The university intelligentsia has a huge influence on the rest of the nation. The universities are the gateway to most of the other power sources:
The intelligentsia seem by and large pretty atheistic, or at least heavily secular with a religious veneer. They are also quite white.
Waitā¦ am I to understand here that the university intelligentsia in the US is interested in ensuring continued white domination?
That would be the implication of what I said, yes. The Darwinian mythos that posits whites as the master race supports their agenda, a variant of Platoās nobel lie from the Republic.
Iām not sure you know much about what is going on in universities.
Well, weird.
I spent most of my life in academia. And it never seemed that the universities had much influence.
If you were right the university would be must more accepting of ID and other forms of non-naturalism.
It doesnāt anymore. Therefore are some churches that practice segregation; however, those days are gone.
People do or do not accept ID. Universities donāt.
I presume that there were faculty at my campus, who accepted ID. Whether there were any such in the Biology department, I would not know. There was very little discussion of such topics in campus discussion forums.
Unless ID is just unconvincing to those not a priori convinced.
I would submit that this was because you were on the āscienceā side of campus rather than the āartsā side. The prevailing ethos on the āartsā side of campus at most universities in North America has been on the left-liberal side since at least the late 1950s, and increasingly so since the 1960s, with the addition of feminist thought in a big way in the 1980s. Thus, the future generations of schoolteachers, lawyers, journalists, judges, politicians, etc. have been educated with a left-liberal-feminist tilt for many years now, and this has very obvious outcomes in the curriculum and culture of the public schools, the decisions of courts, etc. It has also seriously affected the undergraduate curriculum in every Arts discipline, social sciences and humanities, which makes it self-reinforcing social trend.
The color of the people attending church does not really matter. Often it is a matter of where people live. Itās similar to whether someone attends a Pentecostal church service and an Presbyterian service. There are blacks and white who attend both. Other than that, itās merely a way for man, looking from the outside to see how there are outward differences between one and another. There really is no segregation of the races in Bible believing churches, however, as some may claim, as in people are kept from attending or walking into a church. They may, whether intentional or not, be made to feel uncomfortable, or just not be comfortable in that service, which is often a problem in some churches.
There are relatively rich churches and relatively poor churches. There are Asians churches that speak Asian languages. Are they segregated from other believers. No. Some denominations were formed because blacks were not allowed in some congregations, like the Southern Baptist. That has all changed, however, for the most part.
Itās important to not make more of this than what the Bible does, which is easy to do.
There is no real distinction between the races in the Bible, in that God is the same God of all. He makes no distinction in his grace and favor in how we look or the color of our skin. There difference is in how we perceive things, especially in the United States, where there is a heightened sense of what people look like, the color of their skin.
I agree completely. Very smart fellow you are. You are after all, a Young Earth Creationist.
are you kidding me? Where do you live? Do you not know history?
I used to think as you do, but people pointed out to me that while there is no formal separation, there are often stark cultural differences between predominantly white, black or Asian congregations - differences in worship music styles, topics that are worth preaching about, rhetorical style, liturgy, prayer style, and so on. These are all informed by the cultural background of the congregations, and unfortunately cause invisible, unspoken barriers that sometimes make people prefer to worship in the same way that they grew up with.
I think one solution to this is that we have to be brave to explore outside our cultural comfort zones. Try listening to worship music or pastors outside the ones you regularly tune in to. Once in a while, attend a service in a church which is dominated by an ethnicity or culture different from yours. I think weāll be able to see better the amazing range of means by which God works among His people. And perhaps itāll give us new ideas and insight into the shortcomings and limited perceptions of our own cultural backgrounds.
In @LarryIās case, Iām pretty sure he attends an integrated church (black-white) in St Louis. Integration in the midst of segregation, family where before there was none. Cultural difference yes, but also a common society. It not something to be neglected.
What history are you referring to? It sounds like that as an atheist, you may not know a lot of current history in the church.
Yes. I agree. But if you attend a church that prefers high or classical music, God can work through that, with many other musical styles.The problems comes when church style is not sensitive to the poor, the economically disenfranchised, the people of different color and experience and income level. In other words, the people who just got out of jail and lost their jobs and their cars because they were charged with something unjustly and had to spend two weeks in jail. How does the church respond to these people? Does the church invite these people to the luncheon banquet, to use my pastors sermon from the last week.
@LarryIi agree with you on this so much. Thank you.
The question is not whether it is convincing or not, but whether ID is given a fair hearing. I have rarely, if ever, seen this happen.
In science, every idea doesnāt get a fair hearing. It takes more and more evidence and better and better ability to explain until an idea gets even looked at. My view is that ID has gotten way too much of a hearing. From the beginning, ID was invented as a disguise of creationism as science - the wedge document. From there it has gotten nowhere. Young PhDs are wasting their time and talents investigating this rubbish called ID. If you have a faith, use your faith to propel you to do useful science. (Like Dr. Swamidass and Dr. Collins and others) But donāt mix up the two as science is neutral on faith issues.