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College Credits For Trolling the Web?
Jafafa Hots writes "Some undergraduate and masters level courses at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary require trolling as part of their requirements.
In William Dembski's classes on Intelligent Design and Christian Apologetics, 20% of the final grades come from having made 10 posts defending Intelligent Design Creationism on 'hostile' websites.
There seems to be no requirement that the posts contain original writing; apparently cut-and-paste jobs are sufficient. Is this the first case of trolling the net being part of course requirements?"
You know, when you make assumptions like that without actually checking the facts, you're not helping.
From their site:
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (1866 Southern Lane, Decatur, GA 30033, Telephone: 404-679-4500) to award bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees.
The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools is a regional accreditation agency recognized by the DOE.
We might not like the fact that they are accredited (and they're aren't lying either, I looked it up), but that doesn't make it not true.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Disclaimer: I'm an ordained minister with a Masters of Divinity (Seminary) and a Ph.D. in New Testament (Public University).
You need to remember that seminarys are strange animals academically. The degree of academic freedom runs the gamete from little (fundamentalist schools) to a great deal (liberal seminaries). However, in almost all there is at least a set of shared convictions that are held by all, or almost all, students and faculty. Even at the most liberal, it's sort of assumed that you at least believe in God, or why are you there? Seminaries are professional schools for training pastors, not academic institutions.
SBTS is part of the "new" SBC, and so is basically fundamentalist in outlook, and virtually all students and faculty will be fundamentalist in outlook. If they weren't, they would have gone somewhere else. It's not unreasonable to assume that most students are going to hold to an ID or Creationist point of view.
Moreover, this course is almost certainly an elective, so no student is required to take it. Even then, speaking as someone who is basically Anabaptist theologically who went to a school where none of the professors were Anabaptist, all my professors were quite flexible. They had no problem with me writing from what one called my "peculiar viewpoint" so long as I did so respectfully and rigorously. I imagine a student that really had a problem for this requirement would be able to get out of it.
Last, Bill Dembski is a smart guy (I've met him), although I don't always agree with him. I rather doubt he would give full credit for "CREATI0N1SM R0X, SUX0RZ!"
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
They are being told to go to websites that are "hostile" to intelligent design, and post material that in support of it -- not necessarily original material. They are not required to take part in an actual discussion. If posting material that everyone on a forum can be expected to disagree with, and then not bothering to stay around to defend your views any further than that, does not quality as "trolling," then I do not know what does.
Palm trees and 8
Exactly. That the author of this article suggests that trolling is required makes the article poster a troll. How ironic.
The directive is to make ID arguments in, quote, hostile websites. They are to look for forums where they know ID is not going to be kindly received and they must defend it in the face of the likely shitstorm of responses. What do we call someone who posts something in a bbs/forum/website that is certain to generate controversy? Oh yea, we call it "trolling". The author of this article was 100% spot-on.
"Even if they do believe it, it is kinda like sending a guy in a blue uniform and police badge and a pistol into a gang house full of people with automatic weapons alone and asking them to surrender without a fight (except without the possibility of literally getting killed... I think)."
Not so much... It's not that they expect anyone to be won over/surrender. The point of an exercise like this is for the "apologist" to experience repeated abuse and become disassociated to the point where they completely tune out any criticisms of their crazy belief system. That's how a lot of cult-like organizations work. It's quite effective.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
More importantly, it creates a "controversy," and then they can teach the controversy.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Ok... I'll bite.
I get so tired of the two myths that often come up among discussions about Christian history regarding the "virgin" Mary. Don't get me wrong, Christianity is rife with messed up history and people doing things in the name of Christ that are despicable and wrong but the whole conspiracy that the church "created the Virgin Mary to appease..." reeks of ignorance and WAAAY too much faith in the non-research, clearly-disproved "facts" of overambitious, poorly-skilled novel writers (seriously... does anyone think Dan Brown is a good writer?).
Dislike and take issue with it all you want but the Bible (the currently accepted cannon) has been consistent in its assertion that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born. The "Gospel of Luke" and the "Gospel of Matthew" both clearly say it and have both been reliably dated to before 100 AD (check the sources on those articles in wikipedia). 100 AD is FAR before anyone was thinking about converting Germanic tribes or the tribes of South America (the other common myth of when the Virgin Mary was first created). Constantine was emperor of Rome from 324-337 and even skeptics of the pre-100 dating of Luke and Matthew don't date them after that.
Christianity has its flaws and its screwed up followers but to start spouting clearly refuted conspiracy theories in an attempt to discredit it does a disservice to those who reasonably object to the accuracy of the Bible or the core beliefs of Christianity as a whole.