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Latest Fundy Fear mongering: Universities make kids atheists

From the Atlantic article I added a link in the OP to:
Let's say for the sake of argument that most institutions of higher education really were trying at their core to produce left-wing secularists (a motive I very much doubt).

How on earth would they succeed?

Typically a faculty member has one or two classes at most with a given student. Often as not these are giant introductory classes on subjects unrelated to religion. Am I to believe that the subset of professors out to secularize their students are so persuasive that in this short interval, they successfully propagandize them into abandoning God? Or do they join forces, each contributing a small part of a larger brainwashing program that runs through Introduction to Economics, Topics In Gender Studies, and Comparative African Politics? It would be quite a feat to build such a program: at once unacknowledged, unorganized, and more intellectually effective than the actual curriculum on offer, which many students absorb only long enough to pass the final....

...I just never understand it when conservative critics of academia presume it is so single-minded, effective and powerful in its impact.
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NewtonTrino said:
The professors aren't pulling any crap. I think we just disagree on this.



I condone ridicule of anyone bring unscientific ideas into a science class. Ridicule has a place in human relations. It's a powerful tactic that shouldn't be off the table, especially in a university classroom. I fully support telling kids who bring dumb ideas to class that their ideas are dumb.

Rhetorical attacks are completely ok IMHO.




I also agree that profs who can't teach well shouldn't be teaching.

But to me shame is a completely acceptable tactic. Again if you bring a 10k earth into a science classroom you need a hard smack down.
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If i walked into a computer repair class and tried to place a cpu that was very similar in make to the CPU's that were compatible with a motherboard, the teacher would calmly explain my mistake and show me how to do it correctly. And if i listened it would go no further.

If i walked into a computer repair class, and said that the hard drive works via a steam driven Tesla coil powered tiny engine, the instructor would ridicule me, especially if i tried to keep pressing the issue, and trying to prove my wrong point, and not a single person in the class would feel that was an inappropriate course of action.

Yet, walk into a science classroom and say the world is 10k years old, and try and prove your point, suddenly everyone is expected to treat you with kid gloves.

Wrong is wrong, and really wrong is really wrong, how much someone clings to the wrong idea has no bearing on the validity of the idea, and doesn't suddenly give someone a cloak they can hide behind from reasonable criticism. Saying the earth is 10k isn't kinda wrong, it is the scientific equivalent of showing up to a football ( use either definition you wish.) game wearing hockey skates. And then, refusing to not play in them.
 
So, education makes people think and question their beliefs. Instead of looking into why this is, those with absurd beliefs would rather have the educational facilities shut down or changed so that their beliefs won't be questioned.

Colour me not surprised.

However, the claim that higher education is run by leftist atheists who want to brainwash people is not exactly a new one.
 
I went into college with all the YEC beliefs and the knowledge that higher education was a threat to faith clinging to me, and I wasn't ridiculed--even by the Biology 101 professor. It was the evidence of just how thoroughly I'd been lied to by those who taught me my faith that took it all apart. When faith is built on a foundation of lies, when its tenets are so far removed from reality that it must be protected from reality itself, there's no saving it when reality intrudes.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
From the Atlantic article I added a link in the OP to:
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You just tacked on The Atlantic link: he's fairly accurate but curiously misses the issue of income or potential income. He almost hits it at the end when he brings up muffler shop workers and Starbucks employees. Those are relatively low-paying and stultifying jobs and really don't have much in the way to offer a free-thinking individual. Once a student realises his potential is greater than that of his parents and siblings then he is able to exercise a greater range of philosophical experiences.
 
stilicho said:
In other words, you agree with Santorum that US colleges are transforming students into atheists but you want that to happen. I think you're right then on both counts.
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I don't agree with Santorum that colleges are transforming students. It's my opinion, from what I've observed and from my own many years in college, that students indeed change as they learn, but it isn't the college that is doing the transforming, it's the growing and learning. It may seem like a nit pik but it really goes to the claim college professors and administrations are conspiring or at a minimum have atheism and left of center political goals embedded in the teaching, and that is the premise of Horowitz, Santorum and Prager.


stilicho said:
The other guy you cited talks about universities producing "secular" (by which he means "atheist") and "left-wing" views. He's partly right but he also ignores the impact of rising, or potentially rising, income.

There is an arguably negative correlation between religion and wealth (cf OSU sociology studies). Wealthier individuals also indulge more frequently in coffee-house socialism and other boutique ideologies. With wealth, too, comes the opportunity to act more selectively as consumers, leading to more time on the links and less time in the pew.
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I don't buy your 'wealth' correlation claim. What evidence do you have re this correlation?
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I don't agree with Santorum that colleges are transforming students. It's my opinion, from what I've observed and from my own many years in college, that students indeed change as they learn, but it isn't the college that is doing the transforming, it's the growing and learning. It may seem like a nit pik but it really goes to the claim college professors and administrations are conspiring or at a minimum have atheism and left of center political goals embedded in the teaching, and that is the premise of Horowitz, Santorum and Prager.
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... and Avalon.

And there's definitely a distinction there. The former doesn't bother me; the latter does. And I've seen both.
 
"Latest"? Where have you been for the last 90 years?

"Now that the legislatures of the various states are in session, I beg to call attention of the legislators to a much needed reform, viz., the elimination of the teaching of atheism and agnosticism from schools, colleges, and universities supported by taxation. Under the pretense of teaching science, instructors who draw their salaries from the public treasury are undermining the religious faith of students by substituting belief in Darwinism for belief in the Bible." - Wm Jennings Bryan
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Ryokan said:
...

However, the claim that higher education is run by leftist atheists who want to brainwash people is not exactly a new one.
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No, that's why I referred to Horowitz in the OP. This is, however, a new claim of Christian persecution seeping into the public discourse of higher education funded on the federal level.

Horowitz's actions were worrisome when he attacked the reputations of certain professors. It was worrisome when Bush ordered NASA speakers to stop mentioning the Big Bang in any public talks and ordered a book on how the Grand Canyon was formed in Noah's Flood added to the science section at the Park's bookstore. (Later it was said the book was simply available in the store and not in the science section.) It was worrisome when The Discovery Institute and other Christian think tanks began supporting fundamentalists running for local school boards who would vote to include Intelligent Design in science class curriculums and promoting the election of a slew of right wing fundie judges to lower appeals courts so as to position a lot of them for promotion up the ranks to higher court positions.

So it is worrisome to add yet another attempt in this defense of dogma. Funding of higher education is currently under assault with students graduating from college with debt that now exceeds all credit card debt in this country. If colleges are turning your kids against God, shut them down, or at a minimum stop funding them with public dollars. That sucks.
 
sadhatter said:
If i walked into a computer repair class, and said that the hard drive works via a steam driven Tesla coil powered tiny engine, the instructor would ridicule me, especially if i tried to keep pressing the issue, and trying to prove my wrong point, and not a single person in the class would feel that was an inappropriate course of action.
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Wait, your hard drives aren't driven by a steam powered tesla coil? Dude you need to check newegg again because these things are total beasts!
 
AvalonXQ said:
...University professors using their authority to indoctrinate kids to spout atheist dogma is the problem. The embarrassing frequency of the latter, rather than the former, is the reason Santorum is correct.
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We've heard the claims, Avalon, where's your evidence?
 
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I'm somewhat surprised at this conception of university where people have their worldviews changed in a radical way. From my experience, the vast majority of students at universities want to get drunk and (if they are really lucky!) get laid, and when they are done with university, land a well-paid job.

AvalonXQ said:
I agree with Santorum. Many college professors are atheists and liberals that really do have an anti-conservative, anti-Christian agenda and really do use tactics other than sound reason (rhetoric, ridicule, and the power imbalance of the classroom -- basically all the weapons of authority) to try to groom students to their way of thinking.

I encountered these professors at college. I also encountered rational atheist professors who had excellent patience in dealing with logical fallacies and bringing up real, rational arguments to accept a different point of view. But just because the latter sort exists, doesn't mean we should ignore the alarmingly high frequency of students encountering the former sort.

So the danger is real. Fortunately students in many places fight it, and create cultures that are supportive to their views and call out professors behaving in this way.

But the danger Santorum brings up is very real.
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When I went to university, the teachers practically never aired their political or religious viewpoints. I don't know them for any teacher I have ever had. Perhaps Swedish universities are very different, or perhaps I'm very dull?
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
The difference was those attacks were mostly against a specific topic, evolution theory. This is an expanded version claiming a broader secular goal.
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You fail to appreciate the breadth of the Boy Orator of the Platte's shallowness. He spent a lifetime defending the values of Gopher Prairie and that Old Time Religion..
 
Humes fork said:
When I went to university, the teachers practically never aired their political or religious viewpoints. I don't know them for any teacher I have ever had. Perhaps Swedish universities are very different, or perhaps I'm very dull?
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That doesn't surprise me because I don't think there are as many fundies in Sweden.
 
Reading the Bible went a long way toward cementing my atheism. I would suggest that if you don't want your kids turning out to be atheists, you should prevent them from reading the Bible.
 
Universities do turn theists into atheists, or at least that happened in my case. But not because of "atheist dogma," unless you consider basic facts about how the world works coupled with instruction in critical thinking and analytical assessment to be dogma, which Santorum might.
 
Humes fork said:
I'm somewhat surprised at this conception of university where people have their worldviews changed in a radical way. From my experience, the vast majority of students at universities want to get drunk and (if they are really lucky!) get laid, and when they are done with university, land a well-paid job.



When I went to university, the teachers practically never aired their political or religious viewpoints. I don't know them for any teacher I have ever had. Perhaps Swedish universities are very different, or perhaps I'm very dull?
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I went to The University of Georgia here in the good old' U.S.A and never had any professor share their political or religious views.
 
Information is their enemy.

Learning enough actual facts about the world and human history is what makes people abandon superstition.

You can shut universities, but you will also have to close libraries and censor the internet if you really want to keep people so ignorant of reality that a vengeful sky god looks like a proper explanation of the universe.
 
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