Double-standards in religion

[Sethomas]

So, apparently a dormitory here at IU offers classes to its inhabitants, calling itself a "learning living center" or something like that. One of these classes is centered on The Simpsons. I guess that's what a state education will get you these days. Anyhow, this class had a sociological project assigned to its students wherein they were to offer people $1 to buy their souls. This would hypothetically spur debate into "the importance of religion in daily life". End the story there, and I'd call it "pretty damn stupid".

The story doesn't end there, for which it earns a promotion to "abjectly retarded".

I don't know whether they were inspired or not by their professor's instructions, although I highly doubt it, but a number of these students boisterously entered a prayer chapel owned and operated by the University and actively interrupted people in prayer to pitch their "sociological experiment". A friend of mine was there only incidentally, taking pictures for decorative planning for her sister's wedding in that chapel, but she was quite offended. So, she posted these happenings in the local LJ community.

The most recurring theme in the responses was that the students hadn't gone far enough in badgering those praying, that it was a legitimate learning excursion, and by the way, Jesus is stupid. Clearly, what happened was a case of mass pseudo-sophism.

Now, there have been a number of studies showing an inverse proportionality between religiosity and IQ, education, and financial security. The right side of the equation is all roughly the same; people with high IQs tend to be more educated, and education is inarguably related to income. I'm not going to dispute this. I could argue ad nauseum about what "religiosity" means and how it's relevant, but I won't unless you really want me to.

The problem with this is that people tend to polarize this tendency and interpret the data to mean "religious equals not intelligent". So, there is an overbearing idea that "If I am not religious, I am therefore intelligent". Not exactly a flawless syllogism.

What strikes me, however, is that this attitude perseveres in greater abundance at my lowly state university than my former elitest private university. Yet, I'm quite sure that Chicago is on average less religious than IU. The Chicago administration takes a lot of kookiness this time of year with Scav Hunt and turns a blind eye when students go so far as building a functioning nuclear reactor, yet I can't imagine there not being a furor over interrupting the right to prayer for some asinine assignment.

So, it just frustrates me that kids here are stupid enough to attack religion in the name of intelligence. It's one thing to ask the hard questions and come up with hard answers, but I'm more than a little confident that the vast majority of atheists here are so simply because it's trendy and "subversive".