Dennis Prager has a column up at National Review titled Why God Isn’t Doing Well. He notes that God isn’t doing well these days, although he’s vague about what that means. He attributes this to a number of causes, mostly the usual whipping boys of the religious conservatives. Naturally, his first target are the secular universities:
The first is that increasingly large numbers of men and women attend university, and Western universities have become essentially secular (and leftist) seminaries. Just as the agenda of traditional Christian and Jewish seminaries is to produce religious Christians and religious Jews, the agenda of Western universities is to produce (left-wing) secularists. The difference is that Christian and Jewish seminaries are honest about their agenda, while the universities still claim they have neither a secularist nor a political agenda.
Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic gives this conservative boilerplate more attention than it deserves. Friedersdorf points out the Judiasm has survived centuries of Christian persecution. Christianity has survived centuries of Christian persecutions as well, plus a couple of centuries of Roman persecution. So does it really only take a few years at a state college – most of whom have large and active religious communities – to destroy a faith?
Friedersdorf points out that this idea turns religious believers into passive receivers of a university’s influence. He has his own theory to explain why college produce so many secularists:
… people who attend college leave home. That is to say, they leave their church, the community incentives to attend it, and the watchful eye of parents who get angry or make them feel guilty when they don’t go to services or stray in their faith. Suddenly they’re surrounded by dorm mates of different faiths or no faith at all. For many of these students, it turns out that their religious behavior was driven more by desire for community, or social and parental pressure, than by deeply held beliefs.
It’s no secret that colleges are the place where many young adults try out new identities. It’s also the place where they are likely to be exposed to new ideas. It shouldn’t be surprising that many break away from their old beliefs at that point.
I agree with Friedersdorf on the the reason-basically they’ve been isolated and indoctrinated (brainwashed, even), and college is the first time many of them are exposed to other viewpoints.
I don’t think this is a valid point, though: “Christianity has survived centuries of Christian persecutions as well, plus a couple of centuries of Roman persecution. So does it really only take a few years at a state college – most of whom have large and active religious communities – to destroy a faith?” Active persecution and suppression often serves to strengthen a movement, while merely being exposed to other viewpoints, without coercion, will weaken it. If Christians were persecuted today like they were back then, God would probably be doing a lot better.
Thanks for writing, I always enjoy your posts, vorjack =)
I left my church long before I went to college.
To draw a parallel, moving to a more liberal church and engaging in internet discussions had a similar effect on me; whereas many of my friends who stayed in the evangelical/charismatic movements are still Jesus freaks. From this perspective I can see Friedersdorf’s point.
I do, however, think that the “agenda” which has been characterised as “producing (left-wing) secularists” (although really the agenda is to educate and enhance capabilities) does use a secular methodology, which, once students adopt, can make faith very difficult to justify.
I think this is chicken and egg; Intelligence predisposes one to ask questions, which makes one more likely to deconvert. There is no “agenda”.
Whilst I don’t think there is an “agenda” in the negative case (like “gay agenda”), universities do have an agenda (as in a set of goals and priorities) to educate and produce highly skilled and productive individuals, and this agenda, as conducted by secular institutions, can lead to de-conversion. I don’t think the intelligence=>atheist argument works (as I’ve said elsewhere, the most intelligent people I know are christians); even as you’ve phrased it, the difference between the skeptic and the religious isn’t the willingness to question, but the willingness to leave the answer to the question open. Fuckin’ magnets, how do they work? (Miracles, yo!)
My wife went to uni to study OT, and is still a born-again christian; the main difference was that she went to a local church, was active in the christian union, and surrounded herself with affirmative people. However, she is a very different christian to her family, who are more on the crazy end of the spectrum. This is as a result of receiving some scientific training, and being medically minded (so she is less likely to claim that demons are behind mental disorders). So I think it’s a bigger picture, with multiple factors, and Dennis Prager has every right to fear the demise of god due to the “agenda” of secular educational institutions, even though he has framed the agenda unfairly.
This might be a dumb question, but what does OT stand for?
old testament.
Also, there have been a decent amount of studies actually showing a correlation between atheism/agnosticism and IQ and achieving higher education. So you thinking it doesn’t work is irrelevant to the information. Sure it might not be a good tactic in debate, but that doesn’t make it a trivial finding.
Occupational Therapy. The people who retrain people in everyday physical tasks when they have lost the capability due to injury or illness.
woops my mistake.
“Friedersdorf points out that this idea turns religious believers into passive receivers of a university’s influence.”
Like church attenders under the influence of the preacher?
This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed religious people’s inability to get out of their own mindset when dealing with other ways of thinking. If the antagonist to religious indoctrination is colleges and universities, their method must be secular indoctrination. There’s a similar logic to creationists – there are some famous creationist straw men which are straw men simply because their proponents have an image of evolution that’s more like wonky creationism. Then there’s all the attacks that try to paint atheism as religions equal and opposite rather than it’s inverse.
No. Universities are not trying to persuade anyone to fit any political mould. In fact, many of them go out of their way to accommodate various political and religious beliefs. You can go on any campus and find a Christian Society or a Conservative/Republican Society. Conversely, you can also find a secular society or a left-wing society.
Religion is not declining because Western universities are making an intentional and concerted effort to eradicate it and replace it with their own agenda, but rather the decline is the result of an increased education that causes people to evaluate their beliefs. In general, an increase in education seems to correlate with a decrease in religiosity and belief in traditional kinds of religion. Traditional religious beliefs and structures don’t fare well when one becomes educated.
The underlying fear beneath Prager’s article is that he’s afraid that organised religion cannot stand up to further education. It is less easy to swallow that the world was made in six days when you you have a degree in geography from a Russell Group/Ivy League university.
I think the biggest lesson about religion in university is that some (perhaps most) religion isn’t able to stand up well against debate (since its all unproven and, frankly, arbitrary), and lack of community. And its not really the ‘University’ as such that causes a loss of religion, but rather a combination of a diverse group of interested students, a lot of new information, and a distinct lack of good religious education coming from almost every church. My old church never mentioned much about science, or biblical history, or other religions, so finding out on my own about a lot of these things you start to feel lied to (because you are). And I don’t think that any religion has really found a good way to cope with the information of the modern world… they’re stuck in a situation where they revere holy books as the word of God, yet they don’t mess well with modern values, science, or even actual history.
The fear of the Universities is more because religions avoid dealing with the facts in their churches, and then want to blame others for telling what they’d rather cover up or ignore.
@ Sajanas….you said “The fear of the Universities is more because religions avoid dealing with the facts in their churches, and then want to blame others for telling what they’d rather cover up or ignore.” That was succinct and very well put. I am putting it in my quote files for future use. Thanks!
I don’t think this person understands the difference between not having an assertive claim and assertive a claim. What a joke, “at least religious institutions are honest about the manipulation” LOL
I love how Prager keeps conflating secular and (left-wing). What, there are no right wing secularists? Or moderate secularists? Who’s really got the agenda, Dennis?
He notes that God isn’t doing well these days, although he’s vague about what that means.
Note the confusion between how an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being is doing, and how the idea of God in the minds of humans is doing. Does Prager really beieve that God exists, that he could phrase his question thus?
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Does he live in a place without heathcare? Maybe he should go to a Dr and get a check up.
Healthcare is evil. So obviously God won’t go see no doctor.
I never really had the whole “move to a different place and get a different point of view” experience.
I was always sceptical and my extensive reading helped that. By the time I was 13 it was basically a matter of admitting that I was an atheist. I had only met like 15-20 people of different faiths and no atheists.
But, hey however you get there, you got there.
Heh, this is funny. I was just browsing through my bookshelves the other day and came across a book called “How to Stay Christian in College”. I flipped through it a bit and read my old underlines. How things change.
So true! Reading through my old christian books (even my underlined Bible), I’m always interrupting my reading with “I can’t believe I swallowed that” or “How could I have been so gullible?”
You should share some quotes from that book of yours, it would be hilarious . . .
Any religion evaporates when people actually start to think for themselves.
That’s the rub. Most people don’t think for themselves. :( That’s why we still have so many theists…
I’d like to qualify that. Many theists can think independently and logically. They mainly don’t apply the same logical reasoning to their own faith, but that doesn’t mean they don’t apply it elsewhere.
He says that like it’s a bad thing!
I agree with Custador: there is no agenda. Other than enhancing intelligence and reason, which, um, does tend to cause atrophy of religion, yes.
Reality has a well known secular atheist bias.
I always find it strange when people talk about the dangers of university to faith.
Yes, from the parents’ perspective you can’t make your little darlings go to church anymore.
But a student can go to the Chrisitan Union and go to church and spend their entire time at university in a litle Chrisitan bubble. If you want to be a Christian it’s easy enough to be a Christian at university.
I think the people who drift away from Chrisitianity at university have probably been having doubts for years and are just glad to be away from parental pressure to go to church.
I don’t see why people want to guilt trip adults into going to church. I think it’s great that today adults who go to church are there because they want to be there.