignorance. Literally "don't expose yourself to new ideas, you may think different."
Of course we're all being exposed to new ideas all the time. You can either jump in, or panic and hide and waste energy trying not to think. Change is inevitable.
j, that really wasn't all that many exclamation points. I've seen more at midnight on the autumnal equinox near the arctic circle. And they're harder to see than a polar bear in a blizzard.
>> Literally "don't expose yourself to new ideas, you may think different."
The fundies claim that university education is >actively< hostile to their beliefs. Now that I think about it, they actually have a point, as universities do teach geology, biology, mathematics (the existence of irrational numbers), etc etc.
You raise another good point, NN: there is likely to be some self-selection, with people predisposed to giving up their beliefs going to a certain college, etc.
[continuation of previous comment]
hostile to their beliefs. Of course, they are right, seeing as how universities teach geology, biology, mathematics, etc.
I thought most fundamentalist theology taught "once saved, always saved" and that you couldn't lose genuine salvation, so...by that standard, these kids weren't saved in the first place.
Best, Marc
That's the thinking that sent me to Christian high schools and a Christian college, and made me resolve to be on my guard in University. (Unhappily, I had to drop out after 1st year, due to health issues. Or I might actually have learned to think a lot sooner.)
"The process of becoming "un-born again" boils down to, "Holy fucking shit, I've been lied to repeatedly about everything and I was too naive to know better. Now I have to unlearn and relearn absolutely EVERYTHINg. And I'm totally spanking it." -Greg Peterson -
That's what I finally realized when I was in my 50s.
Count another gut-level response that the Catholic religion courses might be part of it. At most secular colleges, you aren't required to take any kind of course covering religion, theology, or philosophy. I know I wasn't; I could have satisfied my Humanities distro with two history courses if I'd wanted to - as it was, my "Intro to Judaism" course hardly required much personal reflection or deep theological thought.
I suspect that at most secular colleges religion is treated with the same "don't ask, don't tell" kid gloves that issues of race, money, and class are generally treated with. Catholic Colleges, however, don't have to be afraid of the accusation of religious bias - although this certainly could lead to (and has led to) abuse and religious discrimination, I think that this also allows a certain freedom to discuss religion that would lead to more people switching religious affiliations. (as many people have noted, that's all this chart shows - the percentage of "born again"s who switched to something else)
Suggested revision from:
to:
Gotta love Catholicism: a religion designed for peasants that has the nerve to turn their students into intellectuals. Like Anglicanism, it's a religion you graduate from. If you come out a Catholic education still a Catholic, you've failed.
The other great thing about Catholicism is that Catholic girls really know how to sin.
This is what happens when you staff a school with Jesuits.
Jesuit:
Archetype: Severus Snape
Accessories: PhD, Assassin's dagger
Dress Code: Scary
Hobbies: Becoming third world dictators; pissing off third world dictators.
Point of Interest: Jesuits prior to WWII were quite anti-semitic, accusing the Jews of trying to take over the world. If this were true, this would make the Jews the Jesuits' main competition.
"The first thing they did was start with a population of "born-again" Christians, and ask how many were still "born-again" when they graduated: that's a number that can only go up."
This number can only go down.
"The only thing that he won't forgive is if you deny the Holy Spirit."
I thought it was blaspheming the Holy Spirit. I say fuck 'im and feed him fishheads.
Since they're in the mood to hang themselves, give 'em more rope:
I wonder what they make of the Scientific Method?
I cannot wait to see similar statistical inquiries into adherents of the church of the great noodle monster - may his blessed appendages live in peace.
Does anyone think there would be a similar effect on pastafarians ??
One thing is clear -our public universities (PZ?!) are really letting us down.
Higher learning institutions are ubiquitously referred to as the "workshops of the devil" among fundamentalist congregations in the south (and maybe northward too). They got them devils like PZ.
Nick, the number of de-converts can only go up. The number of born-agains can only go down.
Give them school vouchers and then tax church real eatate and all income and use that new revenue only for better public schools.
Since this religion is a recent phenomenon, and popular among the internet and irony-savvy young folk (see: facebook groups), I would approximate that most pastafarians learn about the FSM in college - meaning that devotees must increase by...let's say...1000% or so from the start to finish of an education.
Meaning we clearly win in the conversion rat-race. Huzzah!
Once saved, always saved, is dependent on the specific church, congregation or preacher. There are many interpretations of the bible regarding salvation among fundamentalists.
I was a born-again when I entered a Jesuit-run college preparatory school. I was an atheist when I came out, and nearly all of my friends who attended that high school with me are also atheists.
My understanding is that one of the main reasons Born-Again kids who go to college end up "losing their faith" is contact with non-Born-Agains. The more fervent brands of Christianity tend to insist that Outsiders are very, very different than Insiders -- and because fundamentalists often live in insulated pockets with little close contact with nonbelievers, this can seem plausible.
Suddenly you have friends, acquaintances, and roommates who are NOT Born-Again Christians, and guess what? They are pretty much the same as the people you grew up with -- good, bad, and indifferent. I would think that it's hard to maintain a strong Us-vs-Them mentality when you find out how hard it is to tell Us from Them.
It seems to me that born-agains go to university with the express intent of not learning. Higher education is not merely a series of classes where you parrot the professor and memorize your lines, it's a place where you go to expand your horizons and drink from the fount of knowledge. Fundamentalists go in with the intent, not of learning, but of proselytizing, of preserving their own ignorance, and of coming out with a bogus piece of paper that says they have learned when they haven't.
Anyone with this attitude should not be given a degree. It renders the degree meaningless and devalues education for everyone, not just the born-agains. If political correctness prevents professors from challenging nonsense, then there is little point in having schools at all.
Bill Bennett actually has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin. Yes, Austin -- and he was there during the serious hippie days.
I don't think he believes a lot of the hokum he spouts; I think he just figured out that prattling about virtues and values and faith and morals and whatnot is politically expedient. In fact, I suspect that he and Ralph Reed have a lot in common. I suspect that they're both basically smart sophists who figured out which side the bread is buttered on. I mean, they're both pretty buttery.
It takes a lot of butter to be a high-stakes Vegas gambler, after all.
My senior Sunday school class did a two month long series on Budziszewski's book Staying Christian in College. I was president of the Sunday school at the time and I attribute this book to being the catalyst for my leaving the Church. One chapter went over political "myths." The conservative myths were these random, far out claims that no conservative would really think. The three liberal myths were actuall three cornerstones of liberal thought (like that separation of church and state does and should exist). Another gem that stuck with me was that "adoption is not an option." (No, really.) I finally told my Sunday school teachers that if they wanted us to keep our faith, maybe we should, you know, study the Bible and learn the faith better.
I guess Jesus must be some sort parasite that infests the cardiac muscle.
Phew! The dedication of some people never ceases to amaze me.
I hope Carl Zimmer writes an article in your honor.
You jolly well better bet fundamentalist born-agains are put straight at Catholic colleges like mine because we teach theological literacy. In my experience, 25 years in Catholic higher education, most don't "lose faith" but come out as informed, reflective, liberal Christians, and good Catholics.
If it were a matter of wakening them from their dogmatic slumbers and promoting secularism you'd think secular universities would do a better job. But they don't by your figures squelch that religious right nonsense as effectively as we do, do they? We make 'em take 3 religion courses and 3 philosophy courses so they know what's up and, if they pay any attention, they come out as good atheists (which is fine with me) or good, informed, reflective Christians--but not as fundamentalists.
You better believe Catholicism, like Anglicanism, has the nerve to turn students into intellectuals. But it isn't a religion from which you graduate--it's one from which you flunk out.
H. E. Baber:
Now, I get it. They weren't trying to save my soul; it was more of a weed out course. That does put it in perspective.
And I'm not even talking Jesuits here--just Christian Brothers, educators of youth and makers of cheap sherry.
As I said above, I do have respect for Catholic education, but I would limit it to writing and math. I think that anyone who wants to do empirical science would be better off in a good public school in a university town. This is just kind of a vague impression I have from people I've known over the years.
My senior Sunday school class did a two month long series on Budziszewski's book Staying Christian in College. I was president of the Sunday school at the time and I attribute this book to being the catalyst for my leaving the Church.
Anyone who is interested in reading this masterwork can get it for free by following the instructions linked to in PZ's post on Dobson as Santa Claus -- it's on the Focus on the Family web site (as well as another one of the article's "recommended reading" books, University of Destruction). -- Assuming this method works: I don't want to risk getting on the email list to find out...
(Too bad they only have Narnia, though. If they had Tolkein, I'd be tempted to go for it.)
Incidentally, the FOF site also has what looks like honest-to-God porn videos (of the soft-core kind that masquerade as "how-to" tapes) in a section called "how to spice up your marriage". WTF?
That's exactly the sort of cult FoF is--it's populated by hateful, intolerant dickheads who think being a housewife and Sunday School teacher are sufficient qualifications to discuss all the faults with scientific theories of evolution, cosmology, etc. And their Pope has influence with President Bush.
Gotta love Catholicism: a religion designed for peasants that has the nerve to turn their students into intellectuals.
Actually, you can rewrite this from a different viewpoint as:
"Gotta love the U.S.; a nation designed for hard-working immigrants that has the nerve to give their children access to the professional class."
That summarizes the lessons of grade school civics as taught here. But, If you think in any depth about the confounding effects of racism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, economic inequality, and religious factionalism, you'll understand that all of them have always had major effects on the actual situation. You might even become more than a bit skeptical that your elementary-school textbooks and the popular press have all the answers.
And then you might start thinking of your elected leaders and representatives as completely fallible people whose numbers include bullies, corporate shills, yes-(wo)men, and more than a few empty suits. (Wasn't it Robert Anton Wilson who once wisecracked about the public's belief in "the virgin birth of U.S. Senators"?)
Julie Stahlhut
The problem with that formulation is that many of the most anti-intellectual Americans are also the farthest removed from their immigrant roots. Actually, I'm privileged to know a quite few "hard-working immigrants", one of whom is my wife. Around these parts, they are the professional class.
BTW has anyone pointed out the facile move from correlation to causation? The message is that attending a secular university causes skepticism, the reverse is more likely true.
PaulC:
I would say that your impression might be a little out of date. Boston College (a Jesuit university) has in recent years developed a reputation for excellent graduate and undergraduate programs in biology, chemistry, and physics. Many undergrads get to spend two years or more working in the labs of world-class researchers.