<p>In re: QuantMech’s post above, #55:</p>
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<p>For the record, here’s a snippet from that post:</p>
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<p>Leaving aside the question of whether the Christian valedictorian would or wouldn’t have encountered that view at Harvard, I hope that reasonable people of all persuasions consider that to be intolerant.</p>
<p>Being forced to have to defend your beliefs is a good thing, not a bad thing.</p>
<p>I believe that quantum mechanics is the best approach to theoretical physics that is currently available. I welcome the occasional challenge to it, e.g. from the “hidden variable” theorists, although their viewpoint has become increasingly difficult to maintain with the advances post-Bell’s theorem. Nonetheless, there are interesting challenges to quantum mechanics that crop up from time to time.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if I had to face daily challenges to quantum mechanics, that would interfere with my work. Somewhere there is a reasonable intermediate level of challenge.</p>
<p>To give a specific example: There are some weird results obtained by Aharanov, with regard to measurements on spin systems and quantum entanglement–leaving aside the Aharonov-Bohm effect, which is plenty weird, by itself. The Aharonov results appear to violate causality. They weren’t intended to challenge quantum mechanics, as far as I know. I haven’t found a provable flaw in the reasoning–there may be none. However, I doubt that the discourse would be advanced by someone who took the tack that acceptance of quantum mechanics (contra Einstein) was non-thinking.</p>
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<p>Agreed, @Bay. But you don’t have to, as it were, throw yourself into the lion’s den if that’s what you perceive a secular environment to be (I think this atheist just made a Biblical allusion!). Also, I would be surprised if there were not people at Baylor challenging the dominant view, despite the overwhelming influence of the Baptist church. I haven’t been to Baylor. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re all a bunch of Stepford Christians.</p>
<p>And with regard to post #65: Way to dumb down the discussion, @QuantMech!</p>
<p>Sorry! :)</p>
<p>@QuantMech: I was just kidding. I don’t understand what you’re saying, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.</p>
<p>That’s ok, absweetmarie–I knew you were joking, and thought your remark was funny.</p>
<p>For anyone who wants to look up Aharonov, his first initial is Y. There should be a Wikipedia article on his work, and there is a paper in Science that is accessible (comparatively speaking).</p>
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<p>I would agree with this statement, if I thought there was any way it could possibly be true. According to the US census, 78% of Americans identify themselves as Christian. Where would someone expect this “lion’s den” of secular Christian-hating college students to exist?</p>
<p>I think it is more likely that those students who choose religious schools are more likely to be intolerant of those who do not share their beliefs, than vice-versa. But that conclusion is based on observation and logic, not any first-hand knowlege.</p>
<p>All I can say is, this young lady graduated from the same HS as my sister.</p>
<p>I don’t imagine Harvard is a lion’s den of Christian haters. I exaggerated for effect. But I do think some people who are conservative Christians feel that anything other than an intentionally Christian community is not for them. I don’t agree with that approach but I respect it. Fortunately, I didn’t have to encourage my D to look for schools that would challenge her belief systems. More or less an atheist from birth and left-leaning, she likes to keep an open mind and so was drawn to schools where it seemed she could find people at all points along any given spectrum. Certainly, intolerance goes both ways. Maybe students at, say, Bard would be more tolerant of a conservative Christian than someone at Baylor would be of a gay atheist. I don’t know. I’ve seen enough intolerance from both sides to be discouraged about the possibility of civil discourse in this great land of ours.</p>
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<p>This is exactly how I feel. But I would respect it more if I understood exactly why anyone needs or wants a religious environment when pursuing an academic degree.</p>
<p>IMO, the problem with “Christian higher education” is not a matter of belief or disbelief or institutional prestige. The problem is that when you define training as higher education and then make it dependent upon faith, you’re claiming legitimacy for an intellectual process that involves deciding an outcome from the start, and then embracing evidence that supports your desired outcome and ignoring that that refutes it. Once you swallow the notion that such a process is legitimate, your intellectual potential is squandered. You can neither learn nor be reasoned with when you decide that only one answer is tolerable, and you become fair game for any manipulative person who knows how to play upon that intellectual shortcoming. This strikes me as a sad story.</p>
<p>Incidentally, I should add that I offer this potentially inflammatory opinion as a former Christian university VP who decided years ago to leave and work in public higher education once I realized how shortchanged the graduates of my university were.</p>
<p>I love this discussion, obviously. In response to @gadad I will throw out this bomb:</p>
<p>You can be “smart” without challenging yourself by exposure to alternative viewpoints but you can’t be an intellectual. </p>
<p>Talk amongst yourselves.</p>
<p>It’s not exposure to alternative viewpoints - it’s being told that you’re being exposed to them so that you can be prepared to reject them when challenged by non-believers. That produces an indoctrinated mind which is neither smart nor intellectual.</p>
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Stanford’s numbers are a good benchmark. In 2008, 675 of 2400 admitted students did not enroll. Where they ended up:</p>
<p>~182 at Harvard
~128 at Yale
~101 at MIT
~47 at Princeton
~30 at USC
~14 each at Berkeley, Caltech, Penn, and UCLA
~7 each at Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, Rice, UCSD, UT Austin</p>
<p>~81 elsewhere (Fewer than 7 at each. If Stanford rounded 0.5% up to 1%, these schools have 3 each at most.)</p>
<p>Source: Stanford Faculty Senate minutes, June 2008</p>
<p>If they are her posts on other thread, and it sure looks like it, she mentioned a full ride at Harvard and having to pay up to $14k a year at Baylor. I support her choice of whatever school she wants, but I hope she doesn’t have to take out loans for Baylor since she also mentioned grad school.</p>
<p>I am curious - how would studying speech pathology be impacted by the religious bent of an university?</p>
<p>I don’t think it had anything to do with her academic education, more to do with her own comfort zone. </p>
<p>Just edited because she didn’t make any reference to professors.</p>