Faithatheism as the social norm of humanities academics

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http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt127698.html

Earlier, NeantHumain spoke of how it seems a majority of intellectuals are atheists and agnostics. From this, he speculated on whether Christians within the intellectual class would seem deviant (that is, divergent or contrary to social norms). And interesting piece of sociology of the the sociologists (and other intellectuals)! But I have a variant on this theme: it seems faithatheism is the dominant disposition among social scientists and people in the humanities.

Quite a few "sophisticated intellectuals" have became angry with the "brass arrogance" and "mirror-image of fundamentalism" displayed by popular, polemical anti-theistic atheists (most notably, Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris - Dennett is pretty mild compared to the other "New Atheists").

So, perhaps a more accurate statement would be that "belief in belief" or "I wish I could be religious" is more the common attitude of the less empirical academia - in sort, faithatheism:

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com ... -a-winner/

In my own experience, my faith and social conservatism have never really been an issue for me working in a Humanities Department. Most of the academics I work with can agree on very little anyway and so mostly attempt to stay out of each others way. This tacit agreement lasts up until they start writing journal articles of course and they naturally attack each other in those.

An interesting personal experience has been relating to the question of what would happen if I put a crucifix in my office? There are two academics whose offices are full (and I mean FULL, no space left on the walls or floor) of communist propaganda of all sorts. Pictures of Stalin smiling with children, CCCP flags, medals and even little miniature nuclear missiles. One of these offices is so full, that the collection spills out into the hallway and whenever one walks past you can see a two sizable paintings of Stalin. So its a legitimate question to ask, if Stalin is ok, can I put an article of faith in my office?

What were their fields and specialities?

Same as mine, history and international relations. Though the two academics in question are a China and India specialist respectively.

Out of a lot of experience observing and kind of surviving academics, I have to say I have seen little sign of this as you define it. Of course it would fit in well with deconstructionist stances and the good old "you have your truth I have mine" deal.

But most of them loyally oppose and support the items on Big Brother's list for today - mostly not very energetically, because nothing outside the Tower counts as important unless [which Dawkins forfend] Pat Robertson becomes president.

A few, of course, do really care about this or that movement and will recite poems at fundraisers and march on the capitol. But I have not personally observed any of them deploring fundamentalism or extremism in causes they agree with.

My brother, for example, might deplore Dawkins [he has been heard to do so] but not for speaking out boldly agin God. Dawkins gets targeted when he pushed an opinion Brother mine does not like.

It is of course possible that since I got out from other the U has moved toward let's not take anything too seriously.

@91

How the hell do they get away with such antics considering all the angry Trotskyists on site??! !

@PhiloLogos

From what I understand, your brother is a natural scientist. I was talking specifically about social scientists and humanities researchers. For instance, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada refused to give physical anthropologist Brian Alters grant money to study the detrimental effects of Intelligent Design in Canada because:

http://ncse.com/news/2006/04/canadian-c ... nism-00793

Now this might be postmodern epistemic nihilism, raw ignorance to the first degree, or mere adversion to offending the Religiots, but it was made by various top Social Scientists and Humanities researchers in Canada.

Another example is various Neo-Marxists who've criticized the "New Atheists" for the naive, disrespectful understanding of religion. There's Chris Hedges (more of an ultraliberal Christian, but still), Terry Eagleton, and Slavoj Žižek.

I doubt the members of the SS aren't good evolutionists. It may be "raw ignorance" as to their rejection of Alters' proposal to research the detrimental effects of Intelligent Design in Canada, however the "raw ignorance" would be merely hearing the term Intelligent Design and automatically getting defensive. Hearing a rhetorically charged keyword with negative connotations, to them, elicited a negative response. If he wanted to get grant money from them, he should have spoke only words with audience-positive connotations and telling them how it will benefit them.

The fact that the SSHRC rejected the application for said reason (there no evidence that evolution is truer than IDiocy) undermines your thesis.

Faithatheism as the social norm of humanities academics - There are several characters in The Pilgrim's Progress book by John Bunyan (written over 300 years ago). One is a university professor (in some versions) described as a person who was esteemed in his own eyes as well as in the eyes of his students, however, he admits he lost track/got off the path and now lives in an iron cage of despair at the Interpreter's House; there is also another character called atheist who tries to convince Christian and Hopeful to abandon their walk to Celestial City. My guess is that faithatheism is quite common at many universities/ivory towers in the USA and around the world today (year 2010). I suspect it is a common religion of many USA politicians today although many will fib and wear Christianity (religious litmus test) openly on their sleeves so as to get and remain elected.

Yeah, and the statement of,



Which, the actual snipped reason for rejecting Alters' proposal regarding Intelligent Design was not



But rather the truncated statement in the article you linked to was,



Which is missing most of its beginning so as to otherwise be nebulous. I seriously doubt your Canadian SS branch questions evolutionism, so never fear the end of True Science is not at hand.

It's 2010 again? Dang, I'm from the year 5988, evolution was rejected by most serious academics in favor of Intelligent Design, and so the flame of True Science lives only in the works of cheesy Science Fiction novels and games in which creatures evolve constantly and then battle each other.

Hehe, for a unfalsifiable claim to be accepted as norm among most serious academics, science would have had to been killed and exterminated from the world, what I guess is the final objective of ID proponents.

Why not? Hypothesizing an intelligent designer instead of a random chemical process has no chance of encouraging research into understanding the functions of the systems of living organisms, right? Expecting to find design rather than a "Jerry-built jumble" just plain discourages the obtainment of new knowledge doesn't it?

I see you're intentionally calling the Social Science and Humanities Research of Canada the "SS" for polemical reasons - namely, as a Christian you long to be persectued and anything that brings this closer to reality, even if only linguistically, is to be used. But I digress.

The point is absurd. If one were requested a study on the detrimental effects of Aristolean Folk Physics on students in Canada, one wouldn't asked that Newtonian, Relativistic, and Quantum mechanics be "proved" for their relevant domains (as the supermajority of physicists have demonstrated Newtonian Physics as useful at discribing everyday events, relativistic physics as useful at describing larger events, and Quantum mechanics as useful at describing micro-level events).

Yes, I do have a persecution complex - ever since Wal-Fart. However, notice also that you display a type of persecution complex also, that is if you think that the rejection of Alters' proposal on the grounds that it, specifically, didn't provide adequate justification in it for the assertion of evolution over intelligent design. They never said that evolutionary theory wasn't their gospel or some other atheistically heretical statement. Alters' research program was flawed, and they said so in a manner that was just ambiguous enough when properly cherry-picked and truncated to elicit denunciation from atheists who are otherwise ignorant, all the while defending Alters' evolutionary faith and overall proposing a conspiracy theory against the agency who refused to give money to Alters for his solitary research proposal.

Hey, who knows. Maybe within the following 5000 years we are going to find a piece of evidence that completes the hundreds of evidence we have right now in support of Evolution and leads us to believe that evolution was a incomplete story and we move on to a new theory.

But by that I mean a new theory. It has been years already and you seem to still be under the self delusion that ID is an actual scientific theory, which it isn't. It is not even falsifiable. It is not even false. It is basically a bunch of guys throwing a bunch of rants against evolution and thinking that just because evolution is false then it must be design is true...