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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?"
Do you get extra credit if it's a first post?
And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
Wait, wait, wait... You're telling me that a Christian, theological seminary actually has a class that involves defending the tenets of the school's beliefs? This is an outrage!
In my independent study class, I search out intelligent design posts and make fun of them.
Sheesh, some people have to be told everything.
As long as the students fully disclose that they are doing this for a class requirement, this could be a good thing, for the students, for the school, and for anyone participating in the resulting discussion.
It can be a good thing for students, to expose them to real-world reactions - both civil and less than civil - to their posts. It can train them to make their posts in non-trollish manner. It may also expose them to ideas they would not have otherwise considered.
It can be good for the school and professor when the school gets feedback from others involved in the discussions and from websites.
It can be good for those participating and reading the discussions because THEY may be exposed to ideas they would not otherwise consider.
It's one thing to have an idea, study opposing ideas, then confirm your belief in your original idea. It's another to blindly accept an idea and refuse to think about or even expose yourself to other ideas. Such willful blindness is bad for individuals and, on a larger scale, bad for society.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...if they ever get the feeling that they are wasting their time?
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
I'm not trolling, I'm _evangilizing_ . Time to wreck my karma with a mess of '-1 Evangilist' mods.
No accredited university should be requiring students to make public statements defending specific ideas under ANY situation, trolling or not. If this seminary is not receiving public funding, them I'm perfectly fine with them requiring any crazy shit they want to, but I don't think the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) should be accrediting them as an academic institution (this isn't the first time SACS's rather lax standards have been called into question--over a variety of issues). Students should retain their rights to their own opinions in any respectable academic setting, be they a liberal in a accredited seminary or a conservative at Berkley. If a professors wants to get up in class and rant about their beliefs, that's fine--but they WAY cross the line when they require (or even attempt to coerce) students to affirm those ideas themselves.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Only if you consider clown college and hamburger school to be real educational institutions
I mean, if you go to a nut job school, trying to learn how to be a real nut job, the fact that they have to turn you into a troll first should come as no surprise.
Superstitious idiots are going to be around as long as there are cockroaches. Those of us with brains will just have to learn how to live with it.
RAID doesn't even work all that well.
The Easter Bunny should be discussed in school science lessons rather than dismissed, says the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
"If pupils have strongly-held family beliefs about the Easter Bunny, such ideas should be explored," said Prof William Dembski (D.D, Ph. D. [P.T. Barnum University mail-order]). "Easterbunnyism, Santaclausism or the contemporary militant Tooth Fairy jihadist movement are best seen by science teachers not as a misconception but as a world view. This is more valuable than simply banging on about 'reality.' Reality-based thinking is vastly overrated and certainly won't prepare children for a career in Wall Street or in government."
Simon Underdown of Oxford Brookes University disagreed. "With so much to be crammed into science lessons, it is not a worthwhile use of time to include lessons on Easterbunnyism. We have monthly standardised testing to coach pupils on."
Professor Richard Dawkins is working on a childrenâ(TM)s text on useful ways to quickly construct street-corner gallows and burning stakes for rehabilitation of the religious.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Many if not most seminaries won't grant you don't actually believe what they are teaching. After all, most seminary graduate go off to become preachers and other religious teachers.
Undergraduate school is ideally designed to teach you to think.
Many/most/maybe all seminaries are designed to filter in those who think like the school wants them to and give them the education necessary to propagate their beliefs to others.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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
That underlines the basic problem with fundamentalism in religion- it is anti-creativity and anti-intellectual and very proud of it. Of course copying and pasting the 'argument' is just fine because unlike most institutions of learning, theirs teaches students not to think for themselves.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
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
I was ready to give it the benefit of the doubt - after all, religion without ministry is just jerking off your soul - until I read this gem:
Jeepers, you might as well just write "I spent a full 24 hours giving myself paper cuts with the book while chanting the Lord's Prayer, so I felt I'd leveled up and skipped actually writing the 'reflection.'"
And they keep saying the word "critical review". I do not think that means what they think it means. I think they'd find any actual "critical" writing to be... Suppressive.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Back in the day, you could get a knighthood for attempting to sack Jerusalem in the name of Christianity -- presumably including killing people. If we're down to online trolling, that's a good thing.
If you take the act of posting on a message board, especially one as hostile to religion as Slashdot, and consider it less an act of trolling but one of encouraging discussion, then encouraging thoughtful posts creates an opportunity for the student to have his beliefs challenged and subsequently shaped. Only through adversity do people really learn who they are.
Besides, we're talking about Science here, not "Biblical Creationism" as such. The idea that the Earth was created in 6 literal days replete with "faith-challenging" dino fossils and other fairy tales is the story that Evolutionists spread as Intelligent Design dogma. It shows a very big gap in their knowledge of the ID field which is quite a bit less dogmatic about the 6 day theory and much more in tune with mainstream scientific method.
What ID brings to the table is a new reexamination of facts. Why are clam fossils at the top of very young mountains? What is the evolutionary progression of DNA? Why are there still discrepancies in the geologic and biologic record where we would expect certain types of data but find none? ID brushes away the dogma of science and brings the scientific method back to it.
But that's not to say that it isn't also flawed. Many of the scientists involved with ID hold very religious views which may cause them to insert God into areas they do not yet understand. The "God in the Gaps" folks. Luckily, most ID scientists are able to put their personal biases away for the sake of good science.
The other problem with ID is also prevalent in fields such as homeopathy and supernatural research. The attempt to address the issues at hand with a completely open mind leads to bad conclusions. Sometimes the established scientific theory is just fine and doesn't need reevaluation. So when ID scientists start questioning things that don't need questioning, they come off looking like crackpots. However, their search for science is no less deeply held and their methods are no less scientific than mainstream scientists.
Ah, no.
Creationism = "god did it."
Intelligent Design = "Something Big (possibly called God) did it."
I have a really, really tough time understanding how these are rather distinct. Even those who first promoted intelligent design see them as the same thing, only removing God from Intelligent design, since that was the major reason why creationism couldn't be taught in schools.
Anyways, Neither creationism or ID have anything to do with young earthers (or at least are only tangentially related). Young Earthers took all the dates/ages in the bible, added them up, and came to 6,000 years, so therefore, the earth must only be 6,000 years old.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
This is not Apologetics, even when using original material. The tipping point is the "hostile websites" requirement. If a town doesn't want to listen, kick the dust off your sandals and move on.
...and that'll blow the uni off the net for a while, i think :)
The term "Intelligent Design Creationism" seems to me a little unhelpful.
Intelligent design and (young earth) creationism are in general rather distinct, although the rather large differences are sometimes blurred both by proponents trying to gather support and by opponents who want to simply ridicule both groups instead of trying to reason with them.
No. Creationists who disguise themselves as scientists call themselves "intelligent design proponents", IDers are just dishonest creationists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Pandas_and_People#Pandas_and_.22cdesign_proponentsists.22
The term "creationists" was changed to "design proponents", but in one case the beginning and end of the original word "creationists" were accidentally retained, so that "creationists" became "cdesign proponentsists".
The basic metabolic pathways (reaction chains) of nearly all organisms are the same. Is this because of descent from a common ancestor, or because only these pathways (and their variations) can sustain life? Evolutionists think the former is correct, cdesign proponentsists accept the latter view.
You can't take the sky from me...
Trolling on one of these boards doesn't interrupt my morning breakfast or a good wank etc.
Next time you should just keep on doing what you're doing and invite them in. I guess the breakfast might not scare them off, but I bet the wanking would.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
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.
I may be the first (and only) poster to defend the professor in the article, but here goes.
It is a course at a Baptist Seminary in Intelligent Design and Christian Apologetics. From Wikipedia:
These people are studying to be ministers in a religion. One of their roles is to defend their faith and its tenets. Given the position of the Internet in the world today, how could anyone say they are qualified to do that without having done work on the internet? And, since the focus is on defense of those tenets, the best place to practice that is on hostile websites. So I believe the assignment is appropriate to the course aims.
Note that I am not a Baptist (RC here), I think ID (except as a philosophical experiment) is creationism in disguise, and trolls irritate me too. But lets face it - who here hasn't trolled in order to tweak someone or start a flamewar? Hell, the folks on Slashdot practically invented some forms of trolling (Goatse, anyone?).
So, instead of excoriating the professor, we should invite his students onto here and "help" them with their studies.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
If you read the article, you'll see that they don't require "discussion" of any kind:
"provide at least 10 posts defending ID that youâ(TM)ve made on âoehostileâ websites, the posts totalling 2,000 words, along with the URLs (i.e., web links) to each post (worth 20% of your grade)."
The only thing this kind of sociopathic requirement causes is hit-and-run troll posts.
Also:
"What ID brings to the table is a new reexamination of facts."
This is wrong. Scientists already reexamine facts constantly. ID does not add anything useful to the discussion, because it postulates a "theory" that can neither be proven nor disproven, and doesn't make any kinds of useful predictions. That's like saying "postulating sock gnomes requires you to reexamine the facts of where you left your socks yesterday." It doesn't.
And finally:
"The other problem with ID is also prevalent in fields such as homeopathy and supernatural research. The attempt to address the issues at hand with a completely open mind leads to bad conclusions."
That, again, is wrong. Scientists are required to have a completely open mind when it comes to everything, even homeopathy. This is precisely why we have useful studies in which scientists tested the claims made by homeopathy and other "alternative" medicine. It's also why we know which of these things work, and which don't.
The ones who don't have an open mind are the people who still believe homeopathy works. Their closed-mindedness makes them unable to accept the evidence.
The directive is to make ID arguments in, quote, hostile websites.
Why don't they do something easier, like question President Obama's economic policies or the wisdom of a Governmental takeover of the health care system on a site like Daily Kos? At least then you'd be arguing a position in a hostile environment that may have merit -- there isn't much merit to ID and arguing it is the rough equivalent of the 9/11 truthers or the whackjobs that think Obama isn't a native born American citizen.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
This is nothing to do with theology. The examples quoted make it clear that this is a political issue. One of the most depressing things for people like me, who went to a small university in the English fens before deciding that engineering was more interesting and of more benefit to the human race, is that US fundamentalists completely confuse politics and religion. The madness is spreading to the Anglican Church in the UK, where Nigerian politics is now more important than good relations with the Episcopalians.
US fundamentalism takes the form of assigning religious worth to capitalism - if God loves you, you will be materially rich - and also aligns itself with backward notions about Creationism and ID which are more about trying to prove liberals "wrong" than spreading light. The simple fact is that it requires really determined blinkers to believe either that Bible literalism has very deep roots (certainly St. Augustine would have wondered what these people were on about) or that the enormous body of information about geology and biology built up in the last 200 years admits of a fundamentalist interpretation.
To be blunt, if these seminaries were doing their jobs they would be teaching pastoral care, teaching how the New Testament (rather than some cherry picked collection of political positions) can be made relevant today, and preparing their students to heal wounds in society and reduce polarisation between social groups. Instead, they appear to be giving course credits for less violent versions of the activities that give the Taliban a bad name.
You say that seminaries are schools for training pastors, and I agree they should be. But we should then not defend "seminaries" that are training schools for bigoted ideologues who will seek to stir up division in society and spread ignorance. If this man Dembski cannot see why he is wrong on this, he needs to be hit on the head with the Sermon on the Mount till he gets a clue.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Disclaimer: Christian Electrical Engineering Student
I would like to point out that "RichardDawkins.net" is definitely presenting one side of this story, and anyone who takes a brief look at the site can tell which side that is. This is a philosophy course they're referencing and if you look at the tests you'll notice that the questions are just like any philosophy course. They ask you to explain/argue both sides of an issue (one of the test questions even says argue against ID).
Speaking as a student, this is actually a brilliant form of instruction. What better way to make you understand and can use the material you've been taught then to have you defend it against people who will purposely be attacking it vehemently. This course is titled Intelligent Design so I would expect students to learn enough about it to defend it on some level. Why take the course if you're not going to learn the reasoning behind the subject matter.
Also, to everyone who has said that students shouldn't be given an assignment that makes them present/defend a viewpoint outside of their own. Try taking an english class sometime with a christian viewpoint. The stuff they require you to read and write about definitely does NOT fall within my viewpoint most of the time.
I'm not the biggest fan of Richard Dawkins. I'm an Atheist and yes, Evolution is the only explanation for biodiversity on Earth but that doesn't mean I think people should be ridiculed for their beliefs.
His attacks on Intelligent design serve as a front for him to attack religion as a whole. He spreads the myth that religion and evolution can't be compatible (why exactly could it not be argued that god designed life with the capability to mutate?) to attack religion whilst using "I'm just debating the science" defence when called on it.
His hard line approach makes Atheists as a whole look like intolerant arses and I don't want to be associated with it. Even science, even though it is evidence based, does rely on a certain amount of faith (that earlier theories are correct, that scientists in fields you're not familiar with are correct). Yes science changes over time but so does religion. There are plenty of laws based on questionable religious principles but there are equally plenty of laws based on questionable science.
I've tried to spend some time examing the scientific evidence for the age of the universe and the evidence for evolution. I've come to the conclusion that the Universe most likely is Billions of years old, because there are just too many things that can't reasonably be explained simply by the idea that God created the Universe 6 or 10 thousand years ago (if he did, why bother making the universe have bizarre things that otherwise would indicate a very old universe).
However, looking at the amazing complexities of life, I still feel that given the long odds, the 'completely random permutation moderated by natural selection' isn't wholly sufficient to explain all life either. So, I fall into the camp of those who believe in God, believe that he had a plan when creating the Universe to cause life to arise on Earth (and possibly elsewhere; the Bible neither excludes the possibility, nor indicates it positively, and science has yet to find evidence of life elsewhere, but allows and renders it likely).
I believe he used a mechanism of evolution in 'creating' life on earth, but I think it's also possible that he fine-tuned the Universe to overcome the 'long odds' that would otherwise be against the random generation of life and rise of very complex organisms. That's not to say he was constantly intervening in evolution. If God is all knowing and all powerful, then it's perfectly plausible that he fine tuned everything from the start of the big bang such that from that point on, everything would happen that was necessary for life to arise somewhere in the Universe.
Am I an IDer? Am I a creationist? Am I an evolutionist? I'd say I'm not really a creationist, and most of the creationists would say I'm not, I suspect. Am I an IDer? My views, I think, would loosely fall into the ID camp because it is much less stringent about the 'how' and 'when' of the way that Intelligent Design was worked out (although, probably most IDers believe in a much more 'active' intervention in the design of life than I do). I do basically believe that evolution is correct, though I view it as less random than pure evolutionary theory suggests.
I think your statement that ID == Creationism (in disguise) is ignorant of the facts of the differing views of people.
However, all that said, I don't think ID should be taught in *science* class. It's not a matter of science, and I have no problem admitting that. I think it would be appropriate for it to be part of a philosophy and religion class, because that's more of what it is. I think it's appropriate for schools, both public and private, to have classes that educate students about the most commonly believed religions and philosophies (such classes, particularly in public schools, should be held from, as much as possible, a neutral perpective - anthropology rather than catechism - learning *what* people believe, rather than trying to convince students to believe one thing or another). People shouldn't graduate from high school without knowing anything at all about Judeaism, Chrisitianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Universalism, Atheistic Humanism, Existentialism, etc).
Bullshit.
The theory of evolution says no such thing. That's a strawman invented by the creationists themselves.
Yes, there is a "social darwinism" piece of bullshit, but it has about as much to do with the real darwinism, as JavaScript has to do with Java. I.e., except for piggy-backing on its name, not much whatsoever.
And, anyway, the real darwinism doesn't actually say "only the strong survive", and it certainly doesn't say "if you are too weak to survive we shouldn't help you."
Social species and social adaptations are in fact cases where a species survives precisely _because_ individual members who are too weak to survive on their own, are helped by other members. Ants or bees are cases where no individual member could survive and reproduce on their own at all. The workers are asexuate, and the queen pretty much can't forrage and feed on its own. The species survives precisely _because_ there is a high degree of cooperation between the individual members.
Heck, even wolves or lions (predators seem to be a favourite of proponents of "might makes right") actually have a group hunting and group survival strategy built in. Wolves couldn't reliably bag the kind of bigger game they normally feed upon, if they didn't act as a group. So, yes, a weaker member which might not survive on his own, nevertheless can survive in a group that cooperates.
Sexual selection and sexual dimorphism are also cases where evolution favours cooperation and specialization. E.g., the male lion is too big and heavy to be a good hunter on his own, while the females aren't as adapted to fight other predators. (That mane is battle armour, for example. A predator going for the male lion's neck will most often just get a mouthful of hair.) A pride survives by the _combination_ of the two specializations. And sometimes they even find more innovative ways to use that dimorphism: e.g., against bigger game, the male lion lies in ambush while the females chase the prey towards him, effectively allowing him to use his greater mass and strength without the handicap of his poorer sprint performance.
Nature and evolution are full of stuff like that. Resemblance to the "if you are too weak to survive we shouldn't help you" canard: zero.
Second, darwinism doesn't judge "fit" as "strong" or anything else. The only criterion that matters is: fit to make more offspring. Period.
For different species that can mean radically different things. For example for rabbits, the criterion isn't strength, it's just being fast and affraid enough to run away fast enough, and making lots of baby rabbits faster than the foxes can eat them.
But even that doesn't even scratch the surface of how many things can mean "the fittest." E.g., being bitter and bright coloured works just fine for ladybugs. (See, aposematism) There is no strength or speed or anything else involved. You just have to be bitter so the first bird that tries to eat you spits you back, and recognizably coloured so it learns not to try again in the future.
For some species, they don't even go the whole way with that. They don't actually have any defense of their own against a predator, but just mimick the colours of a species that does. The "being fitter" there just means the most resemblance to the real aposematic species you're immitating. That's it. That's the whole survival of the fittest in that aspect.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...This is not about preaching, this is about setting up an Us vs. Them attitude in the students, to make it easier to accept the irrational. After all, the other side is evil, they wouldn't have been so mean to them if they weren't, they must be wrong...
Exactly!
And we see that illustrated beautifully in the grandparent's post - "If you take the act of posting on a message board, especially one as hostile to religion as Slashdot..."
Slashdot is not intolerant of religion, per se. However, it can be brutally intolerant of badly reasoned arguments, articles of faith presented as proof, and other forms of stupidity. Only the most disingenuous tool would suggest that such a metaphorical "bringing a knife to a gun fight" as cut-and-pasting some lame intelligent design screed into a forum populated by those well-equipped to refute it's every point, is anything other than some form of "Martyrdom Light". Having seen the same pathetic arguments put forth time and again, often verbatim (cut-and-paste counts, remember), the forum regulars can be expected to pounce hard and fast. That's pretty much the definition of trolling, and it has nothing to do with intelligent discourse.