Around here there are Christian based organizations of all stripes mobilized and on site at Joplin, as well as supply lines from churches to recovery centers in Joplin. Bass Pro Shop in Springfield has teamed with Convoy of Hope (faith based). Many industries seem to align with faith based volunteer organizations to provide food, clothing, clean up assistance and materials, and so on. It is the main topic in newspapers in the area.
PZ is also soliciting, but not for Joplin. His concern is for Camp Quest. As one might expect, Camp Quest is an indoctrination experience for children. If you are interested, here is the mission statement of Camp Quest:
Camp Quest MissionIt would be fascinating to quiz some of these kids on their "critical thinking" after their Camp Quest stay. Not to mention their concern for the kids in Joplin.
Camp Quest is the first residential summer camp in the history of the United States aimed at the children of Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists, Brights, or whatever other terms might be applied to those who hold to a naturalistic, not supernatural world view.
The purpose of Camp Quest is to provide children of freethinking parents a residential summer camp dedicated to improving the human condition through rational inquiry, critical and creative thinking, scientific method, self-respect, ethics, competency, democracy, free speech, and the separation of religion and government.
Through our programs we seek to:
Build a community for freethinking families
Foster curiosity, questioning, and critical thinking
Encourage reason and compassion as foundations of an ethical, productive and fulfilling life
Raise awareness of positive contributions made by atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, and other nontheistic people to our society
Promote an open dialogue about metaphysical questions that is marked by challenging each other’s ideas while at the same time treating each other with respect
Demonstrate atheism and humanism as positive, family-friendly worldviews
2 comments:
PZ is also soliciting, but not for Joplin. His concern is for Camp Quest.
Your concern is for Joplin? What about Japan? The staving in Africa? There will always be another cause.
Camp Quest is an indoctrination experience for children.
Teaching critical thinking is as close to the opposite of indoctrination you can get.
"Your concern is for Joplin? What about Japan? The staving in Africa? There will always be another cause. "
This seems inordinately callous, even for an Atheist. PZ did not collect for Japan or Africa either. My community has constant drives for Africa, South America and even Russia and other places, along with drives for the tragedy du jour. These are church-driven, and semi-tractor trailers leave here full, destined for areas such as those. There are missions every summer where bus loads of local people go into poverty stricken areas to help with health and housing. This gets no coverage on the national Atheist news. The missions to Haiti, for example, are still pretty much non-stop from faith-based NGO's around the country.
"Teaching critical thinking is as close to the opposite of indoctrination you can get."
The general Atheist concept of critical thinking is to criticize certain categories of the Other, regardless of the existence of grounds to do so. Being critical (as in being a critical person) is placed into the same meaning as being skeptical, which is taken to mean to be constantly negative when contrary worldviews appear, especially those which present logic which contradicts Materialism, etc. When there is an inability to refute a premise, then just be critical of it using whatever off-the-wall illogic or fallacies are necessary. In other words, use "doubt" in attempting to negate when there is no refutation or legitimate negating argument to make.
Piggliucci once mentioned a book on "Critical Thinking" which he has his students read. I bought the book thinking it might be a practical logic book. There was virtually no logic contained in the book at all.
Atheism is subject to "new think" and "new speak", where words and terms are redefined constantly to meet the needs of the ideology. Critical thinking is one of those terms; it is general ehough to be easily distorted into "prejudice".
A few months back I was in a discussion at Pigliucci's blog concerning whether logic could be valid without resolving to some sort of undeniable axiom. I led slowly up to the question of how the "analytical" philosopher could speak truth if the logical arguments were either circular, depending upon his own opinions for validations, or infinite regresses, depending on other's opinions. When I wrote down the First Principles in my comment, Piggliucci stopped allowing my comments from being posted (he has comment moderation on full time, ostensibly for eliminating SPAM and death threats[!] but I can attest that he used it for eliminating uncomfortable logic as well).
So no, for Atheists, at least those I encounter, critical thinking is not the opposite of indoctrination: is specifically is indoctrination.
Which is why I say that it would be interesting to determine the actual abilities of the children indoctrinated at Camp Quest.
BTW, the perceived need for a camp like that seems to indicate that even Atheists don't believe that the secular government schools have much value.
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