Social retard, he is

Having worked for the poorest of the poor — let me invite this social retard and Mr. W.L. Churchill to find their own way, in the private sector. Yes, there those (e.g., Rev. Jerry Falwell) who can be different. But this kind of social insult just raises funds for their causes and opposition from certain segments of the tax-paying public. Look at how Mr. Churchill is now the poster child for an entire movement, demanding immediate action.

Say what you will — just don’t whine about the response. You brought it upon yourself. Taxpayers have First Amendment rights, too.

Think academic freedom is absolute? Ever heard of financial exigency? If your department had to be split in two — would you still have a job?

Bob, Graduate student at Public mega-university, at 7:39 am EDT on May 26, 2005

Taxpayers angry about spending priorities

CDM made some very good points. I’d only add this —

Recently, some Florida legislators suggested increasing funding for high-growth areas (e.g., health care, engineering) and cutting funding in low-growth areas (e.g., philosophy, anthropology). Now, consider this:

http://www.statenews.com/article.phtml?pk=30238

Mr. W.L. Churchill, et al, have 1st Amendment rights. That is not in dispute.

But contrary to Mr. “I’m always right, you’re always wrong” Churchill, the taxpayer crowd reserves the right to fund what academics that they want — and not to fund what they don’t want. And now, with so many global competitors (China, India, South Korea, EU) — they are reviewing public spending on academics, even more closely. Social retardness just makes them, re-check state budgets.

Bob, at 1:23 pm EDT on May 26, 2005

a violation of civil liberties

I wonder if Professor Shortell had been critical of Marxism or postmodernism if the hew and cry would have been so great. If Brooklyn College capitulates to journalists and media outlets who wish to suppress the right to express unpopular opinions, the intellectual and political integrity of the college will — and ought to — disappear.

Delia K., at 2:09 pm EDT on May 26, 2005

Wow

The funny thing is he is right in his assessment of religion. It is the tonic for the feeble minded who are too lazy to explore and understand ideas. Religious people think they have the “answer” to everything, when they really know nothing.

Think I am wrong? Then consider the number of evangelical PhDs or MDs. Blind faith does not stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Dibna, at 3:45 pm EDT on May 26, 2005

Anyone ask Lucifer his take on this god thing?

Hey Lil’ Bob, you religious nutjobs really crack me up. I propose that we just cut through the crap and split this country in two. One for you and one for the people who actually use their heads and try to think about this screwed up planet. How did it get this way? Who is involved in this? When will the religious BS go away? When will we be given a chance to fix it? You pick the turf you want and we’ll take the rest. Want to bet which one your children will be clamoring for? I live in a country that has separation of church and state; I don’t ever want to hear about religion in the public sector. Ever, yet I am confronted by you pod people continually. Go away, leave me alone.

Big Bob, at 5:55 pm EDT on May 26, 2005

Freedom of Speech vs. Tolerance

Writers seem to be taking a legalistic view that blithely disregards the need for coexistence lest society become a free-for-all in the pre-civilization sense, hence the irony that this should take place in the field of sociology. In order to share the same space, people need to be tolerant and self-controlled to an extent lest inflammatory remarks tear apart the fabric of society, which consists of compromises for mutual benefits. Unbridled freedom of speech does border on intolerance, and an academic should practice some degree of diplomacy in his or her private life as a member of society. Not that personnel decisions should be affected, but it is too facile to hide behind freedom of speech and a private Website to hurl insults at the mainstream of society. The answer must be one that promotes tolerance and civility rather than civil war.

Japanned, Professor at Osaka Jogakuin College, Japan, at 4:33 am EDT on May 27, 2005

The dangers of telling an unpopular truth

Not only did the professor NOT connect his comments to the university and his teaching, but it would seem that he has offered at the very least a rational & defensible definition of morality — “one accept full responsibility for one’s self” — as the grounds for his other comments regarding religion. He should be as protected for making his comments re religion as are fundamentalists who may have a different view. This isn’t about “offensive” language, but about religious extremists attempting to enforce their view through public institutions.

Ron, at 6:59 am EDT on May 27, 2005

Wrong About Christians

For him to base his observations about all Christians on those that he has seen is wrong. Christians are not retarded, and their eyes are not closed to the real word. What he fails to realize is that there is an ultimate supreme being and his name is Jesus. Also, it is totally obsurd for you to place judgment on any individual. It is not your place to judge. Just because you don’t have the faith to believe that there is a real God, others should not be put down because of their beliefs.

Nita, at 8:16 am EDT on May 27, 2005

If one does seek to examine religion from a psychological perspective, one unavoidably runs into the fact that it behaves in every way like a paranoid construction. W. W. Meissner, psychoanalyst and Jesuit, shows the correlations in a number of essays.

As a simple explanation and example, the paranoid construction readily accepts whatever information it acquires that reinforces its existing beliefs, while dismissing information that counters those beliefs, much like Christians saying “With a billion Christians on Earth, we couldn’t all be wrong, could we?” while ignoring even greater numbers of Taoists and Buddhists.

Intellectual development _is_ retarded by the reflexive dismissal of large classes of information. Faith defines itself by saying, “I don’t _need_ evidence—I believe,” or alternatively, “I don’t care what the evidence says; I _believe_ otherwise.” Carrying this behavior into every aspect of life is, frankly, the end of meaningful analysis, and morality comes to an end if one is incapable of analyzing situations of moral difficulty. The professor has it right, even if his language in a wholly non-academic setting is less restrained than it would be in an academic setting.

If speaking truth to power—power here represented by religion and those seeking to use it to expand political power—has a place in academia, a person who is unafraid to address the debilitating actions of religion upon reason is exactly the type of person you want heading a department. It’s only a short step from going after this professor to going after any biology department chair who says that evolution is science and creative design is not. The reasoning will be the same: “He belittles me by saying my religion is not scientific.”

Meissner notes that religion serves a purpose for the aged that nothing else really does, propping up the ego against the narcissistic loss of impending death by promising some form of life after death. Perhaps it is harmless for those near death to accept unprovable promises such as these simply because they want to believe them, but when military leaders (Dubya, William Boykin) start pushing particular policies because of what they choose to believe about their God(s), people who otherwise would be nowhere near death are suddenly pushed toward and into it. (Note that the entirety of the Sermon on the Mount and the majority of what’s in red letters in the Bible are among the information reflexively dismissed as useless to the belief system at work.)

Thane Doss

Thane Doss, Yomiuri Culture Centers, Tokyo, at 1:03 pm EDT on May 27, 2005

Nita says that there is a supreme being, and his name is Jesus.

This will be news to most Christians.

Duns Scotus, Supreme eing?, at 6:19 pm EDT on May 27, 2005

THEOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

It’s about time someone spoke up at CUNY. Let’s consider a small-medium HBC in one of the largest urban universities in the country (mine). Many faculty, however, and most administrators including the president, act like it is a private (Baptist) HBC. There are hymns at all major functions. There are blessings at meetings. There is a choir. The Chancellor attends major functions, observing, and therefore condoning, the erosion of the separation of church and state. The state’s emissary does not comment or react. In the face of this, Muslim, Jewish, agnostic, and atheist faculty are mute. If the Chancellor is not taking on the theocracy, all the more reason faculty are powerless to effect any change to the constant conducting of religion in their academic spaces.

Religion is a protected practice ("religious freedom"). Religious preference is not due to some immutable property, like race or sex, which constructs and receives prejudice. People choose religion like they choose being republican or democrat. As such, and as religion is a discourse, it is subject to inspection, criticism, and (oh my!) derision at some of its more outlandish dictums, as well as its contribution to the lack of critical thinking among our citizenry.

The religious want it both ways. They want faith-based federal money but they don’t want to yield to the political labels that inevitably follow the money (and the resultant political commentary). Dr. Shortell is not preventing anyone from practicing religion and he’s not making it a requirement in any way.

Not like my “public” University workplace.

Public_HBC, at 3:23 pm EDT on May 28, 2005

“Is He Qualified to Teach?”

I was quite surprised to read the views of Mr. Shortell on religion. To restate a couple of the quotes in the article, Mr. Shortell said that concerning religions, “They persist today because they are so effective at constructing group identities and at setting up conflict between the in- and out- groups. For all religions, there is an ’us’ and a ‘them.’ All the ritual and the fellowship associated with religious practice is just a means of continually emphasizing group boundaries.” And then later Mr. Shortell is quoted as saying, “On a personal level, religiosity is merely annoying- like bad taste. This immaturity represents a significant social problem, however, because religious adherents fail to recognize their limitations. So, in the name of their faith, these moral retards are running around pointing fingers and doing real harm to others. One only has to read the newspaper to see the results of their handiwork. They discriminate, exclude and belittle. They make a virtue of closed-mindedness and virulent ignorance. They are an ugly, violent lot.”

What is so surprising to me is that a department chair in sociology at an institution of higher learning in America could hold such a narrow and uninformed view of people of religious faith. When one looks at the diversity of belief and practice amongst the 2 billion Christians, 1 billion Muslims, nearly 1 billion followers of Hinduism, � billion Buddhists and many millions of followers of Judaism and other religious faiths throughout the world- isn’t it a little ridiculous to lump all these people together like this? Let’s narrow our focus on the approximately 160 million Christians in America. According to research sponsored by the US News and the PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly (see US News, May 6, 2002) 19% of America’s Christians believe that their religion is “the only true religion.” Whereas 77% believe that “all religions have elements of truth.” This obviously contradicts the ideas espoused by Mr. Shortell concerning the “us” and “them” mentality. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has also done much research in this area with similar conclusions. I think any well-informed member of the public, let alone a scholar of sociology, should be aware of the many diverse beliefs of Christians in America. Even amongst those who call themselves “born again” or conservative Christians, there is a wide array of beliefs and practices. There are those who are very adamant about protecting the environment, those who have devoted their lives to helping the poor, those who feel the death penalty is immoral and so forth. Some of the major differences between conservative Christian groups in America have been well documented in a poll entitled “The 2005 Political Typology” released by The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press a few weeks ago (May 10). The recent protests against President Bush’s policies on poverty and the war by several thousand students and teachers at Calvin College is a good example of just how diverse this movement actually is. “Born again” or conservative Christians are certainly not a monolithic group, although they are often depicted as such in the popular press. I think the same holds true for just about every denomination, sect, or school within each religion. Even within the same denomination there are many different kinds of beliefs and practices.

I teach a one-year survey course in World Religions, a one-year survey course in Buddhist Studies, and a semester course in US Government to juniors and seniors in a tiny private high school in Northern California. I’m also a translator of Ancient Buddhist Chinese texts into English. And I’ve been a traditionally ordained Buddhist monk- a Bhikshu- for several decades now. I guess in Mr. Shortell’s eyes I certainly qualify as one of his so-called “moral retards.”

I think the question is not whether Mr. Shortell has a right to hold such views and retain his position. In my mind the question- and this is a question for the administrators at Brooklyn College- should be, “Is a person with such narrow and unscientific views, qualified to be the department chair of a sociology department in an institute of higher learning?” Personally, I wouldn’t expect the 16 to 18 year old students who take my World Religions course to be as “close-minded” and “ignorant” of religion as Mr. Shortell seems to be.

I’m proud of the fact that my father’s grandparents were devout Roman Catholics from Poland and my mother’s grandparents from Greece were equally devoted to their Greek Orthodox faith. This provided a very enriching environment for my sister and myself as we grew up. I’m not sure what happened to those “boundaries” between religious groups that Mr. Shortell talks about. I should also mention that my sister, a “born again Christian”, has a beautiful and lovable 7-year old daughter, Carlin, with Down’s syndrome. I guess I would have to acknowledge that Mr. Shortell’s statement with the “R’ word, is accurate when applied to my little niece.

Above we read that Mr. Shortell said, “They discriminate, exclude and belittle. They make a virtue of closed-mindedness and virulent ignorance.” The great sage Lao Tzu said, “To know your ignorance is supreme. To not know your ignorance is a sickness.” (Tao Te Ching, Section 71) Heng Shun

Heng Shun, at 4:57 am EDT on May 30, 2005

Well Heng Shun. First off, you left out the 1.1 billion non-religious:

http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

Second, you fail to consider the similarities in concepts and ideas between them. While some are more open, like Budhism, two of the ‘major’ ones, Islam an Christianity, and the most influencial *are* based entirely on an ‘us or them’ mentality. So are a ‘lot’ of the others on the list on that page. The modern Christian tolerance of others views is something only seen on a wide scale in maybe the last fifty years and is probably in no small part to its fragmentation and anability to survive as a faith, if its adherents where called upon to appose the thousands of different versions of itself, let alone all the other non-Christians simultaniously. Even the fundamentalists know that would be suicidal to try, so they simply ignore the inconsistancies with supposed ‘bad’ versions and convince themselves that God is more likely to eventually save those people than all the heathans.

However, the most significantly disturbing thing about this is that people who have such extreme views are often attacked, while ’safer’, but more destructive ones are welcomed. A certain Edwin J. Nichols is promoting a ‘fix’ for this sort of “offensive” speech, colleges that fall for it call it diversification. In reality it is adding a non-existant clause to the first amendment, to the effect that, “People have the right not to be confronted by anything that might offend them.” This is bad enough, but the speech Mr. Edwin gives when explaining diversification includes things like how black people should be expected to show up late, becuase they are genetically predisposed to it.

So..

Racism = Hell yes, if it will ‘fix’ the problems with people feeling offended.

Attacking religious insanities in a way that is not decidedly not PC (and doing it outside of his job at the school) = No way, this can’t possibly be American, so lets fire this guy, then not even let two groups with radically different views protest on the same campus at even close to the same time on most campuses. Oh, and make sure that what ever they protest isn’t ‘too’ contraversial or likely to offend passing students as well. Oh, and teach special ‘diversity’ classes, so we clue them into ‘why’ its bad to have a $##^%^ opinion about anything.

Yep, the various, “I am not a moron, but I sound like one and act like one", people that have posted here really have not one scrap of sympathy from me about either their protests or the solution at least one of them implied. But heh, I am sure good old Edwin will listen...

Kagehi, at 6:48 pm EDT on June 2, 2005

Red herring.

The man obviously has First Amendment rights: That is a red herring. The issue here is that someone who is unintelligent enough to contend that religious thinkers per se are “moral retards” lacks the cognitive capacity to teach anyone anything. The market is such that Brooklyn College can do much better than that, and it is abusing its students by hiring and tenuring clearly substandard thinkers.

Katja, at 3:26 pm EDT on June 7, 2005

All this relgious debate really irritates me not only because it borders on a fine line between freedom of speech and intolerance which as such cannot be neatly divide the two categories, but also because it exposes the presumptuousness and bigotry on both sides. To illustrate such an example, lets look at what Tyler P says in his response to comments posted by religious bloggers. He writes:

“We’re simply people that were cursed with a superior intellect and the ability to accept nothing less than truth. Fortunate for me I was not raised with any particular religious teachings. Which believe it or not is a good thing.”

Even at first glance, this statement is exactly what it is: charlatanical nonsense. I wonder if Tyler P can enlighten us by telling us just exactly what the hell Truth is. I mean this is a concept that has mystified and baffled philosophers, all of whom I regard as superior in “intellect” to MR. TYLER P, for thousands of years, and for some “scientist” to claim finality to truth is simply hysterical. Tyler doesn’t seem to realize that all science observation is “theory-laden", and susceptible to “paradigm” shifts. In other words, what we know now and they way we conceptualize the world is susceptible of being replaced with another scientific theory in the future. For example, Einstein’s theory of relativity challenges Newtonian physics and Galileo’s experiments overthrew the Aristotelian theory that bodies fall at a proportional rate to their weight. Yet the progression of these theories is not just accumulation of knowledge. Each theory actually supplants the other so that they are “incommensurable.” So much for an “objective,” assumption-free, scientific truth! As Kuhn argues in Structure of Scientific Revolutions, scientists are the most conservative individuals: they simply accept models and try to solve problems within it. Thus, even science has its limits and for Tyler to use science as an indicator of his intellectual superiority is just nonsensical crap. In fact, some of the most brilliant philosophers, such as Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche, were raised as Christians but obviously the idea of free thinking and the search for the “truth” is not Tyler’s strong points.

To put succinctly, I think both sides of the debate should just realize how little they know of the world and should just simply stop judging and condemning one another. In other words, we should all leave our hubris aside and simply respect each other’s beliefs.

JOHN DOE, TRUTH?, at 4:34 am EDT on June 8, 2005