Could there be a better time to think about what a college education means than at the start of a new academic year? As a long-time academic administrator, I've given countless talks about the value of a liberal arts education. Indeed, as I write this, I'm preparing to do just that again tomorrow morning at the opening session of The Evergreen State College's Tacoma campus.
As I have in virtually every one of my talks, and as I will in the morning, I'll discuss how a liberal arts education prepares students to become active, engaged citizens by helping them communicate well, think critically, work collaboratively and develop a passion for learning. I'll encourage students to make wise choices, both academically and socially, and to think about ways to play leadership roles in their community. In essence, I'll urge students to use their time in college to make better lives for themselves while helping to make a richer environment for those around them.
Oddly enough, I've just discovered that a very powerful group is promoting a very different message for students heading off to college. It is a disturbing message and one that undercuts the very core of what higher education is supposed to be about.
The group is Focus on the Family and the message to students is that they should be very careful not to be swayed by what they might learn in college. Although the content might seem odd, the presentation, not surprisingly, is slick. Focus on the Family has teamed up with Stephen Meyer, Director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, to produce a DVD series entitled TrueU.
Meyer, the Discovery Institute and Focus on the Family are major players in the anti-science campaign so dominant in the United States today that relentlessly promotes the absurd belief that modern science leads to atheism. TrueU is not subtle in its message. Meyer warns parents that their offspring are in danger of undergoing a "faith-ectomy" while participating in "higher education."
Why, you might ask, did I put higher education in quotation marks in the above sentence? Simple. That's exactly the way that onenewsnow.com described Meyer's comments. And I hasten to add that onenewsnow.com is the news outlet for the American Family Association, a fundamentalist Christian group designated as a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The article goes on to report Meyer's concerns: "He laments that students entering Christian colleges and universities are not necessarily immune. 'It can be very disorienting if you have biologists who are Christians but Darwinists, or psychologists who are Christians but behaviorists who think that all human behavior is determined by genes and environment,' Dr. Meyer notes."
The TrueU series also embraces another related view that is being widely promoted across the States today: beware of the educated elite and their expertise. The introduction to the series is described by the publisher in no uncertain terms: "This 45-minute DVD introduces the TrueU series and shares stories of students who were tested and stood in opposition to false worldviews." Jay, one of the students portrayed, says, "In college you hear the words 'experts' and 'facts' thrown around all the time."
What's not at all surprising is that this attack on "expertise" is associated with Stephen Meyer and the Discovery Institute. The Discovery Institute, after all, worked closely with the creationists on the Texas State Board of Education when they reworked the state's science curriculum in 2009. During that fiasco, Don McLeroy, then chair of the Board, weighed in on his perception of the importance of evolution. Rather than rebutting the data offered by experts on the topic, he simply ranted. "I disagree with these experts. Somebody's gotta stand up to experts."
So, according to Meyer and Focus on the Family, colleges are filled with "experts" who see their job as coercing youth to accept their godless worldview. And these godless "experts" have apparently even taken over Christian colleges and universities.
Conspiracy theories of this sort seem pretty farfetched and a far more rational explanation of the situation comes immediately to mind: perhaps those godless experts at Christian colleges aren't godless at all. Perhaps accepting the basics of biology need not call anyone's faith into question. Rather than merely offering this alternative hypothesis, I can offer ample evidence to support it. The Clergy Letter Project consists of more than 13,000 religious leaders who are anything but godless and who all accept evolution.
Obviously, my view of the value of a college education differs markedly from that proffered by Meyer. And, obviously, my advice for college students has nothing in common with his. We are so far apart that I struggled to find something productive to offer Meyer and the TrueU series. Finally, though, I decided that I could suggest a theme song that would fully encapsulate their worldview.
With apologies to Ed and Patsy Bruce for the slight rewording of their classic country tune, I recommend that TrueU move immediately to adopt the following as their theme song: "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Students."
Follow Michael Zimmerman, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mzclergyletter
Jeff Selingo: The Self-Absorbed Higher Ed System
Creation Science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Institute for Creation Research
Creation Science Evangelism - Creation, Apologetics, Evangelism
This is where home-schooling would come in..but again, only for those who can afford it. So really, we are all slaves to what? The Real God....the Almighty Dollar that locks us into our little worlds against our dreams and wishes and keeps us victim to the system.
I will say this much...we all know that poorer people have less education and less education means greater belief (for good evolutionary reason) but who would disagree that poorer people are BETTER people? Tell the truth. Don't they tend to care more for their fellow man? Don't they have better family values, cohesion, loyalty? Again...there's evolutionary advantage to it....but isn't it true? Who's to say it's not because of faith?
I'm not sure that I'd want masses of poor people with NO impetus towards fear of God and the resultant restraint in conduct. Imagine the consequences...because I'm pretty certain our leaders (rich and often godless) have. Which is why they are always pretending to be religious.
The've made an excellent point. The more educated you are, the less likely you are to believe in some hocus pocus, supernatural mythology. If I were a Christian, I wouldn't want my children going to college and using their minds.
A college World Religions class in which I re-read the Bible, and read the Bhagavad Gita and Qur'an helped me along greatly in my recovery from Christianity. I've been a recovering Catholic longer than I was a practicing Catholic and I have never been more at peace.
Cheers
You are missing the point big time. No serious scientist has ever believed in randomness creating complex forms. ... the point is that natural selection when applied to a source of randomnes (mutation) acts a a filter to retain the useful and discard the harmful.
No, I did not miss the point. Natural selection must have something to act upon. The probabilities against getting even two really unlikely mutations that just happen to fit together as needed are very high, and getting three is a near miracle. Natural selection is not the problem, getting millions of needed random mutations, is.
We often forget the length of time during which these minute modifications take place. But, despite the 'impossibility of randomness to create a 'wining' combination', according to detractors of Science, the combinations do happen.
A simple proof of that is the Lotto, where people use random numbers and some win every week or every month and without having to wait thousands of years.
Wikipedia has a good article on mutation which explains how mutation works. And, spontaneous mutation is far more common than you suggest:
"Mutation rates also vary across species. Evolutionary biologists[citation needed] have theorized that higher mutation rates are beneficial in some situations, because they allow organisms to evolve and therefore adapt more quickly to their environments. For example, repeated exposure of bacteria to antibiotics, and selection of resistant mutants, can result in the selection of bacteria that have a much higher mutation rate than the original population (mutator strains)."
-- Wikipedia
Mutation rates also vary across species. Evolutionary biologists[citation needed] have theorized that higher mutation rates are beneficial in some situations, because they allow organisms to evolve and therefore adapt more quickly to their environments. For example, repeated exposure of bacteria to antibiotics, and selection of resistant mutants, can result in the selection of bacteria that have a much higher mutation rate than the original population (mutator strains).
Also, do these people really believe this. They say such things when it comes to religion or politics. But if a family member has a heart attack, do their treat the person themselves rather than going to the doctor? If they are being sued, do they defend themselves in court rather than getting a lawyer? Yea, be careful of those elitist experts!
however, the founders, who held a strong belief in a liberal education, established a basis for a great nation of individual rights and freedom, but not a powerful one. [the founders were suspicious of powerful governments.] that happened later when the rest of the world blew itself up and we got rich producing the materials for it as well as financing it. so that would be FDR, progressivism and the world environment that did that...
I cannot help but wonder just how many ways one can approach natural phenomena without, either dumbing down the science involved. You hear repeatedly that 'the other theory' (though there is never another per se), should be discussed or presented as well as the 'experts' explanation.
It reminds me of my physics teacher tell that we could explain ourselves in what ever clumsy way we wished as long as the results we right. If we wanted to be clumsy, it would take him longer to correct our copy and our only penalty would be to have to wait longer to get a grade.
Here is a simple example: You can say, "the slower you go and the faster your speed decreases", or "when you decelerate, the slower you go". I will spare you the other combinations of clumsiness.
My point is, why should the professor spend time discussing the students concept of the problem? The professor is the 'expert'.
It's a double edged sword.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saWSxLU0ME8
but thanks for stopping by to demonstrate how religious beliefs tend to stupify debates.
Where did the information come from? Please don't say "god". You have no proof of that.
Walter W Lee
Two further points: I see little discussion of Gosse's Omphalos theory which is surely just as rational as the others. (For those unfamiliar with this theory may I refer you to "The Mind of the Maker" by that brilliant Christian theologian, Dorothy L. Sayers0.
Walter W Lee
You're right about Creationism and Intelligent Design. They are certainly not scientific theories. But the model of evolution as proposed by Darwin is definitely a scientific theory. And you are totally wrong when you say Dearwinian evolution could not be falsified, of course it could
Not falsifiable? How?
We’ve gotten to the point that principles of tyranny are taken as natural laws, and studied as the pseudo-science of "economics."
Who needs dictators any more when we've internalized the control mechanisms, call their instillation "education," their re-enforcement "entertainment," and the results of playing by the rules "success?"
religion may be obsolete in your worldview, but 92% of the worlds population still has a belief in a greater power...there is a reason for this. it is very small minded to dismiss it as a remnant as if it were a wisdom tooth, a tail, or appendix. it is still with us in profound ways. rather than attacking and disrespecting it, why don't most of you try to understand it and why evolution SELECTED US FOR IT, because it did.