A conservative explains what's wrong with academia

[Darth Wong]

Someone my wife knew back in university recently got back into contact with her. He is very conservative now, and likes to quote C.S. Lewis. He also says that he resents the world of academia (I know; it's a huge surprise for a conservative), and he said this:

I do have a little resentment against some of the acedemia world of my past ... I started out as a politcal science major and than changed to history. If you change your position when presented with a particularly convincing arguement than you are by no means "an open minded intellect who believes in nothing." However if you constantly waiver from principles that you stand for than you become the intellect that believes in nothing. Many positions that I hold in both the politcal/ethical world are based on principles.....and as you rightly said you will not waiver from them and niether should I. Take for example PACS 101. My first test score 38% Why? My opinion on the root cause of violence was based on man-kinds sinful nature. Now we are talkiing about principles. Religeous principles. What I present as facts to the proff is deemed as irrelevant. My facts and justifcations are to him not facts and do not follow his belief system and his value system. Presuppositions that are formed by religeous beliefs now come into play. That was not acceptable to the Proff. The question was posed and my opnioin delivered and backed up. The low mark was not granted because of poor referencing and or poor arguments. Heck no. It was delivered because the Proff disagreed. I say shame on him.

Get this: he got 38% because he claimed that the root cause of violence in society was "mankind's sinful nature". What kind of a fucking idiot actually submits that as a university-level argument? I also like the part where he says that once he introduces this argument, then "religious principles" become "facts", and he assails the professor for not recognizing them as such. I can't help but wonder what impact his utterly abysmal language skills had on his mark. He goes on to say:

The next test I spouted on an on about how I was now questioning the very core of what I believed including principles and values and thus my politcal views and my view of history. It was all a lie. The end result. "Dave you have come along way" Last test A-.

So let's see if we get his logic straight: he got a better mark when he pretended to have a more nuanced view later, therefore he concludes that the professor was being unfair the first time. The logic is impeccable

[Stark]

Is that for real? Did he sleep through the actual lectures?

Have you met him? Is he an obvious whacko?

[Darth Wong]

Is that for real? Did he sleep through the actual lectures?

Have you met him? Is he an obvious whacko?

I saw him in the hallways of our university dorm, but I didn't really interact with him much. He seemed like one of those "nose in Bible" types so I ignored him. Clearly a wise decision, since he was obviously too fucking stupid to talk to.

PS. I decided to make an actual thread out of this instead of just leaving it in Venting.

[Stark]

I asked in the venting thread; is this guy an obvious crazy person, or does he come across as normal on other issues? The idea of going to a lecture where they intend to teach you about subject xyz and TOTALLY IGNORING ALL OF IT and then writing nothing but your own preconceptions on a test is great, but comlpaining about it makes it better.

I mean, I think that intrustion detection is best done with a big magnifying glass. On my security exam I should have talked about that, instead of all that shit they demosntrated in tutes, right?

EDIT - oh dear, I posted too soon.

[Darth Wong]

I asked in the venting thread; is this guy an obvious crazy person, or does he come across as normal on other issues? The idea of going to a lecture where they intend to teach you about subject xyz and TOTALLY IGNORING ALL OF IT and then writing nothing but your own preconceptions on a test is great, but comlpaining about it makes it better.

I mean, I think that intrustion detection is best done with a big magnifying glass. On my security exam I should have talked about that, instead of all that shit they demosntrated in tutes, right?

It's unbelievable how he says that if he doesn't stick to his guns, then he would have no "principles". It is not a "principled" stand to ignore anything that doesn't fit your preconceptions

[Stark]

Well, it's clearly wrong to be an 'intellect that believes in nothing'... except what is supported by evidence. He clearly states that he MUST give these answers on exams, because his political views are based on principles!

[Superman]

Get this: he got 38% because he claimed that the root cause of violence in society was "mankind's sinful nature". What kind of a fucking idiot actually submits that as a university-level argument?

You know what gets me about fundie tards like this? When you talk to them, it doesn't really seem like they're that fucking stupid. Sure they're not exactly intelligent, but most should have enough common sense to know better than to do stupid shit like this. A halfway reasonable religious tard (if there is such a thing) might even realize that the consequences of writing a paper like that are pretty bad. He might even manage to suck up his christ-tard pride, write a proper paper, and fight the holy war another day.

Except that idiots like him don't do that. They're angry fuckwads that can't wait to defiantly push this stupid shit on everyone else, and then they have the balls to act like a victim when people call them on it. I dunno, I used to think that fundies/conservatives are just stupid people who don't know any better, but these days I'm starting to think that they're really just angry miserable bitches.

[The Yosemite Bear]

So why didn't he go to one of those fundy colleges? I mean he could have gotten a nice flying colours degree at pat robertson U....

[Count Chocula]

Conservative =/ fundamentalist Christian, although I acknowledge they are a vocal minority. Your wife's acquaintance, as previously noted, seems to have an axe to grind WRT his faith. He strikes me as the type of person who came fairly late in life to whatever religion he now hews to (I'm guessing it's Baptist), and is determined to view the world through his new filter...including the purely academic topics at school. It seems his new-found convictions have overridden his common sense. If he thinks his views will get a warmer reception in the business world, he's in for a sore disappointment.

[Samuel]

However if you constantly waiver from principles that you stand for than you become the intellect that believes in nothing.

Which is bad because...? Why do you need to base ethics off of principles?

and as you rightly said you will not waiver from them and niether should I.

Religeous principles.

The question was posed and my opnioin delivered and backed up.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 2&t=137707

What I present as facts to the proff is deemed as irrelevant.

Yeah, than they aren't really facts are they? God, why do idiots have to redefine words to cover the fact they are making shit up?

Conservative =/ fundamentalist Christian, although I acknowledge they are a vocal minority.

Well, in the US it comes pretty close... actually, what percentage of the population is evangelical?

[Guardsman Bass]

What strikes me as extra pathetic (and lazy) on his front is that he probably could have tried to make an argument for violence being based on "innate human nature" or whatever the fuck, looking up psychology and so forth. It still might not be a very good argument on its own merits, but it at least would have been an effort, particularly on a topic as broad as "what is the source of violence?".

Instead, he tried to force his own terminology on the whole situation, which is meaningless if you don't believe in the principles underlying it (and that's what always gets me about a lot of these people - it's like it rarely occurs to them from the forefront that other people won't accept them as valid at face value).

[Junghalli]

This is what happens when you reject anything that contradicts a religious text written thousands of years ago. It's pretty hard to get a meaningful education without running into facts that contradict something that's in the Bible. Unfortunately for him when propositions that have actual evidence behind them conflict with propositions that have zero evidence but the say-so of guys who lived 3000 years ago in an academic setting the propositions with evidence behind them win. He doesn't understand this or doesn't want to accept it because of its implications for his religious beliefs, so to him it looks like his argument was rejected because it was ideologically incorrect, instead of because he had no evidence for it beyond some long-dead people's say-so.

Come to think of it, does the Bible actually even explicitly contradict the idea that there may be root causes of violence besides man's sinful nature? I'm wondering if he is not just rejecting everything that contradicts it but also rejecting everything that contradicts the things he has extrapolated from it.

[Count Chocula]

... actually, what percentage of the population is evangelical?

Looking for that fig I ran across a Wiki article, and found two references in it that appear to be legitimate: a Pew Research poll, and the 2007 statistical abstract of the United States. Depending on the source, evangelicals are 26% - 29% of the US population. Assuming, unlike Catholics, that all evengelicals who vote go Republican (feel free to contradict me if I'm mistaken), that would make self-named evangelical Christians around...holy shit...2/3 of the Republican party if the latest Rasmussen survey is correct! Granted, evangelicals are probably not a monolithic bloc of voters outside of abortion, and probably have their own political fractures outside of the "big issue," but still...assuming my premise holds, that would explain a lot of candidates' electioneering behavior. Especially at the national level. It's possible that a significant percentage of Independents are evangelical, but I couldn't find any info one way or the other on that.

Hmmm.

[Metatwaddle]

... actually, what percentage of the population is evangelical?

Looking for that fig I ran across a Wiki article, and found two references in it that appear to be legitimate: a Pew Research poll, and the 2007 statistical abstract of the United States. Depending on the source, evangelicals are 26% - 29% of the US population. Assuming, unlike Catholics, that all evengelicals who vote go Republican (feel free to contradict me if I'm mistaken), that would make self-named evangelical Christians around...holy shit...2/3 of the Republican party if the latest Rasmussen survey is correct! Granted, evangelicals are probably not a monolithic bloc of voters outside of abortion, and probably have their own political fractures outside of the "big issue," but still...assuming my premise holds, that would explain a lot of candidates' electioneering behavior. Especially at the national level. It's possible that a significant percentage of Independents are evangelical, but I couldn't find any info one way or the other on that.

Hmmm.

I'm looking at some Pew forum stuff from 2008, and the political breakdown is not really that simple, according to their exhaustive Religious Landscape Survey. They say 26.3% of Americans identified as members of evangelical churches (not counting historically black churches, which are mostly evangelical but substantially different from white churches, so they got a separate category).

50% of those evangelicals described their party affiliation as "Republican" or "lean Republican". The table where I got this doesn't break the voters down into proportions of the Republican party, but I fed the relevant data into a little spreadsheet of my own, and it ended up that only 37% of the Republican party was comprised of evangelicals. 24% was "mainline" Protestants and 21% was Catholics. The rest was a mishmash of other groups, the largest of which was the heterogeneous "unaffiliated" group (atheists, agnostics, people who "aren't really religious" and grew away from their parents' faith, maybe some "spiritual" people, and so on).

Liberal and moderate evangelicals do exist. There's another chart in the same survey about political ideology (as opposed to party affiliation). Plenty of evangelicals describe themselves as moderate (32%) or liberal (11%). I suspect the problem is that the conservative evangelicals are the ones with political power. Even if an individual churchgoer is politically moderate or liberal, her pastor and church are probably conservative, and they're the ones who orchestrate letter-writing campaigns to congressmen about boobies on TV.

Have I mentioned how much I love this survey with its extremely detailed charts? I could look at this survey's breakdowns for hours. Seriously, you should check it out if you're curious about this stuff. I always end up poring over these stats at least once every few months.

[Terralthra]

What is PACS 101? Googling it gives things like Physics and Astronomy Classification System and Political Action Committees, none of which seem appropriate.

[Metatwaddle]

My guess would be Political and [Something that starts with C] Science.

[D.Turtle]

A little googling finds Peace and Conflict Studies as a possible solution - it would fir with what he wrote.

Which also makes his argument even dumber, as he apparently ignored everything in the course and just spouted his own stupidity. Anyone who expects to get good grades for doing that clearly is in the wrong place.

As for the Republican/Evangelical thing:
52% of Evangelicals describing themselves as Conservative and another 30% as moderates is quite a lot.

[Metatwaddle]

As for the Republican/Evangelical thing:
52% of Evangelicals describing themselves as Conservative and another 30% as moderates is quite a lot.

Yeah, it is. Nobody ever said they were a liberal bunch--on that Pew chart, they're the most conservative and Republican-leaning group except for Mormons. But Count Chocula seemed to be suggesting that all evangelicals voted Republican and that they might therefore comprise 2/3 of the Republican party, neither of which is true.

Anyway, I didn't mean to derail the thread. Mike's acquaintance is contemptible and hilarious. I don't see what a discussion of "the sinful nature of mankind" could possibly add to a discussion of why humans are violent; it seems to simply state that humans are violent. How could he possibly think the professor would find his response insightful or interesting? It sounds like he didn't really know what the question was for. Maybe the fundamental difference between me and Mike's acquaintance is that he's the sort of person that thinks theological explanations for human behavior are interesting and deep. I am not that sort of person. But still, how could he possibly think theology is relevant to a class on peace and conflict that is presumably about human psychology and sociology?

[The Yosemite Bear]

competition for limited resources, reproductive opportunity, territorialism, and xenophobia woulnd be the basis last time I checked.

no I don't mention religion, as that's just window dressing used to justify the above.

[Oskuro]

I dunno, I used to think that fundies/conservatives are just stupid people who don't know any better, but these days I'm starting to think that they're really just angry miserable bitches.

Because you need to be smart to reach such levels of stupidity. These type are not just people who can't understand concepts and as such get lost when trying a rational approach. These are people who have the capacity for rational thought, but choose to use it to pursue their own ideas in a zealous fashion.

[Eleas]

This reminds me of a partner I had during one English 101 exercise at the Uni. In that group exercise (a dissection of The Turn of the Screw) he felt compelled to bring up, repeatedly, the point that psychic powers "might exist." No, really! They might! Don't be close-minded, guys! This from a man fifteen years my senior.

There were a lot of additional words there, but basically that was the information content of his diatribe. It was completely baffling, not only because nobody had even touched upon how the book reflected reality (the whole notion was preposterous), but because the assertion had nothing to do with... well, anything.

[Superman]

but choose to use it to pursue their own ideas in a zealous fashion.

I think I agree with your point here, but when you say they're choosing to live in their fantasy, are you also implying that they must know, on some level anyway, that it's a bunch of bullshit?

[salm]

This reminds me of a partner I had during one English 101 exercise at the Uni. In that group exercise (a dissection of The Turn of the Screw) he felt compelled to bring up, repeatedly, the point that psychic powers "might exist." No, really! They might! Don't be close-minded, guys! This from a man fifteen years my senior.

There were a lot of additional words there, but basically that was the information content of his diatribe. It was completely baffling, not only because nobody had even touched upon how the book reflected reality (the whole notion was preposterous), but because the assertion had nothing to do with... well, anything.

I know two creationists personally. One of them ist just your standard moron studying thology in some strange ultra christian fundy "university". The other one, though, is a really intelligent guy with a fucking PhD in Physics. It´s really mind boggeling how such a person can selectively chose to use his intellect in one area and completely disregard it in another area.

[Simon_Jester]

I'd like to ask him a few questions about the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metric...

[raptor3x]

This reminds me of a roommate I had the summer after my sophomore year. He was from some Baptist college, but was taking a class at Penn State over the summer. This guy was a huge fan of the Left Behind series and tried all summer to get me to read "one of the greatest works of literature ever written." Anyways, he used to brag about how much better the engineering department was at his christian university compared to Penn State. Then one day he told me how one of his physics finals was an essay on, and I'm paraphrasing, 'how the wave-particle duality of light is a representation of how jesus is both man and god'; I shit you not.

Later in the summer when he was flunking out of the only class he was taking, Differential Equations, he would go on rants about how the atheist grad student teaching the class was persecuting him for being a christian. Apparently he had made a point to ask everyone their religion durings introductions until the grad student stopped him saying it was inappropriate.

To top it all off, I later found out he had told my neighbor that he would set his web camera to record whenever he left the room and I was still there because he thought I was going to steal his stuff. The problem? The camera was pointed right at my bed and the only time that he left, besides going to class, was when I kicked him out to have sex with my girlfriend.