Antidote to Hostility

I came across two pieces of information in the last week and just realized this morning that they were connected.

Dinesh D'Souza  writes about the intentions of the "new atheists" to indoctrinate children - not just theirs, yours - in a materialist worldview and against Christianity via the education system.

Philosopher Richard Rorty argued that secular professors in the universities ought “to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own.” Rorty noted that students are fortunate to find themselves under the control “of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents.” Indeed, parents who send their children to college should recognize that as professors “we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable.”

This kind of attitude is what makes the "new atheists" new.  They not only disagree with religion and Christianity in particular, they consider it dangerous.  They don't engage so much to dialog but to warn.  And they claim a rational superiority without argument - all based on the presupposition of scientism and materialism.

As an antidote for the public schools, the Bible Literacy Project has produced a textbook that I reviewed here before that is being used in over 400 schools and has been featured in Time magazine.  The Constitution doesn't require schools ban the Bible and Christianity from schools.  In fact, there's a good argument that Biblical literacy is part of cultural literacy.  Proper instruction about the Bible should produce familiarity and respect, at least, rather than hostility.  You can help bring this curriculum to your school and the Project now provides resources to assist you in approaching the school administrators and board.  I was glad to learn about this because it integrates the qualities of a good ambassador STR values:  knowledge, wisdom, and character.

Comments

[Jared]

I guess this sort of attitude in the education system should not surprise us anymore.

A study done recently found that 53% of college and university faculty have "unfavorable" feelings toward evangelical Christians. Ironically, this survey was done by a Jewish group to gauge anti-Semitism, but the results they found were not at all what they expected.
The next highest groups receiving negative responses were Mormons at 33%, followed by Muslims at 22%.

Even one of the pollsters recognized the double standard. "If a majority of faculty said they did not feel warmly about Muslims or Jews or Latinos or African Americans, there would be an outcry. No one would attempt to justify or explain those feelings. No one would say, 'The reason they feel this way is because they don't like the politics of blacks or the politics of Jews.' That would be unthinkable," Tobin said.

Link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/04/AR2007050401990_pf.html

[Sage S]

An English teacher I taught with would do a unit on the Bible as literature. Shakespeare is generally mandatory in public high schools; yet our language contains at least as many Biblical phrases and allusions as Shakespearean. Young adults listening to political speeches or commentary might be at a loss whenever someone is accused of "washing their hands of the whole affair," or of being a scapegoat. To oppose Biblical literacy out of personal bias does not necessarily give us fewer Christians (as our noteworthy professor intends), but it does guarantee our citizens remain ignorant of a portion of our public discourse.

I can surmise why professors hate Christianity; why do they fear it?

American schools and colleges have as much to do with educating the young as the American media has to do with informing the public.

[Sage S]

In all fairness, the overwhelming majority of schoolteachers I have ever known would not set out to undermine unsuspecting students' religious convictions. This misuse of the profession in public K-12 seems marginal at best, and institutional at worst (where the textbooks and general policies promote specific ideologies rather than universal knowledge and methods). The Academy, on the other hand, is too busy consuming its own tail to admit that its boldest progenitors (Darwin, Freud, Marx) are becoming increasingly anachronistic as an inquisitive populace continues to search for answers.

[Sage S]

BTW, this is exactly the sort of thing that makes athiests seem so, well, fundamentalistic and dogmatic. If a fanatical religious professor resorted to ad hominem insults to silence and brainwash his opponents, he would be widely villified for the freak he is. Why do athiests get a pass when they become what they despise? I suppose the rest of us actually tolerate the free expression of ideas we disagree with.

Tolerance and love are far more attractive and persuasive than authoritarian brainwashing, hatred, and bombast. But athiests reject the God of love, so are left to fend for themselves.