Just when you thought we'd entered the age of literacy ...

[unixronin]

Wait, literacy was a long time ago, wasn't it?  So was the Age of Reason.  And science.

Apparently, none of these things has percolated through to Bob Jones University yet.

Relevant page scan reproduced here for the full horrific effect:

(click for full size)

"Creation Science" is one thing.  But Bob Jones University is outright flat lying here.  "Electricity is a mystery."  That might have been true in 1710, ninety years before Alessandro Volta invented the first battery.  By 1810, electricity was being widely studied all over the civilized world.  But in 2010?  Look, let me be straight with you here, I don't even believe that Bob Jones has been alive for two hundred years in order to have spent them all under a rock.  "Some scientists think the sun may be the source of most electricity.  Others think that the movement of the earth produces some of it."  There is no lie so convincing and dastardly as that which knowingly contains a grain of truth placed there to mislead.

I'm not sure which is worse — the idea that there are people ignorant enough and gullible enough to swallow a piece of a-wizard-did-it crap like this, or the idea that there are people in positions of (at least within certain communities) trust who are mendacious enough to take advantage of the poor bastards by feeding them this kind of bullshit and presenting it as fact.  I can only conclude that Bob Jones "University" is actively, knowingly, and intentionally in the business of turning out people utterly unprepared to deal with the realities of the modern technological civilization on this planet.

(Speculation upon possible agendas behind such a venture is left as an exercise to the reader.)

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

You're assuming Bob Jones "University" is accredited.

(I haven't checked. Though I suppose it would make a good yardstick for what measure of trust to place in the accrediting body.)

[xander-opal.livejournal.com]

Good point. Also, methinks 'Bob Jones University' on a resume is an automatic candidate for the circular filing cabinet.

[rosencrantz23.livejournal.com]

from BJU's wikipedia entry:

Since 2005 BJU has been accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, an accrediting organization recognized by the Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.[3] The university enrolls approximately 4,200 students representing every state and fifty foreign countries. It employs a staff of 1,450, offers undergraduate degrees in over a hundred majors, and conducts precollege education from pre-kindergarten through high school.[4]

I am ashamed at the DoE....perhaps we can use this to erode their accreditation?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately I suspect there'd be enough push-back from the Christian right's friends in Congress to make it politically impossible. The BJU set may be intellectually stuck in the Dark Ages, but they vote.

[rosencrantz23.livejournal.com]

it *is* worth noting that BJU only has a *National* accreditation, and not the far more respected *Local* or *regional* one....

Accreditation

[lwj2.livejournal.com]

Of note: Liberty University in Lynchburg VA (founded by Jerry Falwell) is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools -- as is virtually every state-sponsored college, university and community college in the Commonwealth of Virginia, as well as a goodly number of private colleges (Hollins and Hampden-Sydney amongst them) and the Marine Corps University.

THAT says something about TACC&S -- and the Department of Education.

Accredited by SAC&S in South Carolina (Bob Jones is located in Greenville SC): The Citadel; Greenville Technical College; the Medical University of South Carolina; Southern Wesleyan University; Spartanburg Methodist College; the University of South Carolina (all campuses) and a number of others.

Bob Jones marches to a very different drummer.