Functional illiterates
August 29, 2004 by Bill
“Functional Illiterates” is a phrase coined by the late Robert Hutchins, who was dean of the Yale University Law School at age 28. He was appointed chancellor of the University of Chicago at age 32. He was obviously brilliant.
One of the most important events of his life took place when he was a teenager. He never forgot it. His father was a professor of philosophy at Oberlin College in Ohio. Hutchins went to his father one day and started to give him his “opinion” on a particular subject. His father stopped him with these words: “Son…let me remind you, before you proceed, that you do not know enough about the subject to even have an opinion.”
Would to God that every Tom, Jane, Dick and Harry going around giving their “opinions” about religion and the bible would take that to heart. As Dr. Fred Denbeaux put it in the Layman’s Theological Library series “the person who is unwilling to study linguistics and literary distinctions and to differentiate between prose and poetry, history and mythology, legend and folklore, will not ever understand the bible.”
There is an enormous amount of confusion as to what it means to be religiously educated. There is a vast, world of difference, between training, indoctrination and education.
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Proud to be known as liberal
August 22, 2004 by Bill
I have often heard myself referred to as “liberal”. I cannot tell you how proud I am to be known by that classification. It is one of the most beautiful and cherished words in our language. It has nothing to do with whether you are a Republican or Democrat, a Unitarian, Presbyterian or Congregationalist. It has to do with an attitude…a frame of mind…an orientation to life and events…a philosophy…a concept having to do with freedom.
Liberal and liberty both have the same root…defined in “Webster’s Dictionary” as…”The quality or state of being free…as a freeman…a free person….as opposed to slavery, bondage and subjection…worthy of a person of free birth…not servile or mean…a noble way…generous…open-handed…free from bigotry…inclined to welcome new ideas.”
If liberalism is that which liberates…which sets free the minds, spirits and bodies of human beings…then how proud I am to be known as one who is dedicated to such a noble concept.
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Humanism 101
August 15, 2004 by Bill
How individual members of Christian fundamentalism define “Humanism” depends on where they are on a scale of 1 to 10 of brain malfunction.
An example: In a pamphlet produced and mailed out to thousands by a Texas fundamentalist parents group, they described “humanism” in these words: “a concern for the environment…control of energy…the removal of the free enterprise system…working for disarmament…distribution of wealth…the creation and support of peace movements.” The title of this pamphlet was “Is Humanism Molesting Your Child?”
For some of this mentality, attacking humanism means taking great literature out of school libraries. They called that “book burning” in Nazi Germany. It means not exposing our young people to what an element of Christian fundamentalism has decided is “obscene”. By their own standards and definitions they must then ban the bible from school libraries. The bible is full of every obscenity known to the human race…rape…gang rape…sodomy…adultery…genocide…incest…murder…and all in lurid detail…
What fanatics, extremists, the ignorant and illiterate do to magnificent words and ideas is frightening.
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