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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-of-liberal-intolerance.html?_r=0
WE progressives believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren't conservatives. Universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We're fine with people who don't look like us, as long as they think like us.
O.K., that's a little harsh. But consider George Yancey, a sociologist who is black and evangelical. "Outside of academia I faced more problems as a black," he told me. "But inside academia I face more problems as a Christian, and it is not even close."
I've been thinking about this because on Facebook recently I wondered aloud whether universities stigmatize conservatives and undermine intellectual diversity. The scornful reaction from my fellow liberals proved the point.
"Much of the 'conservative' worldview consists of ideas that are known empirically to be false," said Carmi. "The truth has a liberal slant," wrote Michelle. "Why stop there?" asked Steven. "How about we make faculties more diverse by hiring idiots?"
To me, the conversation illuminated primarily liberal arrogance — the implication that conservatives don't have anything significant to add to the discussion. My Facebook followers have incredible compassion for war victims in South Sudan, for kids who have been trafficked, even for abused chickens, but no obvious empathy for conservative scholars facing discrimination.
The stakes involve not just fairness to conservatives or evangelical Christians, not just whether progressives will be true to their own values, not just the benefits that come from diversity (and diversity of thought is arguably among the most important kinds), but also the quality of education itself. When perspectives are unrepresented in discussions, when some kinds of thinkers aren't at the table, classrooms become echo chambers rather than sounding boards — and we all lose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @01:57AM
Then you've lost your saltiness. If you were on your own side you'd be fighting harder for what you believe in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @02:03AM
That's what causes the filter event. Probability of survival (per 100 years) < 40%, those aren't very good odds.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 29 2016, @04:54AM
Probability of survival (per 100 years) Who's giving those odds?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @07:23AM
The problem for many Christians they have a habit of being Salt when they should be Light and Light when they should be Salt. But it's often not so simple to know whether you are supposed to try to change stuff from within or stand out and make a difference. ;)
Back to the topic of academia and intolerance, I remember Michael Reiss lost his job as the Director of Education at the Royal Society in the UK because the media misrepresented what he had to say and then a mob gathered to "lynch" him.
Compare what he said:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2008/sep/11/michael.reiss.creationism [theguardian.com]
(ignore the biased paragraph at the start which is from the Guardian and not from him!)
Compare the media's spin: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2008/sep/11/creationism.education [theguardian.com]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7612152.stm [bbc.co.uk]
http://www.americanscientist.org/science/pub/leading-scientist-urges-teaching-of-creationism-in-schools [americanscientist.org]
See also: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2006/nov/28/academicexperts.highereducationprofile [theguardian.com]
This sort of deception and bigotry is not very "academic" nor scientific. There were plenty of Christian scientists. Galileo himself was a Christian, he even had help from the Pope till he mocked the Pope in a publication.
Even elsewhere on Soylentnews you can see the bigotry:
I'm personally shocked that somebody who believes in magical fairy tales isn't being taken seriously in academia. It's almost like these are institutions of higher _learning_ and that ignorant bronze-aged beliefs have no place.
The truth is people can be wrong about all sorts of stuff but more correct than everyone else within their fields of expertise. To throw them out merely because they are wrong about unrelated stuff is bigotry and can be counterproductive for Academia and Science. There are mathematicians who are geniuses in math but fools in many other things. Should we throw them out too?
As for arrogance and even hubris, I wouldn't want to be as silly as Pacman saying based on the known rules and information of the Pacman Universe there's definitely no Creator of the Pacman Universe. Mysterious writings (copyright message etc) somewhere in the Pacman universe don't prove anything- in other games mysterious writings may talk about gods but those gods aren't the actual creators ;).
Physicists already have plenty of _scientific_evidence_ that our universe is rather weird:
https://source.wustl.edu/2015/03/in-the-quantum-world-the-future-affects-the-past/ [wustl.edu]
http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v11/n7/full/nphys3343.html [nature.com]
So it's genuine arrogance and hubris to be so sure that if there's a Creator the Creator and motives of the Creator would be so simple. Of course it could turn out to be very simple - e.g. make enough money to buy more beer ;).
There are arrogant/extremist Christians, Muslims,etc but I see the same arrogance from Atheists too. The rest of us just don't have as much faith that we are 100% right :).
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 29 2016, @10:31AM
I'm pretty sure the Creator wrote a brilliant little perl script which turned out to be me and the rest of you are just what happens when too much input is taken from /dev/random.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 29 2016, @01:38PM
Perls before swine?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 29 2016, @02:00PM
I cpan what you did there.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @02:45PM
So you think that you're the only real person and that nobody else is a real person, with real consciousness and feelings? Congrats, you just admitted to being a sociopath.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DECbot on Monday August 29 2016, @04:30PM
If I were I perl script, I would call any output from java as garbage from /dev/random.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 29 2016, @11:18PM
I admitted to being a perl script, which is not subject to human shrinkery.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @11:41AM
Bah.
First, sociopathy is a personality disorder, not a philosophy.
Second, while some elements of the latter could _hint_ at former, in this case it's pointing towards narcissism instead.