God and Nihilism at College

Parent Cafe
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<p>Atheism, or at least militant secularism, has certainly carried the day in the academic arena, but what has it won for the hearts and minds of Dartmouth students? It is hard for this enlightened knowledge to stick when the academic accomplishments of the day are washed away in the night by a meaningless sea of alcohol and one-time assignations.</p>

<p>Such social coercion to enforce commonly accepted values is the College’s job as an authority figure in students’ lives. Radical 1960’s educational reformers campaigned to strip universities of any such in loco parentis authority, but, in practice, the old orthodoxy has been usurped by a new one that is just as stringent, where, among other things, a thorough-going nihilism has replaced long-standing religious traditions.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.dartreview.com/archives/2005/07/22/god_and_man_at_dartmouth.php[/url]”>http://www.dartreview.com/archives/2005/07/22/god_and_man_at_dartmouth.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>[thanks, d]</p>

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<p>FS - I think you’re making an assumption that substance abuse and promiscuity are inherently the domain of atheists. I think you’d find experimentation in sex and alcohol across all religious persuasions as well as secularism. As for atheism carrying the day, consider this - given a free, open, and limitless exchange of ideas and a large group of people, one could expect the group to vary widely in the faith orientations they would develop. Some would embrace Christianity, some would embrace other world religions, some would embrace no religion, some would create new faith structures of their own. But that’s not typically the way that we’re raised - we’re raised by a family with a particular religious orientation, and they tend to socialize with others of the same orientation. Their belief system is usually taught to us when we’re young - few parents try to explain the whole spectrum of spirituality to their toddlers and guide them in making their own unique choices.</p>

<p>But when you get to college, you’re suddenly in that free, open, and limitless marketplace of ideas (or you should be, if your chose your college wisely). I think it’s only normal that when they have the barriers lifted and are free to question assumptions - often for the first time in their lives - some young people will embrace Christianity, some will embrace other faiths or none or one of their own design. You’d hardly expect the open exploration of limitless ideas to result in greater conformity rather than greater diversity, would you?</p>

<p>As for experientation with sex and intoxicants, that practice among college-age young people pre-dates the invention of colleges by several millenia.</p>

<p>Just for the record, I’m personally in favor of a strong sense of responsibility where sexuality and the use of alcohol are concerned. But that’s not so much related to my Presbyterianism as to my philosophy of how people might best live together. And I built the foundation of that philosophy in college.</p>

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<p>FS - you wouldn’t have wanted to be at Dartmouth in the age of “religious traditionalism” (if it ever existed). If you would have been admitted in the 50s, which I strongly doubt you would have been, your skin color and ethnicity would have barred you from virtually every fraternity - where, by the way, “in loco parentis” didn’t apply. Your social life would have been nil, and your religious life likely not much better. “Radical educational reformers” didn’t strip the college of “in loco parentis” - conservative lawyers employed by the college did. If you think there is a meaningless sea of alcohol today, take your time transporter back to those times. This was a day when (at my alma mater), George Steinbrenner and Stephen Sondheim - both Jewish - had to sit together in the college chapel four nights a week until they managed to stage enough fights with each other to get themselves forcibly removed (and permanently excused.)</p>

<p>I doubt there is more than a handful of Dartmouth students, including those who write for the review, who would be particularly happy campers at the Dartmouth they so easily claim to miss.</p>

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<p>“who would be particularly happy campers at the Dartmouth they so easily claim to miss.”</p>

<p>Mini, </p>

<p>Is change a zero sum game? Is it all or nothing? Is it clearly only one per se, or the other? Not a little-bit of this, a little-bit of that? Good-guys v bad-guys?</p>

<p>However, you are quite right about my chances at Dartmouth in the 50’s…I would have had a hard time getting a decent score on the SAT and I had no ec’s…neither did my mother, she wasn’t even born until 1961.</p>

<p>“This was a day when (at my alma mater), George Steinbrenner and Stephen Sondheim - both Jewish - had to sit together in the college chapel four nights a week until they managed to stage enough fights with each other to get themselves forcibly removed (and permanently excused.)”</p>

<p>Obviously didn’t do much to diminish their sense of their-selves. You might have thought so though; I enjoyed my time at a number of ‘Friends’-meetings, eyes closed, musing on the transcendent (other than the occasional interuption when some felt moved to denounce George Bush and his stance on Global warming…didn’t quite seem to fit the occasion, but I was no more than a stranger there myself and simply refocused on the infinite.)</p>

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<p>I’m sure George and Stephen enjoyed themselves on the outside while the rest were forced to attend chapel services mouthing words that most of them didn’t believe.</p>

<p>Get yourself, if you can, a course catalog from Dartmouth in 1958. See if you find yourself there, already blackballed from fraternities where they threw out ‘in loco parentis’ decades earlier.</p>

<p>Those folks at the Dartmouth Review don’t know the meaning of social coercion. Chances are, at Dartmouth, you wouldn’t have either - they wouldn’t let you in, regardless of your SAT score or ECs.</p>

<p>And, yes, when it comes to racism, and institutionally enforced religious coercion, it IS either/or - there isn’t a middle ground.</p>

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<p>Agreed, and does such a social correction entail and demand “a thorough-going nihilism” in the ‘Review’s’ words, or can it be finessed? If there is a, or many, social evils in a particular culture, should the culture itself—in total—be seen as superfluous? What would we make of those cultures around our world which are still evolving away from things we consider in bad taste or even flat-wrong (in their way). Do we hope to dismantle such cultures entirely and leave in there place “a thorough-going nihilism”. It’s been done, with very sad results.</p>

<p>Does the baby leave with the bath-water after-all?</p>

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<p>GAdad,</p>

<p>First, the post was simply cut & pasted from The Dartmouth Review…I didn’t write it.</p>

<p>Second, I’m often confused by those who view “diversity”, as such, as a value of sorts. Diversity is merely many different things; it is neither good nor bad in itself. There may even be reason to see diversity in a more negative than positive light…a diluting of actual beliefs and values, cultures and properties in favor of a lukewarm and toothless view of all things being equal and therefore, meaningless and milquetoast .</p>

<p>Moreover, when you say “some young people will embrace Christianity, some will embrace other faiths or none or one of their own design” I need to ask if this your experience in college? Because anecdotally I would have to say that given no social/cultural parameters other than sensuality and skepticism most would act not on belief or values but on desires and circumstantial or contextual preferences.</p>

<p>I’m well aware that my own beliefs will be in an extreme minority at the college I will attend—a female Sufi conservative with a profound respect for any traditional or cultural value—and yet I would find no advantage in diluting the values of others in order to liberate or exonerate my own.</p>

<p>“As for experientation with sex and intoxicants, that practice among college-age young people pre-dates the invention of colleges by several millenia.”</p>

<p>…as did the prudential social imperatives that countered/resolved them—until rather recently, in historical terms. Today, in an absence of traditional values (of any kind) many are raised with a charmingly new set of values and social devices like those offered by the likes of Jerry Springer and Howard Stern; both well known and attended purveyors of exotic-nihilistic entertainment who have stepped into the breach.</p>

<p>“I think you’re making an assumption that substance abuse and promiscuity are inherently the domain of atheists.”</p>

<p>This is for others to say; I will say only that those who have no beliefs or moral imperatives—let’s say the nihilistic types alluded to above, that is, those lacking communicable values—are perhaps more likely to take yes for an answer when it comes to abuse; sexual, pharmaceutical, alcoholic or otherwise.</p>

<p>Then there is the issue of etiquette and its absence, a traditional and forgotten value to be sure, which may turn out to be replaced with a “damn the torpedoes” approach to social cohesion and morality.</p>

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<p>I don’t understand why you continue to grant the Review’s conception of “thorough-going nihilism” when they are factually wrong about so much else? I can’t think of anything more productive of nihilism than being forced to worship within a religious context in which one doesn’t believe.</p>

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<p>Just being allowed to TAKE the test could have been an issue, getting a great score would have been irrelevant in many schools</p>

<p>As a woman, when I explain to my Ds, and my Mom talks to my Ds, about how women were treated in the 50s, that there were very few career choices open, that schools were a NOT like they are today, and those doors that are open now for them were locked shut, I want them to know that many people fought, that it wasn’t just a matter of self worth. It was a matter of even walking the halls. And even the most brillian women had a very hard time. Sure, you have some prominent women and minorities, but after WWII, it was as if things went backward in time.</p>

<p>And if you don’t realize the problems of the 50’s and the problems people had that weren’t white and male, you need to read some history. </p>

<p>As for the drinking and sex, well, that was happening before the 70s. And, during the prohibition, when drinking was illegal, there was still lots of alcohol. </p>

<p>It saddens me to think of young people forgetting the battles their parents and grandparents fought, the prejudice and racism they faced, and to think that things back in the day, ie the 50s were just peachy.</p>

<p>Think about music. In certain areas, black musicians were accepted, but in many, it was white singers that sang “black” music, the blues, etc, that got played on the radios. </p>

<p>Your mom was a baby in 1961, my mom was a teen in the 50s. She was in a car with a Mexican kid in Texas. Because it was a white girl with a Mexican kid, they were harrassed, and one night, they were rammed by a truck and the kid was beat up and sent to the hospital. This was the glory days of the 50s.</p>

<p>I would rather a school with a bit of drinking and fooling around, but with ALL kids qualifed able to attend, then a school with a very narrow student body- ie white males from the upper and middle class.</p>

<p>And, when during all of history, there was much bigotry based on religion. And if people don’t recognize that, well its to their peril. </p>

<p>I think religion and faith is fine, but when its used to debase others, as it has been, to discriminate against those of different faiths, that is when my tolerance ends.</p>

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<p>WHen they discuss the RADICAL 60s= well, during those RADICAL times, you got rights that you didn’t have. </p>

<p>You will get equal pay. You will actually get hired for a job. It was WOMEN in that radical time that fought for YOUR rights. It was radicals that went to the south and risked their lives for other people.</p>

<p>So, when I read an article that seems to demonize an era that opened the doors for so many. That was the era of Kennedy asking what you can do for your country. That was the era of Martin Luther King. That was the era of blacks riding in the backs of the bus BY LAW, and yes there were Christians and Religious people on both sides. But the Religious people that tried to stop that young black girl from going into that schoo, is that the kind of religion you want to go back to?</p>

<p>Jews couldnt’ be members of the same clubs. Sufis would have been barred. </p>

<p>Interesting to think that one so young and educated would not think about all the thinks that were backwards during the 50s that seem to be what the Authors ideal is.</p>

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<p>And what exactly is a Christian Mission? I would really like to know.</p>

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<p>Mini,</p>

<p>Having read W. F. Buckley’s book, “Nearer My God” I recall that Buckley spent the bulk of his time coerced into attending mass throughout his academic 'Protestant" education and he felt he grew because of it—much like many here insist that a conservative student in liberal academia will grow from their minority status. </p>

<p>My cousin, a Muslim living in Canada, chose to attend Catholic parochial school; he prefers it and sees no harm in it. I suppose Steinbrenner and Sondheim chose Williams for the same reason, I assume they preferred it. Many lapsed Christians seem somewhat whiney in these affairs, most non-Christians seem rather realistic and content with the situation such as it is—many even prefer it to the ‘nihilistic’ alternative .</p>

<p>I attended a high school dominated by those of Jewish and Catholic beliefs…it never occurred to me to think of it as an oppression of sorts, simply difference…hey, I thought that was a liberal value?!</p>

<p>If you do not think that society, particularly in its academic parts, is more nihilistic than not or than it was, I respect your view but do not agree with it. Perhaps such nihilism was brought on by so many abuses in the past, for instance racism and misogyny amongst other things. I just think it is regrettable that out of that sadness too many have given up on the idea of tradition and traditional cultures per se: other than viewing them as naïve and cute—at best and likely due to PC constraints.</p>

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<p>Reed is one of the schools most likely to “ignore God on a regular basis”
However their mandatory freshman curriculum includes a year long study of St Augustine and the Christian Bible as well as Homer and Thuycides the study of which is full to the brim with tradition. ( also for a school of less than 1300 students a good chunk go on to recieve degrees in religion including Phds)</p>

<p>Perhaps you are using a different defintion of nihilism?</p>

<p>I don’t see current students as nihilistic at all

    1. Philosophy.
      1. An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence.
      2. A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.
  1. Rejection of all distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to repudiate all previous theories of morality or religious belief.
  2. The belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement.
  3. also Nihilism A diffuse, revolutionary movement of mid 19th-century Russia that scorned authority and tradition and believed in reason, materialism, and radical change in society and government through terrorism and assassination.
  4. Psychiatry. A delusion, experienced in some mental disorders, that the world or one’s mind, body, or self does not exist.*</p>
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<p>When talking about tradition, you need to think about what that tradition was. YOU WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN WELCOME. During that time WOMEN didn’t go to college. Tradition? Women couldn’t vote until the twenties. And many people said, for decades that women were second class, had no rights, just like in the Bible. Tradition? Your mom might not have been able to buy a house in a certain neighborhood. Tradition? </p>

<p>You seem to think that it was better years ago. You would not have been able to participate, most likely years ago.</p>

<p>Please please please, ask some women you know about what it was like during those TRADITIONAL times. Ask the families of JEWS what is was like during those TRADITIONAL times. Ask some African Americans what it was like during those TRADITIONAL times.</p>

<p>My point is, while it all looked so wonderful when people where less "nihilistic’, there was so much awfulness going on, by those very same people that professed religious faith. So before thinking that those were the good old days, that because schools were religious based, that all was just wonderful. Far from it.</p>

<p>Sure there is more drinking, drugs, sex. I can live with that.</p>

<p>But there are also Blacks, Jews, Sufis, Women, Native Americans, Muslims at those schools. Traditionally, there weren’t. So I would rather a bit if diversity, of which you should be very very grateful, because people DIED for you to have that right.</p>

<p>When you want to talk about tradition and a bygone era, you need to pay attention to all the problems from those times as well.</p>

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<p>“But the Religious people that tried to stop that young black girl from going into that schoo, is that the kind of religion you want to go back to?”</p>

<p>…Oh my; I don’t suppose you were really looking for an answer to this one, were you?</p>

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<p>I just think you need to open your eyes and not think that just because something is religious and traditional that it will make things swell. It won’t. And to claim that tradition is good when it comes to religion and people, it is not always so. And the past, which the article refers, was awful for many people. </p>

<p>And, yes, I would like an answer. That is the time and religion which the article refers. Those were the timesof oppression, and now, thank goodness, you have freedom to be a Sufi. You have no idea what it would have been like for you in the 50s. I wish you would recognize that, but you just can’t I suppose.</p>

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<p>Emeraldkitty, </p>

<p>I believe the following would apply:</p>

<p>“2. A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.”</p>

<p>This, I believe, would fit the dominate trend of modern philosophy in its guise of ‘logcical positivism’, and more recently I would think Deconstruction would give it a go, Derrida et al. </p>

<p>“2. Rejection of all distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to repudiate all previous theories of morality or religious belief.
3. The belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement.”</p>

<p>I don’t know—numbers two and three seem to cut straight to the heart of modern normative ethics.</p>

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<p>citygirlsmom,</p>

<p>I’m sorry, but if your point is that given free choice many will choose to do the wrong thing, no matter what there cultural affiliations, I agree.</p>

<p>If on the other hand, your point is that with no moral constraints (those derived from beyond their own egos and desires) these same people will make fewer bad choices, human nature inclines me to disagree.</p>

<p>Is that what you mean to say?</p>

<p>[I’m off to a party, I’ll check tommorrow]</p>

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<p>I think it would be refreshing if some of the older types on this board would read a little more thoroughly, and perhaps even digest a bit before dismissing something as coming from “those Dartmouth Review people.” :slight_smile: Then, perhaps, they would realize that this remarkable essay isn’t a call to re-introduce compulsory church service at Dartmouth or anywhere else. It’s an interesting commentary on the irony of the transition of many of our nation’s elite colleges from schools for Christian ministry to the antithesis, using William Buckley’s well known writings as a starting point. All you fornication proponents would rest more assured had you actually read what the DR writer wrote:

That’s Bill Buckley quoting someone even older than he is! in a book he wrote decades ago, with a nice contemporary flourish added by a current college student with an opinion. Relax!! There will be plenty of flavored condoms available at your kids’ schools, and no one wants to make them go to church. The point that there is a policy of “benign neglect of all things spiritual” on campus is a valid one, and one that all of these schools wrestling with drinking and date rape and all the rest might consider. So that they don’t “discourage religion by omission.” You guys are so paranoid.</p>

<p>The issue of racism/sexism that’s been brought up here is a red herring, and a sloppy, decomposing, smelly one at that. It has nothing to do with the the article FS posted. For an opinion on what it was like being a Jew at Williams in the 30s, you could try Ben Stein: <a href=“WRAPS organizes campus-wide food drive, adapts to COVID restrictions – The Williams Record”>WRAPS organizes campus-wide food drive, adapts to COVID restrictions – The Williams Record;

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<p>No, I am saying that you are pointing out that schools would be better, less immoral if the schools maintained tradition and there religious bases they started with years ago.</p>

<p>I am saying that those times weren’t perfect, far from it, and that you would not even have been welcome. If you feel those traditional times need to come back, well those traditional times were a mess. And you need to see that.</p>

<p>When the author refers to radical times in such a negative way, those radical times gave you, your mother, your father, my mother, me and my daughters freedoms they never had. Dartmouth went co-ed in 1972. You would have had the CHOICES of a very few schools in those TRADITIONAL times and mindsets you seem to admire so much.</p>

<p>And you need to recognize that those idealistic times to which the author refers NEVER WERE. There were no times like he pines for. Instead, there were times of racial segregation, sexism, religious segregation and persecution, where you would not have been hired because you were a Sufi. And those idealistic times never were. Not like in the movies, not like in Father Knows Best. Not like the author would have you believe. The times when religion had a stronger place in schools were also times of discrimination, lynchings, segregation and more. </p>

<p>So, to say that we would be better off, is not true. </p>

<p>If you don’t want to look at history and what others went through in times of TRADITION for you and YOUR CHOICES and YOUR FREEDOMS and YOUR future, in the face of the TRADITIONS you seem to think are the panacia to all our woes, then I feel sorry for the people that stood up against overwhelming odd and against TRADITION, for you. </p>

<p>And moral contraints, what is that? Many people thought it was moral for blacks and whites to be in separate schools. Many people thought it was moral Jews to be denied the right to buy a house in their neighborhood. Many people thought it was moral to pay women less because they were just gonna get married anyway, and some people thought it was moral to deny admission to minorities. </p>

<p>When one claims they want the traditions of a bygone era, one needs to see ALL the tradiions of that era. One is not excuslive of the other.</p>

<p>Please thank those that fought for you during those wonderful traditional, radical times that allowed you to even go to Dartmoth. They deserve.</p>