The question is why you didn’t say more in the other thread I referred to, when your remarks would have been on-topic. I could have used your help.
I completely agree with these two statements.
Did you listen to what Buggs actually said at the end of the lecture? As I read it, he was not asking biologists to refrain from expressing ideas (such as evolution) that some Christian students (such as YECs) might find “uncomfortable or challenging to their own beliefs.” He was asking them to be careful not to make “digs” at Christian students that might make them disinclined to pursue biological studies (anticipating that they would be the target of more such digs all through grad school and probably beyond). That’s a reasonable request.
In biology as in other subjects, there are a few professors who enjoy making students of religious faith feel small and stupid. I’m a big boy, and can take such digs against me when they are offered here, but how would I feel if I were a student, eager to get into grad school or med school, and I felt my professor (who controls my grades and my potential letters of recommendation) was targeting me (or people like me) with aggressive, taunting remarks? I wouldn’t like it. And I shouldn’t have to take it. There’s a huge difference between a professor saying that in his view as a scientist, Adam and Eve couldn’t have lived only 6,000 years ago because radioactive dating shows people were around for much longer than that, and a professor saying or suggesting that anyone who believes in religion is brain-dead. Christian students should accept the first sort of statement from profs without whining about religious discrimination, but they shouldn’t have to endure the second sort of statement.
Assuming he wasn’t flat out lying there, as he was thru much of the rest of the lecture.
It is quite interesting to observe which points you respond to in this discussion, and which you assiduously avoid or misconstrue. Particularly when so many of the latter pertain directly to what you initially said was one of the “interesting” points of Buggs’s lecture (if it had been true).
Such as by calling them by pronouns they had expressly asked not to be used, for example?
This and other such details would require a separate topic to discuss. I suggest a new topic, along the lines of “When, If Ever, Should the Classroom Expression of Opinion by University/College Teachers Be Restricted?” I warn you, however, not to expect much traffic under such a topic. I previously posted a piece praising Jerry Coyne’s view on freedom of academic expression, here:
My post got three “Likes” (including, surprisingly, one from a poster who normally reflexively disagrees with whatever I write), but not a single comment. So it might end up being just a discussion between the two of us – not an ideal outcome. But you are welcome to try, if you like, or if you like, I can start it up.
In any case, what is not off-topic here is what Buggs said in the last few minutes of his lecture about hostile atmospheres in some biology classes. I mentioned that, when I introduced this topic, as one of the two things I was interested in talking about; predictably, most of the comments have been about the other subject. Sigh.
Well, I’ve just liked it, too, and you might think that I am also reflexively against whatever you say.
The issue I have with things like this often is specificity. I certainly agree that religious students should not be abused for their religion as such, but what constitutes abuse for their religion and what constitutes a professor simply standing up for science can be a surprisingly contentious ground. Nobody should expect to meet with a friendly reception if he comes to a biology class spouting creationist views, and there may be a spillover, once that can of worms is opened. When it is claimed that professors are abusing religion, specific quotes, and specific contexts, are very important.
I certainly share Coyne’s concern for academic freedom. “Woke” has a variety of meanings and so I cannot say unqualifiedly that wokeness is bad, but there certainly are some forms and aspects of it that are.
If a biology professor finds himself attacked by a wild-eyed fundamentalist who is clearly unwilling to discuss scientific data, I can understand why he might overreact in some cases. But I think Buggs is talking about not a momentary show of irritation against isolated religious dogmatists, but a more systemic show of disdain for Christianity or the Bible or people who think there is a God. I’ve seen that disdain in atheist professors of religious studies whose world view is very much that of a Dawkins or a Coyne, and I have every reason to believe that at least some biologists would enjoy taking periodic shots at religious students in their class. (Not personal shots, usually, but general remarks about the stupidity of their religion.)
Remember also that Buggs is teaching in the UK, a society very unlike that of the USA; regular church attendance in the UK is only something like 6%, last I heard, and it’s extremely unlikely that a British biology teacher is going to find his classes full of loud, aggressive Bible-thumpers who challenge him on the age of the earth etc. So if some British profs are dissing religion (and Buggs seems to say they are), I suspect the cause is more often their own personal dislike of religion, not the presence of junior Ken Hams in their classes.
I’m not saying that most biology profs do this; I think the majority steer clear of talking about religion in class. But even a small minority can cause a lot of unnecessary hurt and probably do drive at least some bright religious undergrads away from the idea of pursuing graduate work. All Buggs is asking is for biologists of the temperament of Dawkins and Coyne and Myers to restrain themselves in classroom settings, and I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request.
I found the general purport of his remarks clear enough. Especially when he linked to a very particular study about students who hide their faith identity out of fear based on past experience (either their own experience, or that of other students) in biology classes.
He references a study, and even shows the first page of it. That study contains examples, as well as links to many related studies, some of which have more examples. Some of the examples are of insulting or mocking remarks made by profs in class which many classmates laugh at approvingly – which has got to be intimidating for the “in the closet” Christian student in the class. I know you will never accept Buggs’s word that such things happen (he says in the video that he knows of cases himself), and I know you will never accept mine, or that of anyone affiliated with ID, but maybe you will believe examples when they are gathered by trained social scientists. If not, well, then, nothing anyone could say could convince you that it sometimes happens.
Here is his reference:
You can track down the chain of studies from there.
It is an interesting paper, and I find it’s conclusions quite plausible.
One theme that is repeated thru the paper is that many of the respondents feel they need to dispel the notion they deny evolution by virtue of their Christian faith. So there is no little irony in Buggs citing this paper given the role he has played in perpetuating that stereotype.
Another theme repeated in it, and in some of the other studies referenced in the paper, is that there are biology professors who make “digs” in class against people with belief in the Bible, or Christianity, or God. And that was my point, that Buggs wasn’t just “making stuff up”; this is a phenomenon that can be observed in science classrooms.
I’m not saying most biology teachers do this, but the point is that no biology teacher should be doing it. If they want to argue that the earth is billions of years old, that’s fine; they don’t have to go on to say that anyone who doesn’t accept that is a moron or unfit to study science. Kurt Wise, a YEC, was praised by Gould himself as an excellent graduate student, so obviously Gould thought it was possible not to personally accept an old earth and yet have an excellent grasp of evolutionary theory. There is simply no need for the belittling and sarcastic language. Just teach the currently accepted theory, and make sure the students can correctly answer questions on it on their tests and exams, and keep the culture-war comments out of the classroom. (And of course students should do that, too, restricting their comments and questions to ones that help them gain an understanding of the theory, not standing up and denouncing the biology teacher as a godless atheist for endorsing evolution.)
Did you read all the stories provided by the students? There are definitely some “shots” recorded there. Perhaps you read too quickly; it’s a long article. Or perhaps you are objecting to my phase “bully pulpit” or perhaps you think the attacks weren’t on “Christianity” per se but only on some versions of it. I can adjust my wording to take into account such objections, but the point is that some of the things said would be bound to make some Christian students feel they were in a hostile environment. That was Buggs’s point.
If you want to say these things don’t happen very often, you are probably right (and I already admitted that), but if you’re saying they have never happened, there is no point conversing with you. I’ve talked to hundreds of people across the continent who say they have, and I don’t think they are all liars or that they are all misinterpreting neutral professorial remarks as hostile ones. But believe what you will.
Yes. You are trying to use a reference to support a statement that it doesn’t support. Perhaps you just stated your point badly. If you would like to retract your claim or modify it to be substantially different, you might find a statement that could be supported. Notice that most of the stories aren’t even about professors but about other grad students. Nor do I see any examples of professors “using their position as a bully pulpit”. At this point you can’t be considered a reliable witness.
There are always going to be some, as in a few, adversarial and even toxic biology teachers, who are fully aware and have no plans to alter course. The department head will not intervene either. Generally, this will fall within the reasonable limits of faculty academic freedom, so I do not think much will change in such individual cases. This is where affirmation from the church and Christian varsity organizations can support students. Unfortunately, in many cases the lectern and the pulpit end up reinforcing the same message - that science and Christianity are incompatible.
At one point it referred to “lab colleagues.” We certainly didn’t call each other “lab colleagues” when I was an undergrad (we said “lab partners”; “colleagues” was a stuffy word that I only heard applied to professors, by other professors), so presumably it was referring to either professors or graduate students. Let’s say you’re right and it was grad students. Let’s say all the hostile references to religion in that article were derived from grad students. OK, I can easily modify the statement to say that the ethos in biology programs is sometimes hostile to Christianity. So I accept your observations, and you get another point.
But I referred in an earlier post not only to that one article but to other articles linked to it. I followed up some of those, and then further articles linked to them. I found definite references to professors expressing negatives about students who held Christian beliefs. So sometimes it’s snickering fellow undergrads (an example of that in the article you looked at, I think, or if not definitely in one of the linked articles); sometimes it’s grad students (in the article you looked at); and sometimes it’s profs. The point is that there is an ethos in biology courses and biology departments that is sometimes (not uniformly, but sometimes) hostile to belief in God and to Christian beliefs in particular. And this ethos can deter students from going beyond the Bachelor’s degree in biology. So Buggs is right, but he shouldn’t have limited the deterring influences to professors alone. However, to be fair to him, the examples he had in mind may have all been professors.
You’re probably right, most of the time, but I believe that there would be at least some cases where repeated complaints of students about hostile comments coming from the same prof would eventually cause the department head (or perhaps a Dean above him) to at least have an informal chat with the offending professor, to see if the behavior couldn’t be somewhat modified. At least, that’s what should happen, if the prof was constantly making demeaning remarks that were totally unnecessary to convey his biological point.
I followed on of the cited references and found these, among others:
Michael: “In high school I was given [an anti‐evolution book] called: ‘Evolution: The Fossils Say No,’ I looked at that and talked about it with my pastor… I had this struggle with that… It was a process, but I’d say by the time I was a freshman in college, I was not a skeptic about evolution.”
Felicia: “I was in college… and I was a freshman and it was ‘this is what evolution is and if you don’t accept it then it’s not okay and you can’t accept this and religion. They’re incompatible.’ It was very clear to me from the first time that I ever heard about evolution, because I never heard about in high school, it was very clear to me that I had to pick.”
Bill: “[My] Sunday school class was basically trying to convince people that what the Bible says is literally true, and that there’s evidence for a 6,000 year old Earth. Every time I would try to bring up evidence to the contrary, people would look at me like I had 3 heads… I was eventually told by one of the pastoral staff that I could no longer bring up my opposing opinions. That really hurt me. That was a real struggle for me, because these are supposed to be my brothers and sisters, and they wouldn’t even listen to what I had to say… that was a very formative time in my faith journey with regard to evolution.”
Anna: “One time I was in an evolution class and my professor was an unapologetic atheist and very vocal about his views. It was very demeaning and just did not respect any religion… I remember thinking ‘this class does not have to be like this, this class could be better.’”
So while there are cases of bias against Christianity, there are also cases of Christians being biased against evolution/biology. I think that by focussing solely on cases of the former and not even mentioning cases of the latter, Buggs (and Eddie) are showing an unnecessary degree of bias.
Do you think mathematics professors should be as sensitive and deferential to students who insist that the value of Pi is 11?
I see. So you believe a psychology professor should not be criticizing his students who want to be referred to by pronouns not specific to the gender they were assigned at birth and, instead, he should simply defer to their request. Correct?
I actually find it quite plausible that biologists will make snarky comments about Christians since their entire profession is under a persistent concerted attack by prominent, if minority, elements of the Christian faith. These biologists, if they exist, should know better than to paint all Christians with the same brush.
That said, it remains quite disingenuous of Buggs to posit this as primarily a problem of anti-Christian bias in academic science and completely ignore the major role he and his fellow neo-creationists have played in fostering this stereotype. And don’t be fooled for a moment into believing his primary concern is for greater fairness and inclusivity in academia. The narrative that academia has a deeply embedded anti-religious bias is one of the chief talking points of the ID movement.