Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Religious issues

ESU's president informed us last Friday that "islamophobic flyers" had been distributed on campus. I watched the nightly TV news out of Topeka to find out more. They talked about the postings and showed a bulletin board but blurred out the flyer itself. At faculty senate yesterday we passed a "resolution in support of ESU's international community" that denounced Trump's January 27 executive order as well as these flyers. I asked ESU's provost about the content of the flyers and was only told that they contained passages from the quran, presumably inflammatory passages. It's interesting that today I found a business card tacked to one of our physics department bulletin boards.  It had Hope Community church, Andover, Kansas printed on the back side and a bible passage from 1 Corinthians on the front.

I would think the intent of the flyers was to denounce one set of religious beliefs and believers. I would think the intent of the other was to encourage a different set of religious beliefs and believers.  I suspect the intent of most of our university administrators is mostly to support enrollment.

While I don't want to single out any one religion for special mention I do think, as an atheist, that pointing out the nonsense in any and all of the "holy" books is perfectly fine by me. Perhaps one should be careful to criticize them ALL each time?

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