I’m unfamiliar with that, care to elaborate?
… penalty for professing a belief …
Um, not it’s not. It’s requiring a student to construct a argument defending a stated position. And learning to do that is a very important aspect of education, of great benefit to a student.
At no time in the scenario is a student required to profess a belief, only to write a phrase.
Furthermore, if you review my posts, I believe you will see I did not support failing a student. If I did, I misspoke.
This requirement is levied at only the student(s) stating one sort of position, that being a religious one. Students who stated a different religious view were given no assignment. That is discrimination on the basis of religion.
Is there some bright-line distinction between the two? If the professor required all his students to be baptized in his church or be failed, would a defense that he only asked them to recite the creed of his church and be immersed, not actually believe any of it, be sufficient, do you think?
That is part of the scenario, from the OP, and it’s an important part.
No, I don’t see that in the post. In fact, I don’t see any other student expressing any religious view. Or an opinion on the assignment.
I think you’re creating a scenario to create a victim.
I’m pretty sure this is a straw man; this is just another scenario you are creating. I commented on the one in the OP.
I know. I never supported it. In fact, I strongly implied I did not support it.
If it were suggested as a response to a poorly constructed or presented argument, I can see its charm, though.
And ? Maybe after “god is dead” week the professor (not the movie one who’s obviously on a strawman crusade, but the movie’s idiotic - we’re talking real world hypothetical here) moves on to “Democrats are poopyheads” week, or “segregation was awesome” week, or “Israel has no right to exist” week, or “WW2 internment of Japanese-Americans : cool or excellent ?” week, or any other number of deliberately provocative ways to prompt argument from individuals within the class who, for one reason or another, hold some views very strongly without necessarily having examined *why *they hold those views or what the framework behind those views implies in other areas of knowledge/ethics.
You know, philosophy shit. Platonic dialectic is all about questioning established positions and “known” facts, be it to point out their flaws or to reveal implicit but not readily apparent aspects of these facts and positions. Besides, if you can’t dispassionately argue both a given position *and *its opposite, you have no business in a philosophy class.
Midterms?
That would make an interesting college course, but probably a boring movie. I gather from the trailer that the very narrow and specific question of whether of not the Christian God is dead (not whether or not it actually exists, mind you, either living or dead) is the entire topic of this particular course, which strikes me as extraordinarily narrow. Heck, if I was one of the other students, I could picture dropping the class just to avoid having my time wasted by the debate, though I’d probably enjoy chiming in once or twice with “So, is Zeus dead too? How about Odin?”
On reflection, if John Houseman was playing the professor, I’d give this movie a shot.
Well, yes. But we’ve already established that the movie is rubbish.
I don’t think it’s the whole topic of the course - the prof kicks off with “before we begin the course in earnest, let’s deal away with this shit”, implying he’s got more material prepared ; and PLC is I think given six months to preach, not the whole year. Which is of course still very long - I could see *maybe *the rest of the class IRL, or a simple GTFO if the professor is a blowhard. They’ve been known to exist in academia - but it’s necessary for the totally original narrative. You see, PLC needs time to doubt himself, eschew physical lust (another WTF moment from the trailer, the girlfriend going “either you drop this college assignment, or I’m breaking up with you” :dubious:), investigate why the atheist professor has renounced god, explain Christianity to Asian_guy_who’s_never_heard_of_it (presumably converting him on the spot - it’s Live Action Jack Chicking after all :)), maybe receive support from a father figure/other professor whom atheist professor will persecute for good measure, be harassed by other students but still refuse to abjure GAWD… a 2 hour lecture’s really not enough, you understand. He’s Christian, he’s special. It’s about him. All of it. So what if the rest of the students in the class learn nothing and have their time wasted by all the idiocy ?
Now, if you want to watch an actually half decent philosophy class movie, check out Die Welle. It’s got German hunks playing water polo, too.
Sorry that I can’t supply any cites, but two reported incidents come to my mind:
- An upperclassman hazing a Jewish underclassman in formation by calling him “Christkiller”.
- A Colonel/professor requiring the students in his class to attend religious services at the church where he was a pastor or assistant pastor if they wanted to pass his class.
Here you go: Anti-semitism at the Air Force Academy
It’s there:
Him, and only him. No other student was burdened with this no-win assignment.
That’s there too, though it’s implicit: the reason that only this one student was given the punitive assignment, is because every other student made the mandated declaration that “God is dead”.
I’ve watched the trailer for the film, so that’s the scenario I’m responding to. I can’t un-watch it, though I’m attempting to limit it to what Czarcasm specifically wrote about…but, the things he wrote about are the salient points of the film scenario.
“Is there some bright-line distinction between the two?” is a salient question, if you wish to make a distinction between requiring a declaration, and requiring belief. You identified that such a distinction existed:
…but not how it’s defined.
The baptism analogy was just that, an analogy. To be strawman, I would have had to attribute a position to you. Plainly, I did not.
As that aspect is what makes the action discriminatory, it can’t be separated from the rest of the scenario. If there’s no negative treatment, it’s no discrimination.
Sure. That’s not what this scenario was, though. There was no general assignment to make an argument; on the contrary, the “assignment” was to write three words.
And that (discrimination on the basis of religion) is prohibited, unless, as noted, this is a private university.
It doesn’t matter what the topic is, what matters is giving assignments on the basis of, in this case, religious belief. The topic could be “Roller Coasters of the Eastern Seaboard”, if only the gay students have to do the assignment, while the rest get an automatic pass, what’s happening is discrimination.
Then require the students to argue positions. Students, mind, not students who don’t meant the professor’s religious (or racial, or national origin, or gender, or…) litmus test.
When the basic idea behind your film can be found on Snopes, you probably need to get some new writers.
I once had to pass a professor’s litmus test.
Of course, it was a chemistry professor…
But that’s not what happens even in the film. It’s not Christian students who have to do the assignment. It’s *that *guy, specifically. Because he opened his big mouth. In the military, they call that “volunteering”.
The movie itself very presumably has him the lone Christian (or possibly the One True Christiant) on the entire campus because it’s an uncomprisingly reality-based oeuvre. But *you *don’t know that off-hand. The professor doesn’t either.
He opened his mouth in response to a religious litmus test. I don’t know what else you’d call an order to disavow theistic belief in writing, for no legitimate purpose, that triggers a punitive assignment if religion is detected. Remember, this wasn’t a debate-starter, the stated purpose was to justify the professor skipping all the religious aspects of philosophy.
He may not be the lone Christian, but he’s the one who failed the litmus test. Religion can’t be discerned visually like skin color, so religious discrimination has to include establishing the religion of the target.
How about this:
The professor announces on the first day that each student must state, in writing, that they are heterosexual. One student protests, on the basis that he’s homosexual. In that case, the professor announces, he must prove that homosexuality isn’t evil, or fail the class.
Acceptable? If not, what makes it different from the film’s scenario?
Precisely. So the “religious litmus test” as you call it wasn’t designed to punish Christians but as a shortcut towards other work. PLC opening his mouth hijacks that purpose.
But the test isn’t “Are you Christian, yes/no ?”, it’s “are you so Christian that you cannot distance yourself from your own religion for one second and stop being an annoying messianic tit if it lets me do my job yes/no ?”. It’s not a cruel persecution of Christians, it’s a shibboleth for troublemaking ones. AFAIK, the Bible doesn’t prevent one from setting it aside temporarily. Render unto Caesar, and all that. Writing “god is dead” at the behest of a third party, even more so under the threat of coercion, is not blasphemy or cardinal sin or whatever. Doesn’t even violate the Ten. God won’t mind. And if he does, just say you’re sorry and you won’t do it again, pinky swear ; that seems to hold him for about a half an hour.
Or do you believe that the “I don’t want to hear any YEC nonsense in this bio. evo. class, and I will fail you if you try” witnessed by two separate posters in the thread constitutes a similar religious litmus test and persecution ?
That doesn’t make any sense, though. If the professor didn’t want to teach the religious aspects of philosophy he could just…not teach the religious aspects of philosophy. He doesn’t need his students’ permission first. Clearly, there’s no need for this alleged shortcut, and no legitimate rationale for the exercise.
Well, that’d let non-Christian theists off the hook, wouldn’t it? I doubt this professor is any more tolerant of Muslims or Jews, for instance. “God is dead” covers all monotheists, who are the majority of the world’s religious believers.
If there was some legitimate purpose to this exercise (“That exercise may have made you upset. Well, now you can understand how upset people were at Nietzsche back in 1883…”), “I was trying to do my job” might be a defense. But, clearly, there was nothing about this exercise that was at all connected to the teaching of philosophy. (This is because it’s the absurd premise of a biased writer, of course).
Isn’t that still a religious litmus test? It’s screening for people with sincere religious faith, who take it very seriously.
The fate of this young man’s soul vis a vis the Bible is irrelevant, the question was whether said third party’s threat of coercion was permissible.
Re-posting those, to have them near to hand:
The second isn’t objectionable at all. The first is a bit brusque, but it’s not a litmus test, or persecution, or discrimination. It can’t be a litmus test, because it demands no response. “Don’t talk about YEC in this class” is an order, not a request for a declaration of beliefs. It’s not persecution or discrimination, because no harm is done.
The professor is establishing what will and will not be topics for discussion in the class. He is not requiring a statement of religious belief from his students, and handing out punitive assignments to the ones who hold beliefs he doesn’t like.
The shortcut isn’t to allow *him *to move on. Obviously he can teach whatever he pleases. It’s just a brusque and self-important way of saying “I don’t want you lot to bring up religious arguments in this class, ever”. The “written exam” is further reinforcement of the point. Over the line, yes, probably. It is a stupid movie.
Sure. Interestingly enough, Sunni Islam specifically allows one to deny their religion under coercion.
Yeah. Which is why I’m not interested in defending the absurd premise of the biased writer.
Ah, well, that was going to be my follow-up question :). If the professor, instead of requiring his students to write “god is dead”, had simply intimated “If any of you brings up god at any point this year, for any reason, I will immediately fail you. You have been warned.”, that would have been OK with you ?
Maybe it was a Philosophy of Religion class. Didja ever think of that, Mr. Smartypants? Huh? Huh? Didja? :dubious:
