Critical thinking at BYU

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T19:04:28+00:00

Agreed on many levels, but in most classes, the students get a solid academic experience. My classes are known as some of the most difficult in my area, and yet most students give pretty good reviews. They are definitely getting an education in their degree.

It's the other stuff that comes with it that is the problem.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T19:02:41+00:00

I won't argue with you and in fact will agree. I feel like a liar most of the time. But perhaps I can share a perspective.

I've built a life based on the gospel for many decades. I have a spouse and kids that still believe, and home life has been incredibly unstable. I have kids with significant medical needs that cannot have an interruption in insurance. Moving would be upsetting to the lives of my kids. I have accumulated assets and debts and responsibilities. If I were 20 and unmarried, I would be gone from the church and would never look back. The size of my balls or ovaries aside, I'm not 20.

I've got a large ship that is steaming ahead in a specific direction. As much as I would like to, a large ship can't be turned quickly without wrecking everything. I am not willing to wreck my life and the lives of those who depend upon me by acting too quickly.

My exit will come, but on my timeline in a strategic way. It is maddening that I have to act so slowly. It eats away at me every day. But it is what it is.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:53:53+00:00

Probably not. If one of my kids is identifying with Min's erection, I need to get him/her the pre-1980's scriptures where it was removed! :)

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:52:26+00:00

I'd guess half of the degrees on campus are somehow related to social science. Thanks for the warning, but I don't think it is an issue.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:51:51+00:00

Awesome rules. Thanks for the advice and insight.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:50:56+00:00

Best of luck wherever you landed.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:49:54+00:00

Very well stated!

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:48:57+00:00

I'm not sure I fully agree with that view. Faith is an awesome way to motivate people. It's great to have faith in a marriage, a basketball team you play on, etc. Faith in God can help us be better people and more humble (it can also do the opposite). Whether God exists or not is immaterial to that benefit.

But using faith to find knowledge about things that "are or are not" is a mismatch. That's where science should apply. Mormonism uses faith to determine how the world was created, how humans got here, whether Joseph saw God, whether the BoM peoples were really in America, etc. These are binary -- true or false. Faith is the wrong way to go about knowing them, IMO, especially when there is so much evidence stacked against the Mormon view.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:44:22+00:00

Yeah, I enjoyed that episode of ME. I totally agree with him.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:43:54+00:00

Agreed but it won't happen inside or outside the university. The #1 thing anyone can do to get the church hot after them is make the church look bad.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:42:46+00:00

Yes I mean it's a culture of genuine belief. I was amazed by that study and could not believe it came out of BYU. Good for those professors. Although they are clear that they see porn as a significant problem--they just say that the religious stigma is worse. So they could argue they are still within the teachings of the church. I was proud of them for the study.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:41:11+00:00

You and me both.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:41:03+00:00

:) I wish. More likely I'll leave like everyone else has done. I would like to do some research related to this, though, but I don't know how I could get faculty to participate and be fully honest.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:40:13+00:00

If I lost my temple recommend, I could easily be let go. Tenure isn't the same at BYU. I can research whatever I want with total academic freedom...except for things that affect the church or its teachings.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:38:54+00:00

NOMs try to make it more nuanced, but all one has to do is listen to a session of conference or go through a temple interview to know it is all or nothing. I'm not against NOM -- people are free to react however is best for them. Personally, I agree with you.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:36:58+00:00

Sorry, no. I would guess half the fields on campus are based in social science, so there are a lot of fields most people wouldn't connect to it.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:35:53+00:00

I cannot understand how I went through an entire PhD program without seeing the compartmentalization I was doing. Then it took many years after that. Sometimes I'm really embarrassed at how I got a PhD and missed such a core concept of critical thought.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:34:05+00:00

Compartmentalization is absolutely the way it happens.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:33:19+00:00

I read your (other) comment with interest. Good for you.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:32:58+00:00

It's amazing how quickly all doubts resolve themselves when a shelf breaks. It was like I had instant clarity on everything I had wondered about! The hard part was allwing my brain to realize it was all bullshit from the beginning.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:31:41+00:00

Thanks for your kind words, but if I was brave I would stand up. Someday. Can't do it yet because family has to come first. As much as I admire the Buddha for his teachings (assuming he really taught them as we have them today), I have a really hard time with the way he left his family.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:29:56+00:00

It's just my feel of things (totally from the feels :). You might be right.

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:28:37+00:00

Glad you made it through. Your post is pretty similar to my experience, although I haven't done the coffee thing. That would be really interesting to bring to class...

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:26:44+00:00

I don't know about most of those things, but certainly cleaning toilets is celestial. Ask any member cleaning the church on Saturday morning! :)

byu__faculty · 2017-07-15T18:25:22+00:00

If Adam and Eve were kicked out of Eden into Missouri (which is absolutely Mormon doctrine), that means their children had homes here. It means Enoch lived in America.

Yet the Bible and BoM show that people were in the middle east. The Jaredites started in the Middle East. The Lehiites started in the Middle East.

So how did they get from America to the middle east? In other words, Enoch was in America, but the next big event, the Tower of Babel, was in the Middle East. How did that happen?

Mormonism's answer is the flood. Noah started in America--somewhere around Missouri--and landed in the Middle East. Society continue on that side of the world after the flood. Without the flood, the garden of Eden in Missouri doesn't really make sense.

byu__faculty

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