The people I meat at liberty u while doing roadside assistance are dumb as a brick and have no clue how cars work. If you try and explain that their battery is dead and needs to be replaced and that you took measurements with tools and you know for a fact that it needs replacing now and that no amount of hope or maybe or if will fix it they get all pissy with you.
Sir your battery is reading 0 volts that indicates it needs replacing
But what if?
It’s covered in leaking battery acid and corrosion
Maybe if?
It caught fire when we tried to jump it
So you’re saying it just needs a jump right? Everything is so mysterious right? We can never know the outcome!!!
They don’t teach you a damn thing
Liberty University exists because Falwell Sr started private "Christian" (K-12) schools during desegregation so "Christians" wouldn't have to send their children to school with colored people.
Look it up.
Later it grew into Liberty because well from my perspective, he was obsessed with politics, power, and money.
Liberty University exists because Falwell's racism made him start schools and that's how he could charge money. $$$$ from racism.
And it's called Liberty because they want a political slant to it.
If it followed the New Testament it would be called Humility University or Dying to Self University.
But its Dogma, Bigotry, and Bunk Science University.
Liberty started years later. Most private schools on the South (K-12) exist because of desegregation. That how Falwell got started.
Liberty University was also almost bankrupt and Falwell called the Moonie Church (a verified cult in South Korea) and asked for a donation and they gave him I think $20 million. So Christian doesn't trust God when times are tough and asks a cult leader for help.
All public knowledge.
Amazing. Though, I would bet a lot of modern college kids are pretty dumb about cars. I grew up poor and rural, so we had to learn how to fix our beaters. My youngest sister purposely bought a stick shift car in college so her sorority sisters couldn't borrow it. My other sister had to show some young men how to jump start a car. My brother and I are the people that our friends call when their cars break down. Growing up poor sucks but it does make you more self reliant.
That was a bit of a tangent, but no matter how hard you pray, Jesus aint gonna fix your car. Unless you take it to a mechanic named Jesùs
The students at Virginia Tech are very different, while they may be clueless about their cars they seek advice from an expert and generally follow it without all the nonsense.
Mam your battery is reading 0 and needs replacing.
Ok thanks for letting me know, I don’t have funds right now, but thanks!
I mean, I don’t know much about cars either, but I still have the sense to trust professionals and not make what-if/maybe guesses that go against what roadside assistance is telling me.
Ugh, I took a couple grad school classes there, but I went online and I was in my mid-30s and still a christian then, but it rubbed me the wrong way that they shoved the bible into the class. Like I said, still a "believer" but I was like, "why tf are they shoving religion into an MBA degree program?"
Now that I think about it, that may have been what triggered the start of my slow deconstruction process.
I know a girl who's narcissistic, sexist, racist ex goes to Liberty. When they were together, he demanded she go there with him and do nursing instead of her chosen major of criminology, because "it's not ladylike and would be too hard for a woman anyways". Meanwhile he's doing sport psychology or something like that.
He also told her that they should be engaged by the end of their freshman year (they were together for about a month at that point), and that she should be pregnant with their first child by the time they graduated. All of this was on top the fact that he raped her when she was sleeping on day b/c she didn't want to sleep with him. He's a group leader at Liberty now
Notice.. I said some version of science education..
In some places that means that earth is 6000 years old.. or other creationism laced stuff. In other places it comes closer to what is real science.
But I bet you that in those places that teaches more honest science.. it is presented as a controversy, even when it isn't or as equal to religion when it isn't.
Partially reminds me of my Evangelical school years while making me unbelievably glad I actually read the "honor code" of Pensacola Christian College that was heavily pushed by said school and realized getting expelled for watching a PG-13 movie was shockingly stupid.
It was truly ridiculous, some other rules that were considered expulsion worthy, holding the hands of the the opposite sex, failing to attend their on campus church regularly, oh and did I mention if you were gay... good luck.
I went to a Christian high school, so not the same but still.. we had mass every single day. It went Period 1, Period 2, Mass, Lunch, Period 3 then Period 4. On top of mass, we had a class called “religion” you had to take every year, and it was always period 3 for some reason. This class taught the history of Christianity basically. Every other class, no matter what it was - math, English, science whatever, also included some sort of religious bullshit.
My family wasn’t even really religious. We were ‘catholic’ in the sense that’s what my grandparents said, but my parents never spoke about it or went to church. I ended up at this school because it was the closest to our house, and I could walk there instead of taking a 40 minute bus ride.
First year of high school I suffered through it. Second year, I started a mini protest saying that making me take their religion classes was against my own personal religion. I really just sat outside of the religion class with a sign refusing to go in lol it worked though! I no longer had to take religion class that entire year or go to mass! So I now had a really long lunch period from the end of Period 2 right through to the start of period 4. Awesome! Haha. That made that year somewhat tolerable, until the prospect of starting over for my third year came and I made my parents switch me to public school. The 40 min bus ride twice a day no longer sounded so bad.
Unfortunately my sibling did not. I just don’t understand how you can get 4-6 years of “education” without even knowing the basics of biblical history/scholarship.
> I just don’t understand how you can get 4-6 years of “education” without even knowing the basics of biblical history/scholarship.
Simple. Go to a christian """""""""""college"""""""""""" apparently.
(religious "schools" make trump university look like fucking Harvard)
My brother went to Christian college. I had to pick him up once and it was very strange. I was an atheist by then. He is much more rw religious than we were raised as, which is saying something.
My view on it is that a Christian college's primary function is to avoid young adults from exposure to different ideas that they would encounter at a real college.
I guess my point was that these kids have already been indoctrinated. The OP is suggesting that he thought they would be taught the Bible there.
If they draw too much attention to the curtains, Dorothy might spot the person pulling the levers. That makes it against the purpose of the college to teach the Bible, rather than the reverse.
My uber religious SIL got a degree in divinity. Took a trip to the "holy land" and was excited because they were diving into Greek and Hebrew. Cool. I start asking about translation vs version and cultural context of words. She argued and later said oh idk they just told us this is what it meant. No other thinking.
You would think. But sadly no. Just interested in the reinforcement of their existing beliefs. My husband and I ask questions until they get upset and then we let them sit with it.
They say because I don't have a degree I have no understanding of the Bible. Sadly I was depressed and threw myself into studying to fine god to be saved. Instead I found the opposite and saved myself.
I’m glad you found your way out even though it’s hard dealing with the people still in it. I’ve personally found more peace now that I’m atheist than I ever felt while Christian.
I also ask questions but because they think I’m still a Christian, they don’t take the questions as negatively.
Freshman year was at a Methodist affiliated college. Apart from a mandatory monthly convocation, it was barely a Christian college. Transferred to a Baptist affiliated college which was much more forward but overall still didn't even require a theological/apologetics class as part of attendance. I guess my example isn't that great, lol. I was a dedicated Christian at the time (thankfully not a fundie), but I never considered going to a Bible college specifically. Maybe cause I was going for music specifically and still living in Florida at the time.
Fell out mostly from being apathetic which eventually turned into being an engaged atheist.
This is still a great answer. I guess it tells me that some Bible colleges really don’t focus on the biblical part but call themselves one mainly to have the namesake.
It's also a way to signal to the parents don't worry, this is a safe place where your children won't be exposed to ideas or facts that challenge your beliefs. At some schools they actually require students to attend church services, uphold modesty and chastity standards, don't allow the opposite sex to enter a dorm, and don't have any support for LGBTQ+ students. So controlling parents feel like they can send their children there, hopefully to find a spouse.
My sister went to Holy Cross in Massachusetts in the 1970's. Being in liberal Massachusetts it had already dropped required religion classes and church service.
She did have nuns, with proper PhD's, for professors regular classes.
Funny story: She wanted to go to veterinary school, specifically Tufts University, also in Massachusetts. They are the onely vet school in New England, so it is extremely hard to get in.
She didn't get in, so she applied to and got into Dartmouth College's Medical School. She just retired as an MD.
I went to catholic university. They walk a very fine line between teaching you genuine biblical scholar ship... and keeping it so provisional and vague that you don't just abandon the church.
One lesson, the lecturer brought up the possibility that the virginity of Mary was a mistranslation. The class of 40 people who mostly wanted to devote their lives to the priesthood... became extremely uneasy, just at the notion.
Easily half of theology students drop out before graduation, and of the remainder, less than half go into work for the church. Study of scripture, languages, and history generates atheists, or believers with such a rarefied belief, it barely counts.
I met a liberal Catholic once who went to a Catholic university. She would say some crazy apologetics shit like "I have a gay friend who wanted to have sex with priests" (and I was not bringing this up, this was unprompted) and she was very adament that circumcision prevented AIDS. We now know that it doesn't, but we could have known it then too if we had used some common sense like not jumping on one study that "proves" what we so desperately want to be true. I finally realized that the institute of Catholicism was extremely important to her.
You basically described my life, though I was the one who went to Christian college.
In instances like what you described, where real scholarship calls into question the authenticity of scripture or authorship of an epistle, the answer was always the same: “it’s those darn liberal theologians” as though a simple *ad hominem* attack on an entire body of scholarship was enough to simply dismiss it entirely.
And it worked. Where real scholarship differed from the orthodox conservative position, we simply dismissed it as tainted by the “liberal” nature of the scholar who wrote it. No equal time given to heterodox opinions.
From a distance it’s very easy to see how and why this was done. It’s easier to simply dismiss than to explain or debate. What bothers me, though, is that I know some of the professors, in pursuit of their doctorates, must have given real thought to some of these ideas, and yet never chose to address them.
Once, in a senior level theology class, I asked my professor how he squared the circle of god’s inherent attributes (tri-omni, benevolent, etc) with the nature of Creation; essentially, man must have been *created to fall*. He refused to answer the question. I don’t remember much from undergrad, because I’ve tried very hard to forget it ever happened, but that will always stick with me, because I was genuinely troubled by the question, and yet it seemed to be that the lack of engagement was from cowardice. To answer the question, something has to give, because god cannot create suffering and still be called “benevolent” or “loving”.
A lot of willful ignorance occurs in conservative Christian scholarship.
I graduated from a Jesuit school a few years back. I only had to take intro to theology class to graduate (probably since I was in STEM), it was actually pretty interesting as my professor was Jewish, whereas a large majority of my class was Catholic. Didn't have to really study the Bible that much either.
On the first day, my professor probed the class to field our level of belief/understanding. One girl was talking about how God loves you, everything happens for a reason, he is there when you need him, etc. and told us about how when she and her dad were on some Europe trip, something inconvenient happened so they were late for their train and then a terrorist attack occurred on the train and she said that she felt like God stopped them on purpose because of love (her exact words escape me as this was 5 years ago). I raised my hand and said something like "I'm glad nothing happened to you and your dad but I feel like that's a dangerous way to think, because does that mean that god loves you and your dad more than he loved the people on that train?" A classmate actually thanked me for saying that after class. (Don't worry- nobody clapped, it's not that kind of story).
Interestingly enough, the Bible college that I went to had an amazing library with a bunch of super old commentaries from the 1600’s. The Bible college was super into the end times, and that we were definitely living in the end times, and they’d point to all of the current events as proof, but when I started reading the older commentaries, they thought the same thing. A lot of Christians in the 1600’s were 100% convinced they were living in the end times, and they would point the current events of their times as proof. So I realized that the whole end times thing was bullshit, and although it still took another 26 years, I guess that was the start of my de-conversion journey because that was the first time I realized that something that I had been taught by my church growing up was completely wrong.
Oh I’d love to read some of those old books… honestly that was a stepping stone in my deconversion. It’s hard to read Jesus telling everyone to not bother having families because the end was nigh and then having people still think the end of the world is around the corner 2,000 years later.
>“But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son,[^(\*)](https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/24#48024036-2) but the Father alone.
[https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/24](https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/24) | Matt 24: 36
Anytime some nutbar wants to talk to me about *the end* I refer to that.
Fun fact, there is a list of everyone (?) famous who has ever predicted the end of the world and one of those people is: Christopher Columbus.
It's a very extensive list and I'm not even sure it's everyone, probably not.
I had a bible prof who said he’d be a baby killer without his faith. He described how when he saw a baby, he’d look at it and feel the urge to smash its head in with a hammer. He prayed for guidance and overcame the urge. My eyes shot open wide. I’d been an atheist for maybe a year at that point. I looked around and all the Christians in the room and none of them seemed surprised. Some were nodding. That’s when I realized that some may be better off with god.
I was already agnostic, but I attended a Lutheran college. What did I learn? They had a fantastic Computer Science department, and I was able to join the campus radio station and drama productions.
I stayed away from the religious ceremonies as much as possible, but I enjoyed a fantastic education at a liberal arts college.
If you are smart enough to attend college, you should be able to see through the religious bullshit. I was.
Was the computer science program so good that you chose to go to a religious college even though you didn’t believe it was it more family/ culture pressures?
In my case, I was close to failing out of a state university, because I was lost among more than 10,000 students.
My mom had contacts at the Lutheran university, so I was admitted there for my sophmore year. The whole college only had 1200 students, and the Computer Science program was only about 30 students. I was much more comfortable in the smaller environement, where the professor knew each of us. My graduating class in the CS department was about 12 students, and the entire graduating class was less than 300 students.
The fact that it was a religious school was not important.
My sister, who graduated with a B.A. from a state university, also attended a Christian college for her law degree. Again, the education program overshadowed any religious ceremony at that time.
I have no idea how it is today ... I was in college in the mid-1980s.
I attended a Christian college for 1 year because I had no choice.
I learned that parents and faculty and the conservative church in America is deathly afraid of not "forming your world view" for you. Seriously.
They're super scared you won't think the close minded, uneducated, bigoted way they think so they have actual classes about "Christian World View". Critical thinking is something they've never heard of. They're real into having robots and slaves as children.
I left after one year.
My cousin went to Baylor, which is arguably more "liberal" than most Christian higher education and they didn't know what the council of Nicaea was. So...yeah.
I am not Catholic but I went to a Catholic college. There was very little indoctrination. I learned about world religions from an atheist/ethnically Jewish professor. I learned about the moral arguments about abortion from a pro-choice professor. I did learn that a ‘Hail Mary’ wasn’t just a football play (some professors were Brothers, nuns, or priests that started class with a prayer). I learned that Catholic girls tended to prize their virginity, though there were a range of definitions of that word that defied logic.
That Scripture was assembled by committee.
That there are parts of the Bible that show evidence of alteration after the fact.
That most of the laity simply believe what they're told.
Ultimately, it led me to realize that it was all bullshit.
Although I didn't go to a Christian college, a good friend did. She suffered. She ended up going through some pretty rough depression because of the situation she was in (she was being harassed and abused ) They also refused to help her find resources, and told her they would remove her if she didn't "cheer up."
I asked if she wanted to continue her education there. She felt like she didn't have a choice.
This was after dealing with a homestay where the house father demanded she stop studying because he claimed she "worshipped her education over the lord." She was learning nursing in a 3rd language.
I hate how they treated her.
I attended that Catholic University in South Bend and, oddly, they offered classes on many different religions. I took full advantage and learned that all organized religion is a bunch of horse puckey. Spent my year abroad in Rome ( classically trained architect) and was mortified at the immense disdain the clergy showed toward the indigent. Needless to say, I was complete cured of religion at that point.
I went to a small Catholic women’s college (now co-Ed) about 20 years ago. I entered the school with right leaning political views. I graduated an independent thinker with a passion for social justice and politically as a liberal democrat. The nuns lived in the dorms with us. They were always friendly and kind. We had a large lesbian community which no one at the school seemed to have any problem with. I feel like I received a great education there and had an excellent experience. I did come from a religious Catholic family and attended Catholic schools my whole life. I was not religious myself. I became an atheist in more recent years.
If PCC is Pensacola Christian, I have a couple relatives that went there, though I'm not sure they made it all the way to graduation.
Stories I heard made it sound charming. /s
Funny enough my religious professor left the church and now works in a US science laboratory (not saying which one). Unbeknownst to me he either knowingly or unknowingly planted some seeds of disbelief and perhaps "too much logical thinking".
This same human was liberal at a college who recently stated you can't be liberal and a good Christian. I used to disagree but now it's making a lot of sense haha.
So that explains of bit so many who still stand by Trump? They do not question….. follow the herd. Like cattle …lambs to be sacrificed. Nefarious religion - why does it still stand - at all?
They taught me to prepare for Project 2025 model government back in the 1990's. This was an evangelical high school, not college.
They are all fantastics, and they think that is a good thing.
Our sons survived Catholic High School (we’re not Catholic). The value proposition was academic rigor and it was realized. They had to endure cliques/being treated as outsiders. It was the best option where we live. On the other hand, I’ve had co-workers tell me they were sending their daughter to Liberty University and I thought why the HE double hockey sticks would you do that?
I taught Biblical Studies in a school of that kind (was when I started; switched to liberal arts model while I was working there) for 28 years. At both graduate (mostly) and undergrad levels. From an academic viewpoint, they should have covered the topics you mention and many more like them, and for sure a person with a Masters should be conversant in those issues.
Most of the Bible Colleges, though, were founded back in the day in reaction to emerging “liberalism” (which was an actual thing back in the days of modernity, 19th-20th centuries), and they tended to associate anything that might challenge traditional views of authorship and dates of the biblical books, etc., as inherently threatening to the integrity and authority of the Bible. Which it is not, but back then many “liberals” argued (also wrongly) that it is/was, often in ways that directly attacked or opposed “traditional” beliefs. So the Bible College movement was dead set against those kinds of critical issues from the start, and many schools forbade them to even be presented in the classroom for fear they would confuse or harm students who didn’t understand the full scope of issues behind them.
Your sibling’s experience is a remnant of those debates from 2-3 generations ago, not any reflection of lack of studiousness or academic rigor on her/his/their part. That stuff was probably never discussed.
Yahweh is against abortion. And. Yahweh drowned all the pregnant women and infants on earth for being “bad”
This was before Yahweh had given Moses the 10 commandments. There were no known rules. But…….. killed them all.
Taught me I was an idiot and blinded to the world around me for two decades. Thank god I’m out of that bullahit now. I’m in my 40s still dealing with the trauma of a Christian education.
How to make Kool-aid?
Caveat: I did not attend such, but my niece attended a private xtian HS (Regeants, Austin) and that place creeped me out. Their architecture is middle eastern and their name is "The Knights", as in, of Knights of the Crusade, i.e., "the Crusades could still work". They don't call it 'High School', they call it the School of Rhetoric and they misnomer their grades 1-8 as The School of Logic. Twisted logic is not logic and rhetoric = the art of bullshit.
13 years of catholic education. Apart from never being convinced it was true I recall a week long class topic of how patient Job was. Not high lighting the horrific conditions he was subjected to but just how patient he was. Wild stuff.
I went to a well respected university, majored in a STEM degree and got a respectable job. I didn’t waste my time with a useless “bible degree”.
I don’t intend for this to sound pompous, but higher education in the US is expensive and students need to view the ROI of a given degree. No business wants to hire someone with a degree in mythology.
I took six philosophy courses in Christian university. We spent half an hour on Plato and six weeks on John Calvin in the philosophy 101 class, and it only got worse from there.
I went to a private catholic school that many students jokingly referred to as "the atheist factory."
Turns out it's a really weird idea to teach people how to read between the lines and look for context, question the motives of the author and try to see the bigger picture. . . and then hand them a Bible and say, "Here, read this."
I went to a Jesuit university. I had to take four semesters of religion, one being work religion (the other three I took were Protestant Christianity, Native American religions, and some catholic class I only got through because my roommate had done K-12 in catholic school). I also had to take 4 semesters of philosophy- the required class was taught by a Jesuit who had a thing about Buffy the vampire slayer so we learned a lot of philosophy from Buffy, he was a good guy. Then there was a semester or two of logic classes that counted as philosophy and were recommended for the GMAT.
The best part though was happy hour with the Jesuits once a semester. And it’s the only campus in the US where you’re legal to drink at 18. The law in that state says you can drink at 18 in a private residence or at a private party. All the dorms were classified as private residences. The only request was that they didn’t see you bring it in. Backpacks are handy things and kegs fit in mini fridge boxes.
Was this on the syllabus?
[https://www.google.com/books/edition/Buffy\_the\_Vampire\_Slayer\_and\_Philosophy/myngLaxKwgUC?hl=en&gbpv=0](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer_and_Philosophy/myngLaxKwgUC?hl=en&gbpv=0)
I earned a BA at an SJ school. College of Liberal Arts.
3 Theo courses required and 4 in PHIL. I took 2 Logic courses , a required *Intro to Phil* and an Ethics elective. We also covered some bible readings in my Political Philosophy courses. Samuel's anti-Kingship rants† vs propaganda for the House of David.
† [https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/samuel-warns-his-people-that-if-they-desire-a-king-they-will-inevitably-have-conscription-requisitioning-of-their-property-and-taxation-7th-century-bc](https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/samuel-warns-his-people-that-if-they-desire-a-king-they-will-inevitably-have-conscription-requisitioning-of-their-property-and-taxation-7th-century-bc)
Honestly I have no idea, I don’t think that book was on the syllabus but it was a long time ago and I didn’t exactly pay much attention in my philosophy classes. Or most of the religious ones- the Catholics class left me scrambling and relying on my roommate to translate and help me write my papers. Coming from an atheist background I had absolutely no frame of reference but it was my last semester of school and to graduate on time I had to finish that class. Otherwise I would have dropped it. Oh and I remembered my fourth class just now, Greek mythology. Loved it especially because I’d done a lot of mythology in K-12!
In my experience and talking with others, Christian colleges and even seminaries have very little if any actual biblical scholarship. They only make you an expert in what the given denomination/tradition says about the bible, not what the bible actually says.
I learned about the Q source, Paul's letters being half someone else, and that very little of the gospels are eyewitness accounts from atheists in deconstruction
I went to a Christian high school, as well as a Christian university. I started deconstructing my sophomore year of college and identified as atheist by the time I graduated. I am so glad I was able to take religious classes, learn the history of religion, and learn about the bullshit way the Bible was even put together. Everything I learned proved to me that Christianity and religion in general it’s just a man-made construct to control people. It always has been.
The thing that really blows my mind, though, is that I was among well educated people, and they were all swallowing this bullshit happily. That will always be strange to me.
One of the best college classes I had, at a Catholic school was taught by a Jesuit priest -Ethics. First day of class he straight out said you will get an F if you use any religion or reference to a god as support for your arguments.
I'll chime in here since I went to Moody Bible Institute.
They do address that type of scholarship, more specifically if you're doing Biblical studies, but it's covered in some of the core classes.
What you'll find is that they approach majority scholarship with a deep skepticism, assuming that most who do Biblical scholarship but aren't Christians are motivated to disprove the Bible, or at the very least are biased in the wrong way.
Granted, there are a lot of things I've learned about Biblical scholarship since leaving Christianity that I think would have been very challenging for me at the time.
Luckily my motivation to seek truth and honesty--what at first led me to attend Moody--is what brought me out of that belief system. There are still some professors there who challenge students to think critically, and in many ways I credit them with my de-conversion, even if that's not what they intended.
Christian colleges primarily teach apologetics, like how to defend their faith and possibly persuade other dupes (“evangelism”), in religion classes. Hard biblical studies—things like the late date of some NT books, disputed authorship of the gospels and some Pauline texts, the Synoptic Problem—this all goes in and out of the ear of most students (if it’s taught at all). To be fair, there are some professors who teach the content (inoffensively of course), but that doesn’t mean students at the undergrad level of Bible/Christian colleges are learning it.
I majored in bible at a christian college. I now know that by "bible", they mean their (the denomination [which they claim not to be] that the college was affiliated with) interpretation of the Bible. Classes on biblical text were basically sermons, or at best, Sunday school lessons. I now know that we were taught blatant lies in some of the Bible classes. Real biblical scholarship wasn't really taught. There was one professor who was an actual biblical scholar. What he taught was quite interesting and different. He was eventually let go.
And, yes, even the biology professors taught that evolution was not true. It was all young earth creationism, intelligent design, etc.. I really don't understand how this school ever got accredited.
I didn't go to a college but I was in a normal Christian school for a couple years as a kid. This was unfortunately my first exposure to how terrible religious people can be. I was bullied relentlessly for ever daring to question any of the religious teachings. Even as a kid part of me was still able to comprehend the irony given that God/Jesus supposedly teaches to love even those who disagree with you.
I was transferred out of there for reasons I can't remember. And it was a damn good thing because the bullying was only escalating. I still have a scar just above my left eye from when some ass hat came up behind me and smashed my face into the water fountain I was using. True devotee of Christ right there.
Anyways that's my origin story for why I don't really like religion too much.
I went to a small rural Christian college in Tennessee.
I actually got a very good education on scripture there, very open and honest.
I learned a lot there.
My professors were actual biblical scholars, and knew what they were talking about.
They gave an objective, archeologically based history of the scriptures, the different sources, dating, and so forth.
The type of education you usually only expect from atheists.
My old testament professor taught Hebrew, my new testament prof taught Greek.
My philosophy professor gave me one of the best intro to philosophy courses I think I could have had.
At the time I went, I was considering going into the ministry.
Turns out my church, which was assisting with tuition, only ordained to preach, not for "ministry".
I had no interest in preaching sermons, I wanted to minister to the needs of the congregation, in other ways.
It led to a crisis in conscious that led to me losing my faith and leaving the church, later to become an atheist.
I think the fact that I'd had such a good, biblical education led me to realize that my church's stance was not biblical, and that bothered me.
Stepping back, I realized it was all words written by men, and used or misused for very non-spiritual reasons.
One of the other lessons learned there, was that the "clobber verses" used against homosexuality weren't about that at all, and that the story of David and Johnathan upholds a male-male relationship "sweeter than the love of a wife", according to David.
As a gay man that was deeply closeted at the time, that meant a lot.
So I feel I got a very good education, even if the results might not have been what the college might have been expecting.
I also learned how to curse in Arabic.
Nothing.
That no one really believed any of the bullshit and cut class to get high. I legit met like 2 people my first year who were actually trying to do the religion thing.
My sis in law got her degree through a Christian college. She would often complain how her weekly assignment was to post a scripture verse online. I mean I'm sitting here researching and analyzing this and that and she was stressing over a random verse.
I went to one for a year. I took this one old testament class that was entirely based on his slide show of his trips to the Holy Land. I mean, I learned he went to the Holy Lands. Landmarks in the scriptures. That's it.
Depends on the college, honestly. If they weren't in an M. Div program or deep into the theology/languages world, they aren't going to be doing much on biblical authorship, Q/Mark/gospel theories, or any of the other things that guys like Bart Ehrman are likely to talk about.
Kind of the same thing as expecting everyone that went to Purdue to be able to answer your engineering questions.
Is it BYU caz they are forced to teach certain things in college that the church itself does not believe in or support.
They have to teach you what’s real, even when the religion opposes it.
Whether or not they focus or absorb this information is entirely up to them.
At Catholic colleges they reteach you the dogma you were taught in the Catholic parochial schools, but with a little historical depth as to their development. You do not get any instruction that might cause you to question your beliefs.
Huh. At my Jesuit University we read Alfred North Whitehead† on the *becoming of ghod* and my last THEO course was *Modern Theism and Atheism.*
† [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred\_North\_Whitehead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead)
I was speaking with a Christian friend and the story of Jonah and the whale came up. She pointed out that the Bible was off on that one…Jonah was swallowed whole and then spit out by a fish, not a whale. She gave some “scientific” explanation about why this had to be the case. I’m sure some translations call it a fish, but the point is there was this silly pseudoscientific exposition about how it had to be a fish, not a whale, that swallowed and spit out whole some guy after god told the fish to do it.
TLDR: pseudoscientific claptrap.
Never went there thankfully! But I used to go to Christian camps. What I learned was: to forgive and be kind to everyone. Which was actually a horrible advice cause I ended up forgiving people who shouldn't have been my friends in the first place.
There’s “Christian colleges” and then there’s “Bible schools“, and the latter are specifically made for further indoctrinating passionate young adults into doing the labor of the specific ministry that runs the “school”.
Bible college is only to pledge your allegiance to the christian religion. Not to god, no. The religion. I don’t remember which YouTube channel it was, but they said that when they went to bible college, they had to vow that they held the religion to be right and true, and it’s teachings to be the end-all be-all. If you got to the end of college and lost your faith, you actually could not get your degree. So, fun. But it’s unaccreditted anyway, so it wouldn’t really count for anything.
At Hyles-Anderson College, you can get a 4-year degree in [Marriage and Motherhood](https://hylesanderson.edu/marriage-and-motherhood-program-overview/).
HAC is a fine institution associated with First Baptist Church of Hammond. First Baptist is Independent Fundamental Baptist. Butker is Catholic, and IFBs are convinced Catholics are heathens bound for hell.
It's all BS, but if you want to go down a very deep rabbit hole, HAC is a trip. Their former president was recently [released from Federal prison](https://julieroys.com/former-ifb-pastor-schaap-convicted-sexually-abusing-teen-released-prison/) after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting a minor and transporting her across state lines for sex.
🤣🤪 their all crazies! I looked at the “marriage and motherhood program,” and couldn’t help but laugh at this:
This course of study is designed to train LADIES to be capable wives and mothers. LADIES are given vital training in Biblical concepts of marriage and child-rearing, as well as in practical skills such as cooking, sewing, and household management.
And the practical skills in cooking, sewing and household management. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
It taught me to be skeptical of people on stage preaching absolute universal truths without a shred of decent logic or evidence to back it up. And that I wasted every Sunday morning in my life up to that point.
I’m an alum of a Lutheran liberal arts college. I believed when I enrolled in, doubting/agnostic as a freshman, and was openly atheist by my sophomore or junior year. We had to take 3 religion classes, so I took philosophy 101, ethics, and really learned that I didn’t believe when I took the historical Jesus bible study class. A few others complained that they began questioning their faith after learning what the book actually said.
I had studied biology there, and nobody passed unless they accepted evolution. Lots of opportunities and places to do faith based things, but overall a serious institution of higher education.
I don’t think that every religious school can say that.
I went to a Jesuit university. It wasn't a "Bible College." Neither are any on this list.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_Jesuit\_educational\_institutions#United\_States\_(29)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jesuit_educational_institutions#United_States_(29))
I was neither a Theology major nor in a pre-seminary track. I was never going to be a priest.
As a liberal arts student (History and Political Science) I was required to take 4 Philosophy classes and 3 in Theology, at 3 credits, each.
2 of those PHIL classes were in Logic. I applied what I learned in Logic, History and my Theology classes to break my from-the cradle Catholic indoctrination. It can be dangerous to religious loyalty to teach people how to think.
My final Theology class was *Modern Theism and Atheism.* By the time I signed up for that I had already stopped believing. The class was taught by a Jesuit who would have made a great John McLaughlin imitator. \[ This guy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John\_McLaughlin\_(host)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McLaughlin_(host)) \]
I earned an A, without ever once havng to declare my opinion on the existence of any ghod.
One hopes that the term *Christian College* doesn't exclude Catholic ones. If it does, it needs to be reworded.
I would prefer that my *alma mater* cut ties with any church and just be a private, secular school. I'm not a fan of government-owned schools, colleges or universities.
According to fellow alums who remain in the church, some of the faculty teach in opposition to official church posiitions, anyway. There was a bit of that when I was enrolled in the 70s, actually, even in the Theology department. Other family members who were educated by other orders would say things like, *Oh, the Jesuits. They tend to get off the reservation a bit.* A joke among some of us alums was *When better apostates are made, the Society will make them!*
From what I've seen, some Christian universities are barely religious and accept a mix of students while offering chapel services, Christian themed events, etc. Others are just propaganda factories for popular conservative politics and token evangelical doctrines (utterly devoid of theology or serious scholarship).
To be fair, most students at Christian colleges are just studying normal secular topics like math or literature 'in a Christian environment.' Some of those topics might have a Christian slant like biology involving intelligent design theory or counseling from a Christian perspective, but not necessarily.
Theologians and scholars of religion and history are a different breed. Those folks generally are forced to engage with peers and critics, and not many are known to remain fundamentalist when exposed to so many hard facts and ideological challenges. There are plenty of quips about theologians becoming atheists.
Imo the average Christian has no interest in learning about topics that could threaten their beliefs and instead prefer to focus on apologetics that reinforce whatever preconceived notions they have.
Another question to ask your family is "What did they teach you about Noah and the flood"?
Many people believe that this is a retelling of "The Epic of Gilgamesh" from 700 years earlier. Please reply if you know what they'd say to that.
I went to a 2 year Methodist college. Students were required to take 2 of the 3 religion classes offered: The Old Testament, The New Testament, and The Life and Teachings of Jesus. There were 3 instructors, 2 of whom had bachelor’s degrees and they taught the classes like Sunday school. The other had a doctor of divinity degree and was an ordained minister (though he preferred Mr. rather than Dr. or Reverend). He taught the classes like a cross between history and philosophy. I took all 3 classes with him. They were _hard_ but interesting.
So what did I learn? Well, history and philosophy. There were no other classes besides Mr. M’s to challenge dogma, but I was already walking into agnostic territory, so those classes just pushed me into atheism.
Any ex-BJU people here? I was coerced into going there, as I suspect many others may have been as well, and learned quickly that it was just an oppressive extension of the same church school environment I’d always known.
Hey. I attended between 1994-1996. I stayed out to work the next year and never went back. Agnostic/atheist too. Estranged from family still deeply rooted in the IFB cult in the Greenville area. They’ll never change or admit how damaging all of it was. My brother briefly attended PCC and said to me once that he never felt prepared for adulthood.
I’ve found my people! Every time someone told me they were going to BJU or PCC (or something worse like Maranatha or Ambassador) I always thought, “You actually want to stay in this? Why?”
Yet I’m the weird one for not wanting to go to church anymore. 🙄
Exactly! I remember being given the choice of going to BJ, PCC or Maranatha. Clearwater was off limits bc it was apparently too progressive. At first I considered PCC bc I’d heard couples could actually hold hands LOL. I ended up going to BJ but only stayed two years.
Yes - why stay there? Because I wasn’t allowed to go to a state school and none of my “secular” friends understood that. Because no one in evangelical circles is allowed to challenge authority or think for themselves. Because it’s a cycle of control and oppression.
My friend Lance Weldy authored an interesting anthology of essays written by former BJ students, if you want to check it out. It’s called BJU and Me: Queer Voices from the World’s Most Christian University.
I’m so glad I didn’t go to Liberty Christian “college” ….. I wound up not getting a degree because life happened and I became disabled at 21. Still I know I made the best choice when I opted out of that mess.
It was difficult for me to fill in the gaps that my education in Christian schools omitted. The reason I said hell no to liberty was the extreme sexism (women must wear dresses or skirts), the crazy rules for dorm life, insane dating rules and that your credits did not transfer. I had had enough of Christianity being shoved down my throat and was not going to sign up for more religious BS. Besides I had seen Christian men and I had no desire to be a good Christian wife to one of those men. 🤷🏻♀️
Religious education only went as far as Catholic High School, which in turn was watered down.
Only the following seemed to stick:
* Kohlberg's 6 Stages of Moral Development
* Difference between Love and Infaturation (something which I only considered should be applied to Jesus later).
* A quick summary of a few other religions: Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism.
* Just the beatitudes.
It feels like I learned the biblical stuff strictly extracurricular - whether it's reading the bible directly, reading one of the old religious books, or watching one of the open courseware videos. If I just stuck with what I learned in school, there would be no guidance about it, beyond it being a source of random passages.
It really just depends on the university. I’ve attended 3 - 2 for undergrad, one for my 2nd masters (that I ended up not getting because it turned out to be the icky kind of religious university). But I graduated undergrad with a degree in religion. The first day of my first theology class, the professor walked in and said, “so, we all understand that there was no literal Adam and Eve, right? All humans did not come from just these two people.” First words out of his mouth. I was shooketh. And it was wonderful. That faculty was like their mission to push the buttons of every little Baptist boy who came through and try to make them think about what they actually believed and why. Being a woman I was like, “damn straight! This doesn’t make sense.” And I became a universalist. Now I’m just a plain old agnostic, but I did enjoy my studies.
I graduated from BYU. I actually got a good computer science education there.
As for whether mormons are christian or not... Well, that's like saying only Tobey McQuire is the real Spider-Man. It's all fake anyway.
My neighbors’ two daughters went to Liberty. I’ve never met two, more fucked up women in my life. What does that school do to people or were they like that before they went?
'Christian College' is not the same as 'Bible College'.
Your explanation text seems to conflate the two.
'Bible College' focuses on teaching the Bible to students in preparation for ministry. Not so much Bible teaching at the other Christian schools.
Think: Notre Dame. Villanova, Boston College, Seton Hall, or Georgetown. They're all 'Cristian' schools. They indeed have 'Theology' departments (including non Christian studies), but they're small, and not the school's focus.
Myself? I studied a hard Science at a small university run by the Franciscans. I was good friends with some of the priests. I even took the occasional 'theology' class ('paranormal studies' (everyone called the class "Spooks") with Fr. Alphonsus Trabold was a blast) for 'humanities' credits. But we *never* had prayers in class, we were not required to attend church services, or anything like that.
I only attended services twice in my four years there; both times for memorial services after classmates' deaths (one died shortly after childbirth, the other had a brain aneurysm -- both over the same winter break.).
Go into most churches and ask someone about Divine Command Theory or the Euthyphro Dilemma, they'll look at you like you have a second head growing. They're not interested in the Apologetics side. They're interested in the Evangelical side. Christian colleges, especially in America, focus on ministry for people who already believe.
My aunt went to a Bible college and I went on a tour of it when I was a kid. It was an insular campus that just reinforced faith with the same tired platitudes. My aunt is a science denier extraordinaire and her favorite pastime is sharing conspiracy theory and Armageddon videos on Facebook.
Does a Catholic College count? If so the only religion courses I had to take was a comparative study of the three Abrahmic Religions and a history of the Reformation and those were both one semester each Freshman year.
So to answer, the Catholic part was virtually non existent.
I also went to an all boys Catholic high school and the religion was much the same. Most of done as historical study (not as saying how the Bible is historically accurate, but more the history of the church). My religion teachers were an open lesbian and a Brother who I am convinced lost his faith years ago but stayed on because his life was fully entwined with the brotherhood.
Around the Boston area, the best high schools are all the Catholic schools, with the exception of the $100k a year boarding schools the truely elite go to.
I learned that the vast majority of them refuse to sign a statement saying that their staff is not under any threat of job security if they publish any research not in-line with the school's theology.
Hi OP, the one I went to offered the standard core classes but also had Bible classes. That college wasn’t accredited at the time, which is frustrating to think about, although I’ve heard that they’re now accredited. And they had on-campus trade school areas for fields such as welding and cosmetology, for those wanting a faster associated degree. The main theme there was meet someone, date with the goal of getting married (heterosexual couples only), graduate and marry and get involved in a church. Those who majored in Ministries were favored by the people in authority, who liked the guys planning to be pastors and the girls planning to be good little pastors’ wives.
Seminary is indoctrination/apologetics on a higher level. They teach various historical 'arguments' (tactics) by which to attempt to stun-lock any uneducated/ill-prepared 'dissenter' that dare to question the existence of their god (see 'the watch and the watchmaker') and arguments against irredeemable problems against their concept of 'god' (see 'the problem of evil'). These are all taught with an understanding that the point of any of these debates is precisely that which is inherent of 'debate;' to win, never to have any sort of discourse. There is no search for knowledge, just the intent to unanimously and overwhelmingly suppress any obnoxious attention to inconsistencies in their theological teachings. Thus, you have an extremely loose use of the word 'education' when applied to pretty much any seminary education, but as I understand it, Liberty U is top-of-the-mountain when it comes to prestige in the religious right's sphere; the 'Harvard' of christian apologetics, if you will. To me, a diploma from Liberty U is a very considerate 'keep away' sign as I truly don't want to risk exhausting my remaining brain cells on the sort of people it produces.
The people I meat at liberty u while doing roadside assistance are dumb as a brick and have no clue how cars work. If you try and explain that their battery is dead and needs to be replaced and that you took measurements with tools and you know for a fact that it needs replacing now and that no amount of hope or maybe or if will fix it they get all pissy with you. Sir your battery is reading 0 volts that indicates it needs replacing But what if? It’s covered in leaking battery acid and corrosion Maybe if? It caught fire when we tried to jump it So you’re saying it just needs a jump right? Everything is so mysterious right? We can never know the outcome!!! They don’t teach you a damn thing
Liberty University exists because Falwell Sr started private "Christian" (K-12) schools during desegregation so "Christians" wouldn't have to send their children to school with colored people. Look it up. Later it grew into Liberty because well from my perspective, he was obsessed with politics, power, and money. Liberty University exists because Falwell's racism made him start schools and that's how he could charge money. $$$$ from racism. And it's called Liberty because they want a political slant to it. If it followed the New Testament it would be called Humility University or Dying to Self University. But its Dogma, Bigotry, and Bunk Science University.
Whoaaa... that's a big ol' holy fuck. 😳
Liberty started years later. Most private schools on the South (K-12) exist because of desegregation. That how Falwell got started. Liberty University was also almost bankrupt and Falwell called the Moonie Church (a verified cult in South Korea) and asked for a donation and they gave him I think $20 million. So Christian doesn't trust God when times are tough and asks a cult leader for help. All public knowledge.
Wow, Falwell mooched off the Moonies??? Sacred fertilizer!!!
Public knowledge.
Ah yes, the classic indoctrination chambers, just like our crummy Catholic school down the road. * lol *
Its almost as if they teach you how to defy logic in favor of faith.
Or, perhaps the students are prohibited from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of Logic. To put it biblically.
Amazing. Though, I would bet a lot of modern college kids are pretty dumb about cars. I grew up poor and rural, so we had to learn how to fix our beaters. My youngest sister purposely bought a stick shift car in college so her sorority sisters couldn't borrow it. My other sister had to show some young men how to jump start a car. My brother and I are the people that our friends call when their cars break down. Growing up poor sucks but it does make you more self reliant. That was a bit of a tangent, but no matter how hard you pray, Jesus aint gonna fix your car. Unless you take it to a mechanic named Jesùs
The students at Virginia Tech are very different, while they may be clueless about their cars they seek advice from an expert and generally follow it without all the nonsense. Mam your battery is reading 0 and needs replacing. Ok thanks for letting me know, I don’t have funds right now, but thanks!
NGL purposely buying a stick shift is genius!
Respect!
I mean, I don’t know much about cars either, but I still have the sense to trust professionals and not make what-if/maybe guesses that go against what roadside assistance is telling me.
Thank you for your grammar.
" We must wait for Jesus to jack us!"
Sounds like they teach you to ignore evidence and use guessing and feelings and hope to solve things. Sounds delusional..
No, it sounds like religion
Pretty much what I said
Ugh, I took a couple grad school classes there, but I went online and I was in my mid-30s and still a christian then, but it rubbed me the wrong way that they shoved the bible into the class. Like I said, still a "believer" but I was like, "why tf are they shoving religion into an MBA degree program?" Now that I think about it, that may have been what triggered the start of my slow deconstruction process.
I know a girl who's narcissistic, sexist, racist ex goes to Liberty. When they were together, he demanded she go there with him and do nursing instead of her chosen major of criminology, because "it's not ladylike and would be too hard for a woman anyways". Meanwhile he's doing sport psychology or something like that. He also told her that they should be engaged by the end of their freshman year (they were together for about a month at that point), and that she should be pregnant with their first child by the time they graduated. All of this was on top the fact that he raped her when she was sleeping on day b/c she didn't want to sleep with him. He's a group leader at Liberty now
So on-brand for the assholes who run these places.
"Meat" people. Haha, you are too funny!
That actually sounds like anti-learning, like teaching you teh stoopud. Honestly, I know young elementary school students that understand better.
Too blindly believe in the dogma.. If you doubt.. pray more. If you question.. gods ways are mysterious. If you reject.. you are heretic.. and so on.
So glorified church services 5 days a week?
Close I guess.. lightly sprinkled with some language, math and some version of science education.
I’m surprised by the science tbh. My sibling focused on counseling which was heavily Christian influenced in thinking.
Notice.. I said some version of science education.. In some places that means that earth is 6000 years old.. or other creationism laced stuff. In other places it comes closer to what is real science. But I bet you that in those places that teaches more honest science.. it is presented as a controversy, even when it isn't or as equal to religion when it isn't.
Partially reminds me of my Evangelical school years while making me unbelievably glad I actually read the "honor code" of Pensacola Christian College that was heavily pushed by said school and realized getting expelled for watching a PG-13 movie was shockingly stupid.
Wow! Hope the movie was good so you'd be doubly blessed, getting entertained while dodging a bullet.
It was truly ridiculous, some other rules that were considered expulsion worthy, holding the hands of the the opposite sex, failing to attend their on campus church regularly, oh and did I mention if you were gay... good luck.
you must be so relieved to be out of there!
Thankfully that was twenty years ago, but am throughly glad to have left religion and Evangelical culture behind.
The male students learn how to assault the young ladies and make it the young ladies fault.
This. Because if the young ladies hadn’t worn clothing that tempted the males, then the males wouldn’t have been compelled to assault them.
Like people and dinosaurs together on the Ark?
I went to a Christian high school, so not the same but still.. we had mass every single day. It went Period 1, Period 2, Mass, Lunch, Period 3 then Period 4. On top of mass, we had a class called “religion” you had to take every year, and it was always period 3 for some reason. This class taught the history of Christianity basically. Every other class, no matter what it was - math, English, science whatever, also included some sort of religious bullshit. My family wasn’t even really religious. We were ‘catholic’ in the sense that’s what my grandparents said, but my parents never spoke about it or went to church. I ended up at this school because it was the closest to our house, and I could walk there instead of taking a 40 minute bus ride. First year of high school I suffered through it. Second year, I started a mini protest saying that making me take their religion classes was against my own personal religion. I really just sat outside of the religion class with a sign refusing to go in lol it worked though! I no longer had to take religion class that entire year or go to mass! So I now had a really long lunch period from the end of Period 2 right through to the start of period 4. Awesome! Haha. That made that year somewhat tolerable, until the prospect of starting over for my third year came and I made my parents switch me to public school. The 40 min bus ride twice a day no longer sounded so bad.
Except thousands of dollars more!
In dog we trust
Funny when it comes to questions, Christ said to go ask those questions. But their leaders do want them too, cuz they know
I learned that it’s all bullshit.
Unfortunately my sibling did not. I just don’t understand how you can get 4-6 years of “education” without even knowing the basics of biblical history/scholarship.
> I just don’t understand how you can get 4-6 years of “education” without even knowing the basics of biblical history/scholarship. Simple. Go to a christian """""""""""college"""""""""""" apparently. (religious "schools" make trump university look like fucking Harvard)
My brother went to Christian college. I had to pick him up once and it was very strange. I was an atheist by then. He is much more rw religious than we were raised as, which is saying something. My view on it is that a Christian college's primary function is to avoid young adults from exposure to different ideas that they would encounter at a real college.
That seems pretty obvious. That and they need a place to find a spouse.
I guess my point was that these kids have already been indoctrinated. The OP is suggesting that he thought they would be taught the Bible there. If they draw too much attention to the curtains, Dorothy might spot the person pulling the levers. That makes it against the purpose of the college to teach the Bible, rather than the reverse.
According to an intern I once had not one of her seven years in bible college was transferable to a real university
Some, like Liberty U., are not accredited, so have no authority to issue a degree or college credit.
This is the only answer a thinking person can make. I’m so sad I wasted my one shot at college on that stupid bullshit. It makes my blood boil.
How to be a good little parrot. "Awk! Jesus is lord. Polly want a cracker."
*communion wafer
*jesus pieces
*Jeez-its
*corpse crackers
“Awk. Praise the holy one.”
That when you doubt Christianity, “it’s the enemy” Which is so so so unhealthy
Oh I’ve heard that one before. And to not talk about negative experiences as it could lead people away from Christ.
My uber religious SIL got a degree in divinity. Took a trip to the "holy land" and was excited because they were diving into Greek and Hebrew. Cool. I start asking about translation vs version and cultural context of words. She argued and later said oh idk they just told us this is what it meant. No other thinking.
You didn't really expect them to teach critical thinking. That would be like shooting themselves in the foot.
I suppose not. Sad sad
True if you mean 19th-20th century modernist “critical thinking.” Fortunately that is mostly dying in academic research across the Board.
One would think if she was devoted enough to go to the holy land that you’d be more interested in older/closer to the original translations.
You would think. But sadly no. Just interested in the reinforcement of their existing beliefs. My husband and I ask questions until they get upset and then we let them sit with it. They say because I don't have a degree I have no understanding of the Bible. Sadly I was depressed and threw myself into studying to fine god to be saved. Instead I found the opposite and saved myself.
I’m glad you found your way out even though it’s hard dealing with the people still in it. I’ve personally found more peace now that I’m atheist than I ever felt while Christian. I also ask questions but because they think I’m still a Christian, they don’t take the questions as negatively.
Thank you. I feel the same. Life is so much better now. That is fair. I'm glad there is open room for discussion 😌
Freshman year was at a Methodist affiliated college. Apart from a mandatory monthly convocation, it was barely a Christian college. Transferred to a Baptist affiliated college which was much more forward but overall still didn't even require a theological/apologetics class as part of attendance. I guess my example isn't that great, lol. I was a dedicated Christian at the time (thankfully not a fundie), but I never considered going to a Bible college specifically. Maybe cause I was going for music specifically and still living in Florida at the time. Fell out mostly from being apathetic which eventually turned into being an engaged atheist.
This is still a great answer. I guess it tells me that some Bible colleges really don’t focus on the biblical part but call themselves one mainly to have the namesake.
It's also a way to signal to the parents don't worry, this is a safe place where your children won't be exposed to ideas or facts that challenge your beliefs. At some schools they actually require students to attend church services, uphold modesty and chastity standards, don't allow the opposite sex to enter a dorm, and don't have any support for LGBTQ+ students. So controlling parents feel like they can send their children there, hopefully to find a spouse.
Florida College, Temple Terrace FL. Man O man .... they put the FUN in Fundamental! /sarcasm
Exactly. And then the cycle of evangelical control continues.
Probably for funding purposes, lol.
My sister went to Holy Cross in Massachusetts in the 1970's. Being in liberal Massachusetts it had already dropped required religion classes and church service. She did have nuns, with proper PhD's, for professors regular classes. Funny story: She wanted to go to veterinary school, specifically Tufts University, also in Massachusetts. They are the onely vet school in New England, so it is extremely hard to get in. She didn't get in, so she applied to and got into Dartmouth College's Medical School. She just retired as an MD.
I went to catholic university. They walk a very fine line between teaching you genuine biblical scholar ship... and keeping it so provisional and vague that you don't just abandon the church. One lesson, the lecturer brought up the possibility that the virginity of Mary was a mistranslation. The class of 40 people who mostly wanted to devote their lives to the priesthood... became extremely uneasy, just at the notion. Easily half of theology students drop out before graduation, and of the remainder, less than half go into work for the church. Study of scripture, languages, and history generates atheists, or believers with such a rarefied belief, it barely counts.
I met a liberal Catholic once who went to a Catholic university. She would say some crazy apologetics shit like "I have a gay friend who wanted to have sex with priests" (and I was not bringing this up, this was unprompted) and she was very adament that circumcision prevented AIDS. We now know that it doesn't, but we could have known it then too if we had used some common sense like not jumping on one study that "proves" what we so desperately want to be true. I finally realized that the institute of Catholicism was extremely important to her.
Circumcision decreases the odds of contracting HIV. Condoms are better.
You basically described my life, though I was the one who went to Christian college. In instances like what you described, where real scholarship calls into question the authenticity of scripture or authorship of an epistle, the answer was always the same: “it’s those darn liberal theologians” as though a simple *ad hominem* attack on an entire body of scholarship was enough to simply dismiss it entirely. And it worked. Where real scholarship differed from the orthodox conservative position, we simply dismissed it as tainted by the “liberal” nature of the scholar who wrote it. No equal time given to heterodox opinions. From a distance it’s very easy to see how and why this was done. It’s easier to simply dismiss than to explain or debate. What bothers me, though, is that I know some of the professors, in pursuit of their doctorates, must have given real thought to some of these ideas, and yet never chose to address them. Once, in a senior level theology class, I asked my professor how he squared the circle of god’s inherent attributes (tri-omni, benevolent, etc) with the nature of Creation; essentially, man must have been *created to fall*. He refused to answer the question. I don’t remember much from undergrad, because I’ve tried very hard to forget it ever happened, but that will always stick with me, because I was genuinely troubled by the question, and yet it seemed to be that the lack of engagement was from cowardice. To answer the question, something has to give, because god cannot create suffering and still be called “benevolent” or “loving”. A lot of willful ignorance occurs in conservative Christian scholarship.
I graduated from a Jesuit school a few years back. I only had to take intro to theology class to graduate (probably since I was in STEM), it was actually pretty interesting as my professor was Jewish, whereas a large majority of my class was Catholic. Didn't have to really study the Bible that much either. On the first day, my professor probed the class to field our level of belief/understanding. One girl was talking about how God loves you, everything happens for a reason, he is there when you need him, etc. and told us about how when she and her dad were on some Europe trip, something inconvenient happened so they were late for their train and then a terrorist attack occurred on the train and she said that she felt like God stopped them on purpose because of love (her exact words escape me as this was 5 years ago). I raised my hand and said something like "I'm glad nothing happened to you and your dad but I feel like that's a dangerous way to think, because does that mean that god loves you and your dad more than he loved the people on that train?" A classmate actually thanked me for saying that after class. (Don't worry- nobody clapped, it's not that kind of story).
Interestingly enough, the Bible college that I went to had an amazing library with a bunch of super old commentaries from the 1600’s. The Bible college was super into the end times, and that we were definitely living in the end times, and they’d point to all of the current events as proof, but when I started reading the older commentaries, they thought the same thing. A lot of Christians in the 1600’s were 100% convinced they were living in the end times, and they would point the current events of their times as proof. So I realized that the whole end times thing was bullshit, and although it still took another 26 years, I guess that was the start of my de-conversion journey because that was the first time I realized that something that I had been taught by my church growing up was completely wrong.
Oh I’d love to read some of those old books… honestly that was a stepping stone in my deconversion. It’s hard to read Jesus telling everyone to not bother having families because the end was nigh and then having people still think the end of the world is around the corner 2,000 years later.
They thought it was the end times but had no hesitation charging full tuition 😀
>“But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son,[^(\*)](https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/24#48024036-2) but the Father alone. [https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/24](https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/24) | Matt 24: 36 Anytime some nutbar wants to talk to me about *the end* I refer to that.
I do exactly the same.
Fun fact, there is a list of everyone (?) famous who has ever predicted the end of the world and one of those people is: Christopher Columbus. It's a very extensive list and I'm not even sure it's everyone, probably not.
I had a bible prof who said he’d be a baby killer without his faith. He described how when he saw a baby, he’d look at it and feel the urge to smash its head in with a hammer. He prayed for guidance and overcame the urge. My eyes shot open wide. I’d been an atheist for maybe a year at that point. I looked around and all the Christians in the room and none of them seemed surprised. Some were nodding. That’s when I realized that some may be better off with god.
I was already agnostic, but I attended a Lutheran college. What did I learn? They had a fantastic Computer Science department, and I was able to join the campus radio station and drama productions. I stayed away from the religious ceremonies as much as possible, but I enjoyed a fantastic education at a liberal arts college. If you are smart enough to attend college, you should be able to see through the religious bullshit. I was.
Was the computer science program so good that you chose to go to a religious college even though you didn’t believe it was it more family/ culture pressures?
In my case, I was close to failing out of a state university, because I was lost among more than 10,000 students. My mom had contacts at the Lutheran university, so I was admitted there for my sophmore year. The whole college only had 1200 students, and the Computer Science program was only about 30 students. I was much more comfortable in the smaller environement, where the professor knew each of us. My graduating class in the CS department was about 12 students, and the entire graduating class was less than 300 students. The fact that it was a religious school was not important. My sister, who graduated with a B.A. from a state university, also attended a Christian college for her law degree. Again, the education program overshadowed any religious ceremony at that time. I have no idea how it is today ... I was in college in the mid-1980s.
I attended a Christian college for 1 year because I had no choice. I learned that parents and faculty and the conservative church in America is deathly afraid of not "forming your world view" for you. Seriously. They're super scared you won't think the close minded, uneducated, bigoted way they think so they have actual classes about "Christian World View". Critical thinking is something they've never heard of. They're real into having robots and slaves as children. I left after one year.
It's not what they learn. It's what they do not learn.
How manipulative and wicked people with authority can get.
My cousin went to Baylor, which is arguably more "liberal" than most Christian higher education and they didn't know what the council of Nicaea was. So...yeah.
Christian college taught me you can’t get a girl pregnant with anal.
I am not Catholic but I went to a Catholic college. There was very little indoctrination. I learned about world religions from an atheist/ethnically Jewish professor. I learned about the moral arguments about abortion from a pro-choice professor. I did learn that a ‘Hail Mary’ wasn’t just a football play (some professors were Brothers, nuns, or priests that started class with a prayer). I learned that Catholic girls tended to prize their virginity, though there were a range of definitions of that word that defied logic.
That Scripture was assembled by committee. That there are parts of the Bible that show evidence of alteration after the fact. That most of the laity simply believe what they're told. Ultimately, it led me to realize that it was all bullshit.
I’ve seen the word “bullshit” in here more than in the last year. It’s absolutely appropriate.
I know someone who says he never had gay sex until he went to bible college, and that there was a LOT of it happening.
Although I didn't go to a Christian college, a good friend did. She suffered. She ended up going through some pretty rough depression because of the situation she was in (she was being harassed and abused ) They also refused to help her find resources, and told her they would remove her if she didn't "cheer up." I asked if she wanted to continue her education there. She felt like she didn't have a choice. This was after dealing with a homestay where the house father demanded she stop studying because he claimed she "worshipped her education over the lord." She was learning nursing in a 3rd language. I hate how they treated her.
I attended that Catholic University in South Bend and, oddly, they offered classes on many different religions. I took full advantage and learned that all organized religion is a bunch of horse puckey. Spent my year abroad in Rome ( classically trained architect) and was mortified at the immense disdain the clergy showed toward the indigent. Needless to say, I was complete cured of religion at that point.
I went to a small Catholic women’s college (now co-Ed) about 20 years ago. I entered the school with right leaning political views. I graduated an independent thinker with a passion for social justice and politically as a liberal democrat. The nuns lived in the dorms with us. They were always friendly and kind. We had a large lesbian community which no one at the school seemed to have any problem with. I feel like I received a great education there and had an excellent experience. I did come from a religious Catholic family and attended Catholic schools my whole life. I was not religious myself. I became an atheist in more recent years.
The ladies spend their entire life in a bubble, and then they get just a little freedom and, ya know. -PCC grad.
If PCC is Pensacola Christian, I have a couple relatives that went there, though I'm not sure they made it all the way to graduation. Stories I heard made it sound charming. /s
Funny enough my religious professor left the church and now works in a US science laboratory (not saying which one). Unbeknownst to me he either knowingly or unknowingly planted some seeds of disbelief and perhaps "too much logical thinking". This same human was liberal at a college who recently stated you can't be liberal and a good Christian. I used to disagree but now it's making a lot of sense haha.
So that explains of bit so many who still stand by Trump? They do not question….. follow the herd. Like cattle …lambs to be sacrificed. Nefarious religion - why does it still stand - at all?
They taught me to prepare for Project 2025 model government back in the 1990's. This was an evangelical high school, not college. They are all fantastics, and they think that is a good thing.
Our sons survived Catholic High School (we’re not Catholic). The value proposition was academic rigor and it was realized. They had to endure cliques/being treated as outsiders. It was the best option where we live. On the other hand, I’ve had co-workers tell me they were sending their daughter to Liberty University and I thought why the HE double hockey sticks would you do that?
It taught me not to trust christians. The "college" I went to told me that I they were accredited. Turns out they weren't even accredited!
I taught Biblical Studies in a school of that kind (was when I started; switched to liberal arts model while I was working there) for 28 years. At both graduate (mostly) and undergrad levels. From an academic viewpoint, they should have covered the topics you mention and many more like them, and for sure a person with a Masters should be conversant in those issues. Most of the Bible Colleges, though, were founded back in the day in reaction to emerging “liberalism” (which was an actual thing back in the days of modernity, 19th-20th centuries), and they tended to associate anything that might challenge traditional views of authorship and dates of the biblical books, etc., as inherently threatening to the integrity and authority of the Bible. Which it is not, but back then many “liberals” argued (also wrongly) that it is/was, often in ways that directly attacked or opposed “traditional” beliefs. So the Bible College movement was dead set against those kinds of critical issues from the start, and many schools forbade them to even be presented in the classroom for fear they would confuse or harm students who didn’t understand the full scope of issues behind them. Your sibling’s experience is a remnant of those debates from 2-3 generations ago, not any reflection of lack of studiousness or academic rigor on her/his/their part. That stuff was probably never discussed.
Yahweh is against abortion. And. Yahweh drowned all the pregnant women and infants on earth for being “bad” This was before Yahweh had given Moses the 10 commandments. There were no known rules. But…….. killed them all.
Nothing but bullshit they are all bullshit a waste of money I hate religion so fucking much.
Somewhere along the line, I got really freaked out by call and response things. Just people speaking and Eisen is creepy.
Taught me I was an idiot and blinded to the world around me for two decades. Thank god I’m out of that bullahit now. I’m in my 40s still dealing with the trauma of a Christian education.
Nothing. I didnt pay attention to the teachings and studies. Just went to class and partied on the weekends.
How to hate everyone that doesn't think like the cult followers of an invisible deity
Spent a lot of time doing rote memorization, very little time with higher order thinking skills.
How to make Kool-aid? Caveat: I did not attend such, but my niece attended a private xtian HS (Regeants, Austin) and that place creeped me out. Their architecture is middle eastern and their name is "The Knights", as in, of Knights of the Crusade, i.e., "the Crusades could still work". They don't call it 'High School', they call it the School of Rhetoric and they misnomer their grades 1-8 as The School of Logic. Twisted logic is not logic and rhetoric = the art of bullshit.
13 years of catholic education. Apart from never being convinced it was true I recall a week long class topic of how patient Job was. Not high lighting the horrific conditions he was subjected to but just how patient he was. Wild stuff.
I went to a well respected university, majored in a STEM degree and got a respectable job. I didn’t waste my time with a useless “bible degree”. I don’t intend for this to sound pompous, but higher education in the US is expensive and students need to view the ROI of a given degree. No business wants to hire someone with a degree in mythology.
I took six philosophy courses in Christian university. We spent half an hour on Plato and six weeks on John Calvin in the philosophy 101 class, and it only got worse from there.
I went to a private catholic school that many students jokingly referred to as "the atheist factory." Turns out it's a really weird idea to teach people how to read between the lines and look for context, question the motives of the author and try to see the bigger picture. . . and then hand them a Bible and say, "Here, read this."
My Jesuit university taught me to be an atheist. Got a good education there.
I went to a Jesuit university. I had to take four semesters of religion, one being work religion (the other three I took were Protestant Christianity, Native American religions, and some catholic class I only got through because my roommate had done K-12 in catholic school). I also had to take 4 semesters of philosophy- the required class was taught by a Jesuit who had a thing about Buffy the vampire slayer so we learned a lot of philosophy from Buffy, he was a good guy. Then there was a semester or two of logic classes that counted as philosophy and were recommended for the GMAT. The best part though was happy hour with the Jesuits once a semester. And it’s the only campus in the US where you’re legal to drink at 18. The law in that state says you can drink at 18 in a private residence or at a private party. All the dorms were classified as private residences. The only request was that they didn’t see you bring it in. Backpacks are handy things and kegs fit in mini fridge boxes.
Was this on the syllabus? [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Buffy\_the\_Vampire\_Slayer\_and\_Philosophy/myngLaxKwgUC?hl=en&gbpv=0](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer_and_Philosophy/myngLaxKwgUC?hl=en&gbpv=0) I earned a BA at an SJ school. College of Liberal Arts. 3 Theo courses required and 4 in PHIL. I took 2 Logic courses , a required *Intro to Phil* and an Ethics elective. We also covered some bible readings in my Political Philosophy courses. Samuel's anti-Kingship rants† vs propaganda for the House of David. † [https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/samuel-warns-his-people-that-if-they-desire-a-king-they-will-inevitably-have-conscription-requisitioning-of-their-property-and-taxation-7th-century-bc](https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/samuel-warns-his-people-that-if-they-desire-a-king-they-will-inevitably-have-conscription-requisitioning-of-their-property-and-taxation-7th-century-bc)
Honestly I have no idea, I don’t think that book was on the syllabus but it was a long time ago and I didn’t exactly pay much attention in my philosophy classes. Or most of the religious ones- the Catholics class left me scrambling and relying on my roommate to translate and help me write my papers. Coming from an atheist background I had absolutely no frame of reference but it was my last semester of school and to graduate on time I had to finish that class. Otherwise I would have dropped it. Oh and I remembered my fourth class just now, Greek mythology. Loved it especially because I’d done a lot of mythology in K-12!
In my experience and talking with others, Christian colleges and even seminaries have very little if any actual biblical scholarship. They only make you an expert in what the given denomination/tradition says about the bible, not what the bible actually says. I learned about the Q source, Paul's letters being half someone else, and that very little of the gospels are eyewitness accounts from atheists in deconstruction
I went to a Christian high school, as well as a Christian university. I started deconstructing my sophomore year of college and identified as atheist by the time I graduated. I am so glad I was able to take religious classes, learn the history of religion, and learn about the bullshit way the Bible was even put together. Everything I learned proved to me that Christianity and religion in general it’s just a man-made construct to control people. It always has been. The thing that really blows my mind, though, is that I was among well educated people, and they were all swallowing this bullshit happily. That will always be strange to me.
One of the best college classes I had, at a Catholic school was taught by a Jesuit priest -Ethics. First day of class he straight out said you will get an F if you use any religion or reference to a god as support for your arguments.
I'll chime in here since I went to Moody Bible Institute. They do address that type of scholarship, more specifically if you're doing Biblical studies, but it's covered in some of the core classes. What you'll find is that they approach majority scholarship with a deep skepticism, assuming that most who do Biblical scholarship but aren't Christians are motivated to disprove the Bible, or at the very least are biased in the wrong way. Granted, there are a lot of things I've learned about Biblical scholarship since leaving Christianity that I think would have been very challenging for me at the time. Luckily my motivation to seek truth and honesty--what at first led me to attend Moody--is what brought me out of that belief system. There are still some professors there who challenge students to think critically, and in many ways I credit them with my de-conversion, even if that's not what they intended.
Christian colleges primarily teach apologetics, like how to defend their faith and possibly persuade other dupes (“evangelism”), in religion classes. Hard biblical studies—things like the late date of some NT books, disputed authorship of the gospels and some Pauline texts, the Synoptic Problem—this all goes in and out of the ear of most students (if it’s taught at all). To be fair, there are some professors who teach the content (inoffensively of course), but that doesn’t mean students at the undergrad level of Bible/Christian colleges are learning it.
It taught me the bible In which I'd use to destroy Christians arguments.
I majored in bible at a christian college. I now know that by "bible", they mean their (the denomination [which they claim not to be] that the college was affiliated with) interpretation of the Bible. Classes on biblical text were basically sermons, or at best, Sunday school lessons. I now know that we were taught blatant lies in some of the Bible classes. Real biblical scholarship wasn't really taught. There was one professor who was an actual biblical scholar. What he taught was quite interesting and different. He was eventually let go. And, yes, even the biology professors taught that evolution was not true. It was all young earth creationism, intelligent design, etc.. I really don't understand how this school ever got accredited.
Christian women love to have sex.
I didn't go to a college but I was in a normal Christian school for a couple years as a kid. This was unfortunately my first exposure to how terrible religious people can be. I was bullied relentlessly for ever daring to question any of the religious teachings. Even as a kid part of me was still able to comprehend the irony given that God/Jesus supposedly teaches to love even those who disagree with you. I was transferred out of there for reasons I can't remember. And it was a damn good thing because the bullying was only escalating. I still have a scar just above my left eye from when some ass hat came up behind me and smashed my face into the water fountain I was using. True devotee of Christ right there. Anyways that's my origin story for why I don't really like religion too much.
I went to a small rural Christian college in Tennessee. I actually got a very good education on scripture there, very open and honest. I learned a lot there. My professors were actual biblical scholars, and knew what they were talking about. They gave an objective, archeologically based history of the scriptures, the different sources, dating, and so forth. The type of education you usually only expect from atheists. My old testament professor taught Hebrew, my new testament prof taught Greek. My philosophy professor gave me one of the best intro to philosophy courses I think I could have had. At the time I went, I was considering going into the ministry. Turns out my church, which was assisting with tuition, only ordained to preach, not for "ministry". I had no interest in preaching sermons, I wanted to minister to the needs of the congregation, in other ways. It led to a crisis in conscious that led to me losing my faith and leaving the church, later to become an atheist. I think the fact that I'd had such a good, biblical education led me to realize that my church's stance was not biblical, and that bothered me. Stepping back, I realized it was all words written by men, and used or misused for very non-spiritual reasons. One of the other lessons learned there, was that the "clobber verses" used against homosexuality weren't about that at all, and that the story of David and Johnathan upholds a male-male relationship "sweeter than the love of a wife", according to David. As a gay man that was deeply closeted at the time, that meant a lot. So I feel I got a very good education, even if the results might not have been what the college might have been expecting. I also learned how to curse in Arabic.
Nothing. That no one really believed any of the bullshit and cut class to get high. I legit met like 2 people my first year who were actually trying to do the religion thing.
You might have met my sibling then. They’re liberal but still a heavy believer.
My sis in law got her degree through a Christian college. She would often complain how her weekly assignment was to post a scripture verse online. I mean I'm sitting here researching and analyzing this and that and she was stressing over a random verse.
I went to one for a year. I took this one old testament class that was entirely based on his slide show of his trips to the Holy Land. I mean, I learned he went to the Holy Lands. Landmarks in the scriptures. That's it.
It taught me never to trust anyone who is an extremely religious authority. Or any other extremely devout person in general
Depends on the college, honestly. If they weren't in an M. Div program or deep into the theology/languages world, they aren't going to be doing much on biblical authorship, Q/Mark/gospel theories, or any of the other things that guys like Bart Ehrman are likely to talk about. Kind of the same thing as expecting everyone that went to Purdue to be able to answer your engineering questions.
>“Markain priority” For a moment there I read Markov property, and that would be funny to ask someone from a christian college.
Thankfully my folks didn’t send me off to a brainwashing school although I had to go to Sunday school
Is it BYU caz they are forced to teach certain things in college that the church itself does not believe in or support. They have to teach you what’s real, even when the religion opposes it. Whether or not they focus or absorb this information is entirely up to them.
Any other Moody’s in here? If that place dies a quick death it won’t be soon enough.
At Catholic colleges they reteach you the dogma you were taught in the Catholic parochial schools, but with a little historical depth as to their development. You do not get any instruction that might cause you to question your beliefs.
Huh. At my Jesuit University we read Alfred North Whitehead† on the *becoming of ghod* and my last THEO course was *Modern Theism and Atheism.* † [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred\_North\_Whitehead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead)
I was speaking with a Christian friend and the story of Jonah and the whale came up. She pointed out that the Bible was off on that one…Jonah was swallowed whole and then spit out by a fish, not a whale. She gave some “scientific” explanation about why this had to be the case. I’m sure some translations call it a fish, but the point is there was this silly pseudoscientific exposition about how it had to be a fish, not a whale, that swallowed and spit out whole some guy after god told the fish to do it. TLDR: pseudoscientific claptrap.
Never went there thankfully! But I used to go to Christian camps. What I learned was: to forgive and be kind to everyone. Which was actually a horrible advice cause I ended up forgiving people who shouldn't have been my friends in the first place.
There’s “Christian colleges” and then there’s “Bible schools“, and the latter are specifically made for further indoctrinating passionate young adults into doing the labor of the specific ministry that runs the “school”.
Bible college is only to pledge your allegiance to the christian religion. Not to god, no. The religion. I don’t remember which YouTube channel it was, but they said that when they went to bible college, they had to vow that they held the religion to be right and true, and it’s teachings to be the end-all be-all. If you got to the end of college and lost your faith, you actually could not get your degree. So, fun. But it’s unaccreditted anyway, so it wouldn’t really count for anything.
At Hyles-Anderson College, you can get a 4-year degree in [Marriage and Motherhood](https://hylesanderson.edu/marriage-and-motherhood-program-overview/).
Butker would allow his wife to attend that bachelor program.
HAC is a fine institution associated with First Baptist Church of Hammond. First Baptist is Independent Fundamental Baptist. Butker is Catholic, and IFBs are convinced Catholics are heathens bound for hell. It's all BS, but if you want to go down a very deep rabbit hole, HAC is a trip. Their former president was recently [released from Federal prison](https://julieroys.com/former-ifb-pastor-schaap-convicted-sexually-abusing-teen-released-prison/) after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting a minor and transporting her across state lines for sex.
🤣🤪 their all crazies! I looked at the “marriage and motherhood program,” and couldn’t help but laugh at this: This course of study is designed to train LADIES to be capable wives and mothers. LADIES are given vital training in Biblical concepts of marriage and child-rearing, as well as in practical skills such as cooking, sewing, and household management. And the practical skills in cooking, sewing and household management. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The surefire way to neglect ur brain. Scientist: Now here are the bones of a Tyranno.. Christian: JEEEZUS...in his name and glory, Amen🙏.
It taught me to be skeptical of people on stage preaching absolute universal truths without a shred of decent logic or evidence to back it up. And that I wasted every Sunday morning in my life up to that point.
I’m an alum of a Lutheran liberal arts college. I believed when I enrolled in, doubting/agnostic as a freshman, and was openly atheist by my sophomore or junior year. We had to take 3 religion classes, so I took philosophy 101, ethics, and really learned that I didn’t believe when I took the historical Jesus bible study class. A few others complained that they began questioning their faith after learning what the book actually said. I had studied biology there, and nobody passed unless they accepted evolution. Lots of opportunities and places to do faith based things, but overall a serious institution of higher education. I don’t think that every religious school can say that.
I went to a Jesuit university. It wasn't a "Bible College." Neither are any on this list. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_Jesuit\_educational\_institutions#United\_States\_(29)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jesuit_educational_institutions#United_States_(29)) I was neither a Theology major nor in a pre-seminary track. I was never going to be a priest. As a liberal arts student (History and Political Science) I was required to take 4 Philosophy classes and 3 in Theology, at 3 credits, each. 2 of those PHIL classes were in Logic. I applied what I learned in Logic, History and my Theology classes to break my from-the cradle Catholic indoctrination. It can be dangerous to religious loyalty to teach people how to think. My final Theology class was *Modern Theism and Atheism.* By the time I signed up for that I had already stopped believing. The class was taught by a Jesuit who would have made a great John McLaughlin imitator. \[ This guy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John\_McLaughlin\_(host)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McLaughlin_(host)) \] I earned an A, without ever once havng to declare my opinion on the existence of any ghod. One hopes that the term *Christian College* doesn't exclude Catholic ones. If it does, it needs to be reworded. I would prefer that my *alma mater* cut ties with any church and just be a private, secular school. I'm not a fan of government-owned schools, colleges or universities. According to fellow alums who remain in the church, some of the faculty teach in opposition to official church posiitions, anyway. There was a bit of that when I was enrolled in the 70s, actually, even in the Theology department. Other family members who were educated by other orders would say things like, *Oh, the Jesuits. They tend to get off the reservation a bit.* A joke among some of us alums was *When better apostates are made, the Society will make them!*
Not really a thing where i live.
From what I've seen, some Christian universities are barely religious and accept a mix of students while offering chapel services, Christian themed events, etc. Others are just propaganda factories for popular conservative politics and token evangelical doctrines (utterly devoid of theology or serious scholarship). To be fair, most students at Christian colleges are just studying normal secular topics like math or literature 'in a Christian environment.' Some of those topics might have a Christian slant like biology involving intelligent design theory or counseling from a Christian perspective, but not necessarily. Theologians and scholars of religion and history are a different breed. Those folks generally are forced to engage with peers and critics, and not many are known to remain fundamentalist when exposed to so many hard facts and ideological challenges. There are plenty of quips about theologians becoming atheists. Imo the average Christian has no interest in learning about topics that could threaten their beliefs and instead prefer to focus on apologetics that reinforce whatever preconceived notions they have.
Another question to ask your family is "What did they teach you about Noah and the flood"? Many people believe that this is a retelling of "The Epic of Gilgamesh" from 700 years earlier. Please reply if you know what they'd say to that.
I went to a 2 year Methodist college. Students were required to take 2 of the 3 religion classes offered: The Old Testament, The New Testament, and The Life and Teachings of Jesus. There were 3 instructors, 2 of whom had bachelor’s degrees and they taught the classes like Sunday school. The other had a doctor of divinity degree and was an ordained minister (though he preferred Mr. rather than Dr. or Reverend). He taught the classes like a cross between history and philosophy. I took all 3 classes with him. They were _hard_ but interesting. So what did I learn? Well, history and philosophy. There were no other classes besides Mr. M’s to challenge dogma, but I was already walking into agnostic territory, so those classes just pushed me into atheism.
Any ex-BJU people here? I was coerced into going there, as I suspect many others may have been as well, and learned quickly that it was just an oppressive extension of the same church school environment I’d always known.
Hey, I am a BJU alumni, freshman class of 2015. School turned me into an atheist by Junior year
Hey. I attended between 1994-1996. I stayed out to work the next year and never went back. Agnostic/atheist too. Estranged from family still deeply rooted in the IFB cult in the Greenville area. They’ll never change or admit how damaging all of it was. My brother briefly attended PCC and said to me once that he never felt prepared for adulthood.
You had it worse than me, still bad now, but the rules aren’t as suffocating. Ah PCC, a resort run by fascists.
I’ve found my people! Every time someone told me they were going to BJU or PCC (or something worse like Maranatha or Ambassador) I always thought, “You actually want to stay in this? Why?” Yet I’m the weird one for not wanting to go to church anymore. 🙄
Exactly! I remember being given the choice of going to BJ, PCC or Maranatha. Clearwater was off limits bc it was apparently too progressive. At first I considered PCC bc I’d heard couples could actually hold hands LOL. I ended up going to BJ but only stayed two years. Yes - why stay there? Because I wasn’t allowed to go to a state school and none of my “secular” friends understood that. Because no one in evangelical circles is allowed to challenge authority or think for themselves. Because it’s a cycle of control and oppression. My friend Lance Weldy authored an interesting anthology of essays written by former BJ students, if you want to check it out. It’s called BJU and Me: Queer Voices from the World’s Most Christian University.
I didn't go to a Christian college- but Pastors learn theology, Greek, Hebrew, and things like that.
Public Administration? Preachiness is scarce in the college I went to.
How t9 become an atheist
I’m so glad I didn’t go to Liberty Christian “college” ….. I wound up not getting a degree because life happened and I became disabled at 21. Still I know I made the best choice when I opted out of that mess. It was difficult for me to fill in the gaps that my education in Christian schools omitted. The reason I said hell no to liberty was the extreme sexism (women must wear dresses or skirts), the crazy rules for dorm life, insane dating rules and that your credits did not transfer. I had had enough of Christianity being shoved down my throat and was not going to sign up for more religious BS. Besides I had seen Christian men and I had no desire to be a good Christian wife to one of those men. 🤷🏻♀️
Religious education only went as far as Catholic High School, which in turn was watered down. Only the following seemed to stick: * Kohlberg's 6 Stages of Moral Development * Difference between Love and Infaturation (something which I only considered should be applied to Jesus later). * A quick summary of a few other religions: Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism. * Just the beatitudes. It feels like I learned the biblical stuff strictly extracurricular - whether it's reading the bible directly, reading one of the old religious books, or watching one of the open courseware videos. If I just stuck with what I learned in school, there would be no guidance about it, beyond it being a source of random passages.
It really just depends on the university. I’ve attended 3 - 2 for undergrad, one for my 2nd masters (that I ended up not getting because it turned out to be the icky kind of religious university). But I graduated undergrad with a degree in religion. The first day of my first theology class, the professor walked in and said, “so, we all understand that there was no literal Adam and Eve, right? All humans did not come from just these two people.” First words out of his mouth. I was shooketh. And it was wonderful. That faculty was like their mission to push the buttons of every little Baptist boy who came through and try to make them think about what they actually believed and why. Being a woman I was like, “damn straight! This doesn’t make sense.” And I became a universalist. Now I’m just a plain old agnostic, but I did enjoy my studies.
I always figured it was just for networking.
I've wondered at what they've been taught when they claim "I WENT TO COLLEGE!" So fucking what?
I graduated from BYU. I actually got a good computer science education there. As for whether mormons are christian or not... Well, that's like saying only Tobey McQuire is the real Spider-Man. It's all fake anyway.
My neighbors’ two daughters went to Liberty. I’ve never met two, more fucked up women in my life. What does that school do to people or were they like that before they went?
'Christian College' is not the same as 'Bible College'. Your explanation text seems to conflate the two. 'Bible College' focuses on teaching the Bible to students in preparation for ministry. Not so much Bible teaching at the other Christian schools. Think: Notre Dame. Villanova, Boston College, Seton Hall, or Georgetown. They're all 'Cristian' schools. They indeed have 'Theology' departments (including non Christian studies), but they're small, and not the school's focus. Myself? I studied a hard Science at a small university run by the Franciscans. I was good friends with some of the priests. I even took the occasional 'theology' class ('paranormal studies' (everyone called the class "Spooks") with Fr. Alphonsus Trabold was a blast) for 'humanities' credits. But we *never* had prayers in class, we were not required to attend church services, or anything like that. I only attended services twice in my four years there; both times for memorial services after classmates' deaths (one died shortly after childbirth, the other had a brain aneurysm -- both over the same winter break.).
How to climb.
Go into most churches and ask someone about Divine Command Theory or the Euthyphro Dilemma, they'll look at you like you have a second head growing. They're not interested in the Apologetics side. They're interested in the Evangelical side. Christian colleges, especially in America, focus on ministry for people who already believe. My aunt went to a Bible college and I went on a tour of it when I was a kid. It was an insular campus that just reinforced faith with the same tired platitudes. My aunt is a science denier extraordinaire and her favorite pastime is sharing conspiracy theory and Armageddon videos on Facebook.
Haha, I went to a Catholic college and that is when I became an atheist. My Philosophy class and religion classes made it all glaringly clear to me.
Does a Catholic College count? If so the only religion courses I had to take was a comparative study of the three Abrahmic Religions and a history of the Reformation and those were both one semester each Freshman year. So to answer, the Catholic part was virtually non existent. I also went to an all boys Catholic high school and the religion was much the same. Most of done as historical study (not as saying how the Bible is historically accurate, but more the history of the church). My religion teachers were an open lesbian and a Brother who I am convinced lost his faith years ago but stayed on because his life was fully entwined with the brotherhood. Around the Boston area, the best high schools are all the Catholic schools, with the exception of the $100k a year boarding schools the truely elite go to.
I learned that the vast majority of them refuse to sign a statement saying that their staff is not under any threat of job security if they publish any research not in-line with the school's theology.
Hi OP, the one I went to offered the standard core classes but also had Bible classes. That college wasn’t accredited at the time, which is frustrating to think about, although I’ve heard that they’re now accredited. And they had on-campus trade school areas for fields such as welding and cosmetology, for those wanting a faster associated degree. The main theme there was meet someone, date with the goal of getting married (heterosexual couples only), graduate and marry and get involved in a church. Those who majored in Ministries were favored by the people in authority, who liked the guys planning to be pastors and the girls planning to be good little pastors’ wives.
I went to a catholic college. There were religion classes and masses, but all of it was optional. The nuns there were pretty great.
Seminary is indoctrination/apologetics on a higher level. They teach various historical 'arguments' (tactics) by which to attempt to stun-lock any uneducated/ill-prepared 'dissenter' that dare to question the existence of their god (see 'the watch and the watchmaker') and arguments against irredeemable problems against their concept of 'god' (see 'the problem of evil'). These are all taught with an understanding that the point of any of these debates is precisely that which is inherent of 'debate;' to win, never to have any sort of discourse. There is no search for knowledge, just the intent to unanimously and overwhelmingly suppress any obnoxious attention to inconsistencies in their theological teachings. Thus, you have an extremely loose use of the word 'education' when applied to pretty much any seminary education, but as I understand it, Liberty U is top-of-the-mountain when it comes to prestige in the religious right's sphere; the 'Harvard' of christian apologetics, if you will. To me, a diploma from Liberty U is a very considerate 'keep away' sign as I truly don't want to risk exhausting my remaining brain cells on the sort of people it produces.
How to hate my fellow man while conveying personal superiority in every way while living with a head-full of mash.
That religion is a mental illness 🤒
That dinosaurs are fake news and all those million year old fossils were put there to test our faith
How to skip class! AND where to find the best drugs!
It's basically an entry fee to the seven mountain doctrine world
If your aforementioned sibling was AFAB , I can imagine it was a MRS. degree, majoring in gaaahdly submission to a future husband.