Pastor and (political science) prof Ryan Burge is terrified of the idea that young Americans going off to college may have their minds "infected" by godless mind viruses. At one point in his recent WSJ review tract ('There's No Crisis Of Faith On Campus', Feb. 26-27, p. C3) he even cites what psychologists call an "inoculation effect". This refers to a conditioning whereby vulnerable young Xtians are "more able to defend their beliefs" when subject to "weak attacks", i.e. by those nasty atheists. His canards come right out of the already existing anti-atheist hysterical playbook, e.g.
He writes at the outset:
“As a pastor who is also a professor of social science, I am often asked by parents of teenagers who were raised in a religious environment how their son or daughter can maintain their faith when they go off to some large state university or private liberal-arts college. Many parents seem to believe that as soon as their child walks into a freshman class, they will throw out their Bibles and pick up Nietzsche.
They haven’t plucked this idea out of thin air. It was the premise of the 2014 film “God’s Not Dead,” which became very popular in Christian circles and spawned two sequels. In the movie, an evangelical student enrolls in a philosophy class led by an atheist professor. To pass the course, every student has to sign a declaration that “God is dead.” The main character refuses, leading to a series of debates in the class about the existence of God. In the end, most of the class sides with the student, and the professor leaves in defeat.”
Going on to add:
"With reinforcement such as this, the assumption that going to college undermines faith has put down deep roots in the psyche of many conservative Christians. "
But is that really a reinforcement, or is it merely brainless strawman fodder to goad the lower IQ into hysterical overreaction? I watched the film myself barely a month ago and was appalled at how the atheist prof was confected out of whole -cloth evangelical angst, tropes and histrionics. Hell, any character that piss poor in attitude is one I'd advise any new collegian to avoid - like the plague! To cut it down to basics, the prof was portrayed as a near degenerate, with no class, no empathy or even basic understanding of atheism.
In other words the character is exactly what a propaganda film by Pat Robertson or the elder Jerry Falwell would have used to terrify their flocks. And it's not just me. A number of more insightful Amazon reviewers also picked it up, e.g. some of the reviews:
"Definition of propaganda: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view. Absolute garbage propaganda at that. Besides the confused "intellectual" ideology that this film attempts to persuade you of, the characters themselves are flat, uninteresting, and lack the subtlety of genuine people"
--
"Full of so many straw men I lost count. Insulting movie that puts up straw man arguments for the agenda this film is trying to promote. The writing is horrible and corny, the scenes that could of led to a valid debate are overshadowed constantly by unnecessary B stories and cliches. "
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"Ending epitomizes everything wrong with the message, something horrible happens to the atheist and a believer rejoices - saying this is is a cause for celebration - texting "God's not dead" to everyone they know."
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"Seriously.
This movie is a lazy one -sided mess that just steamrolls over any thoughtful
dialogue. Ugh. Could we possibly represent a non religious people any worse?
I'm not debating the topic, I'm debating the movie: awful caricatures, bad
acting..."
-----
"It turned into a sermon rather than a story of people moving through a story. I am more happy to watch a movie that wants to prove a point but not outright building a wall around Christianity. Or building a wall around atheism. Or building a wall around Islam. That's what this movie does."
---------
As for the third instalment, one VOX reviewer has this to say:
"Perhaps
the most surprising moment in God’s Not Dead: A Light in the
Darkness — the third installment in the wildly
popular and commercially successful Christian movie franchise — comes when the
beleaguered Pastor Dave (David A.R. White)
goes to visit Pastor Roland (Gregory Alan Williams),
the minister at the nearby predominantly black church, and Roland reads him the
riot act.
It’s a startling moment because it’s one of several in the movie in which it seems that the God’s Not Dead series might have become self-aware. Dave is certain that his church, St. James, is under attack from people who harbor an anti-religious political agenda against Christians. "
---------
In other words, citing the 'God Is Not Dead' films carries no value for argument whatsoever, other than to the already converted, benighted or gullible. The last film even displays its paranoia openly as it finally acquires some self-awareness. Talk about self-awareness, is Burge remotely aware of any of this? Obviously not. He goes on to blabber:
"For many parents, the thought of sending their teenagers off to a university where they won’t have someone reminding them to go to class, get enough sleep and brush their teeth is a terrifying prospect. It’s even worse when those parents have raised their child in a specific religious tradition and want to make sure that this part of their family culture is passed down to the next generation."
But why? In truth, the university experience ought to be a fully eye and mind-opening one that transforms the student from what he was when he entered. After all, technically, he or she is no longer a dependent infant. Independent thought and identity therefore should be at the top of the agenda, along with passing courses. Hence, bland ignorance ought to be challenged on all fronts, not merely via coursework. In fact, a thoroughly changed adult ought to be able to objectively compare tracts from perhaps history's most notable theologian (Thomas Aquinas) and atheist (Jean-Paul Sartre) e.g.
Without the need to interject propaganda, paranoia or hysteria, as Burge does. Unable to be an honest information broker in his WSJ piece, Burge next induces those predisposed to gullibility and strawmen, asking:
"But is it true that
going to college makes students less religious? Are people with higher levels
of education more likely to say that they have no religious affiliation than
those who have completed only high school?"
He claims to have:
"used data from 12 years of Harvard University’s Cooperative Election Study, an annual survey of more than 50,000 Americans," and from there "calculated the share who identified as atheist, agnostic and nothing in particular at six education levels, ranging from those with no high school diploma to those with graduate degrees".
And what results did he find? Blog readers won't be surprised (totally) to learn he found: "People with the least education are the most likely to indicate that they have no religious affiliation." Adding
"In 2008, 26% of those without a high school diploma identified as an atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular. Only 19% of those with a graduate degree did. And that 7-point gap stayed fairly consistent over the following 12 years."
What the good pastor and budding evangelist leaves out is this finding from a more recent (than his finding) Pew Research study which noted:
"Looking at the U.S. public as a whole, however, the answer to the question of whether more education is correlated with less religion appears to be yes. Among all U.S. adults, college graduates are considerably less likely than those who have less education to say religion is “very important” in their lives: Fewer than half of college graduates (46%) say this, compared with nearly six-in-ten of those with no more than a high school education (58%).
Highly educated Americans also are less inclined than others to
say they believe in God with absolute certainty and to pray on a daily basis.
And, when asked about their religious identity, college graduates are more
likely than others to describe themselves as atheists or agnostics"
This is important to note as when Burge cites "Other scholars have come to similar conclusions. Sociologists Damon Mayrl of Colby College and Jeremy Eucker of Baylor University surveyed people between the ages of 13 and 17 in 2002, then followed up with the same group in 2005 and 2008, making it possible to assess how these young people’s views of the world changed at the individual level."
But again, a much earlier analysis than the Pew research and hence questionable with regard to the claim that: "they found that those who went to college were no more or less likely to embrace an impersonal or uninvolved view of God than those who did not".
Let me also quickly note this result from a Pew Research study, regarding scientists and unbelief:
" the poll of scientists finds that four-in-ten scientists (41%) say they do not believe in God or a higher power, while the poll of the public finds that only 4% of Americans share this view."
Where Burge is more in line with facts is noting that over time, students’ ideological beliefs started moving closer to those of their classmates or roommates. Thus: "Spending two or three hours a week with a college professor doesn’t hold a candle to spending hundreds of hours with a roommate." Well, doh! What can I say? But left out is the fact that the more intelligent students, likely with Mensa IQ or higher, will also do independent reading which will also take them out of their original comfort levels, and even part ways with roommates. Thus, even while taking Theology 112 at Loyola, I read Sartre's Being and Nothingness . I had picked up my copy of the book, a 1960 Washington Square Press imprint, at the Loyola Bookstore, e.g. the cover below,
The takeaway, however, is serious and calls attention to what might be a fundamental disadvantage or defect of American university education, if students are not impelled to reach outside their intellectual cubby holes. That is, the college experience has neither altered their base beliefs, or elevated their consciousness toward more skeptical and rigorous examination of those beliefs. The assumptions made by Burge, including based on his "inoculation effect" nonsense, leads him to assert:
"Looked at in its entirety, the college experience may actually make students more sure of their religious beliefs after they graduate. This is the idea known to psychologists as the “inoculation effect”: When someone is confronted with weak attacks on their beliefs, they become more prepared to defend those beliefs when they come under serious attacks."
This is somewhat incredible in a number of ways. First, it exposes a concerted intellectual close-mindedness, a severe lack of inquiry or even the slightest instinct to investigate beyond one's cosseted, closed niche. It also underscores the warnings sounded in Richard Hoftstadter's book, 'Anti-Intellectualism in American Life', e.g. p. 133:
"There seems to be such a thing as the generically-prejudiced mind.
Studies of political tolerance and ethnic prejudice have shown that zealous
church-going and rigid religious faith are among the most important correlates
of political and ethnic animosity."
And further (p. 135):
"The fundamentalist mind will have nothing to do with all this: it is essentially Manichean, it looks upon the world as an arena for conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, and accordingly it scorns compromises (who would compromise with Satan) and can tolerate no ambiguities."
Which admirably highlights how Christian fundamentalism has led to glib thinking and intellectual degradation, such as the swill pushed by Burge..
Burge himself plays into this by conceding the arguments made by the atheist character in 'God Is Not Dead' are actually a "weak attack." Which begs the question: Would any of Burge's hypothetical students - safe from unbelief on campus - be able to counter strong unbelief arguments? Writer and atheist John Campbell in a Skeptic magazine piece from last year, e.g.
25 Fallacies in the Case for Christianity | Skeptic 26.2
Doesn't believe so. If these "secure", unchanging in outlook students did, they'd not fall prey to so many logical fallacies. For example, "special pleading" which Campbell describes thusly:
Special pleading is creating or allowing an exception to a
generally applicable rule (a "double standard") without first
justifying the exception. The principled approach, by contrast, is to set or
recognize prescriptive rules on the front end and then apply those rules
consistently. A special pleader will set ad hoc rules or exceptions after the
fact based on whatever argument he is making. Special pleading is often used to
immunize one's position from criticism by claiming that the rules applicable to
everyone and everything else simply don't apply to this claim. His claim, the
proponent argues, involves special considerations and must be treated
differently. Why? Because. Just because.
More examples can be found in this previous blog post:
One always hopes university graduates will be smarter, more knowledgeable and critical thinking than they entered as frosh, but Burge's tract makes one wonder if he himself possesses those attributes.
See Also:
And:
And:
Brane Space: The Dangerous Disease of Belief (brane-space.blogspot.com)
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