My prof on child sacrifice: "Who are you to judge?"

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As a college professor myself I can say without quivocation that the professor this poor student ran up against was NOT trying to get people to think "outside the box’. This professor is in a box and is trying to force others to squeeze into it with him. These punks get a degree on the cheap and expect everyone else to stoop to their level. They have power and consistently abuse it.

It makes me sick.

Dan L
 
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siamesecat:
My history teacher would ask us, “if you were a nazi and were asked to kill a Jewish family would you do it if your life depended on it?” and of course when everyone would say no, he’d say “even if you would be killed and they would be anyways by someone else? You’d leave behind your family rather than kill the Jews?” He wasnt advocating the murder of Jews, but rather making a point of why Nazis did such a thing.
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Perhaps I am misreading you, but it seems this prof was excusing immoral behavior? I think there was more to it than fear and even fear is no excuse for murder.
 
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Perhaps I am misreading you, but it seems this prof was excusing immoral behavior? I think there was more to it than fear and even fear is no excuse for murder.
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Trust me if you were in the class isn’t wasnt like that. He wasnt saying it was right, but he was saying how in the position he understood how young scared men could reconcile the atrocities they did in the Nazi Army, since many of the students were asking “well why did they do these things?”
 
Sounds like you should find a school where you can spend thousands of dollars and actually learn something. Any school that would hire a clearly logically deficient professor has nothing to offer you. Take your business elsewhere.
 
Good ones! I agree I prolly woulda smacked him myself. Altho… sometimes better to show restraint… unless you felt like you were in danger and needed to defend yourself.
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mlchance:
I’ve provided some knee-jerk responses:

“Well, I don’t know about the you all part of ‘we,’ but the I part is able to judge because I have a brain and I’m not afraid to use it.”

“Talk to me like that again, and I’ll settle your hash with a chop to the throat.”

“Apparently you’re confused about what ‘objective’ means. It doesn’t mean ‘surrender one’s critical faculties to win the valueless approval of smug pseudo-intellectuals.’ Rather, ‘objective’ means looking at the facts as they are and judging accordingly. Hence, anyone who is ‘objective’ can plainly see that human sacrifice just ain’t right.”

😃

– Mark L. Chance.
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siamesecat:
Trust me if you were in the class isn’t wasnt like that. He wasnt saying it was right, but he was saying how in the position he understood how young scared men could reconcile the atrocities they did in the Nazi Army, since many of the students were asking “well why did they do these things?”
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Siamesecat:

When I was “on the road to Jericho”, I had 2 classes with a professor who was like the one Blindsheep is describing. I was so lost that agreed with the man at the time. What he’s teaching is called “Socially Constructed Reality”. Essentially, it means that something is right or wrong because the culture says it is, and that the effects in people’s lives spring from that social decision.

Blindsheep’s professor probably believes in this theory that’s very popular in the Social Sciences, and really meant that we have no right to judge the Aztecs for anything that they did, including the slaughtering of humans in human sacrifices.

The Professor probably doesn’t believe in an Objective Reality or a Knowable Truth that doesn’t change just because cultures don’t understand it or can’t follow it. Blindsheep’s professor probably doesn’t believe in an Objective Morality that doesn’t change.

Her Professor probably believes that each culture gets to determine right or wrong for itself, and probably believes that applies to individuals as well.

You might be tempted to ask about the RIGHT TO LIFE AND LIBERTY, and to be FREE FROM HARM, of the person being Sacrificed. BTW, the Sacrificial Victims" were almost NEVER VOLUNTARY! and, Being sacrificed was both PAINFUL AND TERRIFYING!

In Christ, Michael
 
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GregoryPalamas:
As a college professor myself I can say without quivocation that the professor this poor student ran up against was NOT trying to get people to think "outside the box’. This professor is in a box and is trying to force others to squeeze into it with him. These punks get a degree on the cheap and expect everyone else to stoop to their level. They have power and consistently abuse it.

It makes me sick.

Dan L
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Prof. Dan:

The Prof. I was referring to hadn’t gone as far as this one, but he thought he was offering enlightnment, that he was edifying his students.

I’m sure his one thought the same thing, and that there is something wrong with those of us who disagree with him and his “Socially Constructed reality”.

I wonder how he would react if a few like minded students offered to let him be an Aztec Sacrificial Victim… What would happen if a couple of students produced a stone alter, some rope, a headdress and a knife and offered to give the Professor the professor the opportunity to be sacrificed to the Aztec god Tlaloc?

I’m absolutely sure that he would not like it one bit, and that he probably would want the students charged with attempted murder. I’m also sure that he would be calling it wrong and evil!

Instead of risking going to prison, one might want to ask the teacher if he would still be calling it OK if someone tried to make him a Human Sacrifice or tried to eat HIM…

By seeing the procedure from the viewpoint of the victims, he might be able to see why it was wrong.

I don’t know what to say about the student who decided that insults were an adaquate answer to the logic a person she disagrees with. This is the 2nd Stage of Schachter (See the paper by Richard Smith on the topic). This class might get violent (the insults will get nastier) - I’d bring at least one friend and a tape and video recorder to every session, and I’d go to the Administration - The Prof may be incouraging this.

In Christ, Michael
 
I know we’re all thinking it, so i’ll say it. It’s amazing how these “enlightened” professors have the greatest respect for child sacrifice and a billion other immoral practices, but no tolerance for Catholics and their beliefs. Their smugness used to enrage me, but now i just get sad and pray. The Divine Mercy chaplet is a great comfort.
 
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It is called moral relativism and if such a culture thinks child sacrifice is licit, one cannot say the Nazis were wrong as another example. Relativism leads to tyranny and rigidity.
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This is exactly correct.
Your professors thoughts are moral relativism taken to it’s logical conclusion. Who are we to say that anythings wrong?
Of course, there are some things that are ALWAYS wrong in their book-
Homophobia,not supporting a woman’s right to choose or gay marriage,ect. So they do have some absolutes.
 
Get a T-shirt with Our Lady of Guadelupe on it and wear it to class.

As Christians, we should be prepared to stand firm on our beliefs. Actually, we have a duty to correct the ignorant and rebuke sinners. We just have to do it from respectfully and with LOVE.
 
I like this particular article about the push of society to not “judge”:
saint-mike.org/library/BroJP/secret.asp

Realize that in this world, as a Christian and especially an orthodox Catholic, you are a sign of contradiction. By speaking the Truth you are making others uncomfortable with their own consciences, which aren’t correctly formed but are written with the natural law that they try to supress. You will have to be comfortable with being seen as the enemy if you wish to proclaim the truth since we now live in a time that proclaims evil as “good” and “compassionate”, and goodness with “judgement” and “condemnation”.
Good luck and don’t worry. It’s cool to be countercultural - be a rebel, proclaim the Gospel! :cool:
 
Blindsheep,

Just two quick points.
  1. Prohibition against child murder is written by God on every human heart. It’s also known as natural law and it is knowable by reason. It has nothing to do with culture.
  2. Your professor and classmates are simply trying to intimidate you. You can only be intimidated if you allow yourself to be intimidated. If God is for you, who can be against you.
Good Luck!
 
mlchance said:
“Turn the other cheek” refers to not seeking revenge. I’m not into revenge. In fact, warning someone there about to get their hash settled could be viewed as an act of charity. After all, if there’s nothing wrong with killing children, then there’s nothing wrong with anything at all.

😉

– Mark L. Chance.
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First I’m thinking calling someone a bitch for being against child sacrifice is whacky:whacky:
…then I’m thinking these products “higher education” will be running this country some day.:bigyikes:
 
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siamesecat:
While I find it crazy that anyone could thing you were a bitch for going against child sacrifice, was your professor more trying to get you to think “outside the box” and realize that cultures are different. Maybe he wasnt being serious to say child sacrifice isnt wrong just because its another culture doing it , but more to make the point that different cultures have moral beliefs and you’d be surprised to find out how much different cultures can differ on morality? Maybe making a point that morality is shaped by the morals we are taught by those around us? If he really was mad at you for saying child sacrifice was wrong that’s ridiculous. But maybe he was just trying to get you to see his point on what he was trying to teach? My history teacher would ask us, “if you were a nazi and were asked to kill a Jewish family would you do it if your life depended on it?” and of course when everyone would say no, he’d say “even if you would be killed and they would be anyways by someone else? You’d leave behind your family rather than kill the Jews?” He wasnt advocating the murder of Jews, but rather making a point of why Nazis did such a thing.
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Look, it’s not necessary for an educated person to respect everything about foreign cultures…just the things that are objectively good. The rest is open to rational criticism. Is it cultural snobbery to view child sacrifice or Nazism as evil, or basic human decency?
 
Does your professor also think Lincoln was wrong to impose his morality on the plantation owners? You should ask him in class and make him answer.

In Christ,
ILO
 
Traditional Ang:
BTW, the Sacrificial Victims" were almost NEVER VOLUNTARY! and, Being sacrificed was both PAINFUL AND TERRIFYING!
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The victims were usually people from conquered tribes.
 
Part of the rationale for Rome’s utter destruction of Carthage was the practice of child sacrifice, which horrified even the pagan Romans.
 
Hi, I just wanted to thank you for your responses. I’m so grateful to have this community to talk to; sometimes it seems like the whole world has gone insane.
Interestingly, in another of my classes (Developmental Psychology) last Thursday, the prof said of forced abortion and infanticide in China, “Well, at least it isn’t done at an age where you have to watch them starve.”
I literally felt sick, hearing that. It took quite a bit of willpower not to storm out of the room. It seems that promoting infanticide is the liberal cause du jour, at least for the faculty at this school.
 
Well, if you can’t judge other cultures for doing “wrong” things, as long as what they do is consistent with their own moral code, than your professor doesn’t have any right to say it’s wrong that “western culture imposed its morality on these people”.

He can’t even say that Europeans coming in and “imposing their culture” on the Aztecs (or even enslaving them) was wrong, because the Europeans’ culture supported their conquest.
So really, his argument is self-defeating.

(I’m writing a paper right now for an ethics class at a secular university on whether moral relativism promotes tolerance. My answer is no.)
 
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BlindSheep:
The consensus of the class, including the professor, was that since child sacrifice was part of the culture, we shouldn’t call it immoral; in his words, “who are we to judge their culture?”.
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It would be interesting to find out if these folks would agree to taking the same approach to the treatment of women in certain Islamic cultures. Would they be as tolerant of the culture that permitted slavery in 19th Century America? If not, you might ask why it’s alright to judge some cultures but not others.

Just a thought. Hope it helps.
 
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