tecoyah

There has been a marked increase in people leaving the fold of organized religion, and a part of this can be seen in the houses of Higher Education. Some of the highly faithful mindset feel this is due to an organized attack on Religion, or a result of corrupt society. While others see it as a natural result of gaining knowledge of the world we live in, and a better understanding of Reality as the pieces come together in the process of education.

Whats Your Take on It?

“The trial everyone has heard about – but most people underrate – is the sheer spiritual disorientation of the modern campus,” wrote J. Budziszewski in a Focus on the Family magazine article.

“Methods of indoctrination are likely to include not only required courses, but also freshman orientation, speech codes, mandatory diversity training, dormitory policies, guidelines for registered student organizations and mental health counseling,” Budziszewski added.

“[T]he modern university, having lost its moral convictions, has attached itself to relativistic doctrines such as tolerance and diversity, which mean, in practice, tolerance of anything but Biblical faith and traditional morality.”

http://www.afajournal.org/2006/august/0806colleges.html

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aberkok

My completely unspectacular take on it is that it's a bit of both. Especially within the people I know, many aren't religious. Some who were brought up religious are no longer, and some who were very dedicated to the book made a big u-turn. The vast majority of these friends and colleagues I know from post-secondary institutions, so at first the idealist in me hopes people are arriving at these choices logically and deliberately.

The skeptic in me sees many of these same friends and colleagues as being without a sense of morality or tenacity. No direction or mission in life. Maybe they're just too lazy to follow a religion?

I think maybe Tom Cruise has done a lot to deter people from organized religion.

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Zeraph

I think it's a natural result of gaining knowledge. Generally the more I learn the more absurd religions seems. Higher education teaches (though it could be better at it) critical thinking skills. And when critical thinking is applied to religion, it just falls apart. There are of course good aspects to religion, but one of the things most tend to realize is that you don't need religion to have those good aspects. You can seperate them from the bad, so who would want the bad when one can have all the good?

Mark23

I agree with Zeraph. Religion is an ignorant person's way of explaining how the world works. Thousands of years ago when people heard thunder and saw lightening, they attributed it to the gods because they didn't understand it. Nowadays, the only thing science cannot fully explain is why we are here on earth, and so religion is being used to fill the gap.

The reason more and more people are leaving organised religion is simple - more and more people are advancing to higher education. With education comes the ability to critically think, and any religious doctrine's worst enemy is critical thinking. Religion almost relies on the ignorance and the blind, senseless following of the masses to propagate.

In the future we will hopefully see more and more people start to think rationally, and, more importantly, for themselves.

nikkiana

I can only speak from my own limited experience, but I honestly feel that the marked increase of young people (teens and twenty-somethings) leaving has less to do with higher education than it does the failings of the church (universal).

Let me stop to make mention that I'm saying this as a person who was not raised in a Christian home, converted to Christianity in the summer between my junior and senior year of high school and then left the church three years later angry and disenfranchised. I would not consider myself a Christian today, but rather a person who has an unexplainable draw to the teachings of Jesus.

From my experience, there are four prodominant behavior/belief patterns that seem to manifest themselves among the church going teen/twenty-something age group. For clarity, I'll call them the the Pretenders, Faithful Believers, the Apologists, the Questioners.

The Pretenders are the people who have absolutely no interest in becoming a Christian despite the fact they attend church. They find the idea deplorable. Usually, the only reason they attend church in the first place is because their parents make them, and often they "pretend" to be Christians just to keep older Christians in the church off their case. They've made up their minds that they're not ever stepping foot in a church again after they've left home well before ever leaving home and it's usually a very shallow-minded decision. Often, their main reason for leaving is "My parents think it's great, therefore it must be a load of crap."

The Faithful Belivers are the direct opposite of the Pretenders... They're generally not very interested in deep theological matters, but rather than leaving the church they're quite content to stay where they are. They're generally passified by the answer "Because God said so." to difficult questions and they're most likely to give you the answer "Because God said so" to tough questions. They're generally more interested in whether or not their peers are having sex so they can use peer pressure to stop them and the latest CD by <insert popular Christian band here> and they generally spend more time making fun of the "stupidity" of non-Christians.

The Apologists are the folks who have actually put a little bit of thought into their position and have come to the conclusion that God is great and his message needs to be shared. Apologists are often very enthusiastic about their faith, and LOVE discussion. Sometimes their enthusiasm gets the better of them and drives other people away, but in general, they mean well and want to be educated about what they're talking about. They have a very optimistic view of the church, despite it's problems.

The Questioners are also usually a very intelligent, thoughtful bunch.... but they're the pessimists. They're plagued by the questions that most of the other demographics don't bother to address... For example, "Does God exist?" and "What if we're wrong?" They find themselves easily frusterated with any sort of wrong-doing with the church and with Christians that give them answers to tough questions that are sub-par because they feel that dumb answers insult their intelligence ("Because God said so." is NOT an acceptable answer with Questioners). This group generally has an unexplainable draw to Christianity and has a very difficult time letting go...

Personally, I think the church blames the loss of the Pretenders to higher education when the reality is they lost them when they were sitting in the church pews.

They often lose the Questioners because they get too frusterated with other Christians that they just can't take it anymore and have to leave to retain any semblence of sanity. Questioners usually leave angry and disenfranchised, but also feeling like failures because they didn't really want to leave the faith entirely.

Apologists generally stay the course, so to speak... However, Apologists sometimes fall victim to the jealousy and scorn of older Christians. Apologists, generally are the enthusiastic ones, and in their enthusiasm, they bring new ideas and possible methods of doing things to the table. While it's largely dependant on the specific church, many Apologist's enthusiasm is shot down by older Christians in favor of doing things their way because it's the way things have always been done. If this happens to an Apologist often enough, he may become a Questioner.

Faithful Believers generally don't stray because they don't really think about it to begin with... If someone challenges, they say "Because God said so" and leave it at that. Attacks from the outside generally don't bother Faithful Believers that much...

The two groups who are probably the most "at risk" of leaving the church after being in acedemia are the two think-tanks... Questioners and Apologists. They often are slightly emotionally effected by any attacks on Christianity by outsiders... How they're effected depends greatly on the person, in my opinion... but I honestly feel that any deviance from the church is probably going to come from problems within the church rather than challenges from outside.

Mark23

There is definitely some overlap here. Let's divide the "pretenders" into two groups.

The pretenders that are in church because they want to please older people and the pretenders that are in church because they are shallow and want to rebel against their parents are different people. The former pretenders are actually more like questioners in disguise; wheras the latter are just as ignorant (and shallow) as the "faithful believers", as you say. In fact, I would most probably expect to find this brand of pretenders outside the church smoking cigarettes, rather than sitting in it.

I wasn't too sure what you meant by the "apologists" falling victim to older christians. What group are the older christians in? Are they apologists who have survived the christian "system" without getting "put down" and becoming questioners? Also, where does all this tie in with education? You mention the "think-tanks" leaving the church after academia, but the very essence of your argument is that education has little to do with it.

Personally, I would look at things more simply.

Firstly, there are the people who do not want to learn, do not want to think for themselves, and will always be willfully ignorant. Nothing can change them. What they believe is probably a direct result of their upbringing be it christian or muslim. The same thing unites these two groups of "faithful believers" and "pretenders", their ability for non-thinking.

The second group are quite mediocre; they are fairly open-minded, but have an extraordinary ability to become absolutely brainwashed. They will question everything else except their religious belief. These kinds of people are very common, and usually are the sort of christians that I deal with on a day to day basis. It seems they are just able to shut out anything negative when it interferes with their faith.

The third group are able to think for themselves. To be as honest as possible with regards to religion, anyone who thinks things through properly will be far from impressed. The only way objective, free thinking people would be religious is through ignorance. That is why I believe that education has a big part to play.

If people are educated, then ordinary, intelligent people can learn how to critically think, read the scientific literature and do away with things like faith once and for all. The church hasn't changed in centuries, but the education system has. More people are being educated, we are learning more through science every day, and less people are going to church. It has to be education; if not then what else?

nikkiana

I'm not denying that education plays a role, but I personally feel that emotion ends up being the deciding factor in the "should I stay or should I go" decision. Most of the people I've known (including myself) who have left the church have not left based on dogmatic issues. We have left the church because we're emotionally exausted by it.

I want to backtrack a moment to explain my comments about whom I refer to as the Apologists being eaten alive by older Christians...

It has been my humble observation that in many (protestant) churches in America, there is a certain progression of things that much happen before older adults in the church consider someone in their twenty-somethings an adult. To be considered a "real adult", you must either A. get married AND procreate, B. become a minister, or C. turn age 40.

Otherwise, you are a "young adult" and "young adults" and their ideas are often not taken very seriously, thus many feel that they are second rate citizens of their community because of their age. Why exactly this happens, I'm not entirely sure.

I can see your point about the "apologists" possibly being suseptable to "Christian brainwashing", and I fully think that's possible and I definately have known fairly intelligent people who definately have fallen into that category, but I've also known quite a few people who happened upon their beliefs quite rationally, aren't terribly plagued by some of the deep dark questions that "questioners" are, but still question their faith as well as the beliefs of those who surround them, and meanwhile they're not obnoxious about the fact that they believe what they do. I don't really find much mediocre about that.

While I do believe education and critical thinking are extremely important, I do not believe that they will ever eliminate faith.

Faith is a broader concept than "is there a God?" or "is there not a God?" Regardless of what your stance is in a higher power, that doesn't mean you don't have faith in something. Science is certainly a very faith based field. Just take a look at how many things are scientific theories versus how many things are scientific law. Isn't there some element of faith involved that certain theories we've all been taught over the years are true?

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Ch'i

I think it comes from what seems to be a trend towards disassociation from inherent traditional ideas. Although education could be part of it.

Mark23

The word "faith", takes on an almost exclusive meaning in religious context that cannot be applied to scientific matters.

You mention that everyone has faith in something, and you are right. I have faith, for example, that the earth is going to continue to spin on its axis, and that as a result the sun will come up tomorrow morning. The difference between this type of faith and religious "faith", is that this faith is based on evidence.

There is nothing irrational about having faith in something if its based on evidence. There is everything irrational about believing something is true just because it must be so, because a pastor has told me, because my parents have told me, because a holy book has told me, etc.

It is important to realise the different contexts of the word faith. Religious faith is the belief in something in the <b>absence</b> of evidence, or often in the face of evidence - as we see with young earth creationists. That is entirely different from having faith that your car will start if it is brand new and has just been filled with petrol.

Yes, faith is a broader concept of whether there is a god or not. Yet only when used in a colloquial sense. Religious faith is something quite different.

And I must disagree with you on science being a "faith based field". On the contrary, science is an evidence-based field. When I believe something in the light of evidence, it is exactly the antagonist of religious faith. When people look at geology, at biology, at history and astronomy and conclude that the world is 6,000 years old and created by a supernatural force, they are either willfully ignorant, or stupid, or both.

There aren't any other options.

As for education never eliminating faith, well I agree with you. You are right to say it will never eliminate faith, but that is because we will continue to have ignorant and stupid people in our society, and they aren't going to go away.

asaris

Unless you have a rather narrow-minded view of evidence, Mark23, you're just wrong. Religious faith is certainly based on evidence; look at the Summa Contra Gentiles, for example, or Descartes' Meditations. You might not find it particularly convincing evidence, but many people smarter than you or I have found it convincing, and so calling them stupid and ignorant only reveals your own ignorance and bigotry.

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Mark23

Asaris,

Firstly, let me point out that my views on evidence say nothing of whether I am right or wrong. You seem to be implying that if I somehow had a broad-minded view on evidence I would be right.

Secondly, it is perfectly reasonable to point out ignorance and stupidity in other people. I hear this sort of thing all the time, that saying someone is stupid by some peculiar default makes that person stupid. This is simple, straightforward nonsense and I cannot see where you are coming from at all. It is perfectly reasonable to point out negative character traits in other people if they are true.

In addition to this, people in the 16th and 17th century <i>were</i> ignorant. Of course they were, and for good reasons too. They lived almost 300 years ago! The scientific method as we know it today did not even exist before the 19th century, so one can hardly expect people of those times to be anywhere nearly as well-informed as modern people of today are. Summa Contra Gentiles was written in the 13th century.

As for stupidity, for heaven's sake look around you. Let's not be so politically correct or respectful as to cloud the truth. It is also important to note that I am not implying that everyone is stupid; quite a large number of people are, but not everyone.

Thirdly, there is much modern objection and criticism of both the texts you mention, in particular Descartes' work; I see little point in going into this at any depth, but a quick internet search will suffice if you wish to learn more.

And finally, you seem to be rather well informed as to both my intelligence and that of Thomas Aquinas, not to mention Descartes. It is not helpful to form arguments based on the intellect of someone you know next to nothing about.

To finish, religious faith is not based on any useful evidence. Ancient, pre-dated texts that have been superceded by modern-day thinking are not evidence for god, whether being read by George W. Bush or Albert Einstein.

If texts like these were even slightly considerable as proof for the existence of god then there would be no controversy in the first place.

filtherton

I don't know why people are leaving organized religion. Maybe higher education has something to do with it. I would guess that the the general trend towards social liberalism has a lot to do with it. Most of the more vocal representatives of christianity in this country are generally associated with more conservative christian sects, sects whose values are completely at odds with the way that most americans live their lives.

I don't think that it has anything to do with the accumulation of knowledge, though. I don't think that americans are really accumulating all that much knowledge, scientific or otherwise. I imagine that in certain respects we are even dumber than the generations before us.

Knowledge and understanding will never displace religion because religion tends to occupy a space where direct, verifiable knowledge cannot exist. One can understand quantum mechanics and have faith in god - these two things aren't mutually exclusive and neither invalidates the other. Some of the greatest minds in the history of science have known this. Isaac Newton wrote extensively about the bible and even tried to predict the timing of the apocalypse based on scripture.

I think that if anything, organized religion is losing faithful because being organized and religious, or even being just plain old spiritual, requires discipline and restraint and reflectiveness and commitment. These are all things that many americans lack.

That and it can seem a bit overauthoritarian and self-righteous.

Mark23

Filtherton, I agree with you.

The accumulation of knowledge is not particularly important. What I do think is important is teaching people to critically think and assess things.

Religions simply cannot stand up to critical, objective assessment. If anyone feels that they can, I would be very interested in hearing what they have to say.

roadkill

Religions can exist with objective assement, it's the dogma's that can't. It just so happens that the dogma is in control of the religions of the world, and it would seem that's not the right way to go about it.

filtherton

I don't think religion needs to stand up to the same rigorous standards as, say, biology. It is impossible to critically and objectively assess the issues of the afterlife or the meaning of existence. Such things are currently by their very definition unverifiable.

I also think that critical thought should be encouraged especially concerning matters of religion. I think that if critical thought were more favored by religious folk people like pat robertson wouldn't exist. I don't think that critical thought and religious belief are mutually exclusive. Some of the greatest critical thinkers and assessors known to humankind were religious.

When it comes to many things that are simply unknowable the scientific method is often woefully inadequate. That's where faith comes in and you can't really function much without it.

There are things that science can tell you. You can be essentially certain that the earth will continue to revolve on its axis and that barring some sort of galactic surprise it will do so for the rest of your lifetime. What reason and verifiability can't tell you is whether you'll get out of bed tomorrow, or next week. You have absolutely no means, other than faith, to expect to live through the next hour. Despite this uncertainty, most people continue to make plans and most people look forward to doing things and most people don't make commitments with the caveat of "i'll do it if i'm still alive".

I imagine that there are many religious folk for which faith in god is very similar to the faith an atheist might have in living until next tuesday. Despite a complete lack of supporting evidence it seems reasonable to them. The same way a person might start exercising in an attempt to experience a more enjoyable life as they get older a religious person might try to live a more pious life in an attempt to experience a more enjoyable afterlife after they die.

Ustwo

I went to a big ten university, and there was no indoctrination to be seen.

I think what really drives kids away from religion is the beer, parties, and sex (and drugs for those of you who want to start out your adult life behind the 8 ball).

Most religions have taken 'fun' out of the equation these days. So you come to the University and have so much fun doing this and that, that its natural to turn away from something that is holding you back.

Hell, I had a better education on a lot of subjects in my Catholic highschool than I did in college. Its not that knowledge makes one change their religious views, its that you see how life can be lived.

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Ch'i

It depends on the school, and the teacher.

In most public schools you'll find a cookie-cutter education system, but if your lucky you'll find a creative teacher. Some teachers are able to bring a learning environment into action and incite debate. Then there are the teachers who read strictly out of their textbook, and require we act much like robots. I'm sure there are schools that are full of the creative teachers, and schools filled with the latter. From what I've seen the robo-teachers usually hold the majority.

Lady Sage

The fastest way to turn someone off to something is to cram it down their throats or threaten them with it. Thats just my opinion and why I detest organized religion.

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Toaster126

Education is indoctrination.

This post is now long enough.

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Seer666

I think one of the big reasons for the mass exodus is mosts peoples resistance to indoctrination. Face it, most of us are sick and tired being told day in and day out just how we should live our lives. Something that that Church has taken great joy in over the years. Education has simply speeded up the prosses. Now that we don't have to worry about being locked up or killed for telling the pope (or religios leader of your choosing) to take a flying leap, many of the fear tactics that were used hundreds of years ago to keep people faithful no longer work. it's also worth noting that the number of people that believe in God or some other higher power doesn't seem to be changing much. They are just realising they don't have to pay some ass hole to make them feel guilty any more.

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InsaneJester

It's simply the evolution of our species.
I mean look at religion...
First humanity started out... Worshiping animals right?
Then as we grew to be a more dominant species, so we then believed god must be more like us than animals.
That's when multiple gods came, and this fit the needs of that society at that time. It was their explination for the things they couldn't find answers for.
Then came Monotheism... and now we are at the point of thiesm.
Science, psychology, and logic have become the new religion.
They are the philosophies that serve the same purpose as the old religions it explains what we don't understand, in a way that makes more sence to us than stories in a book.
People have grown to the point where they need to seek out answers for themselves instead of allowing it to be spoon fed to them by their parents/society/culture. Quite frankly religion can't give us the answers we need.
Todays god is dieing, just as the olympian gods did. Our society needs more than our gods have to offer.

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irateplatypus

which religion does this? unless you're speaking about a fringe cult or life in saudi arabia... i don't know how an organized religion could cram it down anyone's throat.

do we have the actual statistics are regarding numbers involved in organized religion? but, assuming tecoyah's premise that they're dropping... i do think higher education (or, more specifically, the postmodernism it preaches) depresses participation.

postmodernism, moral-relativism, multiculturalism and the various other "isms" preached (and i use that word deliberately) from college lecterns all place truth within the realm of individual interpretation. once a person has accepted this worldview (truth is relative, all cultures/belief systems are equal, etc.) why would following a religion make any sense at all? a shared religion in which a person relies on clergy, scripture, or divine revelation becomes silly (even offensive!) when person has come to believe that all things in life are a matter of self-discovery.

i think many are accustomed to viewing this debate in a faith-versus-reason view rather than the more appropriate faith-versus-relativism perspective. higher education isn't inherently hostile to religion (and vice-versa). it's the belief in relativism that has taken on its own faux-theology that degrades faith.

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roachboy

first off, the kind of emphasis on "faith" above as an individual drama involving the believer and some god is a very protestant way of thinking about christianity. catholicism is less about this, and more about the collective rituals of belief--and in that you can see how its internal practices mapped onto a whole range of other social functions.

the main driver behind the loosening of the hold of organized christianity on folk may have little really to do with "faith"--which seems to me only one dimension of such appeal as these organizations have---it may have to do with social mobility--not so much up/down the class ladder as physical mobility. you know, cars and highways and the ease with which folk move about, change cities, change social networks....

think about catholic parishes in urban residential neighborhoods.
it is rare now to find families that have lived for more than one generation in the same neighborhood.
this was not the case before world war 2.
and before world war 2, catholic churches tended to be very dominant in what were catholic neighborhoods--and the populations of these neighborhoods would have been in the main stable across two or three generations (more or less)--so the parish would be a kind of natural horizon of life in the neighborhood. this would hold for questions of faith--if your family was catholic, you would simply go to mass. it would be a ritual that was as much social as it was religious--the gathering of the catholic population of a nieghborhood every week in one place meant that it was a space where the community could see itself, interact with itself as a community, etc.--so the religious identification would be blurred into social identification--and the position of the church relied upon both.

the church was alot more important than simply being an elective community--it provided lots of social services, from education to fraternal organizations (knight of columbus, say--and so these were also social and political systems that served complicated social functions that went way beyond questions of faith) to mechanisms for the monitor and control mechanisms for forms of "deviance" (like the famous homes for wayward girls)to distribution of goods and shelter to the poor, to neighborhood social functions like dinners and festivals...the church was a fundamental space within which civic life unfolded...church organizations were spaces where the social and economic hierarchies of neighborhoods were arrayed and reproduced and adjusted...so they served a myriad secular functions, a myriad functions that were organizationally catholic but functionally more neutral...and these were directly linked into city politics.

i dont know if there was a particular moment when things changed---but by the mid-1970s, the patterns of residency had become very different than they were, with turnover in populations becoming the rule--mobility, changes in the lengths of time folk expect to stay in one place, the breakup of formerly homogenous neighborhoods---all of which would be linked to changes in the basic economic organization in the states, the rise of managerial capitalism (shorthand)....

if you think about the above and line it up with the effects of increased population mobility, you could infer that one result would be the weakening of the hold and meaning of many of the social functions of the church and its various organizations. one effect would be the collapsing back of the sense of community onto the relatively weak problem of faith--weak in the sense that it was always only an aspect of an aspect of the range of social functions that churches once served. it is not irrelevant, the question of faith, but it is limited in import (think about any church group and how it is arrayed differentially around questions of committment, its waxing and waning etc.)--and maybe the reduction of a church to a matter of faith--that is to a faith-based elective community--is a pretty tenuous to weak way to sell a church over time.

so maybe the main changes that explain the fracturing of the hold of organized christianity has little to do with its doctrinal content and more to do with shifts in the functions that are filled by churches as social institutions.

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irateplatypus

good post rb

however, i think that analysis holds true for the subset of religious structure you discussed (catholicism) much more than it does for the balance of organized religion in the US.

even still, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that organized religion is taking a hit from increased physical/social mobility because 1) the church does provide a range of social/communal functions 2) various social organizations of all stripes (religious/secular/recreational) are all reporting low numbers. it seems reasonable to infer that the church wouldn't be exempt from that phenomenon.

but i don't think our two theories are entirely independent. part of rampant post-modernistic multiculturalism and its joined-at-the-hip sibling moral relativism is the inevitable splintering of cultural/social groups. the glue that binds society together is weakened by both individualized morality as well as more transient/mobile lifestyle.

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Halx

First I'd like to state that being smart does not protect someone from influence. I found the solice that Asaris takes on the opinions of "people smarter than you or I" to sound like we should all file for divorce because Stephen Hawking has done it twice. No, your brains do not dictate your capacity in love, life, or spirit, so what other people may find convincing has no bearing on me.

I was not raised religiously. I was around religion... my mom is Jewish and the retired nurse who took care of me while my mom was at work was very Christian... however all of this penetrated my soul about as deeply as a San Fransisco beggar asking for my change. So, I have not embraced religion and religion has not embraced me. The point of view that this affords me is merely that of an interested observer.

I feel like roachboy hits on a key topic and I can expand a little on it. Technology enables us past things that were previously deemed impossible. Not only are we able to freely move about the world without the comfort of the church, we are able to see and learn for ourselves from sources not associated with religion. In fact, as this society becomes more and more utilitarian, there is a 'survival of the fittest' competition going on regarding what is useful and what is not. Useful things increase in popularity, and less useful things decrease.

Now, I dont want to put down religion as "useless," I just want to say that in today's society, we seem to be getting along well without it, thuss illustrating its worth to us at this moment. You may also notice that it is the places in the world where religion is a big deal that things are.. heh.. going to hell.

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irateplatypus

economically, i'm about as free-market/libertarian a person as you're likely to find, but the survival of the fittest idea (in any arena) has its limitations. look at the the new york times bestseller list, the top grossing movies, fashion, album sales... are these the best representatives of their form or the most easily consumed?

think of mcdonald's... sure they're the "fittest" in a way. they deliver an easily consumed product at a rock-bottom price with speed/convenience. few would argue that they aren't popular, but how does that translate into intrinsic worth?

as for getting along well without it, 85.8% percent of people in the US describe themselves as identifying with some religion. if you're thinking we're getting along well, then it isn't because we're doing without religion.

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If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

roachboy

i'm not sure that we're talking about the same thing at all, irate---but i am also not entirely sure about what you are arguing for--i know what you the categories are that you understand to refer to BAD BAD phenomena, but not so much why they are bad--or even what you actually mean by all the categories that you oppose. please help.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

asaris

Halx makes a good point. Of course we should treat these 'experts' as limited experts. I wouldn't go to Aquinas for advice about science; I wouldn't go to Hawking for advice on successful marriages. But just as we can learn a bit more about science from reading Hawking, we can learn a bit more about philosophy from reading the great philosophers (and yes, even the Christian ones).

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche