This professor is fantastic. He was fired from his job for telling students that the story of Adam and Eve should not be taken literally — students apparently felt the professor was “denigrating their religion.” But his responses to the situation are hilarious and spot-on:
“I’m just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master’s degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job,” Bitterman said.
Well, if the Bible says to teach it…
“I just thought there was such a thing as academic freedom here,” he said. “From my point of view, what they’re doing is essentially teaching their students very well to function in the eighth century.”
So perfect.
There was a much smaller-scale blow-up like this one when I was in college and taking a required first-year course on literature and philosophy from antiquity to the Enlightenment. We read parts of the Bible, and our professor (also the dean of the college) referred to the stories within the Bible as “myths.” A handful of mouth-breathing freshmen didn’t bother to look the word “myth” up in the dictionary, and instead whined to everyone in the class and to their advisers that our professor was insulting Christianity. The professor eventually had to get up and explain the term “myth” and even publicly self-identify as a Christian just to stop the “you’re persecuting Christians” bitch-fest. Even as a green 18-year-old not too far removed from my days at Christian horse camp (yes, really) I knew they were a special kind of self-righteous and stupid.
In other words, the “you’re insulting my religion” argument in response to scientific evidence is anti-intellectual and moronic, and it’s embarrassing to people of faith who haven’t totally traded rational thought for dogmatism. If you believe that the Bible should be taken literally, then please, follow the recommendations of one President Bartlett:
Back to the good professor, who sums it all up nicely:
“As a taxpayer, I’d like to know if a tax-supported public institution of higher learning has given veto power over what can and cannot be said in its classrooms to a fundamentalist religious group,” he said. “If it has … then the taxpaying public of Iowa has a right to know. What’s next? Whales talk French at the bottom of the sea?”
I’m sure he’ll eventually get his apology. Just like Galileo, right?
Thanks to Ms. Lauren for the link.
I would venture that 8th century scholars had a more sophisticated interpretation of the Bible than these folks do. Bede, anyone?
I referred to Bible stories as myths in an English essay in university, and I was called to my professor’s office to explain myself. She wanted me to change what I’d written. I refused, she finally conceded, and I received a decent mark. I couldn’t believe that a university professor would even consider taking me to task for that.
Unfortunately, there are people who were raised to believe that any questioning of their religious belief, political ideology, or their world view is a direct attack upon themselves and their family. This is especially true for those who were raised to take them as infallible and anyone who disagrees is the enemy who must be harshly criticized and if possible, put down. In many ways, these students are being raised no differently by their families/local community than students raised in authoritarian regimes of fascist/communist orientations.
At least from this account, they sound no different from my Great-Aunt’s account of how Mao Zedong got thousands of students down to junior high level to form Red Guard units to go around denouncing and harassing teachers and anyone else who deviated from the prevailing view of Maoist thought.
A college education should be about exploring ideas and learning how to critically grapple with/analyze such ideas with the Professor serving as facilitator of the process. If students are not prepared to have their beliefs/worldview challenged by the Prof or fellow classmates, they are not ready for college and for life after graduation.
What I fear with this Professor’s firing is that faculty and students may become so fearful of questioning and challenging ideas/worldviews that the whole purpose of a college education is rendered meaningless.
I’m so glad I went to college in the 80s. And in the Northeast. Nobody gave a rat’s ass about any of this then.
I agree with exholt – many of the Horowitzian tactics in play these days are very reminiscent of the cultural revolution.
I took a Greek/Roman mythology course as an elective in my third year, and my professor didn’t really go out of his way to draw specific parallels between the Bible and other mythologies, but it was definitely mentioned in passing, as a greater lesson on mankind as a whole, and how we tend to create our gods; always in our own image (i.e. “if horses had gods, they would look like horses”), the motif of the “son of God” taking over in the heavens as a new era of worship took over, the tendency to take a great historic man and elevate him to the position of a god.
Of course, we’re Canadian, so there was never any controversy about it at all; I think I heard one guy bitching about it after class one day, to which his incredibly wry friend told him that if he wanted a Bible study class, he could just go to church on Sundays: “It’s probably a lot cheaper.”
Geeze, so when in a lecture about the Greco-Roman gods the prof casually made a remark to the tune of “but no one believes in those anymore” I could have gotten him fired? Or does it not count as denigrating a religion if it’s not Christianity?
*grumble grumble* It peeves me so much to hear how up in arms these people get about the tiniest perceived slights, when those of us in less popular religions are getting along just fine without any of this pandering, or indeed recognition. And it makes me ashamed for my Christian friends who are sane about their religion, that they have to watch utter nutbars giving their group a bad name.
I sent the reporter a love note, because I’m curious about why she thought it was relevant to her story that her quoted source, an ISU professor of religion, is an atheist.
At first glance it implies that his beliefs about the mythical sky fairy influence or control his beliefs about academic freedom, which is the topic he commented on.
I’m sure I’ve used this quote before, from the world’s oldest educational film:
“How does a scientist know what’s true? Well, all facts begin as dreams, dreamt by a wizard. If the wizard crosses the path of a scorned widow, then he shares it at the town council. Now it is a hypothesis, and it’s time to drown the wizard. If he floats, he is an evil wizard, and must be burned alive. If he drowns, then the hypothesis is true! The king is told, and he consults with his menagerie of birds. If the king is satisfied, then it becomes an old wives’ tale and science is once more advanced.”
Note that the voice of Spongebob (Tom Kenny) introduces the film.
Love that video. I’ve seen it many times. Just goes to show you that these sick fundamentalists pick and choose what parts of the Bible they believe in to support their own sick actions.
Of course, we’re Canadian, so there was never any controversy about it at all
Heh. My Canadian ex used to get beat up in school because he questioned the Lord’s Prayer being read over the loudspeaker every morning.
It’s probably a good idea for any professor teaching mythology or religion classes to start off defining terminology, just as in any other subject–i.e. that “myth” doesn’t mean “fake” as it does colloquially. That aside, anyone who is going to get their Fruit of the Looms twisted over the fact that there are parallels between different mythologies needs to go sign themselves out of college. Because it might make them think, and stuff.
I loved that West Wing scene, a classic.
Hee – my high school was the exact opposite. We were used to listening to it since it was piped in at us after O Canada every day since Kindergarten, so it was white noise for the vast majority of us.
One day in my junior year, the born-again Christian ‘club’ asked the principal to forgo the Lord’s Prayer – it was Worldwide Christian Persecution Awareness Week (or something), and they thought that doing so would approximate the persecution that Christians in less-Jesus-friendly nations underwent. (Yeah, right. Sure.)
Anyways, people kind us went “Huh” and didn’t really take much note of it – those who did notice it were of the opinion that someone had pointed out to the principal that we really shouldn’t be piping in religious material in a public school, and they just did away with it without ado. Then the next day, a representative for the Christians made an announcement about their “awareness event” and asked how the student body felt about being deprived of the Lord’s Prayer, and invited them to come pray for the souls of oppressed and persecuted Christians the world over after school.
By the end of the day, the office had a petition of 700 students (in a 1000-student school) asking for the permanent banning of the Lord’s Prayer – the only thing the Christians had accomplished was to wrest the student body from their numb apathy regarding the matter.* Not quite the reaction the Christian’s were looking for.
*NB: I come from a small yet reasonably educated and affluent small town, with a largely Scottish/British ancestry. There wasn’t a single Jewish family in the area, nor devout Muslims, so there was never a question of offending a minority religion to disturb the acceptance of the status quo; if there had been, I’m quite sure the Lord’s Prayer would have been done away with much sooner.
At Princeton in the late 1980s, there was a big (meaning, small, in reality) brouhaha over an Opus Dei priest who has prepared a list of courses that he discouraged students from taking – a fairly long list, including much of the religion department, courses on Latin American history, etc. My favorite professor Elaine Pagels, a scholar on early Christianity and Gnosticism, was probably on the list though I honestly don’t remember. After a stink over this and other issues, the priest – a former Wall Street guy of some sort – was removed by the bishop of Trenton and eventually made his way down to K Street, where he ministers now to a substantial segment of the Republican Party at prayer.
Zuzu – I relate to feeling fortunate for having attended college in the northeast in the 1980s, before theocratic madness reached its tidal mark.
This is off topic a bit, but I wasn’t sure where to send story leads on to you all at feministe.
Apparently, there is a site, myfreeimplants.com, where women sign up, and put naked photos up and do a donation drive to pay for their implants.
There is a video story here.
http://potw.news.yahoo.com/s/potw/35823/hooter-heaven;_ylt=AvBYBPbQ3recyROSve9yhI8KwId4
[...] I was fired, said Bible isn’t literal (thanks to Feministe) “As a taxpayer, I’d like to know if a tax-supported public institution of higher [...]
Actually, RKMK, I would have no objection to “O Canada” being played over my kids’ schools’ PA systems every morning.
Neither did we – which is why they kept playing it, and just ditched the Lord’s Prayer.
fundies = third century Bible-beating scholars
Jovan1984: That’s unnecessarily insulting to third century Bibles and their contemporary scholars.
Few of today’s fundamentalists have the intellectual chops of an Origen or a Clement, for example, or even an Arius. And the 2nd century writer Justin Martyr had, it appears, rather more tolerance than most of them can be accused of.