spotlight wrote:The CCC wrote:Liberty University. Cough Cough
founder - Jerry Falwell
a course called "History of Life" presenting Young Earth Creationism as fact is required for all undergraduate students.
Randall Price, head of the university's Center for Judaic Studies, has conducted several expeditions to Turkey to find remnants of Noah's Ark.
In 2005 Liberty University opened a School of Aeronautics that claims to be "the largest faith-based aviation program in North America."[16] It is now entirely possible that the person flying your commercial flight actually believes the Earth is 6,000 years old. Also LU offers an Osteopathic Medical school, startup grant provided by the Virginia Tobacco Commission,[17] so it is also possible for your doctor to believe the Bible is a literal history book. Thankfully that is very unlikely as they are currently ranked 825th in the nation for a medical education[18] and 508th for research.[19] US News and World Reports ranks it #80 for the Southern region in 2014.[20] This doesn't seem bad until you realize the list ends at 93.
The Pre-Trib Research Center,[23] based at Liberty University, "is a 'think tank' committed to the study, proclamation, teaching and defending of the Pretribulational Rapture (pre-70th week of Daniel) and related end-time prophecy."
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Liberty_University
Among hundreds of pages of surviving family correspondence, "religion was scarcely ever mentioned" by Wilbur and Orville or their father, a bishop with the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, a U.S. denomination related to Methodism. The smattering of facts historians have about the Wright brothers' religion has led to mixed conclusions. Both Wilbur and Orville did well at school, but neither went to university. Wilbur’s plans to attend Yale College and become a clergyman like his father were dashed when he lost most of his teeth in an accident while playing ice hockey. It was only years afterwards when he was fitted with artificial teeth that his confidence to speak in public resumed. After the accident, Wilbur spent several years at home caring for his dying mother.
Wilbur and Orville never worked on Sundays, didn't drink alcohol or use tobacco and were described by a friend in Kitty Hawk, N.C., as "Christian gentlemen and moral to the core." As their friend put it, "During all the years of my acquaintance and close association with them, I never heard one of them utter an oath, never saw one of them get angry, never heard one of them tell a story that bordered on obscene."
Moreover, the Wright brothers sided with their theologically and socially conservative father Milton Wright during controversies within the United Brethren Church. Wilbur's first piece of published writing was an 1888 tract opposing liberals within the denomination who sought to open church membership to participants in secret societies like the Freemasons.
Yet Wilbur's tract never mentioned biblical doctrine or theology, focusing on denominational procedure instead. The brothers typically did not attend church, and at least one psychologist has implied they took little interest in contemplating their own spiritual conditions. A 1982 study by Adrian Kinnane concluded that they "regarded introspection as irrelevant at best and possibly even destructive of the efficient pursuit of useful goals."
McCullough believes the Wright brothers may have stopped attending church under the influence of books by Robert Ingersoll, a 19th-century agnostic who mocked religious belief. Their father "seems to have accepted" their lack of church attendance "without protest," McCullough writes.
At a lecture and book signing May 24 in Kill Devil Hills, McCullough said Milton Wright encouraged his sons "to read everything, including the works of the great agnostic of the time Robert Ingersoll, which was [among] the books he had in his own collection [of] theological subjects. And they read Ingersoll, and they went for it."
Tom Crouch, author of "The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright," told BP that McCullough's theory "might, in fact," be accurate. "It's really hard to tell," Crouch said, whether the brothers' personal beliefs were atheist, agnostic or Christian.
"The only thing you know for sure is that they weren't churchgoers," said Crouch, a curator in the aeronautics department of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
Wilbur's defense of the conservative cause in United Brethren disputes was "personal and political," Crouch said. Whether he also held to conservative theology is difficult to determine, and the meticulous Wright family records make little mention of religious matters.
It is "strange that there isn't more talk of that kind of thing in memories [and] papers," Crouch said. "It's not something they ever talked about."
At times, Wilbur's anti-liberal rhetoric seemed to suggest belief in traditional Christian doctrines. In 1898, for instance, he wrote, "There is no law in America requiring churches to leave the essentials of their faith and practice to be legislated upon from time to time as majorities may dictate. ... It is the privilege of churches to protect the rights of their legitimate spiritual children in future times."
Orville, who disliked writing and at times avoided it, also took their father's side in denominational conflicts. Such conflicts were part of the larger fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries pitting those who wanted to preserve traditional Christian orthodoxy against those who sought to adjust Christian doctrine to make it more palatable to the modern world.
So, the very men who brought aviation to the world likely were of a "Christian" leaning. Although there are some unanswered questions. The fact remains that I'd rather a conservative "Christian" be flying the plane I was aboard, than some smoking alcoholic who had an all night'r with a prostitute the evening before and believes God is dead. Such would not make me feel comfortable that I was in "good" hands. Thought I do believe God would take care of me and perhaps the plane would be safe for the sake of the passengers and God's intervention.
