Here's a little article to get you thinking. The University of Kansas is planning a new course named "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies." Mythologies? I thought universities were there to open a persons mind not narrow it down to a pre-chosen path. I am not talking about the merits of Intelligent Design, I'm talking about the position the university has taken by targeting a belief as a "myth." There is something wrong when intellectual institutions ignore their mandate, that of training the next generation of intellectuals, and attempt to suppress the beliefs of a person, not through discourse, but through belittlement. Myth. Is there no longer the need to respect the beliefs of others? Is there no longer a need to train minds through and in the skills of logic and critical thinking? Is the opinion of the old guard so sacrosanct that it can not be questioned or arrived at through independent thought? Must the next generation be spoon fed the ideas of the current rather than be allowed to arrive at those conclusions on their own? Is there such a fear in academia that the current set of assumptions could be challenged or even, heaven forbid, disproved, that students must be directed in their thinking so that dissent can not raised without risking failure? It is indeed sad to think that our centres of learning could be transformed into centres of propaganda and spin in order to maintain the status quo. Could "Introduction to Politics" become "The Inferiority of Other Political Systems?" Could "Introduction to Macro Economics" become "The Inevitable Evolution to Market Based Economies?" It is difficult to see why these changes can not be made. If our mosaic of ideas can, through the "education" of our institutions of learning, be reduced to a single square, how will new ideas ever hope to see the light of day?
3 comments:
Hey, J-Griff, just found your blog.
The technical meaning of "myth" is, "a story used to explain something otherwise left without explanation". It does not imply at all that the story is true, or false, just that it is used to explain something. It is therefore proper even for a strict young-earth creationist to refer to Genesis as "myth", and in fact, they'd be far better doing so more often, to better disarm their audiences and to alleviate the seclusion that Christians of that opinion often feel.
Hey Blake,
Your definition may be correct but it does not reflect the intent of the course. The prof. who was planning to teach the course, Paul Mirechi, sent an email to a friend describing the course as a "nice slap in [fundamentalists’] big fat face." I think there was an agenda here.
My wife had a similar experience when taking a university course called, Logic and Critical Thinking, or something like that. As part of the course, the students were to dissect the story of Abraham and Issac and prove that Abraham should _not_ have trusted God to keep His word and therefore should not have brought his son to be sacrificed. Failure to prove this would result in a failing grade. My wife challenged the prof. on this assertion, I won't bore you with the details but she did not back down. She did pass the course but that was the lowest mark she ever got.
"The prof. who was planning to teach the course, Paul Mirechi, sent an email to a friend describing the course as a "nice slap in [fundamentalists’] big fat face.""
Good, frankly.
"As part of the course, the students were to dissect the story of Abraham and Issac and prove that Abraham should _not_ have trusted God to keep His word and therefore should not have brought his son to be sacrificed."
John, all that is, is to do the process of logic through a story. It isn't to tell anybody that the Bible is wrong or any such thing, it's just to teach people to use critical thought and logic. I would have had no issues whatsoever in doing that. It's not like Abraham would have been terribly offended if you said that his choice didn't make a whole lot of sense: of course it didn't make sense! That was the point of the whole exercise, and why God put him through it!
Don't forget: choices biblical characters make often are sublogical, operating on faith. It's the purpose of a logic course to teach people how to think logically, not from a particular biblical hermeneutic.
I would highly recommend to you the book, "Exegetical Fallacies" by D.A. Carson. He brilliantly discusses common logical and exegetical errors made in scriptural interpretation by Christians and preachers in particular. Carson is one of the best biblical scholars alive (or scholars of any kind, honestly), and thoroughly conservative in his viewpoint. He's one of the directors of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, but he's brilliant, and a superb biblical schoalr.
Again, this goes to "anti-intellectualism" that I confront so much. We as Christians need to be able to think in our society. We need to realize there's more than one way to look at things, while being comfortable with what we believe and open to consider things differently at the same time. It's not easy, but this is what I said before: we might be wrong. We need to be less definite and more thoughtful in our daily lives.
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