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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!"
I'm not trolling, I'm _evangilizing_ . Time to wreck my karma with a mess of '-1 Evangilist' mods.
What do you expect from creationists? Rational thought based on your own judgment of presented evidence?
"If everybody is thinking alike, somebody isn't thinking" - Gen. George S. Patton
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
Congratulations, you've earned credit.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
By the way, notice that defending their position does not include a knowledge of evolution theory. So it's really a pure trolling.
Last I checked there were no secular biology classes that require students to go find ID websites and defend evolution on them... Unless of course you mean making an ass of yourself spreading pseudoscientific bullshit as one of the tenets of the school's beliefs.
Here is another fun requirement for the class.
Trace the connections between Darwinian evolution, eugenics, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. Why are materialists so ready to embrace these as a package deal? What view of humanity and reality is required to resist them?
In fact...my outrage is that the school is actively encouraging these shit for brains to go forth and share their idiocy. Writing a paper about this crap is one thing, but actively going out and finding 'hostile' websites to post on is just being a douchebag. You might also carefully consider the fact they use the word 'hostile' to describe those who disagree with them. Now, if you are ok living under fundamentalist religion rule like the Taliban, by all means, just let them continue their push and growth. Palin 2012!
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
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
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
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.
Marketing Students should go on forums and attempt to defend ID. Bonus credit for converting people.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
I hope you get a good grade.
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.
I hope your post is a joke, even though it's a pretty bad joke. There is no secluded problems with ID, there is only one problem, and it's ID. You cannot defend it. Re-examination of what? Why are clams on top of a mountain? Why, could it be because a bird dropped it there a million years ago, maybe it was because that mountain was at the bottom of the ocean a billion years ago. What the hell does Intelligent Design have to do with real scientists thinking about such things? Science is about questioning everything! Intelligent Design is NOT about questioning, it's about looking at something, then saying "this is god's work" and then that's that. Intelligent Design is anathema to science. And defending it in any way is ridiculous and retarded.
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."
Their opinions are valid (even if their evidence is... er... patchy)
An argument is valid if and only if the truth of its premises entails the truth of its conclusion.
They may have a right to their opinion, as idiotic as those may be, but that doesn't make them valid.
You can't take the sky from me...
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.
> especially one as hostile to religion as Slashdot
We're not hostile to religion, we're hostile to bullshit.
> ID scientists
There's no such thing, since ID isn't science. Even your buddy Michael Behe admits that in order for ID to be science, Astrology, Alchemy, New Age, Wicca, etc must also be science.
It's funny how you ID'ers can't stop contradicting yourselves:
> ID brushes away the dogma of science and brings the scientific method back to it.
> The attempt to address the issues at hand with a completely open mind leads to bad conclusions.
People like you need to understand that there is no point refuting Evolution. Evolution is the glue that holds Biology together, and without it we wouldn't have: Paleontology, Micro-biology, Medicine, Genetics, among other fields.
Here's a simple thought experiment: If Evolution is false, what created swine flu? The only other possible explanation is that God is a dick, and I don't believe that.
Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE!
Why are clams on top of a mountain? Why, could it be because a bird dropped it there a million years ago...
Depends. Are we talking African or European clams?
Is there any difference between the blind dogmatic stupidity of ID, and the blind dogmatic intelligence of darwinism?
Yes, one is blind and dogmatic, the other is supported by evidence.
You can't take the sky from me...
Exactly, getting a civil response is not the goal.
This seems to be less about ID and more about not getting civil responses. The professors don't give two shits about convincing anybody in the forums of anything.
Getting the students to do this, takes a retarded worldview and forces them to plop it down where it really wasn't invited with the inevitable hostile responses.
Which in turn, indoctrinates or say... brainwashes the students into viewing the outside, thinking world as a hostile place to their kind.
And, thus insures the students stick to their kind and stop looking at the outside world (especially the Internet) as a place to get good information.
This is simply brainwashing. A clever way to do it granted, but that doesn't change the affect on the student. They still come out suspicious and feeling attacked by the internet and non-whack people, the effect desired by the school administrators.
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).
...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.
The issue with intelligent design is it isn't science! There is nothing falsifiable about intelligent design, it makes no predictions, it's not useful to anyone outside of spreading dogma, and has no potential to be useful for any other purpose.
There is no research done on intelligent design, you can't design an experiment to prove or disprove it, in a biology classroom you can't teach anything about it outside of saying "there are some holes in evolutionary theory that we can't explain yet, so some people think a magic man in the sky waved his hand to create these things."
The only leg Intelligent Design has to stand on is that proponents pretend there are only two possible explanations for the origin of life, Evolution and Intelligent Design. They claim that if Evolution is in any way false, then Intelligent Design must be true.
This is absolutely ridiculous.