<h1>268 - Less an overall culture of greed at Baylor? I am not sure the answer is so clear cut. Baptists vs Investment Bankers - I’m going to think about that</h1>
<p>oldfort - may be Houston is in god’s country!</p>
<p>If one wanted to aim for a top 20 school by attending a private school, the religion based ones have a much better track record. Yale routinely admits 7 or more each year from one of the schools (about 25-30% chance).</p>
<p>If you want to know Baylor’s values, read its mission statement:</p>
<p>[Baylor</a> University || About Baylor || Read Our Mission Statement](<a href=“About Baylor | Baylor University”>About Baylor | Baylor University)</p>
<p>This statement seems be trying hard to be tolerant, reasonable, and scholarly, but it fails occasionally. It gets self-contradictory at points - it gives lip-service to “critical thinking,” but it clearly wants its students to be doing their thinking within the confines of a biblical and Christian perspective.</p>
<p>But hey, here on CC we have our own religion. Don’t we constantly preach the Gospel of Fit? As such I can easily see where Christian schools might be a better fit for this or that conservative Christian individual than are Harvard and Yale. If so, more power to them. I am all for diversity in the academy. And a religious point of view is a perfectly valid one. Anyone who would deny Christian colleges a seat at the academic table would be denying the very beginnings and foundations of colleges and universities in the English-speaking world.</p>
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<p>That is likely true of nearly every academic mission statement. They specialize in goal conflict. :D</p>
<p>The question keeps coming up: “Why might someone choose a Christian university versus a secular one?” I come at this as a huge supporter of public education. My daughter goes to a large, very well-respected public university and loves it. We are theologically moderate Christians and are happy that she is in an environment with so many students that she can be involved in Christian groups on campus, yet be around ethnically and religiously diverse students and faculty. Some of her closest friends are Muslim and Jewish, and she has attended faith group meetings as their guest. We are so happy with her university, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.</p>
<p>That being said, we have a son who will be going off to college soon. He is very bright, and he is on the autism spectrum. As parents, our number one concern for him was that he find an environment that would be supportive of his needs and where he could find friends, as well as a school that had the academic programs that he was interested in. On our college visits, we found that, overwhelmingly, the students at the Christian universities were so much more friendly and accepting of him than those at the state universities. Not that the public university students weren’t friendly, but the Christian university students went out of their way to be kind and invite him to sit with them and participate in their activities. We, his parents, were nearly in tears watching them reach out to him. This happened whether they knew of his autism (which isn’t obvious at first) or didn’t know. These are the schools he liked the most.</p>
<p>There are other reasons one might choose such a religious school as Baylor, Brandeis, Notre Dame, or BYU:</p>
<p>1) General comfort with the environment. Everyone talks about “fit”. Well, sometimes a university with many students who share your basic beliefs just “feels” better. It might not be that this is a conscious connection with any mission statement, but a general feeling. Most people who have the ability to choose a job would seek a company or environment where they would be surrounded by people who make them feel at ease. Is it any wonder that most college-bound students would want to do the same?</p>
<p>2) Potential spouse-meeting opportunities. This sounds trivial, but it isn’t really. Lots of young people meet their future spouses in college. It’s the last opportunity for most people to be surrounded by thousands of other people their age who live together and spend most of their days together. It’s logical to assume that students might want to go to a school where they could meet many others who share their basic beliefs. Every young Mormon my children or I have known wanted to go to BYU, and many even said that they wanted to meet their husband/wife there.</p>
<p>Again, I’m not talking about Liberty or Bob Jones. I’ve known of parents who sent their children to those schools to keep them OUT of the world’s influence as much as possible. That simply isn’t going to happen at most religious schools. Most are not insular. Most Christian universities I know of don’t refuse to hire all non-Christians; they usually at least have some Jewish professors. These schools maintain their Christian mission, but they do not quash science or the discussion of other religions.</p>
<h1>2 above is a big one.</h1>
<p>See link below:</p>
<p>[Provo</a>, UT Girls - BYU Divine Comedy - YouTube](<a href=“Provo, UT Girls - BYU Divine Comedy - YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84u5k4bboU4)</p>
<p>Really funny! Though from what I’ve heard, the guys who go to BYU are looking for marriage as well.</p>
<p>Okay. It seems to me that for every Sherman McCoy, there is probably an Elmer Gantry. Prosperity Gospel is frightening to me, as is the patriarchal nature of some religious communities in this country. I don’t know how much we are allowed to discuss religion here, but maybe I can just mention Bethany Moreton’s To Serve God and Wal-Mart. </p>
<p>Which came first, the bible or the patriarchy? Bay’s non-religious daughter had to go to Yale to encounter the idea that gender roles might be a societal construct and Bay wonders, on a different thread, whether an ivy educated young woman may be disadvantaged in acquiring a husband.</p>
<p>On the one hand I’m really supportive of closed religious communities like the Amish or even extremist polygamist groups, a view which my academic Mormon friends seem to consider very misguided feminism. On the other hand, I think we have the potential to end up like Michael Crichton’s liberal environmentalists who don’t really believe in cannibals till they find themselves in the stew. (State of Fear -His books are just about my scientific speed ;))</p>
<p>And finally, anti-gay environments that some gay youth may be unable to opt out of really upset me. No matter how happy and supportive a
Baylor type campus culture seems to some, it is incredibly damaging to others.</p>
<p>And absolutely finally - QuantMech, I wonder if you want to elaborate on why you keep referencing those two Professors? :)</p>
<p>Probably just a lack of thread-coherence, alh :)</p>
<p>I was referring to Peter Singer as an example of someone who could challenge many people’s deeply held beliefs, and who is very controversial, since (for example) he seems to deny personhood to infants, as I understand it. His approach is logically consistent, I think, and he has a number of admirable characteristics: for example, he donates 25% of his salary annually to charitable causes (per wikipedia). On the other hand, I think it would be legitimate for a person to find some of his views so abhorrent as to avoid classes from him–and not to benefit from his particular challenges to their beliefs.</p>
<p>I was referring to Aharonov to provide a secular example that constant challenges to one’s beliefs might not be beneficial, even on intellectual grounds. Aharonov’s work is extremely interesting, in the quantum realm. He has suggested a method of measurement that should not cause the wave function to collapse upon measurement. This is counter to the standard Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, and to standard calculations in quantum mechanics (though not for the specific situation that he envisions). The “price” for this is that causality is lost. Aharonov may have a resolution of this with the time-symmetric approach, which lets the future influence the present, as well as having the past influence the present. Feynman and Wheeler also developed a theory where the future plays a vital role (their “absorber” theory). In my work, I am operating a bit on “faith” that my approach (standard quantum mechanics) is sufficiently correct that my results will still hold, even if Aharonov succeeds in revolutionizing part of quantum mechanics. </p>
<p>My point was this: In order to accomplish my work, I need to operate within the standard framework of quantum mechanics most of the time. I find Aharonov’s work extremely interesting, but if I spent too much of my time digging deeper into his challenges to my current thinking, I would not get much done. So the issue is really: How much of one’s time is it profitable to spend responding to challenges to one’s beliefs?</p>
<p>(This might have been based on a mis-reading of Bay’s position. I thought that Bay was advocating for secular university education for Christians, because it would be good for students such as the Baylor student to be forced to defend their beliefs.)</p>
<p>Finally–citing Winnie the Pooh, I must acknowledge that I am “a Bear of very little Brain.” So what I am writing about Aharonov’s work is what I understand from reading it, but anyone for whom it’s important should go to the source!</p>
<p>QM,
You certainly come after a problem like a scientist!</p>
<p>I do think it is important for people to have to defend their beliefs at some point in their lives (preferably sooner rather than later), and I accept that others do not agree with this.</p>
<p>Using your Aharanov example, I think you are going to an unrealistic extreme. It sounds as though you assume that there is a college out there that would never let up on challenging a Christian student’s beliefs, to the point where they would be unable to get much else done other than defend them. Of the colleges that Lizzie rejected, I don’t think there is one among them that could be characterized this way (although I didn’t attend any of them). My understanding is that they all offer Christian support, whether via on-campus churches and chapels and Christian groups and activities (and Republican groups, too).</p>
<p>My Ds have told me that students at H and Y do not care what religion or political party you follow, many religions are represented there and are respected. So the idea that a Christian can keep her faith only at a Christian college and avoid constant challenge to her beliefs seems like an extreme and inaccurate position. Again, I cite the census figure that 78% of Americans identify as Christian, so the idea that you are going to find any US college environment that is hostile to Christians (other than a non-Christian religious college - but I doubt you’d find it there either), is dubious at best.</p>
<p>Not so fast. At my kid’s ultra liberal HS, republican youths complain that it is harder for them to come out than gay kids. It gave me a chuckle that being a republican is something to come out about. It also made me think ideological tyranny is not monopolized by conservatives.</p>
<p>I agree with you Iglooo, I think it is much tougher being a Republican than a Christian. The great thing about that, is it really makes you question and defend your Republican position, and I consider that a good thing.</p>
<p>“the idea that a Christian can keep her faith only at a Christian college”</p>
<p>But no one, including the student in the original article, has that idea. The question is whether she can keep her faith better at a Christian college. Probably the answer is yes.</p>
<p>Do you doubt that a religiously diverse community leads to more questioning, switching, and abandoning of faiths than a religious monoculture?</p>
<p>No, I don’t doubt that.</p>
<p>If they want to be religious / follow traditions, they do, if they do not, they do not. Place has absolutely nothing to do with it. They are facing the same question later on when they are extremely busy after graduating from UG. And the answer is still the same, however they feel. No place cant do it. there are Jewish kids at Catholic Univerisities as well as other religions. Most of them do not pursue Christian religion, and in regard to their own, they may and they may not. Again, what name of place has to do with it?</p>
<p>When my bright son chose to attend an Ivy League school, many of my Christian acquaintainces were quite concerned about the likely weakening of his Christian faith. Ironically, the secular influences at his school did not weaken his faith at all, but the narrow-minded thinking of the Christians he met there seriously undermined his commitment to Christian fellowship. They had some rather restrictive ideas about what were acceptable and unacceptable goals and career objectives for a believer. For the most part, you were expected to want to enter full-time ministry, become a missionary, work in a service profession (medicine) or at the very least the Peace Corps or some non-profit. Becoming a lawyer, politician, or banker was one step away from hell in their minds, and made one suspect of evil materialism or power-hunger. Funny, how my banker son has gone on to make a great salary, and his tithes and offerings are a nice chunk of support for his church and its outreaches. </p>
<p>My youngest is like Marsian’s son, and I’ve had the same thought about the Christian schools perhaps being a better fit and more nurturing environment for her. I just keep getting hung up on not being able to come up with one single Christian college or university near us which has a respected level of academics and athletics. And given her social limitations and likely problem with connecting personally in job interviews, I wonder if she’d be better-served by a less nurturing school but a more-respected name on her diploma.</p>
<p>I meant only what I said: that women being silent in the church is an anti-feminist concept from the Christian tradition.</p>
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<p>Not JUST “Christian” tradition. Of course, it’s not “church” in other religions, and it’s not “church” in other places in various societies where women have been expected to remain silent. </p>
<p>I left the Catholic church years ago to join a protestant denomination. I consider myself religious (although not the-earth-is-6000-years-old brand of religious). I sent my kids to a Catholic school (an EXCELLENT school, in my opinion). They taught concepts like in vitro fertilization in biology. The messages against that sort of thing came in religion class … as well as other messages I did not agree with. I taught my kids my views, told them to be respectful of the views of the Catholic church. I would have sent them to a Catholic or other Christian-denomination school if that was what they wanted … in fact, a couple schools on D’s list had ties with churches (such as DePauw/United Methodist). We base our searches for schools … at all levels … on much more than just whether or not … or IF … it has ties to a religion. </p>
<p>Although others have said that there is no Christian-bashing on this thread, I think there is certainly some level of thinking that those who identify enough with a religion (Christian, in this case) to want to go to a Christian school because it is a Christian school are somehow wrong (or at the very least, not to be respected for their choice). I don’t know … I guess I am just disappointed that intelligent people seem to think there is something inherently wrong with wanting to be around others who share their beliefs. Is it threatening?</p>
<p>No I do not think it is threatening but I do think it sends a message that may be off putting to those who do not share your faith.</p>
<p>I was musing about this idea that a student should be forced to defend his beliefs. I have to say that I don’t think most students at secular schools have to do this very often, if at all. It’s only those with beliefs that are out of the mainstream at those schools who will find themselves defending them. Most students probably don’t have their beliefs challenged very much, either.</p>
<p>I think that’s a very astute point, Hunt.</p>