Those Liberal Social "Scientists"

[Jedidiah]

Religion has been a little behind the curve in adjusting to the reality of diversity in human sexuality.

Society is far behind the curve in facing the reality of the human sexuality question. They should turn back to the Bible.

[Sea of red]

Everyone's biased. However, since the field is so overwhelmingly liberal, the bias tends to get positive reinforcement and there's precious little balancing from other viewpoints.

Funny, when I pointed out the same exact thing about biblical studies, I was told that it was off base.

Cool how that works.

[Sea of red]

I can say "it's better for a baby to grow up in a home where a mother and father love each other and care for the baby accordingly", and somebody will say (and has said) "replace 'a mother and father' with 'parents' and I agree". When challenged, they'll produce "studies".

My problem is that the vast majority of these "studies", in my opinion, come from biased liberal social 'scientists'.

Interestingly, the Science section of the NYTimes supports this suspicion....

Source: NYTimes

Social Scientist Sees Bias Within

SAN ANTONIO — Some of the world’s pre-eminent experts on bias discovered an unexpected form of it at their annual meeting.

Discrimination is always high on the agenda at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s conference, where psychologists discuss their research on racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities. But the most talked-about speech at this year’s meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new “outgroup.”

It was identified by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology. He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.

© Copyright Original Source

The problem is that conservatives typically want nothing to do with academic study outside of things like economics (which they dominate), political science, and the like. They just don't tend to get into even the softest of the sciences. It's no different than how Christians tend to dominate biblical studies. You get into things you believe are useful, and a good method for finding truth. Conservatives don't find much value in social science, psychology, etc, anyways. I think conservatively minded people are more inclined to get these sort of truths from religiously based philosophy, rather than social sciences.

So why conservatives are bitching about not having a voice in a field they don't value, is beyond me completely.

[Faber]

“[Scientists have found even more evidence that sexual orientation is largely determined by genetics, not choice. That can undermine a major argument against the LBGT community that claims that these people are choosing to live "unnaturally."]”

I would agree it's not choice. But certainly not genetics. That gene would die out in a generation or two, due to lack of offspring. Maybe an acquired taste from ones environment.

Even if the orientation is not a choice, acting on it is definitely a choice. Even heterosexual activity, outside of the divinely ordained bond of marriage, is in violation of God's moral standards.

[One Bad Pig]

Funny, when I pointed out the same exact thing about biblical studies, I was told that it was off base.

Cool how that works.

That would be because you're wrong. Biblical studies runs the gamut from atheist to conservative Christian. In fact, I dare say that in public/Ivy League universities, the balance tilts rather closer to the former than the latter.

[Adrift]

I would agree it's not choice. But certainly not genetics. That gene would die out in a generation or two, due to lack of offspring.

To be fair, the paper cited in the article that was posted speaks directly to that point, but it doesn't look like it's received much support.

[Sea of red]

That would be because you're wrong. Biblical studies runs the gamut from atheist to conservative Christian. In fact, I dare say that in public/Ivy League universities, the balance tilts rather closer to the former than the latter.

Do you have a survey for that?

[One Bad Pig]

The problem is that conservatives typically want nothing to do with academic study outside of things like economics (which they dominate), political science, and the like. They just don't tend to get into even the softest of the sciences. It's no different than how Christians tend to dominate biblical studies. You get into things you believe are useful, and a good method for finding truth. Conservatives don't find much value in social science, psychology, etc, anyways. I think conservatively minded people are more inclined to get these sort of truths from religiously based philosophy, rather than social sciences.

So why conservatives are bitching about not having a voice in a field they don't value, is beyond me completely.

What you think is, um, less than accurate. I find science, in general, fascinating (which is why I took the trouble to get a minor in Astrophysics). If anything, I am rather more skeptical of the soft sciences than the hard sciences, but I quite enjoy history and and am of the opinion that social science can help illumine the world of the Bible (I'm a big fan of the Context Group). It can be rather daunting for a conservative to obtain a degree in the social sciences because the field is so monolithic.

[One Bad Pig]

Do you have a survey for that?

Nope, purely anecdotal - which is why I pointedly did not couch it as a dogmatic statement.

[Sea of red]

Nope, purely anecdotal - which is why I pointedly did not couch it as a dogmatic statement.

You said:

That would be because you're wrong. Biblical studies runs the gamut from atheist to conservative Christian.

and,

In fact, I dare say that in public/Ivy League universities, the balance tilts rather closer to the former than the latter.

Now, what do you base this bold assertion on?

[Cow Poke]

So why conservatives are bitching about not having a voice in a field they don't value, is beyond me completely.

How you got that out of what anybody is saying is WAY beyond me.

[Sea of red]

What you think is, um, less than accurate. I find science, in general, fascinating (which is why I took the trouble to get a minor in Astrophysics). If anything, I am rather more skeptical of the soft sciences than the hard sciences, but I quite enjoy history and and am of the opinion that social science can help illumine the world of the Bible (I'm a big fan of the Context Group). It can be rather daunting for a conservative to obtain a degree in the social sciences because the field is so monolithic.

Yep, but in general it's just a trend that conservatives are not really into the sciences as a whole. I know that you, Kerb, Ox, and a few others on here may have backgrounds in science but for the most part, conservative people are not interested in getting trained in them.

I think it has a lot to do with the way conservatives have been brought up to believe that academic institutions are in some sort of conspiracy to undermine their beliefs - which couldn't be more off base. It wasn't always that way. We had lots of intellectual conservatives in economics, philosophy, political science, and some fairly good participation in the natural sciences. Then conservative commentators in the media during the 70's through the 90's scared conservatives away from these fields, and it's suffered since then.

[Sea of red]

How you got that out of what anybody is saying is WAY beyond me.

Maybe this entire thread?

[Cow Poke]

Maybe this entire thread?

Maybe you're smokin' the funny stuff. It's not about 'not having a voice'.... please show where anybody made that as a complaint. Perhaps I missed it, but it's certainly not "the entire thread", because, as thread starter, I wasn't going anywhere near there.

[One Bad Pig]

You said:

and,

Now, what do you base this bold assertion on?

C'mon, put your noggin to use. One of my statements was a bold assertion, and the other was qualified.

I don't need a study to know that Bultmann, Wellhausen, et al. were not conservative Christians, and they have many followers today. Crossley and Ehrman are certainly atheists in the field, and they are hardly marginal voices.