You Can Lead a Creationist to Water…

I think it depends on the type of belief.
Belief in god is extremely irrational, extremely harmful to society and can be extremely harmful to the person, therefor I think it is our duty as human beings ( it’s not just professors) to educate people and show them how their thinking is flawed, And it is not flawed because it’s different then ours, it is flawed because it doesn’t match reality.

I think it depends on the type of belief.
Belief in god is extremely irrational, extremely harmful to society and can be extremely harmful to the person, therefor I think it is our duty as human beings ( it’s not just professors) to educate people and show them how their thinking is flawed, And it is not flawed because it’s different then ours, it is flawed because it doesn’t match reality.

I can’t help but agree with what he’s doing. Ignorance via believing things that just aren’t true or all-around made up just opens doors for people to believe basically anything, which opens yet another door on the journey toward things like religion-based biases and outright discrimination of people who just don’t deserve that kind of treatment.

This guy is trying to treat the problem at the source (to instill fundamental truth that a student can actually *believe* as true if he or she will only open her mind a little further than fairytales), rather than just treating the symptoms as they crop up (trying to convince a religious person not to discriminate against gay people).

You make the distinction between moral and non-moral, but for me, they’re all connected. Christians who discriminate against gay individuals do so because essentially they believe in bullshit to begin with. If they somehow were to wake up tomorrow and not believe that same bullshit, there would be a chance to a high degree they would no longer be so discriminative against gay individuals. Perhaps not a 100% chance, but certainly a large one.

You can’t convince them to drop their bigotry by simply appealing to the fact that “gays are equal to everyone else”. You have to *rid* yourself of the initial insane beliefs first before a person can typically get to that level of understanding. We have to replace the erroneous belief-set with not just information, but a subsequent set of beliefs, because sadly that is how the human species as a whole tends to operate. As is stated in the original content: “There’s a fundamental difference between knowing and believing. ”

I like what he’s trying to do. But you’re right: We can’t force someone to believe the truth…

… but does that mean we shouldn’t “kinda” try?

“my role was not simply to provide evidence and counterexamples and
hope for the best, but to help her overcome a false belief and supplant
it with a true one. ”

That’s where this gets immensely troubling. In a world in which there are differences of opinion, one person’s ‘false beliefs’ are another person’s sacred truths. While I think that creationism is a false belief, it is not my place as an educator to actively push students into thinking the same way I do.

Telling someone that creationism is false and they should abandon it = unproductive
Teaching how the natural world makes more sense without creationism = productive
Explaining that science used to be creationist, tested the idea, abandoned it = productive

I think this is what the professor should have written: “The primary goal of every academic should be to [TRY] bring students’ beliefs into lawful alignment with reality.”  There’s no controlling the outcome, so trying is the best a teacher can do.

One of Tesla’s professors gave him a failing grade for his design of an AC generator because it was a “fact” that alternating current was akin to a “perpetual motion machine.”

I’m no Pyrrhonist but we should be careful not to be dogmatic in our belief of “facts.”

Ideally, I think it would be wonderful if we, as educators, could convince our students to accept scientific truths.  It would be excellent if every young earth creationist who took a course on geology or evolution would come to accept that their belief doesn’t jive with reality.  It would be wonderful if every antivaxxer who takes a biology class came out the other side chomping at the bit to get their children vaccinated.  

Unfortunately, though, as Hemant said in his title, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.  There are some beliefs which are, in some people, so incredibly ingrained in their worldview, and even self-image, that no amount of evidence will persuade them from it, even if they accept the evidence! Cognitive dissonance becomes preferable to them to accepting the facts, because accepting the facts as truths would require them to build, from scratch, a brand new understanding of the world around them.  We spend decades constructing our understanding of how the world works, and to remove something fundamental to that understanding is for many an insurmountable obstacle.  

There is one additional point I would like to make.  We need to understand that, because of the preference for cognitive dissonance and maintaining ones worldview, for many people facts are NOT the same as truth.  Facts are cold and objective.  Facts do not provide them comfort.  Truth is warm and subjective. Truth does not necessarily need to be based in reality.  The man from RI clearly separated the facts of the existence of a 65-million year old reptile, however his truth is still that god created the earth 6 thousand years ago.  This is not to say that we shouldn’t try to educate people, but that some people will not be educated.  Even if they may accept things as fact, they may never believe it as truth.

If a person can make, or explain the rational scientific argument then cool. The best we can expect is that eventually cognitive dissonance will fall in our favour. If reliance on belief obtains, well that’s unfortunate, but rationally we should not penalise that in students.

Absolutely he should try to disabuse her of the ridiculous ideas with which she’s been indoctrinated. In fact, I’ll go further; she probably shouldn’t be there in the first place. If it were a higher-tier institution – Ivy League or on the level of BU or NYU – I’d insist unequivocally that she should not be there.  She’d be taking away the space from someone who might not have scored as highly on a standardized test, but would be more capable of taking advantage of the school’s menu of offerings and be better able to make a contribution to society later on.

As far as Marcus Ross is concerned – it’s a travesty that he was awarded a PhD. He’s now at Liberty, teaching his students about the “gaping holes” in evolutionary and standard cosmological theories. His very existence is an abomination.

I had a brief email exchange with the professor at URI who was his adviser. He gave me some pablum about the “marketplace of ideas”, or some such bullshit. He also tried to compare my objections to Ross’ receiving the degree to not wanting to teach music students to appreciate Wagner because he was an antisemite. I came away with the distinct impression that Ross got the degree because the administration at URI had been afraid of a lawsuit.

This is becoming a serious problem. I wrote a piece for Pharyngula two years ago (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/08/a_first-hand_report_of_nathani.php) about a lecture given by a young earth creationist who had just buffaloed his way through a PhD program at Harvard, largely because his adviser (with whom I also corresponded) hadn’t been paying close attention (he was mortified afterward).

Let me head the Libertarians off at the pass – a graduate degree program is different from an undergraduate program. You don’t just show up and parrot back what the professor has told you. You’re required to do original work, based upon a foundation of work done by your predecessors in the field. If you start out by repudiating that foundation, on what do you base your research? Whatever you have left, it isn’t science. If you want to subordinate data to faith, go into theology – not science.

If a student applied to the PhD program at the Harvard Physics Dept., and told them, “I’ll show up for all of my classes, I’ll repeate everything you want to hear, but I want you to know that I reject every theory of twentieth century physics. Relativity, quantum theory, string theory – it’s all nonsense. Newtonian mechaincs tells us everything we need to know, or ever will need to know, until Jesus returns.” – should that student be admitted to the program? Of course not – yet this is precisely what is happening, increasingly, in Biology departments across the country. It’s disgusting, and is a symptom of the evangelical, reactionary conservative sickness that has overtaken this country, has caused our “fall from grace” as a world power, and will finish us in the end.

Now, of course, I’ll have to hear about how education is the answer, “If I got out, anyone can”, yadda yadda. Yeah, great – how often does that happen really? In the meantime, this goddamn country is going down the tubes because everyone is scared shitless of the fucking Christian fundamentalists.

Professors should certainly require students to demonstrate their understanding of topics covered in the classroom. To dictate the contents of their consciences, however, strikes me as extraordinarily arrogant.

So long as someone does their job well, their career should not be dependent in any way upon personal or public beliefs. This is what protects atheists in the job market. Do you really think this would only affect Christians seeking science degrees or jobs? Even if it did, would you really want to force Christians to choose between the closet and career destruction like atheists have had to do for so long?

In science, facts can be easily overturned and often are. Every rational person should still accept well-substantiated facts provisionally, unless one is designing an experiment to test said fact.

Of course we should try to convince others to accept reality in our capacity as fellow human beings, but using one’s power to threaten that person’s career is unethical.

If you aren’t going to hire them (a position with which I agree completely), then it follows that they shouldn’t be awarded the degrees in the first place (at least, nothing beyond a Baccalaureate), because someone will hire them – then it’s only a matter of time until experimental data gets fudged – because we can’t have people thinking microorganisms actually evolve, can we? – and research will be held up, or an ineffective medication will be released, or what have you – and then someone will die.

They’re dangerous. Keep them in their place, and that place ain’t science.

By granting a PhD to someone who admits of an opposition to the very
field itself, the University of Rhode Island has put any citizen who
consults with Ross at risk of receiving bad solutions which can lead to
bad consequences.  Furthermore, the university has harmed the field of
Palaeontology and their own reputation.  It is now expected (justifiably
so) in a slightly higher degree that the recommendations of
Palaeontologists and graduates of the University of Rhode Island lack
credibility.

Yes! Absolutely!

Because it is college and the students are there by choice it is a different matter than high school students.  Part of earning a degree is critical thinking and much of an undergraduate degree is teaching students how to learn so she is clearly not passing that test.  So, should she get a degree?  She is not alone, many students with and without religious reasoning don’t learn those lessons as they should.

*You’re

What is the value of a PhD if someone can get one who doesn’t believe any of the things they have studied? Why are we confering the title of “doctor” — considering them an expert in their field — if they don’t even believe the basic tenants of their field? What does it mean to be an expert? This is a big problem. It will only serve to further the public distrust of knowledge.

I think it’s a simple fix to this problem.  Whenever the Creationist starts speaking, and relying on his or her doctorate as an authority – the proper question to ask is, “Were you lying then, or are you lying now?  Is it ethical to lie for God if that lie saves souls?”

It’s an untenable position that destroys credibility.  The problem almost solves itself.

I’m pretty sure our atheist beliefs exclude us from working as (say) pastors. Someone who is prepared to publish work that they believe to be false is an academic fraud, and that should exclude them from working in academic roles.

It’s not that they’re ‘bad people’ and we should keep them out of work to punish them for being bad (which is the sort of logic that harms atheists in the general employment market), it’s that some beliefs are incompatible with some professions.

Absolutely – we have to treat the cause, not just the symptoms.
Facts > Beliefs
Knowledge > Faith

Yes, that’s precisely how it works. You’ve caught us out.

Moron.

If people can convince themselves they see Jesus in a Wal-Mart receipt (and somehow get this nonstory into the media):

http://www.whptv.com/news/local/story/VIDEO-ADDED-Wal-Mart-receipt-has-image-of-Jesus/i0kmLGPH-k2IAbLKRH_VaQ.cspx?rss=50

then it’s no real surprise that someone can go through university courses and still steadfastly believe in creationism.  People can convince themselves of just about anything, it seems.

That reasoning can be used to tear down any civil liberty we have, but each time it destroys our rights a little more.

At the very least one needs an extreme circumstance to justify ignoring fundamental rights like freedom of belief. And I mean extreme like good expectation of immediate and drastic harm – like if someone explicitly says they think God wants them to kill people.

Besides, as a pragmatic matter if we tore down freedom of belief, America would not turn into a secular utopia; America would turn into a theocracy. Professors would not have the ability to grade others on their acceptance of the material; professors would be the ones forced to swear an oath to God and Country; professors would be the ones forced to pledge not to teach evolution, skepticism, or other Ways of the Devil.

“If a person earns the grade it doesn’t matter what they personally believe.”

Come on!! What if a medic earn his grade and did all the work but thinks homeopathy works? And instead of giving proper care to someone he recommends homeopathy as the way to go…and the person eventually dies for lack of treatment…

Do you really have the guts to say, well, it’s just one life, I’m sure he would be stripped of his medical license after that, or, well it’s not his fault, it’s the employer’s problem?

Sure the employer has to be and should be careful when hiring people but the point I’m trying to make is that critical thinking, logic, value for evidence and so forth should be taught at school from an early age, people need to be educated. Let’s no kid ourselves, the educational system is  shit. Sure it’s better then it has ever been probably but how good is something when you could improve it in 5 minutes?

If a doctor prescribes alternative medicines when current best practice is to prescribe real medicine, then that doctor has committed malpractice and needs to be sued and possibly stripped of his or her medical license. Doctors are aware of this (or they should be), and will presumably follow the law.

Performance should be the bottom line. Anything else is a witch-hunt based on potential misbehavior. It is unnecessary and worse, it will eventually turn on you. Unleash a witch-hunt at your own peril.

JD, gene duplication is well-established, as well as other events that lead to greater complexity. Please read about them.

Do you think threatening the career of a doctor who for instance has a history of prescribing homeopathic remedies to severely ill people  is a witch hunt? To me it looks like the only sensible thing to do besides stripping him of his license of course.

But my point seems to have not come across. I’m only advocating education and critical thinking and ultimately , ridicule for those who reject reality (only for sane people of course).

Being self reflective about our own beliefs when trying to convince others on their validity is always relevant.

Speaking as a palaeontologist…

The public already has a lot of bad and wrong ideas about what we know, how we know it, and why we think we’re right. Young Earth creationism has been a force for evil since the 1890s, and the fact that they’re not dead yet proves that facts don’t stop ’em.  Up until Kurt Wise / Marcus Ross, all of the creationists were not officially trained by any of us. Now, they’ve broken through that door. It’s annoying, but is it as bad as it looks?

I don’t think it makes that big of a difference. Creationists don’t care if the person lying to them is a doctor or a priest. Because of the existence of the Christian college (and television and internet and book…) system in the U.S., their lies and influence are mainly going to an audience that already believes the shit they’re peddling. The credentials that Wise and Ross spent money acquiring didn’t help
them receive jobs in the world of real science, and (unless I’m wrong) I
don’t think they’re using NSF funding that real scientists could better
use.

…they did waste their supervisors’ and departments’ times, since their positions could have been filled by actual real scientists. So I think that Harvard and URI deserve to both get smacked. But if they had told these students to take a hike, they probably woulda gotten smacked with litigation, and they probably woulda lost. That’s the bad thing about the First Amendment, it helps protect crazy people from doing stupid things if their excuse is Jesus.

Coyotenose,

Do the predictive models put forward by evolutionary biologists rise to the level of the hard sciences?

Skip that.  Do they even rise to the much lower threshold of the social sciences?

Are you even well-read enough on this topic to even answer that question in an informed manner?

I agree.  But it’s valuable to explore the logical fallacies behind religious ideas and pseudoscience as well, simply for the sake of building critical thinking skills.  The professor shouldn’t hope to supplant irrational thinking (but may yet!), and in deconstructing these topics, a professor is simply extending ‘classic’ principals of education to modern controversies.  If you don’t learn how to think, there’s no point in memorizing facts.     

Belief if creationism is not conscience.   
 

Do you still beat your wife?

I’m sure tons of kids pretend to have an ‘aha’ moment in this class and right afterward they go back to prayer group to complain about their radical atheist biology prof!  I think the solution to this problem is to examine at a broader base of misconceptions during the course aiming to teach scientific/critical thinking.  That way you end up teaching a skill set and hopefully the students take that with them, whether or not they’ve changed their beliefs…perhaps they will later as become used to seeing the world more clearly. 

As far as I’m concerned the job of the educator is not to persuade the student into believing something, but rather to develop their skills comprehension, analysis and argument, and the best way of doing that is to expose them to the best ideas and theories and to teach them to comprehend the idea and why it is widely accepted. What the best education should not do, is indoctrination, which is what seems to be advocated by many comments on this blog.

There is also the problem of the constitutionality of teaching in public schools what a student should or should not believe. Once a public school teacher starts telling a student that they should believe in evolution, then that steps over the line and violates the right to freedom of belief.

I haven’t read any of the other comments, but my thought is doesn’t the professor have an ethical duty to let potential employers know if his/her students are qualified?  Maybe I’m thinking about this too much from an engineering perspective, but, in engineering, skills like problem solving, understanding logic, etc. are generally more important than knowledge.  So, even if I possessed the knowledge to answer questions or could fake those skill sets (which I’m not entirely sure how one fakes such things, but apparently it is possible) to pass the tests, etc, but yet the professor knows I’m faking, isn’t it his/her ethical duty to lower my grade?  It may even be beneficial to the student.  If they go get a job, and then their employer finds out they are inept, they’ll lose their job.  …Though, if these students are faking skill sets they know they don’t possess, they’ll probably prepare for getting fired or try to find a boss with a similar mind set.  But even then, they could then use an argument from authority if they graduated from a so-called prestigious university and perhaps try to use that to pull a more credible Ben Stein (reference to “Expelled”) maneuver.  I.e., instead of us being able to discredit these creationist “doctors” for getting their degrees from diploma mills, they’ll be flaunting credentials from MIT.  That won’t be persuasive to us, but could be to the less informed.

No. I said it would be a witch hunt to discriminate against a doctor who believes in homeopathic remedies on the sole basis that the doctor might potentially fail to prescribe real medicine to a patient.

If the doctor has already failed to do his or her medical duty, then that doctor has committed an action that would form an adequate basis for repercussions.
Action, not belief.

Who said it wasn’t? Isn’t it better to stub your toe than get hit by a train? It’s it better to be happily alive than dead? Isn’t it better to have as much ice cream as you care for than to have none?

There are lots of things that are better than other things and I didn’t mention any of them either.

Gonna chime in and agree again.  The PhD is more than just a process; there’s a matter of honesty.  Ross displayed appalling dishonesty and does not deserve his degree.

This is going to sound extremely pedantic, but every single Code of Conduct in any University that I have seen includes the words “Integrity” and “Honesty”.

If you hide your stupid beliefs about the age of the earth just to get a passing test score, or a diploma, it means you lied about your beliefs and your fundamental understanding. This is not a display of integrity nor honesty. On that basis alone, I would revoke any grade or diploma awarded.

If somebody truly understood the scientific reasons of why we know the age of the universe and the earth, and then they reject that simply for their “faith”, they have then demonstrated that they actually understand nothing whatsoever about science. The core fundamental principle of science is that you accept what is testable and the results of countless tests, and you build upon that – regardless of how you “feel” about it. Feelings don’t come into it, and neither does faith.

If somebody cannot grasp that, or cannot process it, or even accept it, they are not a scientist no matter what their grade or diploma says.

Correct me if I’m wrong and I may be since english is not my native language but firing someone over his religious beliefs would be bigotry. Firing someone because the person is an atheist is not bigotry, because atheism is not an ideology or an opinion, or a belief, it is the lack of an ideology/opinion/belief…and it’s also the default position.

But hey, maybe I’m wrong.

Regardless of whether atheism is an ideology, it is not, strictly speaking, relevant to job performance.

You can’t open the floodgates of discrimination on the basis of irrelevant criteria without it turning on you.

In many fields a PhD by itself means nothing without the extra
experience of a post-doc position along with starting to establish a
published track-record.  You also need the recommendation of your
peers.  These one or two creationists that “slipped through” with a PhD
(even from a prestigious university) would never get these extra
necessary recommendations to land a job at a legitimate university. 
They will only be able to land positions at places that function to mock or fight science – Liberty “University”, “Discovery” Institute, and the like.  It is sad that these places will hire these PhDs simply for propaganda purposes so they can say “some PhDs believe this, some PhDs believe that”, but I don’t think degrees should be withheld from people because of their personal beliefs who otherwise did the work necessary. 

It is also a necessary part of science to try to disprove and find fault
with existing scientific theory.  This is necessary to prune out bad
ideas and focus attention on slightly different tangents.  Or maybe the
“bad idea” was only bad in a small detail that was exposed with the
criticism.  Then the idea can be made better.   Scientists “should” be doing the criticism for the purpose
of advancing science.  Although, if actual criticism (backed up with valid reasons) is offered that allows science to move forward, does it really matter what the person’s intent was? 

I don’t know anything about Ross.  Perhaps he would jump at the chance to let his name and title be used for propaganda purposes somewhere and sit on his butt collecting a salary doing nothing but spewing creationist dribble.  But on the other hand, if he is up to snuff, he might find some minor detail of evolutionary theory that legitimately needs to be rethought…  Who knows.

This is part of the reason why I distrust humanities courses in general. Your course could have been taught as a science course, but it obviously wasn’t and I think that that subjectivity is the problem.  

Entirely different scenarios. As to whether or not they feel “cheated” – frankly, I don’t give a crap. They don’t like it, let them stay the hell out of legitimate academic institutions and confine themselves to Christian clown colleges as in days of yore. We’ll all be much happier, and society as a whole will be better off.

Wait.

ID proponents get offered real science positions but right now I don’t see a future wherein creationists do, unless it’s a future in which the States have drastically changed. Almost every secular university has at least one prof who thinks something wonky or kooky (cryptozoology, ID proponent, 9/11 Truther…) so I don’t think ID will be extinguished in our time. But I don’t think that the Wedge stratagem has succeeded as well as the DI hoped.

On the subject of grad students not being beat down as much as we deserve… Part of it is about Americans who have higher expectations of entitlement than they should, and thus are litigation-happy when they feel like their fictional rights have been stepped on. All education past mandatory education is a privilege, not a right, and doing badly/failing out in a course/program because you don’t believe a word of it should be standard.

However, part of it is a slippery slope, in which denying a person a degree for their beliefs can (theoretically) get out of control.

…I’ll have to ask some palaeo profs the next time I’m at a meeting if we as a scientific society should try to have a concrete reaction to potential students of a creationist/ID bent.

http://www.uri.edu/judicial/Student%20Handbook/ch1.html

Did he violate academic honesty according to URI’s rules and standards of academic honesty?

if he is up to snuff, he might find some minor detail of evolutionary theory that legitimately needs to be rethought

Marcus Ross worked on mosasaurs from the Cretaceous Period.
…the problem is that he thinks that the Cretaceous Period was all deposited during the Noachian Deluge a few thousand years ago. However, none of this is mentioned in his dissertation (so I hear, I’ve never had the pleasure of reading it) which reads like he interpreted the fossil record the same way most scientists do.

He talks of the Flood when he’s with creationists. He talks of the Cretaceous when he’s with scientists. He is not going to rethink a thing.

I couldn’t disagree more. I’ve been saying it for years – not only should the degrees be withheld in the first place, but if they earn the degrees honestly, then flip out later on and start promoting nonsense, the degrees should be rescinded.

We wouldn’t want professors withholding signatures for PhD candidates not buying into the professor’s pet theory about something.

There is a profound difference between disagreeing about the mechanics of evolution, and proclaiming “Goddidit!”

In fact, I’ll do you one better. He made it clear to them that he didn’t think there was conclusive evidence to support evolution, but, even if he thought there were – he’d refuse to believe it because the Bible contradicts it.

How on earth is this science, and how do they rationalize giving this clinical psychotic a PhD? Again, I have to think they were afraid of a lawsuit (at least, that’s what I want desperately to believe).

I wouldn’t support the rescinding of degrees.  What is done is done.  I would support, though, some kind of public record where professors who signed off on a PhD who later regretted it for whatever reason could indicate their change of heart.  This wouldn’t have any legal bearing on the degree, but could be used as a resource (like the published record) to determine if the PhD recipient is still in good graces with the people that launched him or her. 

I’d like to add something else. I downloaded Portland State’s course catalog. Here is the description for the course entitled “Science and Pseudoscience”:

Phl  306  
Science  and  Pseudoscience  (4)
An  examination  of  basic  issues  in  philosophy  of
science  through  an  analysis  of  creation  science,
faith  healing,  UFO  abduction  stories,  and  other
pseudosciences.  Some  of  the  questions  addressed:
What  distinguishes  science  from  pseudoscience?
How  are  theories  tested?  When  is  evidence  reli-
able?  Must  we  invoke  the  supernatural  to  explain
certain  aspects  of  reality?

Here you have a student who was a Christian fundamentalist, attending a secular university, who went out of her way to take a course in which she knew she’d be confronted with arguments in favor of evolution. She was clearly there for the sole purpose of proselytizing.

You know the drill – I’m sure she was told, by her parents or her pastor, that she had a “Christian duty” to confront the heathens and proclaim “the Word”. I’m sorry, but she deserved to be smacked down for that reason alone.

I highly dislike how subsequent replies in this format get tinier and tinier.

But you raised good points, cipher. Like I said, I’ll have to harass people who are on the other side of the grad student / prof dichotomy to see what they think should be done about evolution students who dislike evolution.

I think it depends on the extent of the curriculum.  Does not a teacher/professor/instructor have a moral obligation to prevent people from attaining a degree if he/she can demonstrate that the student’s beliefs will make the student unreliable in practice?

Should a medical school prevent a student from graduating, regardless of the student’s grades, if the school knows the student intends to practice, say, “faith healing” or some similar scam?

I say yes, the school must prevent the student from graduating.  And they should do it in every case where a graduate is known to use his/her academic credentials to advocate for a position disavowed by the school.

And on the “beating down” on grad students.  I was one once.  I got beat on, intellectually.  It was a test of character.  The notion is that it takes more than intelligence to be an academic.  It takes character.  I sucked it up because I knew I’d get through it while those too weak to speak for truth and knowledge (i.e. what academics do) would not.

I’m a prof now.

Hello, I am a Christian, though not a fundamentalist. I was raised in the Eastern Orthodox Church, by parents who were born in Greece and moved to America before their children were born. I went to religious schools all the way through my junior year of high school. I was the Valedictorian of my class and in the top 96% (academically) of students in my state as a senior in public school. At that point, I had encountered so many religious restrictions and hateful “Christians” that I left the church as soon as I could. I was the president of the University GLBT club at the University where I received a BFA in visual arts. I had entire shows dedicated to mocking Saints. I married a female to male transgendered person. I minored in Women’s studies, I protested extremist religious groups (Fred Phelps). I MCed Drag show fund raisers and I gave presentations of safe lesbian sex to freshmen.  I organized my University’s National Coming Out Day activities for 2 years. I was the moaner in the Vagina Monologues. I threw paint balloons at Mormon temples from teh passenger seat of my best friend’s car. The most significant part of my identity (other than being a feminist and an first generation American) was being gay.

I became Christian at the age of 28. No one was more surprised than I. I still believe in equality for all people. I believe in the separation of church and state. I believe in the freedom of religion, the freedom from religion, and the freedom from “no religion,” which in the liberal arts and religious studies fields is increasingly becoming viewed as it’s own religion (if you MUST believe in the opposite of a religious belief, you are as bound by it as if you believe in it). 

I have gone back to school for molecular biology. I have been beaten in the face by vehement evolutionist bio teachers. The things I have heard in classrooms would be an absolute outrage if they were said of black people or women or gay people. I go to PSU. I am a science major. And I’m sorry, but nothing disproved evolution to me (I believed in it wholeheartedly prior) than evolutionary biology for biology majors. You have to have a tremendous amount of faith to believe in that. And you know what, it’s OK if people do believe in it. America is a free country and I am glad my parents came here. 

Please keep in mind though, Greece has a national religion. It is a Christian religion. Yet somehow, they produce doctors and scientists (my neurologist went to medical school in Greece) plenty enough to care for their people and do research. These people are not taught evolution. It is presented as what it is, a scientific theory. It is not rammed down the throats of students in a defensive and violent manner as it is at PSU (repeatedly, in every biology course). Is it really necessary to repeat the same tired old line over and over in every class? Cell biology? Evolutionary theory hasn’t even caught up to technology in molecular bio or cell bio. Or bio chem. We all know who Darwin was, we all know that mutation is the driving force of evolution. We’ve all parroted out the expected answers. I did this in high school english, I do it in biology. In Chemistry, I actually get to answer based on my own deductions, calculations, and understanding of the material. 🙂 

Physics is in an uproar right now. They are looking for something called “The Grand Unifying Theory,”  but no one can actually define it… 

And as far as Trig goes, you have to learn the unit circle, the 3 special triangles, and how to algebraically manipulate and substitute for functions of sin, cos, and tang, in order to take CALCULUS. 80% of my trig class was how to do nautical measurements as if you were trapped in the pre-1900s. No body needs to know that crap, we have calculators and computers. 

Noone needs to know the “fig-pudding” theory of the atom. No one needs to know WHO figured out that DNA is an anti-parallel double helix. No one needs to know how to calculate chi squared tests or use the quadratic equation without a calculator. We have CALCULATORS. there are lame hoops to jump through in every discipline. It’s part of indoctrination into academiology. 

Even modern evolutionary theorists disagree with many of Darwin’s observations. Teach us your theory and move on. At public Universities, all student have access to all degrees, provided they can keep their GPAs up. Discriminating against religious groups for admittance and grades violates the Constitution.  The Constitution. Attacking religious groups is called hate speech. That’s been around a Hell of a lot longer (legally) than the concepts of Hate Speech against many other groups of people. 

But you know what? I would stand up for GLBT people and anyone else who was facing the kind of constant bombardment by hateful “educators” in required classes. Because I think that is the CHRISTIAN thing to do. 

If evolution is so logical and self-evident, why are theorists behaving in such a way that makes them appear as if they are rapid dogs cornered in an alley? I tolerate them, even though I think that they are encroaching on my Constitutional rights. Why are they attacking me? 

And I am sorry, but 2 of the most published creationists with BIOLOGY PhDs teach at Ivy league schools. One is at Yale, the other is at Harvard. They have both been extensively published to the point, that you won’t even need their names to find them on Google. 

Why yes, society would be so much better off without the right that the founders of America find so valuable as to write into the constitution. 

This is hate speech. You spew hate speech. Have you even GONE to college?

You posted previously that people wit6h creationist views would never be hired by Ivy league universities because of their views. Now they are taking over. Seriously? When I was in Catholic school, the teachers were afraid of a tiny group of kids who called themselves “DTO.” Dykes Taking Over. They never took over. 

If you have such an issue with these people, don’t take their classes. 

And I am sorry, but 2 of the most published creationists with BIOLOGY PhDs teach at Ivy league schools. One is at Yale, the other is at Harvard. They have both been extensively published to the point, that you won’t even need their names to find them on Google.

Well, I just tried Googling them and I couldn’t find them.

Noone needs to know the “fig-pudding” theory of the atom. No one needs to know WHO figured out that DNA is an anti-parallel double helix. No one needs to know how to calculate chi squared tests or use the quadratic equation without a calculator. We have CALCULATORS. there are lame hoops to jump through in every discipline. It’s part of indoctrination into academiology.

Right; it’s enough merely to say “Goddidit!”

I highly doubt that anyone is attacking you. It’s far more likely that you resent the many challenges to your belief system.

You obviously have issues. Please get some help.

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Drive-by posting should be illegal.