Asymmetrical Information

The sad thing is that I think most college athletes aren't that stupid. It's just that they've had a buy for so long they can barely read their own names. Now admittedly there are guys out there who really are idiot-savants when it comes to sports (I'm thinking Manny Ramerez, because I'm a baseball fan, but you get the idea)but in general the brain is a muscle and it needs to be excecised to be kept in shape. Even a dumb jock knows that.

And speaking of dumb jocks, do you think the reverse problem is any better? When a baseball player wants to go to college and KNOWS he could be giving up four years of his best possible performance if he pursues his education.

The real problem is the values we express to children, sports over education for example.

When I was teaching at a small regional school in the South, I had numerous students over the years who honestly thought they were going to play in the NFL or the NBA, despite the fact that they weren't even stars--or, sometimes, even starters--on the college team. And we weren't even Division I-A at the time

It's all part of the great Kevin conspiracy. Mitnick is the patsy.
Professional athletes, like professional musicians and actors have a tough time with the power-law curves.

I think that we sometimes over-estimate the extent of the academic problems with college athletics. First of all, the vast majority of college athletes play on low-profile teams and are not coddled. Think women's track and field is a ticket to glory? Think again. Its really only football, men's basketball, and, at a tiny number of colleges, men's hockey and women's basketball, that breed problems.

And even in those high-profile sports, you'll find lots of kids who are respectable students, if perhaps a bit behind the student body average in terms of academic abaility and effort. Yes, there are football players who as dumb as dumbells, and who can't be bothered to attend class more than once or twice a term, but I suspect that if you did a comprehensive survey you'd find that a majority of athletes in even the high profile sports are working toward a degree, most with a high probability of finishing.

Official NCAA stats will show low graduation rates for many programs, but those stats use artificial cutoff points (to facilittate comparisons between institutions), ususally five or six years. Granted, we'd like for students to be able to complete their degrees in four years, five tops, but many kids don't these days, often for reasons of fecklessness considerably less admirable than the big time football player's typical reason - namely that he took low course loads during his playing years because of the demands of practice, conditioning, travel, etc., and has to take extra time to finish his degree requirements.

True, many jocks end up in majors that stretch definitions of academic respectibility ("Fitness and Sports Management," "Motivational Communications"), but its not their fault that the University faculty allows such majors to exist. If Phys Ed isn't a worthy major, then it shouldn't be offered. The fact that 40% of the football team is majoring in PE shouldn't affect the calculus.

Second, I suspect that if you go to a big university (the type of place likely to produce "problem" athletic departments) and round up the students who are performing arts stars, or who are super active in political causes, or who hold leadership positions in the biggest extra-curricular activities, you'd find that a lot of them aren't the best students. Opponents of college sports shake their heads in dismay when athletes are given special treatment by the administration, but do they muster the same level of moral outrage when the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper gets special dispensation on her GPA requirement on her financial aid package by the dean of students because five all-nighters a week in the newspaper offices have left her with a D+ average?

Not to say that there aren't real problems in big time college sports, but the impulse to hyperbole that sees the entire enterprise as a "sham" and a "mockery" of academic standards just because a few dozen football and basketball players are at the tail end of the GPA bell curve doesn't help solve those problems. For the vast majority of college athletes its possible to obtain a real college degree while playing organized sports that leave them with intangible benefits in terms of character and self discipline that serve them very well in the life beyond the playing field.

If the athletes never get a diploma, it's their own fault. Getting a free college education is not, IMO, getting screwed. If it is, then I'd like to sign up my kids to be the next victims.

If they end up with nothing out of the deal, it's because they failed to take advantage of the opportunity, along with the massive amounts of support and assistance that the athletic department marshalls to assist athletes in their classes.

Now, there are some perverse regulations, specifically the fact that atheltes in revenue sports (and maybe all sports) are forbidden from working jobs, and I'd supprto getting rid of that and making some reforms. But it steams me when people claim that the athletes aren't getting paid or aren't getting anything from the univsersities they represent.

FWIW, I've gotten a couple of emails saying that, in fact, sometimes good athletes really can't get into a program anywhere. I still have a feeling that the good ones really do end up somewhere eventually, but just thought I'd pass this along.

And a note: "major" really means "football and basketball." I should have been clearer about that.

Overall, I think Eugene hits on the major point. Among the entire population, about 25% go to college. You can argue that this should be a little higher or lower, but no one thinks it makes sense for it to be 100%. Since star athletes are probably representative of the population as a whole, why does anyone think 100% of them should go to college?

As a good liberal, I'd also like to point out the race problems here. A *lot* of the kids who are conned into thinking they'll make it in the pros are black, and I think this does this them no good. Most of them are just being used, and I really don't like that.

But I don't get excercised about the fact that people read it, any more than I worry who's consuming the dreadful bodice rippers, awful gay and lesbian sermons-with-a-cast, or tedious war blow-by-blows clogging the shelves of my local bookstore.

People don’t generally believe that bodice rippers or gay fiction represent God’s imminent plan for humanity. That would seem to be a rather important difference between those types of book and the "Left Behind" series. I don’t consider the review in question to be “sneering;” it just points out an obvious fact that American journalists tend to ignore: that conservative fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity makes claims that are preposterous and potentially very harmful to our society. Social critics like Wendy Kaminer and Michael Lerner have pointed out the double standard in American journalism with respect to religious or "spiritual" beliefs. Small and unconventional religions are rightly subjected to rational and skeptical criticism, while more traditional and popular religions are given a pass in the name of “respect,” even though their claims are no less objectively absurd. Christianity began as what we now call a "cult," after all.

Respecting the right to believe is not the same thing as respecting the content of a belief, and the beliefs described in “Left Behind” series are as silly and irrational as those of the members of Heaven’s Gate or the Christian Identity movement. We need more reporters and reviewers, and more media outlets, who are willing to say that, even if doing so does piss off a lot of people.

Well said sd. Jane's comment about reading material seems related: "I think displaying contempt for what other people choose to while away the errant hours says more about you than the readers in question." Jock bashing seems to say a lot more about the bashers than the bashees.

Since star athletes are probably representative of the population as a whole, why does anyone think 100% of them should go to college?

You're absolutely right, they shouldn't -- but neither, IMO, should universities be providing player development services for the NFL and the NBA, and doing so in the case of the large powerhouse state schools on the taxpayers' dime. Major League Baseball avoids this conundrum by having both a college draft and an amateur draft, and by having an expansive farm system that they fund themselves.

It's time for the NFL and NBA to bite the bullet and fund farm systems, rather than letting state universities do it for them. Such a solution is even better, because it would provide an opportunity for the athletes Eugene and Kevin are discussing to make a living, or at least earn money, as professional athletes without being faced with the "Major Leagues Or Bust" problem.

The premise that good athletes can not develop their skills is just retarded. Has anyone ever heard of Junior College? For baseball and hockey it is the minor leagues as the majority of prospects never even attend college.

How can you feel sorry for some kid who is given the opportunity to get a free education from a pretty good school. Now I do believe some of the NCAA rules are just crazy, we should give these kids some sort of stipend to help support themselves. It is not right to take some kid from Texas, send him to school in California, and then not help him pay for his flight back to Texas for Christmas, but we should not be buying them cars and jewry.

If these kids have even a modicum of desire they will be way ahead of the curve that they were destined to be on without sports. Any kid at a good school who takes his education seriously has a tremendous advantage over the rest of the kids in that school. Who do you think is going to get the job first, some kid with a 3.5 gpa or an athlete with a 3.2 gpa who was on national television for three straight years.

Hey, there is good and bad with the system, but there is no doubt that the advantages these student athletes have are tremendous and anyone who fails at it just never gave it a shot or was incapable of learning, at which point then let him play while he can. Maybe have a rule that each team has two guys that don't have to go to class ever... The Ringer Rule.

"Think women's track and field is a ticket to glory? Think again"

A little anecdote (for what it's worth):

My girlfriend was a scholarship track athlete at a junior college. When she was eventually forced to choose between remaining on the team and passing organic chem, her coach told her, "I failed chemistry. It's no big deal." While it's easy to criticize those who fail to take advantage of the opportunities "available" to them, coaches with different agendas are often likely to be an obstacle to academic success. Consider Robert Smith, formerly of the Vikings, who had run ins with the Ohio State coaching staff for consistently violating bedtime and staying up past 10 to study.

"If you want an education, go to Harvard."
- Jimmy Johnson

Say, what's wrong with Mein Kampf? It's extremely educational. And as a long-time observer of Florida State, I can say that the real NFL prospects are going to make it no matter where they play or how badly they study. Heck, some NBA stars have gone in from high school. Kevin Garnett, Moses Malone, Kobe? And Dizzy Dean was playing for the St. Louis Cardinals when he was 15. The college football programs are tremendous money generators for their schools and do give many opportunities to late-developing talent. There's no real necessity, though, for pro players to go to college. And if the college programs give a few athletes the opportunity to get a degree and some credentials they can use if they get injured or don't make it, what's the harm?

From the review:

We live in a big country, with 290 million people, and the lunatic fringe may be numerically large. The majority might find the books absurd, and even most evangelicals have registered objections to the dark, violent, unforgiving story. But the message of "Left Behind" as applied to current affairs isn't fringe. It is, in fact, quite similar to some of the messages emanating from Washington. The response of some in the U.S. government to the crises of the last year and a half feels ripped from the pages of the "Left Behind" books. The intense animus toward the United Nations, the suspicion that multilateral action is a path on the road to perdition, the conviction that Israel must be supported no matter what it does and the fear that secret forces are gathering in preparation for a final confrontation are not marginal views. They are, in fact, close to being dominant ones.

The problem with a statement like this is that the anecdotal evidence provided can AND REGULARLY IS debated independent of theological considerations, yet the review author is using statements like this as a premise for claiming that Left Behind et al may possibly be (ripping from the conclusion) "danger signs....an expression of aspects of our culture that have the power to undo us."

Riiigghht.

Calling the review "sneering" may be a bit harsh, but "hyperbolic, paranoid" would be fair.

And now it's happening in high school. One of my professional friends teaches in an large inner city high school. All the city kids go there, but, alas, the school itself is one of the lowest rated in the state.

However, the athletes are coddled. If you write up a detention slip on a varsity player, the vice principal rips it up before your eyes. He then lectures you about school spirit and the importance of winning.

So in return, Marty flunked ALL the troops in his computer applications class. That settled their hash (BTW, they flunked on their own, thank you) and sent a rocket up from the school board. One flunk and you can't play sports...there goes the basketball season.

So Marty gets an 'Unsatisfactory' job rating: sort of 'Doesn't play well others' for teachers.

My point: spoiling the student starts early. What's horrible is that the high school coaches at this place REGULARLY tell the kids that The Pros are in their future.

Even the 5'2" point guard is told the NBA awaits. All you have to do is "work hard" and practice.

Never a word of encouragement about studies. Just sports.

The corruption starts early. With college, it just becomes obviously visible.

Kevin D. -- re your stats: I had been under the impression that about 50% of Americans of the appropriate age group go to college (including two year colleges)these days and that about 50% of those end up getting bachelor's degrees (so about 25% overall). I can't find a citation for these particular numbers at the moment, but I've seen them a lot. Some somewhat stale data for high school graduates can be found here:
http://www.jointcenter.org/DB/factsheet/college.htm

"How can you feel sorry for some kid who is given the opportunity to get a free education from a pretty good school. "

Because (a) for many of these "kids", the "opportunity" is worth comparatively little and (b) while having to avail themselves of this unwanted "opportunity" their income is severely curtailed by NCAA fiat.

"But it steams me when people claim that the athletes aren't getting paid or aren't getting anything from the univsersities they represent."

But the athletes aren't getting paid, and different people value what universities offer differently, with some valuing it at nearly zero.

"It is not right to take some kid from Texas, send him to school in California, and then not help him pay for his flight back to Texas for Christmas, but we should not be buying them cars and jewry."

If by "we" you mean the universities for which they put in a hell of a lot of work and generate considerable amounts of revenue, then why the hell shouldn't they get more than token compensation? What is so terrible about talented college athletes making a decent (or even indecent) income?

that conservative fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity makes claims that are preposterous and potentially very harmful to our society. Social critics like Wendy Kaminer and Michael Lerner have pointed out the double standard in American journalism with respect to religious or "spiritual" beliefs. Small and unconventional religions are rightly subjected to rational and skeptical criticism, while more traditional and popular religions are given a pass in the name of “respect,” even though their claims are no less objectively absurd. Christianity began as what we now call a "cult," after all.

And this affects you how, exactly? Other than annoying you, that is?

I've got no problem with people believing that there really will be a rapture and some kind of AntiChrist. I've even got no problem with poorly written novels to that effect. There's quite a few people who believe in zero-point energy as a cure-all for the world's energy ills, with less evidence. Question is, how do these beliefs affect you? Not at all, I'd think, other than it offends you that some people think they're better than you. Get used to it, I say.

"how do these beliefs affect you?"

On September 11th 2001, about 3000 people were killed in the name of a religious belief. Had the killers not believed in an afterlife and believed that they would be rewarded in that afterlife for the murders they were committing, the attack would not have been possible.

I'm not saying that fundamentalist Christianity is on a par with Wahhabism -- I know for a fact that it generally isn't. But it's extremely naive to say that other people's religious beliefs can't affect you. They can and they do. Which is why journalists should be as critical of a major religion as they are of any other belief or political movement.

Squander Two: But you just put them on a par, despite your "generally" qualifier. The reader is left with your generality while wondering how specifically Wahabbism inculcates suicide bombings while Christian eschatology does not seem to, yet. To put matters bluntly, you've got a point there, but the way you said it doesn't allow for anyone to know precisely what it is. Which is cut from the same cloth as the original review.

I think there's a world of difference between those who think they'll be chosen above others at the end of the world and those who're willing and indeed eager to show others the door. But that's just me, maybe.

After all, Jews believe they're God's one and only people, and not many get all bent out of shape about that. Perhaps it's because they believe it unobtrusively. Is it the obtrusive expression of belief that's bothersome? Just curious.

Let's be clear: for me, there's a very important distinction between those who merely believe other than I do, and those who believe other than I do and may be inclined to kill me for that difference.

OK, so the athletes aren't getting paid in cash. But they are getting free tuition, room, and board, which is worth anywhere from 15 to 35,000 a year, depending on the school. The fringe benefits are pretty enormous, too--being a local celebrity.

If some of the kids don't value education, that's their fault, and I don't feel any sympathy towards them. They're not being exploited any more than the guy who squanders his salary on trifles and ends up losing his house has been exploited. They receive tremendous benefits which, if they are smart enough to take advantage of them, will leave them set for life.

And given the fact that most of them have no future in professional sports, sending them to a pro-style farm league is much more exploitative. If you think they're going to be making much money there, you're kidding yourself. (Check the CBA salaries or those for minor league baseball--they're quite low for all but the top stars.) And 95% of them will be out of work in 3 years with no savings, no professional contacts, no noteriety, and no education. And this will be better for them how?

"But you just put them on a par, despite your "generally" qualifier."

Er, no, I definitely didn't. Unless you mean that Christianity, like Islam, has an afterlife, which is hardly an insight.

"To put matters bluntly, you've got a point there, but the way you said it doesn't allow for anyone to know precisely what it is."

Well, I didn't see any need to go into all sorts of details of the comparisons between Muslim and Christian fundamentalists because that's not what the discussion is about (and, these days, the web is crawling with such comparisons anyway). All I was making was the extremely general point that other people's religious beliefs do have an effect on us, sometimes a huge and extremy bad effect.

I get sick of the idea that major religions should be respected simply becase they're religions. No they shouldn't. If a journalist is willing to point out the ridiculosity of David Icke's claims to be the messiah, they should be willing to apply the same cynicism to Christianity or Buddhism or Islam or whatever. After all, cynicism is a safeguard. At the moment, Christian fundamentalists (unlike the Wahhabis) aren't being dangerously nutty. But the question is: if they start going down the road towards dangerousness (as they have done at various times in the past), will anyone in the mainstream media bring the impending danger to the attention of the public? At the moment, unfortunately, I think probably not, because major religions get respect without having to earn it.

When I was at Rice University (1989-1993) it was part of the Southwest Conference. The faculty was in the process of reviewing the athletic program (specifically football). The report they generated was very interesting. One little fact that I found revealing was that the SAT scores for the football players did not even overlap the SAT scores for the rest of the (non-athlete) student body. The HIGHEST football player SAT score was lower than the LOWEST non-athlete student score. Now SATs may not be perfect predictors of intelligences or academic performance, but there is some correlation and this difference is huge.

In addition, the woman in charge of helping athletes pass their classes spent more time cajoling professors into giving passing grades than actually getting the athletes tutored. The time demand on athletes was huge. They missed out on a lot of social opportunities as well as study-time in practice.

Another interesting fact. Rice has fairly high admission standards. All students must meet certain minimum requirements. However, the athletic department had a limited number of exceptions that they could use to get students who didn't meet those requirements. To be fair, the music school also had exceptions.

I can't speak for other schools, but I imagine they have similar policies. College athletics is a sham. The athlets are semi-professional athletes used by the school for name recognition and revenue. Their student status is often a fiction. Just because some athletes manage to succeed as students in spite of the system is not a good justification for keeping the system.

Bolie IV

An anecdote and a clarification:

First, my alma mater is the University of Iowa. It's in the Big Ten, a conference pretty well known for football excellence. Two of our all-conference offensive linemen (a position not traditionally known for its intellect) are going to medical school instead of the NFL.

Second, Doug, student-athletes in revenue producing sports are actually allowed to hold jobs. Just not during season. It was a NCAA rule change from a couple years back.

> All I was making was the extremely general point that other people's religious beliefs do have an effect on us, sometimes a huge and extremy bad effect.

However, the supporting evidence was that certain other people's religious beliefs had an effect. Extended that to a position about the whole is, shall we say, unsupported.

Of course, not all religious beliefs are actually in the bad pile. So, apparently some distinctions can be made. And, if it hadn't been for 9/11, Islam as a whole would still be getting a pass too.

But, if we can dredge up a nasty fundamentalist Christian, the whole lot is damned.

Some animals are more equal than others.

I don't know much about college sports, but the comments here match what I've heard before.

Maybe the NCAA is going about this the wrong way. How about if they added a rule which specified no college athlete could spend more than 20 hours per week at practice and games? That would make the sport more like a part-time job, and much more compatible with getting an education.

I realize this wouldn't be easy to enforce, but given typical NCAA penalties, you'd probably get the different colleges spying on each other.

Also, wasn't it Notre Dame (or maybe Villanova?) which adopted a plan to make sure all their athletes graduated (even if it took 5 or 6 years)? I'm not sure how a place like Rice would handle this, if they're accepting athletes who really aren't capable of interacting academically with their fellow students.

Jef--thanks for the info. I hadn't realized paying summer jobs were allowed.

PJ--The NCAA already does limit practice time. I believe that it's 20 hours per week for basketball during the season, with organized practices not allowed at all during the offseason. It's similar in football, I think, although they are allowed a two week off-season practice time.

Of course, this excludes sports-related activities that kids do without the direct supervision of the coaching staff, like weight training and practicing on their own. But there are regulations.

Robert Barro recognizes that the NCAA is a conspiracy in restraint of trade in this article

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_49/b3811038.htm

From which:

----------quote--------
Finally, we come to the NCAA, which has successfully suppressed financial
competition in college sports. The NCAA is impressive partly because its
limitations on scholarships and other payments to athletes boost the
profitability of college sports programs. But even more impressive is the
NCAA's ability to maintain the moral high ground. For example, many college
basketball players come from poor families and are not sufficiently talented
to make it to the National Basketball Assn. Absent the NCAA, such a student
would be able to amass significant cash during a college career. With the
NCAA in charge, this student remains poor. Nevertheless, the athletic
association has managed to convince most people that the evildoers are the
schools that violate the rules by attempting to pay athletes rather than the
cartel enforcers who keep the student-athletes from getting paid. So given
this great balancing act, the NCAA is the clear choice for best monopoly in
America.
----------endquote--------

A student attending college on a music scholarship would be allowed to earn spending money playing in a band on week-ends. An athlete does not have a similar opportunity to exploit his skills by, say, representing a manufacturer of athletic equipment.

The NCAA is a wage-fixing cartel that targets mostly young black males. Where's Al Sharpton?

"However, the supporting evidence was that certain other people's religious beliefs had an effect. Extended that to a position about the whole is, shall we say, unsupported."

I wasn't trying to prove a point, though, so I don't need to make that extension. I was disproving a point (that other people's religious beliefs don't affect us), so all that is required is one counterexample. So nurr.

Hi, Bolie. Long time no see.

Last year the University of Miami's Men's Basketball team graduated 82% of its players. Stanford, 100%. My cousin turned down a football ride to University of Georgia but knew many athletes while there. His observation is that even a yahoo who takes no advantage of class but manages to travel to 5?, 20? other cities and colleges every year for 4 [5?] years is much richer for the experience rather than having stayed down on the farm.

Best,

The point was never that no one has ever killed in the name of religion. The point was and is, that the beliefs of fundamental Christians are of no concern to you. You're going to have a hard time making the case that fundamental Christians in general have got a God-written mandate to kill others who don't share their beliefs. I'm not talking about in some fictitious future scenario, either. I'm talking about what's actually so, now.

You can feel free to disrespect organized religion. I'm sure some of them feel the same way about you. Such feelings, though, do neither of you any good.

Perhaps even more to the point, if the author of that review had wished to suggest that mainstream persons might wish to be more aware of the philosophy contained in the Left Behind series in that some people take those kind of things very seriously, I would have left well enough alone on the matter. I feel the same way about, say, the Harry Potter series.

Instead, the author tried to make a very flimsy claim that such theology is, in fact, could be a motivation in current foreign policy issues, and that being "aware" is important because of potentialy "dangerous" elements.

Right around THERE was where the fine line was crossed, I think.

I get sick of the idea that major religions should be respected simply becase they're religions.

First of all, I don't really think this is being practiced. One doesn't have to watch TV for very long to find disrespect for various major religions.

But isn't it also possible that large religions get respect because they're generally respectable? As opposed to wacko fringe groups and cults? You may have some caricature image of what an evangelical Christian is, so you wonder why the world doesn't join you as you snicker at them. But you don't realize that the vast majority of evangelicals don't view Left Behind as the absolute truth, or base their political opinions on one particular interpretation of Revelation.

Squander Two: To extend Eric's comments, I'd be glad to note that Irish Catholic and Ulster Protestant Christians are obviously dangerous terrorists at periodic intervals in the past 90 years. This can be traced in turn to various Christian religious quarrels over the past centuries which have posed a distinct danger to various bystanders of all faiths. But this correlation between violence, either by groups or individual terrorists, and these rather specific Christian groups shouldn't mean that every distinct Christian group should be suspect merely because of the uniqueness or adamance of their views. If that was the case, I'd recommend your suspicions extend to the Amish or Mennonites, or to various Catholic monastic orders, as their views are just as fervent, if not "fundamentalist", as your cited "fundamentalists" who happen to think that a convoluted book of the New Testament would make a good fiction plot line. If this is your "general point", so be it, but I find it absurd. Just as I'd find tarring the Sufis with an al Qaeda Wahabbi brush absurdly ignorant.

Barro's argument seems a little weak. He makes it sound like the evil NCAA makes billions of dollars on the back of the athlete, while the athlete gets nothing in return. Not quite accurate. The athlete gets a full scholarship and access to a degree from that university, something he may not have been capable of if left to his own academic/financial devices.

So while "a student would be able to amass significant cash during a college career", they're just going to have to wait until after, just like the rest of us.

I think it's fair to call the Amish fundamentalists; I'm pretty sure they believe in the inerrancy of the bible. Also, the conflict in Northern Ireland, like the conflict in Yugoslavia, has little to do with religion; it's an ethnic conflict in which religion is a very accurate proxy for ethnicity.

Jane, I think you nailed that one. Religion is not the direct cause of violence -religious wars happen when religion becomes a proxy for something else. Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Hindus all can find something in their religion to justify killing if they look hard enough, and ignore all that boring stuff about peace. So Christianity spawned the crusaders, the Spanish Inquisition, Quakers, and Mennonites. But note that the crusaders weren't just killing for Christ - they were looting and conquering foreign lands, which combined a profit motive with plain old tribal warfare. (The Teutonic Knights kept on looting Poland long after virtually all Poles were Catholic.) The Inquisition got to confiscate all the property of anyone they could "persuade" to confess, as well as satisfying old tribal urges - the victims were mostly Christian descendants of the Spaniards' old, formerly Muslim, enemies. The Northern Ireland "troubles" are an ongoing tribal war where the two tribes identify themselves by their religion - but Marxist atheists can still be IRA killers. And so on. Look close at any religious war and you'll find someone with a secular motive for violence, even if it's just starting a war to distract his followers from his disastrous leadership.

But for flat-out wackiness, there's that Buddhist cult that released Sarin in the Tokyo subway. I'm not a great scholar of Buddhist literature (it puts me to sleep, when it makes sense at all), but as far as I know, it utterly lacks anything that could be twisted into endorsing killing. Some forms of Buddhism place no value at all on things of this world, presumably including life, but it's still clear that killing is bad karma for the killer. Did these guys _want_ to be reborn as cockroaches???

Can I just say that a lot of people seem to have completely misread what I've written? For the record, while I'm an atheist myself, I don't have any major problems with Christian fundamentalists, and I think their Christianity tends to give them pretty sound views on morality. And I support the Bush administration, and I don't think they're trying to turn America into a nation of biblical fundamentalists. I was merely disagreeing with David Perron's point that other people's beliefs are essentially harmless and should therefore be ignored. I disagree with this because other people's beliefs are frequently far from harmless. I gave one example; there are plenty of others. And I'd extend my point from religion to beliefs generally.

Also, to all you people, including David, talking about how Christian fundamentalism is harmless: The reason you know it's harmless is that you've checked; you've looked at it critically, rather than just ignoring it. Which is a perfectly sensible thing to do, which is my point.

"this correlation between violence, either by groups or individual terrorists, and these rather specific Christian groups shouldn't mean that every distinct Christian group should be suspect merely because of the uniqueness or adamance of their views."

No, the correlation between fervent beliefs (religious or otherwise) and violence should mean that all beliefs should be suspect. Which is why I object to any beliefs (religious or otherwise) getting a free pass. And major religions do.

"I'm not talking about in some fictitious future scenario, either. I'm talking about what's actually so, now."

Continuing to be critical of people's beliefs enables us, hopefully, to spot the dangerous beliefs at an early embryonic stage, which is better than not noticing them until after they've raised an army and taken over Luxembourg.

Incidentally, it's also better for the believers, as exposing their ideas to criticism forces the ideas to be better thought out. Which is one of the reasons Mormons go proselytising, I believe: having to explains one's beliefs to non-believers forces one to explain one's beliefs better to oneself. Which is why I reject David's assertion that being critical of a religion amounts to disrespect. Criticism and disrespect are not at all the same thing. Quite the opposite, I would say.

"isn't it also possible that large religions get respect because they're generally respectable?"

Certainly it's possible, but it's not always the case. The multiculturalism mantra that we must always respect other people's beliefs just because they're beliefs has gained general acceptance these days. Islam maintains that a woman's word is worth half that of a man in court. You call this belief respectable? I don't.

"Also, the conflict in Northern Ireland, like the conflict in Yugoslavia, has little to do with religion; it's an ethnic conflict in which religion is a very accurate proxy for ethnicity."

Thanks for saving me from making that point, Jane. I'm moving to Northern Ireland later this year. I currently live in Glasgow, though, and would say that the prevalent and frequently violent sectarianism here is purely religious, not ethnic. And it's a pain in the arse.

Sorry for such a long post. I'll shut up now. Anyone who still thinks I'm slagging off Christians won't ever be dissuaded.

Nice clarification, Squander. It did appear to me that you were making an error in insisting that respect has to be earned before given. To me, respect comes at the start and is maintained until the other party shows they're unworthy.

That works nicely, thank-you for clearing things up. I take no exception with that point of view; just the seeming earlier intimations that the review author was saying only that. I still think he was saying quite a bit more. But be that as it may...

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