Good morning class. I want to start with a clarification of my remarks from the last class period. Towards the end of our discussion, I referred to religious persons as “moral retards.” The point I was trying…
Excuse me, could you please stop using the term “retards”? My nephew is mentally retarded. Could you please show some degree of sensitivity? I mean, you are a sociologist, aren’t you?
Well, Adam, yes, I suppose I could. But, please, hear me out. My point was that religion often functions as a sort of a disease that…
But, professor, retardation is not a disease, it is a defect. The former can be cured but the latter cannot. Could you please use your terms properly?
Yes, Barak, but, please, remember that we do have a speech code here on this campus. You will be tolerant of my opinions or you will be removed from this class by campus security.
Well, practice what you preach, professor.
That isn’t funny. I don’t preach, I’m a sociologist, damn it. What, Cain? What do you want?
Could you please stop cursing, professor?
Hell no, I won’t. Do you have a question you would like to ask?
Yes, I was just wondering whether you knew what Augustine, Aquinas, Bach, Berkeley, Bonaventura, Calvin, Chesterton, Copernicus, da Vinci, Dante, Descartes, Dickens, Dostoevsky, T.S. Eliot, Galileo, Kierkegaard, Lewis, Lincoln, Luther, Michelangelo, Milton, Newman, Pascal, Pasteur, Shakespeare, Spenser, Solzhenitsyn, Tolkien, …
Please, hurry up, Cain.
…and Tolstoy all have in common?
What?
They were Christians. But, in your view, they were no more than moral retards. I was wondering whether you have your vita posted online.
Why?
Well, I just want to see all that you have accomplished that makes you so superior to all of these great men.
Listen, I do not deny that everyone you named was indeed a great man. Now, let me shock you. I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was also a great man. But by trying to make him divine, you destroy any prospect that he could be a great man. The greatness of a person lies in his, his, well, his humanity, for lack of a better word. By giving him magical powers to heal, to cast out demons, and to rise from the dead, you deprive him of, oh, what are the words I am looking for?
Free will, professor? It was free will you meant to say, wasn’t it? But, throughout this course, you have done nothing but denigrate the concept of free will. You have done nothing to praise the accomplishments of anyone. You, perhaps unknowingly, suggest that all great accomplishments have been made by white men. You do that indirectly with all of your references to the concept of “white privilege”- a concept you have yet to define.
Hold on a second…
No, you hold on a second. Every time you try to defend the so-called “disenfranchised” you speak of racism, classism, labeling, and the latest syndrome de jour. Do you not understand that your deterministic view of human behavior deprives every man of the prospect of greatness? Even the term “man” is rendered meaningless by your worldview.
That is not the reaction I expected. I call your Savior a great man, and this is what I get? Perhaps, the characterization of religious persons as “moral retards” needs no further explanation. Yes, David, do you have a question?
I do. Do you have any evidence that Jesus’ claims to be divine were fabricated by the authors of the New Testament?
No, I don’t. But that does not mean I believe those claims. I certainly do not. I did not intend for this to become a discussion of my personal religious views. Those views are irrelevant.
No, they are not irrelevant, just irreverent. You have just called a man a “liar” and “great” within the span of a few moments. You seem to consider yourself great-even greater than Augustine, Aquinas, Bach, Berkeley…
Please don’t repeat the whole list, David.
…and all of those other guys. If you are a great man, are you also a liar?
How dare you suggest that!? I have never told a lie in my life!
Well, you must be divine.
Very funny. Listen, I did not say Jesus was a liar. He may have thought He was God but…what, Esther, do you have something else to add? Don’t you people have a commandment saying “Thou shalt not interrupt?”
No, “we people” don’t. Now, did you mean to suggest that because Jesus thought he was God he was insane but, nonetheless, still a great man? What about Charles Manson? Was he a great man, too?
Adam, where are you going?
Sorry, professor. I’m headed to the Registrar’s Office to drop this class.
But, why? You need this course to graduate this semester.
I have decided that I cannot be both a Christian and a sociologist.
Well, that’s a cavalier statement. Will you please explain what you mean?
Of course, I will. Genesis Three presents us with a tragic view of human nature. It attributes our fall to free will and makes clear that man cannot construct a Utopian society without God. Sociologists teach the exact opposite. They say we are good by nature, corrupted without choice by a bad society, and able to create a Utopia based on Marxian principles, which write off God as a mechanism contrived by capitalists to oppress the workers. These two worldviews are incompatible. I do possess free will. Call me a moral retard, but I choose God.
But Adam, you will not graduate this semester. You have not thought this out.
Yes, I have, professor. But, unlike you, I am thinking eternally.
Mike S. Adams (www.DrAdams.org) enjoys writing satire on campus life. He plans to raise Cain as long as he is Abel.
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Mike S. Adams was born in Columbus, Mississippi on October 30, 1964. While a student at Clear Lake High School in Houston, TX, his team won the state 5A soccer championship. Mike Adams graduated from C.L.H.S. in 1983 with a 1.8 GPA. Mike Adams was ranked 734 among a class of 740, largely as a result of flunking English all four years of high school. After obtaining an Associate's degree in psychology from San Jacinto College, Mike Adams moved on to Mississippi State University where he joined the Sigma Chi Fraternity. While living in the fraternity house, his GPA rose to 3.4, allowing him to finish his B.A., and then to pursue a Master's in Psychology. In 1990, Mike Adams turned down a chance to pursue a PhD in psychology from the University of Georgia, opting instead to remain at Mississippi State to study Sociology/Criminology. This decision was made entirely on the basis of his reluctance to quit his night job as member of a musical duo. Playing music in bars and at fraternity parties and weddings financed his education. Mike Adams also played for free beer.
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Upon getting his doctorate in 1993, Adams, then an atheist and a Democrat, was hired by UNC-Wilmington to teach in the criminal justice program. A few years later, Adams abandoned his atheism and also became a Republican. He also nearly abandoned teaching when he took a one-year leave of absence to study law at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1998. After returning to teach at UNC-Wilmington, Adams won the Faculty Member of the Year award (issued by the Office of the Dean of Students) for the second time in 2000.
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After his involvement in a well publicized free speech controversy in the wake of the 911 terror attacks, Adams became a vocal critic of the diversity movement in academia. After making appearances on shows like Hannity and Colmes, the O'Reilly Factor, and Scarborough Country, Adams was asked to write a column for Townhall.com.
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Today Mike Adams enjoys the privilege of expressing himself both as a teacher and a writer. Mike Adams is also an avid hunter and reader of classic literature. Mike Adams published his first book, Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel, in 2004. His second book, Feminists Say the Darndest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts "Womyn" On Campus, was published in 2008.
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