Department Meeting

The Department meeting today covered a wide range of topics--too many for the time allowed. One that caught my eye was a proposed new course Seeking Truth, Living with Doubt, to be based on the book by Marshall Onellion and Steven Fortney. Onellion had worked with a lecture series at the library on faith and reason; one of whose speakers was Chris Hedges, author of American Fascists. Red flags immediately--Hedges, to the best of my observation, lied.

The proposal met a fairly cool reception--lots of worries about hassles from upset students, is this the department for this kind of thing, etc.

Afterwards I looked up the book. Onellion and Fortney take the position, if references can be trusted to describe it accurately, that any dogmatic position whatsoever is evil. The only useful religions are those that have no "dogma," which curiously enough included Buddhism. Any sort of Christianity or Islam or Judaism that makes propositional statements, as opposed to filtering everything through mysticism, they hate.

A course on science and religion might be useful, but this one isn't going to help any.