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[Phys-L] Re: FL stamps out dictator professors



I want to make it clear that it is not religious people I have problems
with, it is religious people who wish to force their viewpoint down
everyone's throat, ie. Fundamentalists. Whether they be Mormon, Jewish,
Islamic, or Christian is not the issue, but rather that they have a rigid
credo which seeks to force others to the same viewpoint. There are even
Roman Catholic fundamentalists.

I also have no problems with creative design as a philosophy, but it can not
be used as a scientific principle. Actually I have seen a huge amount of
intolerance by so called good Christians, most of them Protestants. For
example one school superintendent told a Roman Catholic teacher that he
would not have her teaching history in the school system because of her
religion. She became a secretary at Duke Univ. This happened in the bad
old days in the old South when it was impossible to do anything about it.

I lived in a small town in upstate NY where there was a large amount of
anti-Catholic sentiment around the 1950s. The most locally famous incident
was when a local school which had always had the Baptist minister for
Baccalaureate had a majority of Catholics in the graduating class. They
asked the principal if they could invite the priest. He said he had to take
it up with board of education, whereupon the parents said he didn't do that
to invite the Baptist, and if he did take it up with the board they would
take him up with the state board of Regents. He caved in, but then all of
the Protestant parents declared they would boycott the ceremony. Well the
predictable happened. The non Catholic parents were so curious that they
all came and it was packed. The priest, a genial Irishman, charmed them and
the ice was broken.

I think I stated that I have never seen any persecution of students because
of their beliefs, so I doubt that it is relevant issue. I believe there are
already mechanisms to deal with faculty members who commit moral turpitude.
I would classify punishing students who refuse to believe things that are
against their moral code as such an offense. But requiring students to
understand and know arguments for or against a particular issue is not
offensive. Indeed once they know the side they do not agree with, they
might be able to fashion better arguments for their side.

As a religious person who has seen religious intolerance first hand, I do
not like it one bit. And I do see such a subtext in this bill. I also see
an anti-intellectual subtext along with an anti-science subtext. It smacks
of censorship. We already have a rise of McCarthyism in this country, and
this is just another sign of it.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

I do not believe the issue has to be science vs religion. I do not like
continued negative statements about "religious fundamentalists" which
seem rather common in these threads. I assume this means that some have
had some very bad experiences with religious people, as I have at
times. However I have also had experiences with some very wonderful
religious people. I am a "creationist" in the sense that I do not
believe the universe and humanity are chance occurances. I have no
problems teaching astronomy to my students, many of whom (but by no
means all) hold similar views. My personal opinion is that I do not
want the government too involved in what is taught in universities,
however I do understand why some individuals want this. In my own
personal experiences most of the ridiculing of other ideas and
intolerance of others viewpoints has come from from individuals with
what I judged to be left-leaning ( as opposed to right-leaning
philosophies) ( whatever the nebulous meaning we sometimes attach to
these terms). If the court were packed with the right religious
fundamentalists we would be fine, if the wrong ones, then trouble! Now
repeat the last sentence and replace religious fundamentalists with
"unreligious materialists" and then sentence stays the same! The issue
is people - not labels!
James Mackey
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