Ever wonder what they teach in a Christian college?

[Rocker5150]

I have always been curious about how the Christian colleges approach certain subjects. It seems that there could be conflicts with their teachings and beliefs. What I found is so insane that I must wonder how these people operate!

Trinity Christian College has a "Professor of Mathematics" Sharon Robbert, whose faculty site MUST be seen to be believed! Here is a small sample:


Single Variable Calculus:

"Does God Change?"

Ps 11:3, Ps. 107:1, Ps 118:1, Ps. 117:2, Lam 5:19, Dan 4:34
To understand the concept of derivative, it can be helpful to begin with simple functions. Linear functions, in particular, are very good ones with which to start because their rate of change is always constant (i.e., the slope of the line). Constant functions also have a constant rate of change--the rate of change of any constant function is zero. So what is God's rate of change function with respect to time? Does he have volatile rate function, one which changes wildly with small increments of time? NO! We are told that God is steadfast and endures forever. His rate of change is zero--in righteousness, in renown, in love, in faithfulness, in his reign. What a comfort to us to know that God is constant, that He will always be the same from generation to generation, everlasting!


"Blessed Exponentially"

Matt 5:43-47, Gen. 12:2-3
Elementary functions play an important role in calculus. The rate at which those elementary functions grow for increasing input values is one characteristic we study. [Note: Applications of this growth analysis appear in algorithm complexity analysis in computer science. Exponential growth is "bad" in this instance.] The fastest growing elementary function class is the exponential function; a function which takes various powers of a fixed numerical base. The principle of exponential growth is exploited in savings plans (save early and often!) and modeled in growth of bacteria.

Christ tells us in Matthew 5:43-47 that we are to love our neighbors AND our enemies. We also read in Genesis 12:2-3 that God blessed Abraham so that "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." Together the concepts of exponential growth and "blessed to be a blessing" tell us to "pay it forward," so that God's love for humankind and goodness can grow exponentially.


Linear Algebra:

"The Span of God's Love"

Eph. 3:14-21
The span of a collection of vectors is defined to be the set of all possible linear combinations of the vectors with scalars selected from some set (a field--usually the real numbers). For example, if you select vectors i = <1, 0> and j = <0, 1>, the collection of linear combinations ai + bj (for a, b real numbers) is every vector in the two-dimensional coordinate plane. Creating something so large using something so small is surprising but at the same time expected because of previous experience with vectors, say in Calculus.

Now let's think about something whose words are very simple, say the love of God, and meditate on what the span of God's love might be. We read in Paul's letters to the Ephesians that he prays that they might "have the power. . . to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ." So the span of God's love is really really big! Is this surprising? YES! Just think about our rebellion and sin--so it is a surprise that God should love us! Is this expected? Again, yes! We have models in our families and friends that demonstrate how broad a father's love for his children can be.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more that all we ask or imagine. . . be glory . . throughout all generations, for ever and ever!


http://www.trnty.edu/faculty/robbert/SR ... culus.html


Ok, now I have seen everything.....Goodnight everybody!!


-Kevin

[wautd]

If I would live in the USA, I wouldnt mind at all some people sent their kids to that kind of schools

Less competition = more chance my kids will have descent jobs

[RedImperator]

I went to a pretty conservative Catholic university, and I have to say I never saw anything like that. We WERE required to take two theology courses, and I had some professors whose standard liberal positions (welfare state, less military spending, humanitarian foreign policy) were informed by Catholic social teachings, but I never ran into anything like "Linear Algebra: The Span of God's Love".

[Surlethe]

Maybe they have to put that stuff on their website to keep their jobs, sucking up to the university's higher-ups, stuff like that, if the university is fundamentalist.

[Eleas]

This has got to be a whole new field of mathematics. "Applied Semantic Algebra", perhaps, or "Calculating the cosine of 'Hello'"?

[Kuroneko]

So the span of God's love is really really big!

O Lord, ...
ooh, You are so big, ...
so absolutely huge.
Gosh, we're all really impressed down here, I can tell You.

Maybe they have to put that stuff on their website to keep their jobs, sucking up to the university's higher-ups, stuff like that, if the university is fundamentalist.

It appears to be Prof. Robbert's pet project. Other faculty members don't seem to share sufficient interest to put anything remotely like this on their respective pages.

[Eleas]

It's all pretty much summed up by an old, proven maxim. "Garbage in, garbage out".

[Col. Crackpot]

I went to a pretty conservative Catholic university, and I have to say I never saw anything like that. We WERE required to take two theology courses, and I had some professors whose standard liberal positions (welfare state, less military spending, humanitarian foreign policy) were informed by Catholic social teachings, but I never ran into anything like "Linear Algebra: The Span of God's Love".

Thats because despite all of the Papal baggage, the Catholic Church actually wants you to think. At least the used to. Who better to go forth and spread the word than intellectuals? Thats what I got out of my Catholic schooling. That and my well adjusted agnosticism/atheism.

[Nephtys]

..at least they're not like Jack T. Chick, who somehow assumes protons and neutrons stick together because of Jesus.

No, really. He's got a tract which specifically says Jesus is actively holding each !@%^## subatomic particle together. Not to mention utterly botch the concept of the Gluon in the process.

[Patrick Degan]

For fuck's sake! That's almost like something out of the Middle Ages and even then I'm not certain the Church ever slathered every academic discipline with reference to Scripture. I never went to a Catholic university, but I certainly went to Catholic high school and they never tried this kind of bullshit on us.

[Glocksman]

If you look on her bio page, she does have a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

It looks to me like she's merely trying use Scripture to illustrate mathematical concepts.
As long as she isn't making up or changing the concepts to fit the Scripture, I don't see what the problem is.

[HemlockGrey]

Apparently the university is affliated with the Dutch Reformed Church of North America.

[General Brock]

I went to a pretty conservative Catholic university, and I have to say I never saw anything like that. We WERE required to take two theology courses, and I had some professors whose standard liberal positions (welfare state, less military spending, humanitarian foreign policy) were informed by Catholic social teachings, but I never ran into anything like "Linear Algebra: The Span of God's Love".

I went to a Catholic HS. There was separation between Church and rendering whatever had to be rendered to Caesar. The point of a religious school, the more competent mainstream ones, is to keep kids in the faith, while giving them the tools to compete in a secular society. The academic standards are usually better, as is the learning environment, because the separate schools are smaller, more conservative and stick to proven teaching methodolgies, so unless they are wacked out to begin with, they won't introduce such nutty measures as 'discovery learning'.

Those that waste time preaching to the converted are rare. I think a lot of actual bible schools cater to those who can't cut math and science and the conventional job market as well, and are looking for a comfy preacher/academic job, or need of the company of fellow religious geeks. The chicks might be easier too.

[Ford Prefect]

Okay, I'm actually going to a Catholic College right now, and I'll tell you something for nothing, the Church rarely comes into it, apart from the fact that it has this board that is headed by an arch bishop, and he's never done anything I know of to effect day to day running of things.

I've had a catholic based education my whole life, and not once were we forced to listen to Fundamentalist bullshit (heck, we were told, by a priest, that Genesis didn't happen, and the world was not created as it is written.), nor were we ever forced to believe in God.

If anything, the only thing that seperates a Catholic school from a non-catholic one is the fact that it happens to have the church involved in it. The college I go to was the end result of a program started by Archbishop Guilford Young to bring higher level education to the masses.

[HemlockGrey]

Yeah, I doubt most Catholic universities are terribly strict about the whole faith thing. Hell, my father teachers at the same Catholic university Red attended and he hasn't been Catholic for nearly 30 years.

[Ford Prefect]

Oddly enough, the Catholic view on faith in schools is pretty ordinary. If they do so choose to believe, they can. They'll actively support a belief in God, here at GYC, but they don't force it on you. And as far as I know, it's the same at all Catholic schools. Of course, fundie schools do exist, but we don't talk about them.

In fact, you wouldn't really know it was Catholic, if you didn't know.

[Nephtys]

Oddly enough, the Catholic view on faith in schools is pretty ordinary. If they do so choose to believe, they can. They'll actively support a belief in God, here at GYC, but they don't force it on you. And as far as I know, it's the same at all Catholic schools. Of course, fundie schools do exist, but we don't talk about them.

In fact, you wouldn't really know it was Catholic, if you didn't know.

Catholic institutions of all kinds in general seem to be a bit better than other Christian organizations in the fundiness factor. I suppose being a more central organization means that they really try to be more mainstream, while Pastor Stuck-In-The-1600s with his own little 50 person congregation can be as whacko as can be in regards to literal interpretations and enforcing belief.

[The Dark]

I never saw anything like that, and I graduated from a Christian college. We were required to take one religion course, either Survey of Old Testament or Survey of New Testament (which were basically History of the Middle East in the appropriate time period, with discussion of very basic religious beliefs) and one philosophy course. The closest we ever got to that sort of thing was a course on Dialogues between Science and Religion, which looked at different topics from the four main ways science and religion interact (conflict, independence, dialogue, or integration), covering everything from evolution to quantum physics to eugenics.

Then again, Reformed is a Calvinist branch, and I've noticed they tend to be a wee bit conservative by my standards. The few Reformed theologians I've read have left me shaking my head and writing nasty essays.

[Ford Prefect]

I'll tell the truth. In most cases, a catholic/christian education is as good, and often better than a non-catholic/christian one. Except where fundies are involved.

[Stark]

Most of the girls I know who went to Catholic schools believe that they're far too soft on many infractions, and try the soft, coddling approach. he opposite of my friends in their 30s who were beaten in Catholic school, I guess.

[Patrick Degan]

It looks to me like she's merely trying use Scripture to illustrate mathematical concepts.
As long as she isn't making up or changing the concepts to fit the Scripture, I don't see what the problem is.

Brainwashing 101: the subject is never given a moment in the day where they are not exposed to the doctrines of the cult; this in order to steadily replace old thought and behaviour patterns with the preferred ones of the cult in the subject's mind. The creation of a closed-loop environment in which the subject gets few if any outside messages other than those of the predominating dogma is central to changing his thinking and worldview. It isn't quite as bad in a university as it would be in a full-out cult environment such as Heaven's Gate or the Peoples' Temple, but imagine having Scripture drummed into your head six or eight hours a day, in every class, through the entire semester. Places like Bob Jones U. are even worse.

[Glocksman]

It isn't quite as bad in a university as it would be in a full-out cult environment such as Heaven's Gate or the Peoples' Temple, but imagine having Scripture drummed into your head six or eight hours a day, in every class, through the entire semester. Places like Bob Jones U. are even worse.

But is it this way, or is it more like "OK Class, here's x concept and we can see that it was used this way in John 3:16" and then go on to teach the math in detail?

Besides, it *is* a Christian college and I'd be surprised if most of the classes didn't mention Scripture in some fashion.
My problem would be if the course material was falsified to fit (such as claiming the Earth is only 10,000 years old in a science class) the Bible.

[The Dark]

Besides, it *is* a Christian college and I'd be surprised if most of the classes didn't mention Scripture in some fashion.

Not to harp on it too much, but outside of my religion and philosophy courses I had precisely two classes that mentioned religion outside of historical context. They were both economics courses where the professor and I had both read Harvey Cox's article "The Market as God," comparing the language of the Wall Street Journal to traditional religious language. It became a running joke in both classes to deliberately try to word things in the pompous, overbearing manner of televangelists. That was the only time religion appeared in my non-religious classes at my Christian college.