And They’re Icky, Too

The Rev. Dr. Susan Thistlethwaite, the president of Chicago Theological Seminary (United Church of Christ), was asked by the Washington Post (in the “On Faith” column) whether she would vote for a pagan for public office. In the course of answering “yes,” she takes the question as an opening to take a gratuitous swipe as conservative Christians:

Paganism has an important role to play in American religious culture as it explicitly regards women as capable of embodying the sacred. It has been my personal experience that conservative Christianity in particular regards all women, regardless of their faith, as vaguely Pagan. Christian conservatives do not value women’s religious leadership as highly as that of males. Women are called the “weaker vessel” and considered less capable of embodying the sacred. This is why women are not ordained by Catholics and conservative Protestants. Women are deemed incapable of “imagining [sic] Christ” despite the fact that Genesis 1:27 clearly states that both female and male are created in the image of God.

I don’t know of any human beings, save Jesus Christ, who are capable of “embodying the sacred” (whatever Thistlethwaite means by that), but it’s clear that she is absolutely stone ignorant of the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church about the Virgin Mary, as well as about why Catholics and evangelical Protestants don’t ordain women. She also clearly has never been in any evangelical churches if she thinks that women’s leadership isn’t valued (as far as it goes, she seem unaware that many conservative Protestants–most Pentecostals, for instance–have no problem with women’s ordination). And the idea that “conservative Christianity” looks at “all women, regardless of their faith, as vaguely Pagan” is one of the most laughable things I have ever heard uttered in public by a supposedly educated person.

Used to be that people who judged others on the basis of ignorance and the application of unexamined stereotypes was referred to as a bigot. But because Dr. Thistlethwaite is a UCC minister and mainline seminary president, she is of course immune to that particular charge. Maybe the Post misquoted her.

 

Christian Trutherism

The intellectual disease known as “Trutherism” (the name of which stems from 911Truth.org, a conspiracy site that claims the US government brought down the World Trade Center buildings) has afflicted a number of well-known, empty-headed celebrities, including Charlie Sheen, Rosie O’Donnell, rock star Tom DeLonge of Blink 182 and others. But who would have thought the tinfoil hat brigade would be joined by one of America’s foremost liberal theologians? Long-time, now retired Claremont School of Theology professor John Cobb dons the aluminum headgear at the site of Progressive Christians Uniting:

The conspiracy theory with which the Congressional 9/11 Commission came up in its 2004 report asks us to be extraordinarily credulous. We must believe that between Sept. 11, 2001 and the meeting of that commission the air force told us nothing but lies, but that no one was ever reprimanded for this deceit. We must believe that a member of Bush’s cabinet lied to the commission about a very important matter but was never reprimanded. We must believe that the FAA behaved in wholly irresponsible ways on that day, but that no one was ever reprimanded.

We must believe that, in contrast, a group of Saudis behaved brilliantly, outsmarting the FAA and the United States military forces, and that one of its members, known as a poor pilot, performed an operation that experienced pilots believe to be virtually impossible. We must believe that the world’s most sophisticated radar could not detect planes even after the world knew that planes had been hijacked. We must believe that the world’s best defended building was incapable of putting up any defense whatsoever….

I have not mentioned the miracles that the official story told by government scientists require us to believe about the World Trade Center buildings. All the evidence points to their controlled demolition including numerous eyewitness testimonies to hearing the sorts of explosions involved in such demolition. But since even those prepared to attribute remarkable abilities to Osama cannot explain how his henchmen gained in advance the access to the buildings required to plant these explosives, the government’s scientists have to come up with other stories.

Thus far the best that is offered is that the planes weakened the twin towers and then they collapsed because of fire. However, the buildings were constructed to withstand airplane crashes and the fires were far too small to have caused the collapse. Indeed, no buildings of this type have ever collapsed from fires before, even though many such fires have lasted much longer. Indeed, it is not possible for even the hottest fires to produce the molten steel that was seen for days in the rubble. Only explosives can account for that; so this phenomenon is simply ignored in the “scientific” report. Thus far the government has not even offered an account of the similar collapse of the third WTC building, which was not struck by a plane.

I’m not going to try to engage this nonsense; to take just one point, if you want a thorough debunking of the “controlled demolition” theory, check out the famous Popular Mechanics cover story that was more than enough to convince anyone who doesn’t see Halliburton executives and other monsters under their bed. I never had any use for John Cobb’s process theology, but it’s still sad to see such a distinguished academic lend his name and pen to a paranoid movement made up of mostly of anti-Semites, apologists for al-Qaeda, extreme left- and right-wingers, and people who think that Elvis, Marilyn, and a trio of Ferengis are being kept in cryogenic stasis at Area 51.

(Hat tip: LGF)

UPDATE: A couple of excellent treatments of the mindset and psychology of this kind of delusion can be found at Eject!Eject!Eject! and Dr. Sanity. Many thanks to Amy K for pointing me toward the former site, which led to the latter.

UPDATE: Well, well. It seems that the light of day was more than John Cobb and his colleagues at Progressive Christians Uniting could stand. The Truther post has been removed from the site–dropped down the memory hole, as it were. I wonder why?

 

Professor Dissents, Denied Tenure

For some institutions of higher education, it isn’t enough that one avoid the subject of Intelligent Design in one’s classes. One must be pure as the driven snow in one’s private life as well, no matter how well you teach or how effective your work in your field. According to the Christian Post:

An assistant professor who supports intelligent design and was denied tenure at Iowa State University (ISU) was found to have the highest score among the entire faculty, according to the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS), which calculates the scientific impact of scientists in astronomy.

The Discovery Institute, a think tank of intelligent design (ID) proponents, is again advocating for Guillermo Gonzalez to receive tenure, and argues that the school’s refusal is a result of their bias against ID – which holds that the biological aspects of life are too complex to have evolved randomly, but must have been produced by an unidentified intelligence. Gonzalez is author of the pro-ID book The Privileged Planet.

“In other words, Iowa State denied tenure to a scientist whose impact on his field during the past six years outstripped all of the university’s existing tenured astronomers according to a prestigious Smithsonian/NASA database,” said Dr. John West, associate director of the Center for Science and Culture (CSC), on the Discovery Institute website.

The score here looked at articles published from 2001-2007. Calculating Gonzalez normalized index, he received a score of 143. The next closest professor on the ISU staff had a score of 103 and the next best tenured astronomer was 68.

Gonzalez, who has written 68 peer-reviewed journals (53 more than the 15 required by his department to meet its standard of excellence in research), says that he does not teach ID in class, however, and that it is purely outside research.

Apart from his work on ID, the denied professor has helped in the discovery of two planets, helped build technology that discovered extrasolar planets, and wrote a college-level astronomy textbook published by Cambridge University.

He was one of three professors not given tenure out of a total of 66 professors at ISU.

Because ID advocates contend that the theory is not based on religious beliefs, this isn’t a case of religious discrimination. I do think, however, that it raises free speech issues. What Iowa State seems to be saying is that what you teach in your classes, or the research and publications you present for peer review, can be cancelled out in tenure evaluations by what you say in purely popular writing. If universities can start denying tenure (and hence long-term employment) to those who challenge reigning orthodoxies in works for the general public (as opposed to the academic guild) despite otherwise sterling records, it won’t be long before the they are nothing but organs of propaganda rather than schools.

 

Free Speech Dead at Tufts University

And it was the university that killed it. Yesterday, the Committee on Student Life (made up of administration, faculty, and students) decided to punish The Primary Source, a conservative student newspaper, for “creat[ing] a hostile environment” for and “harassment” of Muslim students by virtue of a commentary in the April 11 issue to which some took offense. The committee’s decision (found here) states that:

This is a complicated case that, at its core, requires us to resolve a conflict between two important policies at Tufts University: freedom of expression on the one hand, and nondiscrimination on the other.

The Committee recognizes that freedom of expression is one of the founding principles of this great nation, one of the precepts that distinguish us as a democracy, a core value of academic endeavor, and a philosophical tenet that benefits our campus community.

Similarly the Committee acknowledges that tolerance and respect for diversity are core values at Tufts, as exemplified by the university’s non-discrimination policy. These two principles were in direct conflict in the cases before the Committee.

Actually, they weren’t in “direct conflict,” because of a crucial reality: the commentary in question was wholly factual, meaning that the committee claims that the statement of facts that hurt someone’s feelings is intolerant and disrespectful of diversity. More on this below. The decision goes on to cite the university’s definition of harassment:

Tufts University’s harassment policy can be found on page 124 of the 2006-2007 version of the student handbook, The Pachyderm:

Members of the Tufts community should be able to live, study, and participate in university life as equals. Any behavior that undermines this spirit of community interferes with an individual’s growth and well-being while at Tufts. Harassment or discrimination against individuals on the basis of race, religion, gender identity/expression, ethnic or national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, or genetics, or retaliation for filing a complaint, whether subtle or explicit, is unacceptable at Tufts. It will be addressed with prompt and decisive action whenever it occurs.

“Harassment” is further defined on the same page, as follows:

Harassment involves attitudes or opinions that are expressed verbally or in writing, or through behavior that constitutes a threat, intimidation, psychological attack, or physical assault.

Translation: Harassment at Tufts is essentially anything that anyone wants to say it is, especially if they are being confronted with uncomfortable truth. Must make classroom teaching a real joy for conservative professors (if there are any), of for anyone who teaches truthfully about Islam (ditto).

In the case of the Muslim Student Association (“MSA”) v. The Primary Source, by a vote of 7 to 0, we find that the MSA proved, by a preponderance of the evidence, that The Primary Source harassed Muslim students at Tufts, and created a hostile environment for them by publishing “Islam-Arabic Translation: Submission.” The Committee found that the MSA established that the commentary at issue targeted members of the Tufts Muslim community for harassment and embarrassment, and that Muslim students felt psychologically intimidated by the piece.

These decisions are grounded in our conclusion that although Tufts students should feel free to engage in speech that others might find offensive and even hurtful, Tufts University’s non-discrimination policy embodies important community standards of behavior that Tufts, as a private institution, has an obligation to uphold. Our campus should be a place where students feel safe, respected, and valued. Freedom of speech should not be an unfettered license to violate the rights of other members of the community, without recourse.

This is truly bizarre. There were no “rights” violated, unless there is now a right at Tufts to never have to face facts when they are inconvenient. And while Tufts students can “engage in speech that other might find offensive and even hurtful,” apparently there’s an exception for students addressing Islam. Here’s the commentary that drew the committee’s wrath:

Islam

Arabic Translation: Submission

In the Spirit of Islamic Awareness Week, the SOURCE presents an itinerary to supplement the educational experience.

MONDAY: “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.” – The Koran, Sura 8:12

Author Salman Rushdie needed to go into hiding after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeni declared a fatwa calling for his death for writing The Satanic Verses, which was declared “blasphemous against Islam.”

TUESDAY: Slavery was an integral part of Islamic culture. Since the 7^th century, 14 million African slaves were sold to Muslims compared to 10 or 11 million sold to the entire Western Hemisphere. As recently as 1878, 25,000 slaves were sold annually in Mecca and Medina. (National Review 2002)

The seven nations in the world that punish homosexuality with death all have fundamentalist Muslim governments.

WEDNESDAY: In Saudi Arabia, women make up 5% of the workforce, the smallest percentage of any nation worldwide. They are not allowed to operate a motor vehicle or go outside without proper covering of their body. (Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2001)

Most historians agree that Muhammed’s second wife Aisha was 9 years old when their marriage was consummated.

THURSDAY: “Not equal are those believers who sit and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons. Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit. Unto all Hath Allah promised good: But those who strive and fight Hath He distinguished above those who sit by a special reward.” – The Koran, Sura 4:95

The Islamist guerrillas in Iraq are not only killing American soldiers fighting for freedom. They are also responsible for the vast majority of civilian casualties.

FRIDAY: Ibn Al-Ghazzali, the famous Islamic theologian, said, “The most satisfying and final word on the matter is that marriage is form of slavery. The woman is man’s slave and her duty therefore is absolute obedience to the husband in all that he asks of her person.”

Mohamed Hadfi, 31, tore out his 23-year-old wife Samira Bari’s eyes in their apartment in the southern French city of Nimes in July 2003 following a heated argument about her refusal to have sex with him. (Herald Sun)

If you are a peaceful Muslim who can explain or justify this astonishingly intolerant and inhuman behavior, we’d really like to hear from you! Please send all letters to tuftsprimarysource@gmail.com

As Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) put it:

So does this paint Islam in a nice light? No. Is it one-sided? Yes, but that was kind of the point. The students were responding to what they thought was a one-sided and overly rosy depiction of Islam during Islamic Awareness week. But is it unprotected harassment!? One certainly hopes not, or else “harassment” just became a truly lethal threat to free speech—an “exception” that completely swallows the rule.

This is perhaps the most troubling and far-reaching aspect of this case. The Primary Source published a satirical ad filled with factual assertions and because this angered people it was ruled to be unprotected harassment. If what the complaining students wanted to say was that the TPS facts were wrong, then—while this still would not be harassment—that could have been an interesting debate. But instead, in sadly predictable fashion, the students plowed ahead with a harassment claim that, based on the hearing panel’s decision, appeared not even to raise the issue of whether or not the statements in the ad were true, but turned only on how they made people feel.

Can you argue with anything in the commentary? Sure, and that’s the point: argue with it. The free exchange of ideas, facts, hypotheses, theories, and opinions is what college life is supposed to be about. Instead, academic brownshirts, in alliance with some (and I repeat, some) Muslims and others of authoritarian mindsets, are seeking to turn the American academy into…what? Indoctrination centers? Ideological boot camps? Dhimmitude internalization practice fields?

So what’s to be the miscreants’ punishment?

Consequence: From now on, all material published in The Primary Source (whether characterized as satirical or otherwise) must be attributed to named author(s) or contributor(s).

Recommendation: We ask that student governance consider the behavior of student groups in future decisions concerning recognition and funding.

Translation of the second is, “take away their money,” of course. The first is especially interesting, however, because it is essentially saying, “we want to know who to retaliate against next time you snot-nosed children step out of line.” It’s good to know that the “Committee on Student Life” is so concerned about creating an atmosphere of tolerance and diversity on one of America’s premier college campuses.

(Via T19)

 

 

Big Surprise Here

A survey of college professors has exposed one of the more shocking–shocking, I say!–secrets of our time: a majority of them have “unfavorable views” of evangelical Christians. According to the Christian Post:

Over half of non-Evangelical university professors say they hold unfavorable views of Evangelical Christians, a new study showed. This group of believers was the only major religious denomination to elicit highly negative responses from faculty.

“Evangelical Christian” is not a denomination, but whatever.

According to research by the Institute for Jewish & Community Research (IJCR), only 30 percent of non-Evangelical university faculty says they hold positive views of Evangelicals while 56 percent of faculty in social sciences and humanities departments holds unfavorable views. Overall, 53 percent of non-Evangelical university faculty have unfavorable views.

“This survey shows a disturbing level of prejudice or intolerance among U.S. faculty towards tens of millions of Evangelical Christians,” said Gary Tobin, president of IJCR, in the report. “What’s odd is that while a good number of faculty believe in a close, personal relationship with God and believe religion is essential to a child’s upbringing, many of those same people feel deeply unfavorable toward of Evangelicals.”

Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, told The Washington Post that the poll does not reflect a form of religious bias, but rather “a political and cultural resistance” probably caused by “the particular kind of Republican Party activism that some Evangelicals have engaged in over the years, as well as what faculty perceive as the opposition to scientific objectivity among some Evangelicals.”

According to the study, 71 percent of all faculty agreed: “This country would be better off if Christian fundamentalists kept their religious beliefs out of politics.”

I actually think that Nelson is right, and that the animus has less to do with the particulars of evangelical religious belief and much more to do with a prejudiced mindset that sees all evangelicals as political conservatives. The average sociology prof, I suspect, couldn’t care less if evangelicals worshipped George Burns or sacrificed chickens to Gozer, as long as they kept out of politics. And it doesn’t really have anything to do with “church-state separation” or any other red herring. It has to do with the bottom line: who do they vote for, and what’s their ideological bias?

The IJCR survey also found that faculty’s views of Evangelicals is likely linked to personal religiosity and political affiliation. Only 20 percent of those who say religion is very important to them and only 16 percent of Republicans have unfavorable views of Evangelicals. Among those who say religion is not important to them and among Democrats, 75 percent and 65 percent, respectively, hold unfavorable views.

Like I said (people who say that religion isn’t important to them are generally political liberals, though not always, of course). The interesting thing is that this survey reveals a mindset toward evangelicals that would be absolutely taboo if directed against just about any other group. It stereotypes, often grotesquely–for instance, there’s far more political diversity among evangelicals than the majority of professors would probably realize, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson hardly being the standards by which all evangelicals measure, well, anything–and then bases prejudicial attitudes on those stereotypes. So much for progressive thinking, eh?

 

Tragedy at Virginia Tech

Last evening, I joined with others from our mother church, Faith EPC, in prayer for students, faculty, administrators, police, EMTs, families and all those who were involved in the massacre at Virginia Tech yesterday. We prayed for the family of the gunman, too. Four students from the Faith congregation are students there; they were unhurt, at least physically. Though there are some people trying to politicize the situation, prayer seemed like the most appropriate response as we sought to lift up those who will live with the pain of the event for the rest of their days.

I can’t imagine what that campus must have been like yesterday. I do know that even in the midst of death and the threat of death, there were heroes as well (the story of Liviu Librescu, the Romanian-Israeli Holocaust survivor and civil engineering professor who saved the students in his class by blocking the door to his classroom and then was shot himself, on Holocaust Remembrance Day no less, brought tears to my eyes when I heard about it). And I also know that even as evil stalked the Blacksburg school, God was on the campus, and is st this moment, and will be in the days ahead. I pray that all who have been touched by this tragedy will look to the Lord for solace, for understanding, and for strength.

 

Academic Cowardice

Demonstrating once again that some academics do not, in fact, have the courage of their convictions, the chairman of the Southern Methodist University anthropology department has refused the opportunity to discuss his ideas in a public forum where he’ll actually be challenged:

The head of Southern Methodist University (SMU)’s anthropology department has declined a request to debate major intelligent design (ID) proponents at an upcoming conference to be held on campus.

SMU Anthropology Chair Robert V. Kemper turned down the invitation to join a debate over the validity of evolution vs. ID on grounds that the department had previous commitments that would keep its members from the conference.

“We appreciate your recognition of the value of dialogue on issues that have such opposing viewpoints,” replied the professor to the Discover Institute, a major organization that promotes the teaching of ID. “Unfortunately, previously scheduled events and prior commitments prevent our department from taking advantage of this opportunity. We nevertheless remain committed to public understanding of these issues, and to providing the public with information to make intelligent choices.”

I had previously posted on this here. The SMU anthopology department, you may remember, wrote to the university president claiming:

“These are conferences of and for believers and their sympathetic recruits,” a letter from the anthropology department said. “They have no place on an academic campus with their polemics hidden behind a deceptive mask.”

The upshot of the protests from the anthropology, biology, and geology departments was that ID is the product of morons and believed only by morons and those morons who can be recruited by other morons. But rather than take the proferred opportunity to humiliate the morons and their moronic beliefs in public, Kemper decided to duck out. We’ll see what his colleagues in the hard sciences have to say. As for the Discovery Institute, they responded as you’d expect:

“It’s interesting that these professors are willing to air their complaints and objections in public forums where there is no way for them to be ‘heatedly debated and discussed,’” explained a post from Robert Crowther, director of communications at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. “Really? ‘Heatedly debated and discussed,’ well no, not in this instance.”

Indeed.

 

Marketplaces and Monopolies

Not the economic marketplace, but the intellectual one. Seems there are professors from several departments at Southern Methodist University who don’t want any competition:

Science professors at Southern Methodist University have written letters of protest to school officials to complain about a coming conference about intelligent design.

Members of the school’s anthropology department demanded the school shut down the “Darwin vs. Design” conference, co-sponsored by the SMU law school’s Christian Legal Society. The conference will argue that a higher power is the best explanation for aspects of life and the universe.

Anthropology is usually classified as a social science, and calling its practitioners “science professors” is stretching the definition. Whatever.

“These are conferences of and for believers and their sympathetic recruits,” a letter from the anthropology department said. “They have no place on an academic campus with their polemics hidden behind a deceptive mask.”

I’m not sure who the letter is referring to when it mentions “believers.” Are the professors suggesting that Christians, and those who look at the world from a Christian perspective, “have no place on an academic campus”? Are they suggesting that intelligent design, put forward by scholars credentialed in their academic fields, is unworthy of discussion at colleges? And are they really, seriously suggesting that “polemics” have no place in the ivory tower? Have they ever read any academic journals?

The biology and geology departments sent similar letters.

The university does not endorse the event but won’t cancel it, interim provost Tom Tunks said last Friday.

“Although SMU makes its facilities available as a community service, and in support of the free marketplace of ideas, providing facilities for those programs does not imply SMU’s endorsement of the presenters’ views,” a statement from the school said.

Ah, yes, the “free marketplace of ideas,” a concept increasingly opposed in America’s universities by those who don’t believe in free markets of any kind, but especially not of ideas, which can be dangerous to the ruling, unchallengable orthodoxies of the academic elite. Good for the provost. SMU doesn’t have to endorse everything that is said on its campus to allow it to be said. Even anthopology, biology, and geology professors should be allowed to express their opinions, as long as they don’t shut down others. Oh, wait…

SMU professors say the “Darwin vs. Design” conference could send a message that scientists at the school support intelligent design as an explanation for how life forms evolved.

“This is propaganda,” said John Ubelaker, former chairman of the chemistry department. “Using the campus for propaganda does not fit into anybody’s scheme of intellectual discussion.”

Yeah, it’s a good thing that nothing else propagandistic gets spewed into the atmosphere at schools such as SMU. For instance, no one would ever dream of refusing a treasure trove of information about world and national events such as a presidential library simply because they disagreed with the politics of the president in question, would they? Fact is, opposition to a “Darwin vs. Design” conference is simply academic cowardice. If the profs at SMU are so certain that intelligent design is bogus, why don’t they just show up and refute it?

 

We May Have a Winner

The jury is still out–you know how low the bar can go on these things–but James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal may have discovered the stupidest book ever written by an academic. He was looking at a story about awards given annually by a British bookseller association for the oddest titles (my favorite is The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification, which, yes, is a real book), when one jumped out at him: Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence by University of Cape Town philosophy professor David Benatar. Taranto went to Amazon.com, which described the book this way (paragraph breaks are Taranto’s):

Most people believe that they were either benefited or at least not harmed by being brought into existence. Thus, if they ever do reflect on whether they should bring others into existence–rather than having children without even thinking about whether they should–they presume that they do them no harm.

Better Never to Have Been challenges these assumptions. David Benatar argues that coming into existence is always a serious harm. Although the good things in one’s life make one’s life go better than it otherwise would have gone, one could not have been deprived by their absence if one had not existed. Those who never exist cannot be deprived. However, by coming into existence one does suffer quite serious harms that could not have befallen one had one not come into existence.

Drawing on the relevant psychological literature, the author shows that there are a number of well-documented features of human psychology that explain why people systematically overestimate the quality of their lives and why they are thus resistant to the suggestion that they were seriously harmed by being brought into existence.

The author then argues for the “anti-natal” view–that it is always wrong to have children–and he shows that combining the anti-natal view with common pro-choice views about foetal moral status yield a “pro-death” view about abortion (at the earlier stages of gestation). Anti-natalism also implies that it would be better if humanity became extinct.

Although counter-intuitive for many, that implication is defended, not least by showing that it solves many conundrums of moral theory about population.

I haven’t read this book, even though I am passing judgment on it, and you know what? I’m OK with that. I feel good about it. I believe that my quality of life has increased significantly today by not reading this book even as I proclaim it the stupidest thing ever written by an academic. Tomorrow, I’m not going to read it again, and I expect I’ll feel even better.

I will, however, be scanning the obituaries in the Cape Times. But hopefully Professor Benatar won’t take his own drivel to heart.