More on Religion and Education

Over at Pharyngula there's an interesting post on that always current topic of fundamentalist religion and higher education. Apparently, there is a great deal of concern amongst some born-agains that American colleges and universities are undermining the radical doctrines they so carefully drilled into their children. After all, these institutions of higher learning are - horror of horrors! - actually exposing them to people with different views, some of which are actually opposed to literal biblical truth.

Imagine that. (You would think though, that a faith which could not withstand a confrontation with critical opposition would not be worth the name, but I suppose that's a different discussion.)

However, it appears that alongside additional courses in biology, born-again christians should be taking a few extra courses in basic statistics, as one of the chart's they're using to back up this charge of enforced university-driven apostasy is less convincing than it tries to be:

But wait…the graph actually says nearly nothing at all about the state of secularism in our universities. It's missing too much information, and it's been selectively skewed. The first thing they did was start with a population of "born-again" Christians, and ask how many were still "born-again" when they graduated: that's a number that can only go up. For all we know from these data, 5% of the students enter public universities as "born-agains", a quarter of that cohort goes apostate (the only figure that is plotted), but another 95% of the godless freshmen become Southern Baptist seniors. That's not likely, I know, but it means this chart can't be used to make the argument that university educations convert people to freethinking secularists.

It's a meaningless scare graph designed to finagle the data and worry people. I have to wonder about a religious organization (this is from Focus on the Family) that makes such an effort to convince the faithful that getting a higher education imperils their soul—it's almost as if they want to keep their donors and supporters ignorant and stupid.

Er, Yes. Almost. I think Dr. Meyers might have put his finger on something there.

A priceless excerpt from the original article in the American Family Association Journal:

“Being a ‘good kid’ wasn’t going to be nearly enough to survive college. …” Wheaton wrote of his first few weeks at Stanford University. “My (paltry) desire to adhere to the Christian values with which I had been raised was overwhelmed by the temptations and pleasures of college life.”

These temptations can turn to assaults when exacerbated by sin. Kaufman said students should expect to be assaulted intellectually, emotionally and socially.

Um... 'survive'? Being 'assaulted'? Was this college or a tour of duty in Baghdad? Is it just me or is it a bit overblown to compare the 'temptations and pleasures of college life' and the possibility that people might strongly disagree with you with 'survival' and what sounds like actual bodily harm?

Given the fact that a significant majority of Americans identify themselves as very religious and Christian, doesn't it seem that there is more than a whiff of an overdeveloped martyr complex in all this?

After all, the tendency to whine about one's victim status is something which the right-wing has long criticised among liberals.

Pot. Kettle. Black.