Author: nh

This site caught my eye this morning on reddit. What’s interesting is the “boilerplate” associated with each course. Check out the entry for Calculus:

Students will examine the nature of God as they progress in their understanding of mathematics. Students will understand the absolute consistency of mathematical principles and know that God was the inventor of that consistency. Mathematical study will result in a greater appreciation of God and His works in creation. The students will understand the basic ideas of both differential and integral calculus and its importance and historical applications. The students will recognize that God created our minds to be able to see that the universe can be calculated by mental methods.

Now I appreciate pushing for a deeper understanding/appreciation of the connections in our world. Pondering the beauty of mathematical consistency and wondering about it’s role in life is a great thing. I would argue that the utility is diminished by refusing to apply the same search for consistency towards religion, but hey, other than that, I appreciate diversity and different modes of appreciation. After all, it’s just a little selective emphasis.

What bothers me about this are two things. First, how banal this approach becomes. I can hear Ben Stein reciting this course description over and over. I can imagine the rigid world of the committee that “just loved” this course catalog. Does anyone believe this glorifies their god? If you’re going to be formulaic, choose a place where formulaic works.

Second; I lied. The emphasis does bother me. If you’re going to screw around with math, how badly will you butcher science, history and geology. How one sided will you be, and what will that produce? Will their American history talk about the role of religious people and the bible in promoting slavery? I doubt it. I’m sure separation of Church and state won’t be there. Hmm. Let’s see.

AMERICAN HISTORY
ELEVENTH GRADE
Students will evaluate the past and learn from its lessons (I Corinthians 10:11), and become effectual Christians who understand “the times” (I Chronicles 12:32). Students will study the history of our country beginning with the Civil War with a biblically integrated filter as they examine the political, social, and economic perspectives. An emphasis will be placed on the major wars, the industrial revolution, and the settlement of the frontier, requiring students to critically analyze the cause and effect relationships of events in history.

GOVERNMENT/CIVICS
TWELFTH GRADE
Students will evaluate the past and learn from its lessons ( I Corinthians 10:11), and become effectual Christians who understand “the times” (I Chronicles 12:32). Students will study the foundational documents of our founding Fathers built upon as they formulated the ideals upon which our country was established. Such documents include: The Magna Carta, The English Bill of Rights of 1689, and the Mayflower Compact. Students are equipped with an understanding of the basic principles contained in these documents, and are able to identify their dependence upon biblical and Reformation principles, leading them to an understanding why the American system is meant for a religious people.
I used to have discussions with a friend who is a young earth creationist. He’s one of the smartest people I know in many, many ways. His view, was that you could remove everything from public education that conflicted with young earth creationism and still have a good education. This would reduce the conflict religious people feel at sending their kids to heathen schools and make the world a better place.

My view was that the age of the earth (and the universe) is a basic premise, on which many other things depend. If the universe is 6000 to 10000 years old, real geology can’t be taught, the speed of light and the size of the universe can’t be taught, and much of physics must be ignored. While I’ve become more aware of and somewhat more sympathetic to religious parents concerns, I’m firmly convinced that keeping faith and public education separate is the best way to be fair to everyone. My opinion is that their (fundamentalist) teaching makes the world a worse place, filled with intolerant people used to twisting facts to fit their world view, and feeling entitled to ignore everyone else’s views.

In a graphic from yesterday the New York Times magazine discusses America’s view of what happens after death. According to a 2002 pool, ten percent of us believe “we return to earth in different form”, twenty four percent believe “the soul lives in a different place, determined by past actions”, forty eight percent believe “we go to heaven or hell, depending on confession of sins” and “accepting Jesus” and ten percent believe “there is no life.” (Hmm. That adds up to only ninety two percent. I’d like to hear what got lumped into the miscellaneous category. Are there many mothership believers?) Of the other responses I’m thinking that the twenty four percent and the forty eight percent should be added together as weaker and stronger versions of “heaven and hell” believers. So that’s seventy two percent roughly in accordance with Christianity.

What’s interesting to me is how this matches other results. In the “Religion in the United States” wikipedia entry it says:

80% of the U.S. is Christian and 15% do not adhere to a religion. Other religions comprise 5% of the U.S. population. According to the CIA World Factbook, the U.S. is 78% Christian and 10% no religion, while other religions comprise 12% of the U.S. population. In descending order, the largest identified religious groups are Protestant (52%); Roman Catholic (24%); Mormon (2%); Buddhist (2%); Jewish (1%); and Muslim (1%).^[2]

So there’s both gross agreement with the 2002 poll and interesting disagreement. Ten percent of people identify with no religion, and ten percent don’t believe in an afterlife. That’s seems consistent. Now let’s add up Protestants, Catholics , Muslim and Jewish believers. We get seventy eight percent. Yet only seventy two percent of the 2002 poll respondents accept even the proposition of a heaven or hell afterlife. That’s almost twenty million people who don’t accept a pretty basic dogma from their professed canon. There’s clearly confusion among believers about what they believe.

I’d like to better understand these numbers and their implications. Do these differences help identify hidden non-believers? Confused people? Polling errors? Of those who believe in afterlife (apparently about 80%) what does that mean? What do people really believe about an afterlife, and why do they believe it? What mechanisms do they attribute to the continuity of identity. Is it entirely magic? Is there some personality substrate that’s not visible to science? Is it just not thought about? Interestingly, today’s New York Times magazine has an article on the possibility of atheists beliveing in an afterlife. The article is “Eternity for Atheists” and frankly I find it completely uncompelling.

Finally, it’s clear that atheists are a significant segment of society. More than Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Mormon believers added together. Make of that what you will.