Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

[Phys-L] Re: Secularists lean politics. Was: Finally the secularists strike back



At 08:34 -0400 8/31/05, Monce, Michael N. wrote:

Somehow this doesn't ring very true with me. Last year on our
"secular, humanist campus" the student Christian organization came
under some very harsh criticism from both other students, and more
disgusting to me, some faculty for chalking some Biblical quotes.
Meanwhile every other student club from the Republicans to the local
Marxists chalk our sidewalks on a regular basis and receive no
comment. I was so disturbed by the nature of which an religious
student club was singled out for retribution I wrote a letter to
both the campus paper and the administration.

I don't think it is the non-believers who are under attack on
college campuses these days. Freedom *of* religion is what is under
attack.

To quote and old phrase from my college days, "There are Devils
everywhere." No ideology is free of its bigots (although there are
certainly more in some areas than others), and it is not uncommon to
find, in places where one side or the other is dominant, that the
dominant group can get carried away. If, on the Connecticut College
campus *any* slogan can be chalked on a sidewalk, then *all* slogans
can be so written, even the ones that offend some group or individual
or another.

So I applaud your stand on defending the right of a Christian group
to chalk biblical verses or whatever religious exhortations they
choose on the sidewalk. I, as a non-believer, am free to ignore them
and use the sidewalk for its intended purpose--walking, including
walking on the slogans implanted thereon--if I choose.

I'm sure the other side of the coin can be seen at places like
Liberty or Bob Jones or Oral Roberts Universities. It seems likely to
me that an atheist, or perhaps left-wing political, slogan chalked on
a sidewalk on one of those august institutions might well meet with
the same sort of criticism you saw on your campus.

What never ceases to amuse me is how power seems to bring with it
insecurity, and the more power one has the more insecure one seems to
be, and therefore the more intolerant of contrary viewpoints one
permits oneself to be. Taken to its logical limit, one sees the
all-powerful god as totally intolerant of such contrariness.

What a wonderful world we live in.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

Never ask someone what computer they use. If they use a Mac, they
will tell you. If not, why embarrass them?
--Douglas Adams
******************************************************