Science and religion vs. humanities and religion
By Thoreau
The Islamic Republic of Iran has ordered limits on the number of humanities degrees awarded. Now, if this were just a limit on the number of doctorates, I’d be saying “Finally, somebody decides to DO SOMETHING about PhD over-production!” But, no, this is a limit on bachelors degrees, because the Supreme Leader worries that studying humanities undermines the authority of the theocracy.
In the US, we tend to believe that among academic disciplines the greatest foe of religion is science. Certainly, science poses severe problems for religious claims like faith-healing (i.e. claims that somebody can consistently produce miracles). It also poses severe problems for young earth creationism (although there are young earth creationists who manage to do well in science careers that don’t relate to the age of the earth, and even a few who do well in fields where many might perceive a conflict). However, miracles as discrete events pose fewer direct problems for many people who are scientifically-trained and also religious. I’ll let the philosophically-trained sort out whether discrete, non-reproducible events are in fact beyond science by definition, or whether those scientists are non-rigorous compartmentalizers. Either way, the empirical observation is that there are many intelligent people who work in science and also practice a religion of some sort.
I suspect that the reason why many people see science as the greatest academic foe of religion is at least in part the first 2 chapters of Genesis. The Bible starts off with some claims that biologists and geologists will certainly have issues with. But after that, it gets into social and moral issues. If your faith hinges on young earth creationism, OK, science class might pose issues for you. If you already regarded the first 2 chapters as Genesis as figurative, or if you regard them as literal but not the most important parts of the Bible, science class is not the biggest challenge to your faith that you’ll encounter in college. After Genesis, miracles are (mostly) discrete events in the Bible, rather than the main theme of the book. Even Jesus’s miracles in the Gospels are all set alongside moral lessons. An education that raises hard questions about people, society, culture, literature, and values may cause more re-examination of religious beliefs and religious texts than any amount of scientific training. This is not to say that religious teachings don’t have valid responses to some or all of the questions raised in those re-examinations, but at the end of the day the chemistry major probably has fewer discussions with religious implications than the sociology or philosophy major.
My anecdotal observation has been that engineering majors (who study plenty of science but often take little or no biology or geology in college) have ample numbers of evangelical Christians in their numbers. Or at least evangelical groups on college campuses have no shortage of engineers. I haven’t observed these groups enough to ascertain the representation of various humanities and social science fields among evangelicals. Of course, these observations may have as much to do with kulturkampf and politics (religion and politics are often correlated, and ethnic studies is of course full of libruls) as with self-examination caused by studying humanities. Still, if I had to make a bet, I’d bet that when students raised in strict religious families return home from their first semester of college and have the Ritual Argument With Mom and Dad, the things studied in freshman humanities lead to more arguments than the things studied in science.
So, I am less than shocked that the Supreme Leader fears humanities more than science.
Comment by Anderson —
September 1, 2010 @ 2:05 pm
The humanities can teach students to read critically, for one thing — humanistic scholarship is founded on the interpretation of texts — and that’s never good for a religion based on the fundamental inerrancy of a particular book.
Comment by Grod —
September 1, 2010 @ 2:53 pm
I’m a software “engineer” (scare quotes not because I don’t think it is engineering, but because we don’t yet have the sorts of guilds for guarding the title that other engineers do), and am amused by how many creationists there are in the field. I don’t know if studying a complex, applied field leads to difficulty understanding how complex things in the world can spontaneously evolve without a controlling intelligence, or if those predisposed to such difficulties are attracted to engineering, but it is certainly a correlation.
We also have a lot of punk rock folks in the field (how I’d designate myself, were I still young enough to be punk rock), especially in ‘net related work, but as the industry matures I expect that segment to go away.
Comment by Keifus —
September 1, 2010 @ 4:32 pm
My experience with engineers is that we tended more than other fields toward premature grouchiness and heavy drinking. Thinking of George Carlin’s maxim about cynics and romantics, these things may not be unrelated.
So far as humanities vs. religion, the former directly addresses the latter often enough (whereas science might dispute alleged accounts and interpretations, but leaves the “why” out of it, generally). It directly addresses politics too. I agree that it’s more in the habit of examination of those issues, but on the other hand, there can’t be a shortage of studies that come up with favorable views of religion-in-general. I suspect that the problem is that Iran’s cultural czars are demanding a political and religious viewpoint specific enough that it’s hard to cull a curriculum out of existing notable works.
(I’m not prepared to guess how heavily “humanities” throughout the world stresses western literature, but even a token sampling from that canon is just chock full of casual bigotry toward the former colonial areas. I don’t approve of banning of course, but it’s got to smart.)
Or maybe they’re just pissed at Azar Nafisi.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
September 1, 2010 @ 4:45 pm
The clerical regime isn’t limiting the number of humanities bachelor’s degrees because of the intellectual challenge to religion per se.
They’re limiting those because they’re a threat to the standing of the clerical regime. As far as academia goes, those humanities professors are certainly quicker to upset the political order than the Evil Fizziks Types.
Comment by Thoreau —
September 1, 2010 @ 4:55 pm
Re-reading the article, I take note of how the Iranian regime regards universities as an ideological battlefield.
My guess is that David Horowitz and the Supreme Leader would get along great. They’d both complain that the universities are full of unpatriotic libruls.
Another thing worth noting, as we look at the Iranian regime seeking more control over universities, is that Rafsanjani, who backed Moussavi, apparently owns some very successful for-profit schools. I’d be less than shocked if their kulturkampf against universities extends to for-profits as a way to go after Rafsanjani.
The Horowitz/Khameini odd couple would be matched by the Rafsanjani/Career Education Corporation odd couple.
Comment by dhex —
September 1, 2010 @ 7:38 pm
Re-reading the article, I take note of how the Iranian regime regards universities as an ideological battlefield.
well, they are!
while it pains me that david horowitz might be right about anything, there’s only so many (deadly serious) tales of “this dissertation on irish modernism needs to quote more lenin” one needs before considering the nature of stopped clocks.
Comment by Thoreau —
September 1, 2010 @ 7:40 pm
“this dissertation on irish modernism needs to quote more lenin”
SRSLY? Professors actually say that shit? Context plz?
Comment by dhex —
September 1, 2010 @ 8:02 pm
context is “you want a job in english, right?”
Comment by Thoreau —
September 1, 2010 @ 8:07 pm
Even then, there’s “I am your committee chair and I won’t sign your thesis and write letters for you until you quote more Lenin” and “You should know that quoting Lenin is popular, and your job talk will go over better if you do that.”
The former speaks to an asshole on a power trip. The later is evidence of a broader ideological consensus.
Comment by implied otter —
September 1, 2010 @ 8:35 pm
1. dhex, I think you could argue that Irish modernism owes a lot to the general European revolutionary movement, and an understanding of the movement would be important to an understanding of the relevant texts. And while Marx would probably be more relevant than Lenin here (and I make this argument from the assumption that your original comment was kind of a trolly apotheosis of thesis advisers wanting more Foucault or whatever) it still isn’t completely nonsensical. And didn’t Lenin fight a duel with James Joyce in a bar in Zurich in 1915? So reminding everyone that Lenin’s remark about “how appropriate; you fight like a cow” was one of the driving influences of The Dubliners is almost certainly something you wouldn’t want to leave out of a paper on Irish Modernism. At least not if you took the topic seriously.
2. Engineers. Jesus.
Comment by chris y —
September 2, 2010 @ 3:28 am
implied otter, you could indeed argue all sorts of things, but if you want to quote Marxists in discussions of Irish modernism, what’s wrong with James Connolly: “Just as it is true that a stream cannot rise above its source, so it is true that a national literature cannot rise above the moral level of the social conditions of the people from whom it derives its inspiration.”
Lenin’s favourite novelist was Knut Hamsun. True fact.
Comment by hf —
September 2, 2010 @ 9:59 am
You probably already know that Ahmadinejad has a PhD in engineering, and I’ve seen several reports that engineers are overrepresented among religious extremists.
But the causality arrow runs from fundamentalist to engineer, not the other way around. The reason has to do with maintaining “purity” – they choose engineering because you can get a degree and have a career without having to pass a test given by a biology professor, and there are fewer humanities courses where the instructor is spouting heresy and you have to sit there and be respectful.
Also, engineering is concerned with applications rather than origins, so you can do a good job even if you disagree with the basics. I knew a very good electromagnetics engineer who believed that Maxwell’s equations were ordained by God and then revealed to Maxwell.
Comment by Thoreau —
September 2, 2010 @ 3:35 pm
Did this guy see the classic physics majors shirt?
“And God said:
div E = rho
div B = 0
curl E = -(1/c) dB/dt
curl B = J/c + (1/c) dE/dt
And there was light!”
Note that I’ve done the equations in God’s Own Units, aka Heaviside-Lorentz units, because they lack the annoying constants and factors of 4pi.
(Yes, I’m aware that the time derivatives should be partial derivatives. I chose simplicity for the sake of an informal discussion.)
Comment by hf —
September 2, 2010 @ 4:01 pm
He had a framed poster of exactly the same quote hanging in his office.
Well, exact except that the equations were in the Engineering-SI units, which eliminate the 1/c constants as well. And the Engineering-SI units are ordained in the King James Version, which is of course the only true original version.
Comment by DensityDuck —
September 2, 2010 @ 4:47 pm
Of course an engineer would favor an intentionally-designed deterministic system with a clear chain of command and an ominipotent Creator.
You’ve just described the way we do our job..
Comment by VikingMoose —
September 3, 2010 @ 11:39 am
if they legalize blunts, it just might be good for Warren!
[keed keed]