Religious Exemption Proposal

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Garp, Jun 3, 2022.

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  1. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    A PhD should advance scholarship. It should either create or test theory and fill gaps in knowledge of the discipline. Is it possible to do that by studying religion? Yes, assuming the study--curricula and research--are academic.

    Can an unaccredited religious school accomplish this? I think we can drop the "religious" qualifier since it adds nor detracts from the question. So, can an unaccredited school accomplish this? I think so, especially when legitimate nontraditional schools were routinely excluded from joining the accredited "club." Hypothetically. But do such schools exist anymore? There are a few left, but they're a dying breed. Most of the old stalwarts have become accredited or have closed.

    Back to religious schools for a moment. Can they conduct secular, science- and academic-based degree programs? Of course! It happens all over. And as long as such schools don't trump science with religious beliefs, I just don't see a problem with it.

    But what about these unaccredited bible schools? They often have a double-whammy. They're not in academia, and they often have faith-based curricula. I don't know how a real PhD emerges from that.
     
  2. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    If I read the following link correctly, homosexuality was de rigeur in Greece centuries before Christ. This is not the first time or place it has been acceptable.. I hope the acceptance lasts - forever and history will show it's not just a temporary 'thingy of the zeitgeist' for those hardened in heart and spirit to rail against. It's nobody else's business besides their own, who a person loves and sleeps with.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Greece#:~:text=These scholars have shown that,BC until the Roman era.

    Excerpt: "These scholars have shown that same-sex relations were openly practised, largely with official sanction, in many areas of life from the 7th century BC until the Roman era."

    I've read your writings on the Internet about this subject, Mr. Burgos. Can't say as I agree with them at all. Maybe other members here might want to have a look, see what you (and they) think... up to them. The writings are easy enough for them to find.
     
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2022
  3. Garp

    Garp Well-Known Member

    I was just watching Discovery and they were talking about Hadrian's Wall and mentioned Emperor Hadrian's (Roman) boyfriend drowning by jumping into a river (or alternatively pushed by Hadrian himself).
     
    Johann likes this.
  4. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

  5. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Sexual relations between women in Roman times appear to be less documented. There are a few accounts, cited in the article above, but one Roman writer stated relations between women were "unheard of." From other evidence, it's plain they were not "unheard of" at all. My apologies and sincere respect to those Roman ladies whose relationships were not "heard of." You are missed. I feel the story of your lives deserved equal time with those of men.
     
  6. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    @Garp Yes. Trump could have used that guy, Hadrian. He knew how to build a wall! It's only 10% still there, now, and even that section won't keep the blessed Picts out, any more, because it's not properly patrolled! :( 300 years before Hadrian, around 220 BCE the Chinese built a magnificent wall, to keep out barbarians - whom Trump might have called "bad hombres." Only 8.2% of that one is still around. :)
     
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2022
  7. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    Agreed.

    My wife and I have a good friend who is a hospital chaplain. And we were discussing the interfaith nature of hospital chaplaincy and she shared that, during her Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) in New York, they had among them a Seventh Day Adventist Pastor. Said Pastor maintained steadfastly that HIV/AIDS was nothing more than a just and rightful punishment for sins of the flesh. To try to broaden his horizons they assigned him to a hospice unit where people were dying of AIDS (this being in the early 90s). Far from broadening his horizons, he instead spent his time preaching this very belief, including to a woman who had contracted AIDS through a tainted blood transfusion. So, my doubting Thomas, you'll have to forgive me for disagreeing with you on this notion.

    Here's the thing...

    If you tell a kid that them being gay is a grave sin and that leads them to suicide then that's not the same as telling a person they have terminal cancer. That's child abuse. You clearly disagree. You can think I'm going to Hell. That's fine. Because I desire no communion with a cruel and sick deity that would hurt children thusly. You're not going to change my mind. I doubt I will change yours. But since you opened up I felt compelled to lay all my cards on the table.

    Since I've already opened the can of worms, I would also say that I see no problem with a person choosing to end their life because terminal cancer or a diagnosis such as ALS and they want to go out on their own terms. Again, I'm talking about the reality that we can observe and not the one some choose to extrapolate from a series of very old and highly politicized books. That, again, is different from a child being told that an essential part of who they are is flawed, wrong, disordered or diseased. The latter happens. A lot. And it's much more of a public health crisis than unlicensed psychologists or doctors delivering verifiable medical diagnoses.
     
  8. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    You have many examples of schools that did it competently and are now accredited. There are many who would argue that LBU does it competently despite its lack of accreditation. My feeling, though, is that if you can do it competently then you should do it as an accredited institution. Religious exempt? Award all of the Doctors of Divinity or Doctors of Theology (Th.D) than you like. The Ph.D. is not for you. That's a purely academic degree that religious exemption should not cover.
     
  9. Garp

    Garp Well-Known Member

    Yes. Technically, a ThD is equivalent to a PhD (academic research doctorate). I would suggest they be restricted to things like Doctor of Biblical Studies (DBS) or Doctor of Christian Leadership (DCL) and so on. Of course they don't want that because in spite of protestation they want the secular titles or titles used at other universities or seminaries. Just not the standards.

    Again, I think two classes of exemption would be helpful. One for institutions with religious objections who can demonstrate some level of compliance with normative requirements (allowed to grant PhDs and so on). And one for those who are exempt and substandard or unable to determine (allow DBS, DCL, etc).
     
  10. Michael Burgos

    Michael Burgos Active Member

    And thus we see that your gripes are routed in a theology, albeit a heterodox one of your own making.
     
  11. Michael Burgos

    Michael Burgos Active Member

    Well, pushing aside your appeal to, umm, that bastion of unbiased truth that is Wikipedia, please note that while homosexuality was certainly practiced in Ancient Greece, it was still regarded as immoral by most writers of the day, especially the ethicists. So too, many of the same people practiced pedophilia as a part of their degenerate paideia. But using your rationale, I suppose that when an adult sexually abuses a child, “It's nobody else's business besides their own, who a person loves and sleeps with.” Truly, that sounds like an indefensible and irrational appeal to moral insanity. Oh wait, let me guess— you want to qualify that statement to preclude the form of behavior you disagree with (i.e., like those dastardly Christians)… And btw, my former comment was not relevant to Ancient Greece but the west as I explicitly noted.
     
  12. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    Actually it was an appeal to the scholar Erich Bethe, Professor of Classics and rector at University of Leipzig, and KJ Dover, "a scholar of Greek prose and Aristophanic comedy [and] author of Greek Homosexuality (1978), a key text on the subject."
     
  13. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Nonsense - and you know I meant nothing of the kind. That's grasping at a particularly filthy straw. Let's just agree to disagree and not like each other.
     
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  14. Michael Burgos

    Michael Burgos Active Member

    Sure, and without the added ballast of the multitudinous scholarly critiques by Gagnon, Reynolds, and others. And as someone who reads classical Greek and who has read the primary sources, forgive me if I doubt the objectivity of Wikipedia.
     
  15. Michael Burgos

    Michael Burgos Active Member

    You missed the reductio ad absurdum and instead, suggested that I implied you meant the absurdum. I trust you'll catch on. Also, I have this strange ability to disagree with people and still like them. You should try it.
     
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2022
  16. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    If your claim is that the specific statements cited were false, then you could have said that. Attacking Wikipedia - the entire encyclopedia - as unreliable is a distraction, no different than Trump saying that "CNN is fake news" when he doesn't like the story they're reporting about him.
     
  17. Michael Burgos

    Michael Burgos Active Member

    My claim is that Wikipedia generally, and the relevant pericope more specifically lacks objectivity. If that makes my comment an "attack," well, I suppose we have different definitions of that term. What I did say is that the relevant pericope lacked balance and the ballast of more recent scholarship. I also pointed out the absurdity of appealing to ancient Greece so as to afford moral normativity to homosexuality in the contemporary western context. Misguided flex, but ok.
     
  18. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    Again, an attempt to distract with irrelevance.

    "Lacking objectivity" is not the same thing as false. Someone who lacks objectivity can still make a correct statement. You haven't provided anything to challenge the statement given beyond an appeal to your own authority. It's falling flat. Your inability to respond with substance speaks for itself, I won't be engaging any further.
     
  19. Michael Burgos

    Michael Burgos Active Member

    That is an ad hominem and my comment is directly relevant to the comment you made.

    Evidently, your reading comprehension isn't what it should be. I never suggested the claim was false. Rather, I repeatedly said it lacked objectivity and the ballast of a massive amount of scholarship. It lacks the nuance one would expect from a specialist.

    Oh, I see. So I partially concede the statement as evident above and note how the relevant citation (from a text published in the 70s) is imbalanced, and you want me to appeal to distinct authorities? You mean beyond the ones I explicitly mentioned? This is nothing short of subterfuge. Did you want page numbers? And how, exactly, is this relevant to the argumentation I gave to Johann?

    You addressed none of the relevant issues as they relate to my rebuttal to Johann's comments but instead issued misguided complaints about a source that you likely haven't even read (I have) upon the basis of the author's citation in Wikipedia and her professorship (which btw, is a fallacious appeal to authority) and now you won't engage? How convenient and transparent.
     
  20. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Christianity has existed long before western society's general acceptance of innate differences in sexual preference, but one might hope that given its central message of love that it would have been a positive factor in that tolerance coming about. After all, theologically conservative Christians do not speak for Christianity as a whole.
     

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