WAPO Articles on Liberty University

All;

Here is what the Washington Post said yesterday regarding Liberty:

Virginia’s Liberty transforms into evangelical mega-university - The Washington Post

The Liberty boom - The Washington Post

Allthough the article was neutral, some of the comments are priceless, as always:

"Liberty University - Putting the Real 'BS' in Science for More Than 40 Years"

"I have been following this (as the true independent I am), and am disturbed by 2 things:
The ease with which anti religious bigots obtain those barney fife badges and how intolerant and bigoted so many liberal commenters reveal themselves to be.
What titanic hypocrites"

“It is impossible for secular schools to compete with Liberty on the values side,”
"Riiiiight. If by "values" you mean a stubborn desire to infantalize yourself and stick your head in the sand. I'll take an engineer or scientist from MIT or some other secular school, thanks. I would like the engineer of the next city building to understand that man didn't ride dinosaurs."

"You're last statement is ignorant. Who cares about the personal beliefs of an engineer as long as that person can get the job done? Ps. Christians study at MIT, too. And Non-Christians study at LU."

"Also, sweetheart, it's "your". Don't they teach proper grammar to the pious?"

 

I'm not sure I'm following the purpose of this thread. I just read that article and none of the quotes you listed are actually in it.

 

The OP is referring to the Comments section at the end of articles.

Wow, mad at what posters say in a Comments section? That's almost as silly as trying to prove someone wrong on an internet chat board! :smile:

From the article: "Liberty’s brand is a magnet for many adults who want online higher education with an evangelical Christian point of view." This is why no one will take Liberty seriously. Accredited? Sure. Accepted? Sure. Respected? Of course not.

On the other hand, this is nice: "Liberty has a lower student loan default rate than the national average, indicating that the school in significant measure has avoided a common pitfall of online education: recruiting and enrolling students who amass debts they can’t repay."

But from the You're-Wrong-But-We'll-Let-You-Think-It Department:

“We want to relate all of our subjects back to Scripture, theology and a biblical worldview,” he said. But Tinsley said students use textbooks that would be found in secular universities. In certain situations in an Earth science course, for example, a student would learn the case for biblical creation alongside the science of evolution.

“We try to present full arguments on both sides and then allow the student to make a decision,” Tinsley said. He added, “I've had many students over the years who have held to an evolutionary standpoint and gotten A’s.”

Well, isn't that generous?

 

I am liberty graduate student - three courses remaining. I would recommend Liberty over NCU. I dropped-out from NCU. I am happy at Liberty. I never once thought about dropping Liberty. My criticism is that lately the feedback from professors have been timely but barely minimal. I think as the Liberty gets bigger the pool of quality professors to draw from is diminishing.
I am not religious but I still recommend Liberty. The bible is like any books, I use some of its sentiment in my courses when it supports my writing. Two quotes that I have used in corporate governance as a non-religious person are.
1 Corinthians 4:2 Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy
1 Peter 5:3 Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.

 

Okay, I see now.

The article was interesting. The comments are about what I would expect...the usual evangelical bashing. There's nothing new under the sun.

Several years ago I toured Liberty's law school, met some of the professors, and even got to sit in on a law lecture. I came away very impressed. Academically, I think Liberty really has its act together. A new medical school is in the works, too.

 

Perhaps it's "the usual evangelical bashing" because it warrants "bashing"?

 

I graduated from LUSLL (the first incarnation of distance learning degrees before internet courses, they were on VHS with required campus modules - 1990). Was a tremendous program. I have enjoyed seeing it grow and become what it is.
Of course the program I was in has certainly morphed into something different, but I was in the counseling program and I was not a fundamentalist, but was surrounded by them. Debate was healthy, different perspectives were accepted and I would not trade those 2 years for any of my educational experiences.
I am sure there were non-Christians in the program, there were certainly other mainline denominations, and of course the fundamentalists were there too.

 

I agree that they are, to use your term, "okay."

 

Someone who believes that the Bible is just another ancient book would see the biblical content as a waste of time, and I can understand that. That would make Liberty just okay, at best. Others, who believe that the Bible is integral to understanding the nature of the universe, would see biblical content as critical to a complete education. It all depends on your worldview and I respect many individuals on both sides of the fence.

 

Or perhaps it doesn't!

 

I don't. Except....I don't really care what people choose to put their faith in. I have absolutely no standing in that discussion. But when it is used as a substitute for reason in non-faith-related areas, I don't have to accept it.

I really resent the insertion of faith-based notions into education, science, etc. They don't fit and they serve to interfere. Take "creation science." It isn't science at all. If it was, its tenets would have been discarded a long time ago. But no matter how much evidence is stacked against it, it's proponents continue to (a) support it (which real scientists would not do) and (b) continue to insist it be taught as a competing theory "and let the students decide." Keep in mind, these people are making a scientific jury of a bunch of high school and college students! Oh, and they simultaneously strive to remove that same decision-making and choosing when it comes to other subjects, usually involving sex. Abstinence only sex education, prohibitions against birth control, discrimination against LGBT persons, etc.

None of that is anti-religion or anti-faith. But it is anti-psuedo-science and anti-hucksterism. And the stronger the evidence is against their "creation science," the harder they cling to it.

I appreciate that some faiths are very open to new discoveries and the advancement of science and human knowledge. And I don't care that others aren't. But when they pretend to be "scientific" or to be a fundamental part of higher learning, oh, boy.

 

You are one of the individuals on that side of the fence that I respect. Like I said before, it all boils down to your worldview and the value you place on the Bible. It's either nothing more than mythology or it's the basis for all knowledge. If it's not the basis for all knowledge, then creation science is just hucksterism and the prohibitions you mention are just attempts by one group to control the actions of another. Debating which worldview is correct is pointless.
_________________________________

 

Sorry, but it's not that simple, and it's not about world view. Oh, in your own life it can be, but not when it comes to science and knowledge. People can believe what they want, embrace whatever philosophies make sense to them, etc. But as soon as they want to take those and claim they are objective truths for others to recognize and acknowledge, we run into trouble.

I used creation science as an example because it really fits this point. In science (natural, social, etc.), we have theories and data. Data are observations; theories explain them. We can take a deductive approach where we have a theory about a particular phenomenon and we research it to gather data to see if our theory holds. (This is what police investigators do--they try to prove whodunit.) In the inductive approach, we gather facts and piece together a theory that explains the phenomenon under investigation. Either approach, theory-to-data and data-to-theory, is science. However, no matter how ironclad the result might be, it is subject to alteration--or even complete dismissal--as new evidence becomes available. This is where creation science fails.

In creation science, we have a sort-of-deductive approach in that its proponents have developed a theory and, supposedly, are in search of data to support it. But it fails in at least two significant ways. First, it doesn't use scientific methods for data-gathering and analysis. Instead, it accepts or rejects data based on its already-established beliefs. Second, its proponents do not adjust (or dismiss) their theory when faced with new evidence that contradicts it. This isn't science, and it is not a way of knowing.

Heck, even faith is a way of knowing--a spiritual way. Creation science, IMHO, hurts faith by dressing it up as something it is not.

Finally, this isn't an either/or proposition. Everyone--everyone!--who lives a life of faith also lives in a world understood by science. And they benefit from its advances. There are, conversely, some people who live in a world of science and do not embrace faith. But if we were to disconnect "faith" (almost always a Christian construct in this country) with "spirituality," we might find that spirituality provides us with a new way of knowing, a holistic way, especially as it applies to understanding ourselves and our other humans. Just sayin'....

 

I'm still trying to determine who was mad about the comments. Not me, I was amused by the back and forth about fundamentalism and evangelical Christianity. I am neutral about the subject, but feel that if fundamentalist viewpoints are introduced in a non-religious curriculum, then the mainstream doctrine or value should be discussed as well.

 

Disagree; it is that simple. If the Bible is hooey, I agree with everything else you said below this statement. If the Bible is the real deal, it is logical to study it as a scientifically accurate text. Everything hinges on that. The problem is there is no way to apply the scientific method to the question or prove either viewpoint conclusively. Debates on the subject always seem to lead to a stalemate.

 

It's certainly growing into a major national institution.

Liberty's expanding profile threatens some people emotionally, I guess. It needn't, since very different philosophies already dominate many other universities here in the US. There's no reason to think that if Liberty is successful, then all the rest of non-evangelical religion and/or the political left are doomed to implode. It just means that there will be a bit more diversity on the American higher education scene, and I think that's probably a good thing.

The comments section pretty clearly isn't moderated, so the comments are inevitably going to be dominated by the lowest-common-denominator. That's the way of the internet.

Back in the day in the 1990's, I used to read the 'Times Higher Education Supplement'. The 'letters' section in the THES was/is carefully edited, and oftentimes the letters were better than the articles.

 

Perhaps it's just a little ironic when people claim intellectual superiority in comments that read like they were written by attitude-crazed adolescents.

If Liberty is acting like a "magnet", then it must be attracting people who presumably do take the school seriously. So your assertion there might have logical problems.

Not by you, obviously.

Nevertheless, I think that it's indisputable that many people do respect Liberty, and I'd guess that people respect it for a whole variety of reasons. Some of those reasons are probably better than others. You might personally disagree with the reasons people respect Liberty and I think that in some instances your disagreement might even be right. But overstating your position won't make it more persuasive.

It might actually be. Tolerance of dissenting opinion isn't always something that's seen in higher education these days. This Liberty thing is basically the same situation that students encounter whenever they disagree with their professor's own views about something the professor cares deeply about.

For example, when I was a student at San Francisco State, one of my favorite professors was a Marxist. I wasn't a Marxist and in fact I took a rather dim view of Marxism. That was fine with this professor and we actually became good friends and sometimes we used to go out for pizza and beer with some of the other students after our night class got out. He respected my opinions provided that I presented them and argued for them well, and I always got good grades. I found him to be an excellent professor, particularly of Greek philosophy. I remember another feminist professor at the same school who taught a very good aesthetics class. She covered feminist aesthetics in a lecture, just as she covered other art theories in other lectures. But there wasn't any expectation that everyone in class become feminists or espouse feminist art criticism. In fact some students were vocally critical of it and they did very well, grade-wise.

So, if Liberty is saying that they handle their own evangelical Christian distinctives in much the same way, then I'm pleased. Far from dismissing this man's remarks, I think that they might be very important. Of course a great deal obviously depends on how all this plays out in real life.

 

Well said. Thank you.