professor-frink

Hey GifSters, it’s been a while. I’ve missed all of your blasphemy like crazy, but I’ve been incredibly busy for the last few months and have been neglectful of you all. In a nutshell, I began teaching at the university I’m getting my Masters Degree from and am still taking classes. Compound that with some various family issues and whatnot and you get an absent King Retard. But no more!!! So enough about me, let’s get on to the atheism!

Today I’d like to share some reflections and observations I’ve made about the religious beliefs of college freshmen at a fairly liberal Southern Californian public university. First, a little background. I teach freshman composition, so all of the writing is essay writing and all of the reading I assigned was non-fiction. I primarily used a textbook, but I also gave out some handouts, notably from Demon Haunted World. The second essay I assigned this semester was to analyze an argument made by another author. Not to make their own arguments, simply to analyze. Discuss why an argument is valid or invalid, how the argument is effective or ineffective, etc. One of the five essays they had to choose from to analyze was titled “Do Kids Need Religion?” Now, the author of this piece was discussing religion in general, of course it always seems to come back to xianity. So, on to the observations.

1. Freshmen seem incapable of distinguishing religion from xianity.

My students seemed to be pretty accepting of other religions, but whenever talking about the need for children to have some exposure to religion, they invariably used xian imagery. They would describe images of crosses, bibles, ministers/priests, etc. Now I realize you need to go with what you know, but most of them would pay lip service to the variety of religious belief out there and then wholly ignore it.

2. Given any opportunity, fundie students will witness to you.

Keep in mind, the assignment was to analyze an argument. It seemed that my students with any kind of religious bent took the opportunity, and hurt their grade, to ignore the parameters of the assignment and instead tell me all about why they are religious. No analysis, just how they couldn’t imagine a life without their awesome church and how gawd is a part of everything they do. A lot of them were shocked during conferences when I explained to them why they scored so poorly on that essay because they ignored the assignment and I could care less what they believe.

3. After hearing all about “liberal education,” xian students come in ready to fight.

True, higher education, especially English departments, tend to be a little more liberal than mainstream society because the main enterprise is critical thinking. When questioning things, you tend to be less conservative. I’m definitely very liberal, but I try not to force my beliefs on my students. That said, that’s what everyone has warned them about. A lot of religious students came in expecting to be force fed gay marriage, evolution, and godlessness. worked it in, but very subtely. Early on though, they were ready to jump all over me and were disappointed by my facade of neutrality.

4. The more religious, the lower the quality the writing is.

“Children are so innocent.” By far, this was my favorite quote of the semester and became my office version of “Oh, how the fire crackled.” One of my colleague’s students wrote this describing an ad with three little girls praying. The whole paper had that smarmy, glassy-eyed tone. It seems the more religious the student is, the worse the writing becomes.

5. Religious students have no concept of why someone wouldn’t be religious.

Much like our religious trolls around here, religious students seem to have absolutely no concept of why someone would reject belief in invisible sky daddies. Any time they would address non-believers, they would do so in the tired and false terms of anger at gawd, not going to church out of laziness, or reactions to scandals, such as priest molesting children. Many of them stared blankly at me when I explained that some people simply did not believe in gawd and felt no anger or resentment towards a being they did not believe existed. That one always seemed to throw them for a loop.