A continuation

CLIFFHANGER: My thought at the time was that it would be cool to compare stories and myths from agrarian societies and contrast them with industrial-era entertainment, to see if Gellner's assertions that pre-industrial societies were conserving and post-industrial societies are socially mobile would be reflected in their myths and media.

When I told my professor my idea after class, he was interested, but thought that actually finding agrarian-era myths that haven't been filtered and reinterpreted for hundreds of years would be next to impossible. It was a valiant effort, though.

ON ANOTHER TOPIC: I'm less than enthusiastic about my ethics class, mostly because the professor is a self-proclaimed Marxist and (at the same time) a Christian.

I have a hard time picking out which aspect bothers me more.

Certainly I have a problem with him saying it's morally reprehensible for people to make money. It's hard to articulate how sincerely he believes that a human being with money is inherently in the wrong, simply because money is only there to be given to others.

With further thought, I don't think it's the fact that he is a Christian that bothers me, but the kind of Christian that he is. He's the sort of person who pushes as close to the line as he can get spreading a worldview that most of his peers would be hostile to, which I have to respect him for. I feel like I very much could have ended up where he is, a teacher willing do everything legally possible to get his faith and his message out.

The problem is, while he says he's not trying to push his ideas on you, gives "alternative" points of view, he gives the same straw-man arguments for things like evolution and atheism I heard in school. Instead of advancing a debate, he describes to parties that have already fought to a standstill.

There's a reason the fight over intelligent design/evolution is fought most viciously over what's taught in schools: There isn't much turn over; people are indoctrinated to one - actually, inoculated against one, and then are blind to argument.

Another professor described it best when he said that there is no evolution "debate": Both sides repeat the same hackneyed proofs, make the same points, win the same rounds of applause from their own sides, and nothing ever gets serious consideration or though applied to it.

I personally don't know where I stand on the issue. I've tried researching both sides, and what it comes down to is that neither of them have proved their hypothesis.

In the end, it works out like this:

Point to creationists: Evolution is nowhere near proven.

Point to evolutionists: It's the best theory for a presumed natural world we've got so far.