Maybe so. But the United States has always been divided geographically with how we think and the viewpoints we hold. I live in the “Bible Belt” for a reason. If you are just talking regionally then yeah I’ll grant you many of your points. But you have really made it sound like it’s this big universal problem and I just don’t think that’s the case. Because people like me are the pariahs down here. And I don’t mind that personally. As far as overseas, I have absolutely no idea what it’s like over there.
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New Testament scholars are found in two different kinds of place: Christian religious institutions (seminaries, Bible colleges, universities controlled by churches, etc.); secular departments of religion (or related departments, e.g., departments where Classics and Religion are merged). I don’t know the numbers in each place (i.e., I don’t know if 60% of the world’s NT scholars are found in religious institutions versus 40% in secular institutions, or if some other ratio prevails), but it’s a fair bet that most of the NT scholars in the first kind of place are Christian. In secular religion departments I have seen some New Testament courses taught by Jews. And of course there are New Testament scholars who are apostate Christians, like Bart Ehrman. But probably the majority are at least nominally Christian. Certainly many of them are on the liberal side of Christianity, and increasingly, a feminist focus is present, or various political/social angles, e.g., anti-war or anti-capitalism. I would estimate that the number of NT scholars in secular religion departments who subscribe to traditional Nicene orthodoxy is not high. I’d be surprised if it hit even 50%. But I have no survey data. It would be interesting if it existed.
No more reasonable than it would be to ask whether this is, rather, a reflection of the anti-intellectualism that has been rampant among conservatives for some time now.
Or that it might be an indication that liberalism entails a better grasp of reality than does conservatism.
The possibilities are many. You seem to have your own personal favourite explanation. For my part, I would point to the political leanings of the members and supporters of the Discovery Institute and Answers in Genesis. If it turned out, as I suspect, that they are skewed way, way to the right, I would not be in the least surprised or concerned. Quite the opposite. But since you seem to be quite emotionally invested in the well-being of the DI, at least, I have to wonder why you are not regaling us with lengthy diatribes about the lack of political diversity in that particular institution.
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I agree. I’m not insisting there is only one possible explanation. But it is interesting that you don’t seem inclined to even consider the possibility of systemic bias.
Would you be as reluctant to consider the possibility of systemic bias if 100% of the faculty in a department were male, white, and heterosexual? If a department consisted entirely of such people, and continued the practice of hiring only such people over a period of decades, and I said, “There’s no bias; we take applications from everyone, and interview people of all types; it just happens that straight white males consistently meet our rigorous research and teaching requirements better than anyone else,” would you drop all suspicions and say, OK, I won’t question this further? Or would you continue to suspect the existence of an old boys’ network?
I have not been discussing the DI at all in this conversation. I have been discussing universities. Universities are a far more important institution than the DI.
The DI is a voluntary association. I have been talking about publicly funded secular universities, paid for by extracting taxes from citizens. If a bunch of conservative thinkers want to get together on their own dime, and form an institution that they and nobody else pays for, I have no problem with that. If a bunch of liberal thinkers do so, or feminists, or lobbyists for rights for the transgendered, or crusaders for stopping global warming, I have no problem with that either. But an educational institution paid for by the state should not represent the views of only one school of thought found within the state. So, for example, it should not teach that some particular version of feminist theory is correct and that opponents of that feminist theory are wrong, backwards, evil, sexist, etc. It should ensure that both supporters and critics of feminist theory have a place on the faculty.
If a university is entirely funded by private donations and student tuition, the case is entirely different. Then it can hire like-minded faculty and preach a monolithic left-wing, feminist, politically correct orthodoxy if it pleases. I would not object. I just would not attend such an institution, and would not pay money for my children to study there.
I already answered this above. In any case, I’ve had no involvement with those programs of Discovery that advocate right-wing economics. I’ve only been interested in their work on ID.
I’m not so sure of that.
Is the subject matter of philosophy a bunch of facts (or claims of facts)? Or is it methods of inquiry?
I would expect (assuming an appropriate class) that he would present arguments both for and against, and perhaps ask students to evaluate the arguments.
I don’t think that’s true of the universities where I spent most of my time.
That’s probably true. I suspect that most conservatives are not very interested in sociology.
No.
But we are not talking about such personal demographic factors. We are talking about a particular conclusion on a question pertaining to a particular discipline.
It does not in the least concern me that few people in medical faculties endorse homeopathy or caution against the dangers and inefficacy of vaccines. Nor that few New Testament scholars believe that Jesus was a purely mythical figure. I am also completely indifferent to the fact that a mere 25% of philosophers accept or lean towards a Humean view of the laws of nature.
So could you please tell me why I should be any more concerned that philosophers are most likely to be atheists?
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Philosophers are concerned with both contents and method. They discuss subject-matter-- God, the soul, justice, beauty, etc. – and they discuss the critical methods employed to get knowledge of the subject-matter.
Do you think that Russell’s A Free Man’s Worship is some kind of detached piece of ratiocination that has nothing to do with the world view of Bertrand Russell, the man? Do you think that Hume’s writings of religion aren’t influenced in any way by Hume’s inclinations or biases as a man? Do you think that Marx’s theoretical views on dialectical materialism have nothing to do with his personal sense of justice? Do you think that Aristotle’s account of the magnanimous man is not colored by Aristotle’s personal judgments about human excellence? How can the philosopher’s conclusions and his personal aspirations, judgments, etc. not be intertwined?
In contrast, if Lewontin writes a technical paper on genetics, do we need to understand his Marxism to understand why he says the things he does about alleles etc.? If Oppenheimer writes an article on the physics of the hydrogen bomb, do we need to understand Oppenheimer’s views on the rightness of thermonuclear weapons in order to grasp his equations? It seems to be obvious that in science (for the most part, though there are areas of science where this would be contestable, e.g., psychology) the argument can be separated from the subjectivity of the author to a much greater extent than in philosophy. And this makes sense, insofar as philosophy is for the most part concerned with human things, whereas science for the most part is not.
I would expect those to come up only in advanced classes, not in beginning classes. And students usually have more choice on which of the advanced classes they will take.
I’m pretty sure that criticisms of Lewontin, based on his politics, have hit the rumor mill.
But it’s the same reasoning involved. You would not expect, in a world where there was no bias, that a department would eternally consist of only white males. That contrast between expectation and reality would awaken your suspicions. And rightly so.
Similarly, one would not expect, in an academic department where only research and teaching ability were used to decide who to hire, that a nearly monolithic philosophical orientation would prevail throughout the department. In a department deliberately blind to philosophical orientation, and focused only on merit, both conservative and liberal, feminist and antifeminist, capitalist and socialist, would end up on the faculty – unless some people on the faculty were keeping track of who was conservative, liberal, feminist, socialist, etc., and using that information to steer the hiring in a certain direction. So if you saw a department that looked philosophically near-monolithic, your alarm bells should go off.
I suggest this principle: “Hire the best scholar. Don’t even try to find out whether he’s religiously politically or socially conservative or liberal. Just review the quality of his research, find out what he can competently teach and if it fits your department’s teaching needs, and base your decision on those things alone.” Would you agree that this is the only principled way to conduct a hiring for a university faculty position?
I have not advocated hiring people like that. Further, we are talking about departments of philosophy, English, religion, political science, etc., not of medicine. You keep bringing your personal professional frame of reference to this discussion. You appear not to be even trying to expand your imagination to think about a part of the university that operates very differently from the part that you inhabit. Departments of religion and philosophy are trying to do very different things from departments of medicine.
What constitutes a good education in medicine involves learning tested and approved practices based on the most recent scientific knowledge. What constitutes a good education in the arts subjects is an expansion of the intellect and of the sympathies by exposure to very different points of view, which one has to wrestle with. Whereas in medicine an endless debate between a variety of theories that can never settle on a standard treatment practice would be counterproductive, in the arts it’s precisely the ability of the student to weigh and balance a large number of alternate possibilities that one is trying to cultivate. If medical schools were still debating between modern medicine and the four humors, they could not function, and so there has to be some closure, some decision about what is good medicine and bad medicine. But that’s the last thing one should ever do in the Arts subjects, try to close down debate and insist that one and only one approach can lead to truth. So there must be diversity of viewpoints on the Arts faculty, or Arts education can’t do what it has to do.
I am not of course advocating that every opinion on every subject must have a faculty member. Not only would that be impossible, it would not even be desirable. There is no need to have a faculty member, for example, specifically to teach von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods? theory in ancient history or archaeology. But on major questions, diversity of educated opinion must be represented. If some faculty members in a religion or philosophy department are preaching that there is no God, there must be some others who are available to give students the other side. If some faculty members are preaching that morality is bunk, there must be some faculty members available to deny that morality is bunk. There is no way to achieve a high-quality philosophical or religious education without balance of this kind. Without balance, university departments of such subjects are nothing but propaganda centers for whatever the predominant faculty prejudices are.
!?!?
Almost all of these ideas have been or could easily be discussed in beginning philosophy classes. But in any case, your question was about what philosophers do, not about what levels different things could be taught at. You seemed to be denying that in philosophy the person and the ideas are closely intertwined. My point was that they are very closely intertwined.
I have no idea how this responds to my point. Do we need to understand Lewontin’s Marxism to read his technical genetics papers, or not?
So are you going to provide any evidence of this alleged “nearly monolithic philosophical orientation”? All you have shown is that most philosophers are atheists.
Yes.
You have provided no evidence that this is not how it’s done. Do you plan to?
So, again, what is your evidence that this is not the case? Are you presuming that a philosopher who personally finds atheism the more convincing position will “preach that there is no god”, rather than present the historic and current arguments made for against the existence of God in a fair and objective manner?
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As I indicated above, documenting it with statistics, department by department, would take me more time than I have right now, as I have a contract to finish working on. But in principle it can all be documented. And in fact, it has been documented, in many books by Jonathan Haidt and many others, which doubtless no one here will be interested in reading.
Good. For once we agree on something.
My goal in introducing the subject (which I introduced not here, but in a throwaway comment to a YEC, I think Ben Kissling, on another thread) was simply to agree with the YEC when he said that YEC was not a tolerated view in current universities. I added that not just YEC but conservative religious and philosophical views of any kind are not well received in most modern university Arts departments. I never intended it as a thesis I would have to defend – I simply offered it as an observation based on 40 years in the Arts subjects. But then all the usual suspects jumped on me, demanding proof. And I certainly don’t have time to study the internal behavior of hundreds and hundreds of Arts departments and report on them all. If people want proof, they can read Haidt and dozens of others whose books are on Amazon. However, I did take the time to look up the philosophy thing, in order to refute one claim of Art Hunt’s.
The atheist biologists here have made it very clear that they will not take my 40 years of experience teaching Arts subjects at various schools as giving me the relevant experience to make reasonably accurate generalizations. If you made a generalization about, say, political strife within Psychology programs in Canada, I would in most cases simply take your word for it, working on the assumption that you talk to the relevant people fairly often and would know what you were talking about. I wouldn’t say: “I don’t believe there is any such political strife. Prove it! Get me some hard numbers!” But the assent I would accord to you is not going to be accorded to me here. You surely know that. So fine. If people don’t believe me, they don’t believe me. Why should I care? I know what I know, with certainty in the case of Religious Studies, and with near-certainty for several other Arts subjects. It is nothing new that I can’t persuade atheist biologists of things, and I have no intention of wasting further hours of my life trying.
No, I don’t presume that will always happen, though it does happen sometimes. Nor am I primarily concerned about philosophy departments, as much as religion departments. When I started in out religion departments as an undergrad, 45 years ago, they were balanced places, with a range of positions on social, political, cultural, and religious questions. You could be a conservative, a liberal, a Marxist, a Thomist, a neo-Platonist, an atheist, a mystical flower child, a pantheist, a Buddhist, an orthodox Trinitarian, a Jungian, an agnostic, whatever; the faculty were roughly balanced across the spectrum. There was no political correctness, no campus policing of language, there was the free debate of ideas. 45 years later this is no longer the case. Departments have shifted far to the left-liberal-feminist end of the spectrum, and conservative representatives of Christianity, Judaism, and other traditions are very hard to find. You’ll find radical feminists, peaceniks, eco-feminists, deconstructionists, animal rights activists, social justice warriors of all kinds. The traditional scholar who had no social axe to grind, who just had a love of theoretical understanding for its own sake, or who wanted to compare and contrast the doctrines of the various traditions in order to determine which ones might be more true, has almost vanished. Almost everyone has a political or social axe to grind, or some social grievance group that they champion, and it comes out in the kind of “research” they do as well as in their teaching.
One exception is some of the Bible scholars who, by long Teutonic intellectual habit being somewhat anally retentive, are still into pedantic textual scholarship in almost an obsessive way. There is still some scholarly rigor there, and a certain Old World scorn for “social relevance” courses. But even there, the need is felt to offer courses on “the Bible and feminist theory” or the like. From the point of view of a traditional religion scholar, what religion departments peddle now is at least half left-wing, pop-culture, sub-scholarly crap. But because of the hiring practices, these people keep hiring more like themselves. Traditionalists (and I don’t mean YECs, I mean just plain people who have an old fashioned idea of high academic standards and studying classic religious texts and issues) have trouble getting a foot in the door. The bias is now systemic, and hardened.
I don’t intend to defend this further here; I’m merely stating what has happened, in agreement with many other authors who have noted similar things happening in English, Classics, Philosophy and other departments. While science and medicine have continued to go on in the way that you guys like, the Arts have decayed into something academically pathetic and highly politically slanted. You science guys tend not to notice it, because you don’t have to live in it, the way people who lived on Park Avenue tended not to notice the conditions in the Bowery, because they didn’t have to live in it. No one is ever going to tell a guy applying for a position in Electrochemistry that he also has to be able to teach a course on “Chemistry and Feminist Theory”, but if you want to teach Philosophy of Religion in many religion departments nowadays, you’ll find such rubbish (e.g., “The successful candidate must be able to teach a course on Feminist Theory and Religion”) attached to your job description. You folks in the sciences have no idea how lucky you are. That’s all I can say.
This conversation is dipping into compulsive territory. Does it need to be closed?
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Close it whenever you like, Joshua. It started when I made a throwaway remark to a YEC on another thread, never dreaming the remark would be taken up and hammered with demands for proof. So all of this page, plus the last part of the previous thread that led to it, are one long digression. But that’s not unusual around here. 
Just trying to help you out . Seems like wheels are spinning…
You’re a kind soul, Joshua. 
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