In the past year or so I have been doing quite a bit of reading and research on undergraduate programs, student life, admissions procedures, and financial aid policies at different colleges (mainly in the Northeast), as my son, now a high school senior, has prepared to apply and then actually applied to a number of them. In truth, my son has only spent a small fraction of the time that I have in such preparatory research, since he has a pretty good idea where he wants to go and where he can get in. Happily, the school he most wants to attend is also one he can almost certainly get into. Even more fortunately, it is our State university, so it is also the most affordable of those he’s considered, and, depending on what offers of financial aid he should receive, possibly the only affordable one.
Some of my son’s classmates applied to our State university for early action, got accepted by early December, and didn’t have to worry about applying elsewhere. That procedure has a lot to be said for it. Nonetheless, based on his school counselor’s recommendation and our feeling that it’s a good idea to have more options, our son has applied to a number of colleges in our area. I should add that these are schools both he and his parents agree might conceivably become the top choice once an acceptance letter (and sufficient financial aid package) made it a definite option. He was not shy about rejecting outright several of our suggestions, and not always for any obvious reason. My wife has sometimes gotten the feeling that her suggesting a school gives it the kiss of death. It’s definitely true that his knowing that a favorite high school teacher attended a certain school raises that college’s acceptability quotient considerably, which is actually not bad reasoning.
In our effort to learn more about colleges we already knew were of interest and to discover new ones that might be worth considering, we utilized a few of the numerous college guides that are available. I thought sharing my observations on some of the leading college guides and how they compare might be useful for others about to embark on the same journey of college choice. Note that I said “observations”–I’m not making thorough reviews.
The first college guide we bought was the Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges: Northeast (also available for other sections of the country). Its listing is quite complete and contains basic facts about all the schools, grouped by State, including the editors’ evaluation of how “selective” each one is. The Barron’s guide also has a section where schools are grouped by selectivity, which can be useful both in identifying schools to investigate further and in sorting them into “reach”, “match”, and “safety” categories. Among the facts this guide includes, and which any guide will have, are the application deadlines, SAT/ACT test submission requirements, percentage of applicants admitted, and percentage of those admitted actually enrolling. Of course, all of the guides have some kind of summary of what the schools most popular majors are and what the students are like, including the percentage of those enrolling who were in their high school class’s top 10%, etc. for each school. Breakdowns along ethnic and public vs private school lines are usually provided. Barron’s had all of these standard data and more information about the programs offered, student housing, campus security, etc.
College guides generally include some report of the SAT (and/or ACT) scores of enrolling students. Typically this is given as the range in which the middle 50% of the students lie. The Barron’s guide had SAT scores broken down further, by 100-point range, so if you’d like to know what percentage of students at a given school scored, say, over 700 on the Math SAT, you can find it there. This finer-grained reporting can be useful in seeing how your student stacks up, which should help in evaluating not only the potential for admission but for “merit-based” financial aid.
One thing to note in gauging the competition for spots in a school is that the test scores of applicants will almost surely differ from those of enrolling students due to two factors. First, the students who were not accepted will presumably on average have lower scores than those accepted. Perhaps less obviously, the scores of those admitted are, for all but the most competitive schools, going to be on average higher than the average for those actually enrolling. Some high scorers will have applied to the school as a “safety school,” and will enroll elsewhere unless their more favored options all reject them. Still, being able to compare one’s SAT scores to those of a given school’s students seems useful.
All of the information in the Barron’s guide was actually quite helpful for someone just starting the college search and selection process. One important fact it revealed to us was just how expensive all of the private schools are, from top to bottom. We experienced substantial “sticker shock” in our college search: the total cost of attending a State university outside of one’s own State turns out to be about 70% of what one would pay for a private school (roughly $35,000 as opposed to $50,000!).
The next book we bought was The Best 366 Colleges (latest edition has 368) by the Princeton Review. There were probably at least 250 schools in this book that I wouldn’t have been able to place on such a list with any confidence. A surprisingly large number of these were small schools I had never even heard of. I’m afraid there was also some blind prejudice involved in my failure to know what schools would be found in the group of the “best.” I would never have guessed that the University of Tulsa was a really good school, for example, my hazy impression of Tulsa having been formed by some ancient movie poster featuring oil wells. I noted with some gratification that a number of the small private schools included were ones I had first encountered when a physics professor had purchased my modern physics teaching software OnScreen Particle Physics.
The Princeton Review guide is one of several books that attempt to give a more in-depth picture of what a student’s life is like at different colleges. It uses student questionnaires to gather data on many aspects of college life, both academic and social. Obviously these evaluations are subjective, but that’s not a bad thing to the extent that measuring student satisfaction and perception is the goal. The reliance on student surveys could leave the process vulnerable to a concerted effort to slant certain evaluations in a particular direction, however. The Princeton surveys are done on a three-year cycle with about a third of the whole batch resurveyed each year. An amusing feature of the Princeton guide is its compilation of the top twenty schools in many categories—relating to academics, bureaucracy, social life, and campus environment—based on the student questionnaire responses. Looking for a party school? The Princeton Review may be able to help.
The third guide that we utilized was the Fiske Guide to Colleges 2009. While the Barron’s guide was all-inclusive, the Princeton Review and Fiske guides restricted themselves to the “best” three hundred something schools. Finally, I couldn’t resist buying the US News (USN) America’s Best Colleges, which is actually very complete at least in its listings of four-year colleges. The USN guide is the one that gives an overall rank to schools in various institutional categories: National Universities, Liberal Arts Colleges, etc. Its most subjective feature is the peer rating of faculties. Student opinion is not consulted, but the USN rankings take into account some hard numbers, such as percentage of freshman returning for second year and, of course, SAT scores of enrolled students. Naturally, USN doesn’t reveal the secret formula they use in turning these factors into a single number that determines a school’s national ranking. USN also has useful summary information on all the four-year colleges in the country.
We’ve been using last year’s Princeton Review guide, but it seems the text of the college descriptions has not changed for any of the schools I scanned for differences. There are now 368 in all in the new edition, which I’ve only seen online. What has been revised is the top-twenty lists, which could change if only some schools re-evaluated things. How consistent are they from year to year? Not as consistent as Princeton’s claims of remarkably stable ratings would lead one to believe.
Northeastern University, located in Boston, is an interesting case to consider both for highlighting the very subjective nature of the ratings and the lack of consensus among guides and for hints that some ratings (supposedly based on student surveys) may be manipulable. Fiske, or whoever wrote the Northeastern review for the Fiske guide, clearly does not think very highly of Northeastern. In fact, he rates its academics so low (a 2 out of 5), one wonders how it made it into the book. I only saw ten other included schools (out of the more than 300) with a rating that low. But over in the Princeton Review (based on student surveys), Northeastern has a respectable 79 (out of 100) academic rating, which, for example, according to Princeton, is somewhat better than the University of Illinois, pegged at 74 by Princeton, but given a highest rating 5 by Fiske. Who’s right? The question really doesn’t have much meaning, since there is no actual number for a college’s academic rating, but such differences point out that relying on a single source may not be a reliable way to gauge even a school’s reputation.
When we look at the US News ratings, we find Northeastern ranked number 96 among “national universities” in the USA and with a peer-based faculty rating of 2.9 (out of 5—Harvard is 4.9), while Illinois comes in nationally at number 40 and with a faculty rating of 4.0). So in addition to wondering what Fiske has against Northeastern, we have to consider that Princeton may be underestimating Illinois. But USN doesn’t incorporate student opinion of their professors into the rating. Fiske says he does. Princeton definitely does. I just noticed that Caltech was tied with Northeastern in the Academic rating last year in the Princeton guide due to Caltech students’ putting their professors at number 3 on the “Professors Get Low Marks” list. Caltech’s Academic rating jumped up 10 points to 88 this year, despite its holding on to the third place in that bad professors’ category. Perhaps Princeton changed the weighting to de-emphasize student opinion; perhaps after some complaints by Caltech.
Princeton acknowledges that they allow schools to contest rankings they perceive to be unfair. There is no way to know how those things are settled; nor, of course, is there any reporting of when a change has resulted from a college administration complaint. Princeton notes that some schools refuse to participate in the student surveys. Though there don’t seem to many colleges at all that are currently opting out, Princeton wouldn’t want that number to start rising, especially among elite schools. Fiske gives CalTech a 5 academic rating, and USN has them with a 4.6 peer rating of faculty (and number 6 overall in the National University category). Of course there is a a difference between being a highly regarded scientist in one’s field and being a good teacher. Are Caltech professors really that bad as teachers? Is there a language problem? Could Caltech students be blaming their professors for the students’ own shortcomings in handling a very difficult curriculum? I don’t know, but the academic ratings definitely seems to be a case where the Princeton Review differs from Fiske and USN, due to its giving more weight to professors’ teaching ability and their availability.
One of the ill-defined but definitely interesting factors that both the Fiske and Princeton Review guides attempt to rate is the “quality of life” (QL) at the various colleges, and there are clear differences of opinion. Not only does Fiske rank Northeastern low in academics, he gives it a 2 for QL. Princeton, however, gives Northeastern a well above average QL rating of 83. I think this must be partly due to a bias against urban schools by Fiske. Boston College and Boston University get a 93 and 81, respectively, from Princeton; but Fiske gives them just OK 3 ratings. Fiske loves the University of Vermont and he certainly makes it sound appealing: “The size is manageable, Burlington is a fabulous college town, and Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains are on your doorstep.” He gives it a 5 for QL, while Princeton says Vermont is right there with Northeastern with an 83. UNH, a small-town school, gets a 4 for QL from Fiske, but only 68 from Princeton. NYU gets a Princeton 87 versus a Fiske 3, so it seems the Princeton-urban and Fiske-nonurban preference holds. Of course, the Princeton results are supposedly based mainly on student surveys and the Fiske ones less so, which seems to me to be saying that students like urban campuses better than Fiske does. It seems clear that it is the locale that causes Northeastern students to rate their experience so highly. Their responses put Northeastern at number 11 for “Great College Towns,” up from 15 a year ago.
A really big jump occurred for Northeastern University in the category of Best Career/Job Placement Services, where they came from out of nowhere to be number 1 in the latest edition. Has there really been that big a turnaround in those services in the past three years? Possibly, but mightn’t there have been a little encouragement by the school administration for students to highlight an area that Northeastern should shine in, given its co-op plan? I know nothing about it, but I can’t help wondering. Or perhaps some students took the initiative to help boost their school’s standing by organizing a campaign to get people to praise the Job Placement Office in their survey. There’s no way to know, but also no way to prevent it. I note that Northeastern has been touting their first-place Princeton Review finish in their recruiting letters this year.
There is also a self-consistency problem in the Princeton Review ratings. For example, The College of the Holy Cross gets a high (93) rating for Financial Aid, yet ranks number 16 (up from number 17) in student dissatisfaction with their aid. This isn’t strictly speaking a logical contradiction except that the 93 rating is supposed to be based on student reports as well as school reports. Is there something misleading in the school report, or is there something different about Holy Cross students? Can it be that only a relatively small minority are so dissatisfied with their aid as to make a big point of it but that this group still outnumbers those at most other schools wanting to raise it as a major issue? We’d need to know more of the details on how the ratings and rankings are arrived at to answer that question. It’s just another indication that it would be a mistake to make too much out of any one rating.
My wife and I have been rather dismayed that all of the schools our son has applied to have the notation “Lots of beer drinking” in the margin of the Princeton review. All but one also add “Hard liquor is popular.” It’s almost as if we were deliberately looking for hard-drinking schools, which is far from the case. I think we may have been a bit negligent on this issue, as I now see schools without the alcoholic notations exist, though not all that many in the Northeast.
An interesting case of an overall negative trend in the Princeton top-twenty rankings from one year to the next is the University of New Hampshire (UNH). In the 2008-9 edition they were number 7 in the “Party School” category, so it’s good (from a parent’s standpoint) that they’ve dropped a bit to number 11. They have, however, moved up from 4 to 3 in the “Lots of Beer” list, and they now appear as number 20 for “Reefer Madness,” while being “unranked” the previous year. Is there some sort of rivalry building with the University of Vermont on this cannabis-loving category? UVM had already staked out a place near the top (number 4) in the category. UNH is now number 5 for “Homogeneous Student Population” (up from 9) and has maintained its position at number 4 in “Little Race/Class Interaction.” To make matters worse they check in at number 6 in “Town-Gown Relations are Strained,” which wasn’t mentioned the previous year.
Those changes could be just due to changed perceptions or some particular incident (for the strained relations) probably. New this year at UNH is high dissatisfaction with professors: number 18 for “Professors Get Low Marks” and number 14 for “Least Accessible Professors.” Maybe this is just a statistical fluctuation from only somewhat lower, but invisible to the list, ratings last year. Or could a few students at UNH be trying to put heat on the school by organizing a campaign to give the faculty bad grades in the Princeton survey? How many would it take really? We aren’t given figures on how many students participate in the surveys for each school. Given that the Princeton surveys are done on a three-year cycle with about a third of the whole batch resurveyed each year, fluctuations could be due to new answers from the school’s students or from changes by students at other schools. Given some fairly big changes with UNH, I’d say they must have been resurveyed. Otherwise, how could the jump from off the list to number 6 in strained community relations have occurred?
The University of Massachusetts at Amherst has seen one major improvement (from the parent’s standpoint). It went from number 4 in “Students Never Study” to not being in the top 20. The list still exists (Florida took the top spot), so there must have been a decided change at UMass in the last three years, assuming the disappearance from the top twenty is due to resurveying. For all I know the campus newspaper published an editorial urging students not to make UMass look bad by saying they hardly ever studied. How would I know? How would the Princeton Review know? On another positive note, UMass has dropped out of the top twenty for “Long Lines and Red Tape,” where they held down the 17th position a year ago. The students at UMass are nonetheless (perhaps because of increased study time) even more unhappy than before—up to number 18 (from 20) in the “Least Happy Students” category. The campus isn’t looking any better, at least in the students’ eyes: UMass has moved up from 12 to 8 on the “Least Beautiful Campus” list. The students (now that they’ve had to start studying?) are showing their dissatisfaction with professor accessibility, coming in at number 17 for “Least Accessible Professors.”
That should be enough to show everyone that college guide evaluations are not gospel, don’t always share consensus, and are possibly subject to gaming by schools or organized groups of students. While I wasted way too much time on reading them, I know I learned a good deal too. I started writing this several weeks ago before much had happened in the way of college admission decisions and financial aid offers, and I’ve left everything about those matters in the future tense. I may have more to say later about the whole process of applying for admission and financial aid and deciding what to do.
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Conversations in the Clubhouse of Truly Smart People
Monday, August 11th, 2008The title of this post alludes to the first few paragraphs of another I made recently (July 21, 2008): “On the Breaking of Bad Habits Acquired in One’s Youth: Smoking and Atheism.” Briefly put, I there compared becoming an atheist during my high school years to joining an imaginary elite society I’d glimpsed through reading Bertrand Russell and other such thinkers: The Club of Truly Smart People.
Now, back in those ancient days of my youth, there was no internet (no personal computers even) to provide access to and communication with the whole world. Living as I did in Dallas County, Texas, I really had no contact with other atheists or agnostics, known to me as such, until I went away to college. Well, I had at least one friend whom I think I had pretty well convinced of the irrationality of religion (God forgive me), but there was certainly no organized and open community of atheists. It was partly the ideal and semi-underground quality of membership in the imaginary club that gave it so much prestige in my mind. I should add that I did not wish for this to be a permanent condition. I looked forward to meeting others who shared my views and hoped that I would live to see progress toward the dispelling of the religious superstition that somehow still lived on in peoples’ minds.
I viewed religion and racial prejudice and discrimination in pretty much the same way, and even as being closely tied together, since I knew so many people who believed both in God and racial segregation, which was manifestly unjust in practice. This was pre-Civil-Rights-Law Texas, which was an apartheid society with oppressive government-enforced separation of races, basically an insane world view that it’s hard even to conceive of now.
As so often happens, I’m seeing things more clearly as I write about them. That connection in my mind between racism and religion was no doubt one of the factors that pushed religion into the category of being too unacceptably backward for further consideration. At the same time, I would have acknowledged that my personal rejection of racism was mainly based on the clear teachings of Christianity. I might note that my inability to come up with a satisfactory non-religious source for ethics and morality remained a problem for me until my conversion.
These times are very different. Partly, I’m sure, as a defensive response to Biblical literalists’ efforts to force inclusion of “Creation Science” in school textbooks and the perceived growth of the “Religious Right” as a political force, something of an antireligious movement has come into being that goes well beyond defense of science teaching or support for legal abortion. The number of atheistic and antireligious books appearing in recent years certainly far exceeds anything I’ve seen in decades past. Of course the internet and the blog phenomenon have made it easy for like-minded people to communicate and congregate virtually online, and atheists have taken advantage of the opportunity.
I recently did a little web surfing through atheist-oriented websites. Although my club analogy for smokers and atheists was fanciful, atheism as a sort of club (atheists strongly object to its being called a religion) actually makes a good deal of sense these days, at least for those who publicly define themselves as atheists and join together to promote and defend their views. It’s worth noting that the people that frequent atheist blogs and web sites are probably no more typical of atheists than the regulars on the Sons of Sam Horn web site are of average Red Sox fans, to take an example close to my home. From what I’ve observed, online atheists probably would agree that their society of non-believers does amount to The Club of Truly Smart People. Let this not be taken to mean that there are not, for example, Christian circles that view themselves as The Club of the Truly Saved People.
One thing I discovered in my surfing is that the atheists’ club now has an official emblem, a red letter A (get it?) that bloggers can post on their web pages to indicate their club membership. The show-the-A push is part of a campaign, evidently led by Richard Dawkins (a quote of whose I critiqued in my previous post), to have atheists “come out” as such. Dawkins apparently sees a commercial opportunity in atheism, since he has a web site that sells not only his books but tee shirts bearing the atheist logo and worn in the ads by nice-looking female models. I know it’s just me, but I was reminded of the cover of my old paperback copy of 1984 which featured a woman with an Anti-Sex League tee shirt.
One of the atheist blogs I encountered was called The Friendly Atheist. Its then most recent post asked readers to respond to the question “What Christian Arguments Could Use a Good, Short Answers?” This was taken by most of the commenters to call for humorous responses. Perhaps it was the blog’s name that invited me to post in the comments section the following off-topic entry:
July 22, 2008 at 9:29 am
Since this is the “Friendly” Atheist site, I dare to write here as a former atheist, current friendly theist. I’d just like to remind everyone that the question of God’s existence is really the most important one we have to answer, since it determines whether or not we find purpose in the universe. There is not really a competition between atheists and theists. There are arguments for God that involve no references to scripture of any kind. I invite you to read my post On the Breaking of Bad Habits Acquired in One’s Youth: Smoking and Atheism for something about my personal experience.
I can see now that this was a bit like coming into the club house and telling the club members to stop horsing around and get serious about leaving the club to join its big rival. I wouldn’t have done it on a normal day, but I was still in the frame of mind in which the writing of my piece had left me.
The deed was done. How would they respond? I had already seen that someone had taken issue with one of the suggested anti-Christian retorts by defending (in a less than optimal way) the historicity of Jesus. He had been challenged and even ridiculed for his assertion by several commenters, but hadn’t really been abused, so I assumed that forays into the blog comment section by theists (assuming that commenter was one) were not forbidden, and were perhaps even welcome if only as a way of sharpening arguments and displaying them before other blog readers.
The full back and forth that went on between me and the other commenters can be found at friendlyatheist.com. Although their screen names (presumably identical to their actual names in some cases) can be seen there, and the comment section of a blog is in the nature of a public forum, I still feel more comfortable quoting commenters with the designation Commenter A etc. since they didn’t envision their comments appearing here.
The first response that I got (from Commenter A of course) explicitly welcomed me, then followed with
I am wondering if you’re going to keep posting here, or if you’re doing a one-or-two-off post. (I tend to get deep into conversations with new posters who have provocative questions… then they leave!)
There followed several paragraphs, mainly attacking the notion that purpose in the universe was a meaningful idea and pointing out unsupported assumptions (in the view of Commenter A) that I had made relating to the idea of purpose. He closed with
I won’t join a church full of people who are sure until I’m sure as well.
Have you evidence?
It was only as the discussion went on that I came to realize (I’m pretty sure that I’m right) that Commenter A was not just being confrontational, which is how it had seemed, but was genuinely if naively hoping to obtain such convincing evidence. His machinegunner’s approach to firing off questions and rebuttals to supposed arguments made it pretty clear why earlier theists had left before he was satisfied though.
Commenter B came on to say that she(?) had read my “blog/essay” but still had a question:
…what made you become a theist? was it because your previous ‘worldview’ (as an atheist) carried with it “the burden of purposeless mortality”? is that the main reason?
I ask because, although your blog post/essay is quite lengthy, you never really seem to touch on the specifics of what led to your ‘conversion’.
Now, in my blog post, which Commenter B said she’d read, I had explicitly said that my personal story would have to wait for another time. I could have left it at that, but given Commenter B’s friendly, even complimentary, tone, combined with my posted comment having called forth a number of responses, I felt I probably owed them a brief account, which I provided. I don’t know if it was a good idea or not, as it evidently deflected some of them from considering the main message of my blog post, which was whether they were open to any sort of evidence for God’s existence, toward making a quick decision about whether this bare outline of my spiritual trajectory presented a convincing argument for theism.
The commenters at the Friendly Atheist blog were going to view things in terms of arguments in any case, as this excerpt from the response of Commenter C to my blog post illustrates:
You then go on to quote a few major modern atheists and discuss them. Badly, judging by the few segments I could bother to read. I was personally interested in your own spiritual journey (I already quit smoking a couple of years ago).
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t just the sheer massive length of the post that put me off. But your arguments, such as they are, mostly fit nicely into Daniel Florien’s hundreds of proofs. I commend them to you as a resource. You could have saved us both some time by simply annotating which ones you were using.
Well, let’s skip over the rather unfriendly tone; since I did after all step into the clubhouse uninvited. The part that is very typical is the reference to my “arguments” (“such as they were,” but there weren’t any!) and how there’s nothing new in them. Is Commenter C really looking for a novel argument after centuries of disputation? Perhaps, but I think he is mainly out to display his worthiness for continued membership in the Club of Truly Smart People by being able to categorize arguments for theism and refute them by mere reference.
At the same time, of course, this ability to label an argument and toss it into the already-refuted pile, also serves as a way to avoid actually considering any arguments for God’s existence, for there are not going to be any new ones. Commenter C was not alone in this; virtually all of the commenters classified arguments by name (when they didn’t suggest going to a list, as this one did.) And yet that “personally interested in your own spiritual journey” seems to be genuine, so perhaps there is another truly disappointed reader.
Commenter C closes by quoting two sentences from my blog post and commenting on them.
Final observation:
[Quoting my blog post] “Are you truly open to revelation? The best way to become open to it must be through prayer, but few are the atheists who would start from that point.”
I think I’ll let that stand as emblematic of your arguments.
I’m not sure what Commenter C thought I was arguing for in that passage or whether he understood the point I was making, which I think should have been clear from the context. Anyone that wants to can go to near the end of my blog post and find the relevant section, which was mainly devoted to asking the atheist reader to seriously consider what, if anything, would truly constitute evidence for God. The quoted passage about prayer and revelation was addressed only to anyone that might feel direct revelation to be the only satisfactory evidence. It was meant to point out the inherent contradiction in that approach since prayer (a plausible minimal condition—nothing said about a guarantee—for its success) was not something a convinced atheist would usually be open to. The whole point was to remove that approach from consideration.
Everyone that mentioned the passage about prayer took it to mean that I was recommending something I thought they wouldn’t accept, and therefore leaving them without a prayer, so to speak. My inability to get my point across (judging from the responses, anyway) was very frustrating, but probably had as much to do with their mind-set and expectations as my expository skill.
Commenter A returned to have his say on the same quote about prayer, which he probably had seen only as quoted out of context:
To put it short and snappy: I prayed. Nothing happened. I’ve tried it several times, in several ways described by believers as the way to get certain results. When they failed, others told me I did it wrong. Must I repeat this attempt with each and every ‘god’ and ‘conception of God’ believed in by thousands of generations of humanity?
Because if you excuse me, I’ve got some living to do before I die. I’ll leave the chasing of ghosts to the Ghostbusters.
I’d say that the experience of Commenter A points to the need for trying another approach, but I feel the disappointment; and his desire for knowledge of God is apparent. I also wonder if there were really “believers” that told him that a specific way of praying would lead to “certain results.” I’m not doubting his word, just hoping there was a misunderstanding.
It seemed to be a bit disconcerting to some of the current members of The Club to encounter a former member that had not only resigned from membership but had, so to speak, joined the rival club. They responded in various ways to this puzzling phenomenon.
Commenter D in particular questioned my veracity. He wasn’t at all sure that I really had ever been a member:
After looking into Lee Strobel and his “Half-Case For Christ”, I am pretty skeptical of people who claim to be former atheists.
Others (let’s start with Commenter E) thought the club was clearly better off without me, as I had never belonged in it in the first place, not having the guts for it:
You wanted comfort, and there was none, so you switched beliefs to one that comforted you. Okay, so you’re weak. I can understand that, but don’t use it as an argument for theism.
Or (Commenter E again) sufficient breadth of intellect:
Dude, it’s clear to me that you never thought through your atheism. You were just young, arrogant, and ignorant. You are a narrow thinker; probably good for a work-a-day physicist, but not for someone tackling a subject like the existence of god.
Well, my being young and immature when I first became an atheist was one of the main points of my original blog post. As I lived, matured, and thought more, over decades, I finally was able to break free (with God’s help, I believe) from the mind-set that admits no possibility of the spiritual. But that hardly conveys all that went on, which I have pretty well committed to describing through this blog in more detail. Of course I have my own opinion about what constitutes narrow thinking—and arrogance, for that matter.
Commenter F expressed sentiments similar to the ones above on the inadequacy of my education and manliness to sustain my club membership:
…It just seems as though you were not an educated atheist back when you still were. I will wholeheartedly agree with you that the Universe is a wonderful place; I’ll even admit that I once thought as you do, and am still tempted to explain all this wonder by believing in something that I wish to be true, but is likely not. I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone knows yet, just how all this works as it does. We may never crack the code, but that’s no reason to start dreaming up gods to make us sleep better at night.…I say, use your brain like a man (sorry women). Some things are difficult to accept–so what, do we just avoid them and prefer comforting beliefs, shut our eyes and whistle past the graveyard?
The interesting thing about the excerpt from Commenter F just quoted is that it acknowledges that the absence of God is difficult to accept, that God’s existence is something to wish for. It was this implicit longing for God that I was trying to point out (in my blog post) in the writings of Weinberg and Dawkins. I believe this is a universal longing innate in all thinking creatures because we are creatures of God. This very longing is in itself a reason seriously to consider God’s existence. I say this knowing it is the kind of quantum-tunneling statement (metaphorically speaking) that escapes the classical confines of the proof-demanding atheist.
Commenter F speculated that it was a genetic defect that had caused me to drop out of the club:
You were bothered by a Universe with no purpose, and now you feel better. Same old things. Reading your words makes me consider again the idea that propensity to believe in religions may be genetic.
Commenter A seemed to become increasingly troubled by my continuing to respond to comments, though he was the one that had initially expressed the hope that I not leave after only a couple of posts.
Treat us like human beings here. Don’t come here to chortle “ho ho ho, I once thought as you did, ho ho ho” and tell us where we’ve got it all wrong.
I’m not sure what your goals here are. If they are conversation, you’re failing. If they are conversion, you’re failing. If they are to convince us that you’re a deep thinker, you’re failing.
So why are you here? Is it to make yourself feel superior by dangling some meat over the edge of the dinner table to see if the dogs jump?
It’s almost as though Commenter A thinks I am taunting him by withholding some secret key to enlightenment, or pretending to do so. The interested reader can go to the full comments to see how little my words justified this kind of response. I wish Commenter A well in his spiritual quest, though I don’t think I have much more to contribute to it at this point. However, I invite him or anyone else interested in a more private conversation to email me.
Having been rebuked several times by the “friendlies” over the length of my posts, I think I will not get into our dialog, for now at least. I assume the whole comment section is still available for those that are interested.
I don’t regret having had the conversation “in the clubhouse,” though I don’t plan to make a habit of it. I’ll let my readers judge how well the excerpts of comments I’ve quoted (and the full set) fit in with the notion of some atheists’ seeing themselves as constituting The Club of Truly Smart People. Though most commenters had trouble suppressing their scorn for this turncoat and some didn’t try, I don’t hold it against them. Comment sections do not bring out the best in people for a number of reasons.
I detect in some of the comments disappointment or even resentment that I had no new and irrefutable argument or scientific evidence for God’s existence. I can only repeat that I claim no new evidence, even as I urge everyone to examine seriously and deeply all the circumstantial evidence in this ultimate mystery. I totally reject the idea, expressed by a number of commenters, that we choose whether to believe in God. We do, however, choose whether to strive for an open mind and what kind of evidence to consider. I again recommend the Polkinghorne book Belief in God in an Age of Science
as a possible starting point.
I’m planning to take a break from metaphysical questions, but sometimes they are hard to escape, so we’ll see how it goes. That Michael Phelps can really swim, can’t he?
Tags: atheism, atheist blogs, blog comments, theism
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