By way of Pharyngula, I saw something that I simply had to repeat here.
\nEvery august, James Kennedy – a thoroughly repulsive ultra-fundy preacher from Coral Ridge Ministries – runs a conference called “Reclaiming America for Christ”. At this years conference, he featured a speech by Paul Jehle about “Evaluating your Philosophy of Education”.
\nJehle is… umm… how do we say this politely?….
\nAh, screw it. Jehle is a fucking frothing at the mouth nutjob lunatic asshole.
\nHis basic argument – the argument that he *expects people to take seriously* – is that *everything* is either christian or non-christian. And if it’s non-christian, then christians shouldn’t look at it, listen to it, or study it. And you can’t *ever* make anything that started out non-christian christian.
\nHow far does he go with this? Pretty damned far. Right into the domain of this here blog. In his talk, he uses the following story as an example:
\n>I was taking calculus. I was a mathematics major and I was at a Christian
\n>college that was called Christian, but was not Christian….
\n>
\n>I asked a question to my calculus professor: “What makes this course distinctly
\n>Christian?” He stopped. He said no one has ever asked that question before…
\n>
\n>He said, “Okay, I’m a Christian; you’re a Christian.”
\n>
\n>I said, “That’s not what I asked! What makes this calculus course distinctly
\n>Christian? What makes this different from the local secular university? Are we
\n>using the same text? Yes. Are you teaching it the same way? Yes. Then why is
\n>this called a Christian college and that one a non-Christian college?”
\nYeah. Seriously. **Math is Bad**, because it’s *not explicitly christian*. I mean, it uses *zero*, which was invented by a *hindu*, and brought to europe by *muslims*. Algebra was invented by muslims! The word “algorithm” comes from the name of a *muslim* mathematician!
\nUh-oh… I just realized that the alleged “Doctor” Jehle has a very serious problem. The way that we geeks heard his talk to write about it is because it was *digitized* – using a thoroughly non-christian technology – and posted on the *internet*, which is built using those non-christian *algorithms*. And to quite Jehle himself:
\n>But the issue is you cannot combine something by its nature which is pagan and
\n>built on humanistic principles and make it Christian by a magic wand.
\nSo the internet, and computers, and digital recording, and the data compression that makes streaming audio work – they’re *non-christian*. And you cannot combine something non-Christian with something Christian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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