Moral Decay In Our Universities by Guest blogger David W. Allan
As early as 1636 many private institutions, beginning with Harvard, religious instruction was woven into the fabric of student life. As universities became secularized, the lack of ethical standards have increased among college students. This trend has many Americans worried about the decay of moral values that is evident on college campuses today.
More Harm Than Good
When Dennis Prager was interviewing Jordan Peterson as shared in this blog article, Dennis asked the poignant question, “If all North Americans graduating HS decided, ‘I’m not going to college.’ Would North America be a better or worse place?”
Jordan replied, “I believe our universities, not necessarily colleges, do more harm than good now… The post-modern collectivist doctrine is so psychologically and politically toxic. [They] deny the existence of the individual… The idea that human beings are made in the image of God, fundamentally.” [This concept is being attacked by academia and being replaced by Darwinian evolution.] “The idea of the sovereignty of the individual…”
The Natural Man – An Enemy to God
I find that as Jordan continues his attack on the evil in the world, his language, but in his vocabulary, is similar to the profound pronouncement of King Benjamin, “For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth of the natural man, and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord…” (Mosiah 3:19) Not only does Jordan see the evil nature of man, but also the many organizations bringing about evil in the world and they hate him for what he is doing – including most of the media and many university professors.
Three False Traditions
1. Charles Darwin gave the world the false tradition that the Bible story of creation is not true and that humankind evolved from lower forms of life.
2. Then Lewis Henry Morgan and John Wesley Powell gave America the false tradition of social evolution – labeling the American Indians as savages.
3. The third big satanic false tradition was the introduction of political evolution by Fredrich Engels and Karl Marx – making the state sovereign instead of the individual.
The Lord warned us that the two main ways Satan has of deceiving us are (false) traditions and disobedience (D&C 93:36). How appropriate is that warning to America?
Teaching Staff – Spiritual to Secular
Who do universities hire when they replace staff or add to? The insightful political historian, Trevor Loudon, points out that over the decades, the conservatives tend to be more open minded and will hire people from both the conservative and liberal camps.
However, the liberals, who are on board, want their own kind and tend to fill the staff with liberals. Hence, we have what we have today, as Jordan sadly shares, and our universities are filled with professors who believe in the above false traditions with devastating effects on the students. Satan’s main goal is to take them away from the Christ and from them knowing they are children of God. The sovereignty of the individual is paramount in God’s plan of happiness.
My Own Alma-Mater
As a university example, take my own alma-mater, Brigham Young University, a Christian university, which has been traditionally a conservative school. How it has changed! When I did my undergraduate program to get my BS in physics in 1960, I had a great experience. To have opening prayer as we began our Calculus Class was awesome to me. I cannot think of one bad teacher, but lots of very good ones.
My religion classes were inspiring, and I learned a ton. Later, when I was in my graduate program at the University of Colorado and took a physics class in mechanics and did well in his class, my professor asked me where I went to school. When I told him, he smiled. He could tell I had been taught well.
Darwinian evolution
To contrast the changes that have occurred at BYU, in the recent BYU Alumni magazine, I was appalled to see a picture of a permanent display being set up at the Bean Museum showing the evolution of humankind. There is a major misunderstanding about evolution. The Law of Evolution is totally valid, and data exist showing evolution within a species or kind. This is seen as Divine design allowing each kind to adapt to the environment. But there are no reliable data showing evolution across kinds. No data; no validation. Yet, the world believes it.
Any good scientist knows, you cannot prove a theory true, but if you have reliable falsification data, a theory can be proven false. Using the most credible scientists and with reliable data in support, I show the theory of organic evolution to be false in Chapter 6 of my book. Yet Darwinian evolution is taught pervasively in our universities across the world – including BYU.
Darwinism Is Effectively Dead
In 1980, Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould stated, “that neo-Darwinism ‘is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy,’ the weight of critical opinion in biology has grown steadily with each passing year.”[1] Stephen C. Meyer’s book, Signature in the Cell, shares a great example showing scientifically that DNA is Intelligently Designed (ID). Stephen Meyer says of Darwin’s work:
“On the Origin of Species seized the attention of the scientific community like a thunderclap. Darwin’s analogy to artificial selection was powerful, his proposed mechanism of natural selection and random variation easily grasped, and his skill in dispensing with potential objections unrivalled. Moreover, the explanatory scope of his argument for universal common descent constituted something of a tour de force. By the close of the Origin it seemed to many that Darwin had dispensed with every conceivable objection to his theory but one. [2]”
That “one” objection was having no data to show cross-kind evolution!
As Meyer further states, “Darwin was puzzled by a pattern in the fossil record that seemed to document the geologically sudden appearance of animal life in a remote period of geologic history…” Darwin gave a copy of the Origin to Louis Agassiz — considered to be the greatest natural scientist of the time — and asked him to read it with an open mind. As Meyer reports, Agassiz “concluded that the fossil record, particularly the record of the explosion of Cambrian animal life, posed an insuperable difficulty for Darwin’s theory.” In other words, the data contradict the theory.
Yet, the masses adopted the theory and ignore the data. In 1909, Cambridge University had an enormous 100-year anniversary celebrating Darwin’s birth. But now time has proven the erroneous nature of his theory and substantiated Agassiz’s conclusion. This has enormous ramifications to our universities and to society as a whole!
Brigham Young University – Evolution vs Intelligent Design
Thirty years ago they did a survey of BYU students and 12 % believed in evolution. After taking BIO100, that percentage increased to 38%. A recent survey taken showed 38% of the BYU students believing in evolution; then after taking BIO100 that increased to 62%. Currently, only 22% of the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe in evolution.
So our BYU students go there as creationists and come out evolutionists, and many of them lose their faith. Jordan was right; I believe most universities “do more harm than good now…” In spite of the down turn in faith at BYU, I still believe that BYU, as a whole, is doing more good for their students than many other universities. Their basic morality and faith are Christ centered. However, there are some departments which teach concepts that are contrary to basic Christian beliefs.
What Can We Do About It?
We need now more than ever to take our education of ourselves and our children into our own hands — to come to the TRUTH’s of God in our own homes. “Trust no one to be your teacher… except he be a man of God…” (Mosiah 23:17) “…seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom, seek learning by study and also by faith.” (D&C 109:7) If you listen to the Spirit, you can even find some truths on the internet
In 2010 I wrote an article, “Christ is Coming. How can we Best Prepare?” How to avoid being deceived. I also share the solutions to several false traditions in my book.
Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints introduced this year the “Come follow Me” program, which is designed to do help us learn the gospel in the home. And we especially need to help our children “understand” and internalize the doctrine of repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ, (D&C 68:25) who is the God of this the “Promised Land.” The need for us as Americans to repent is of paramount importance.
Jesus defines “eternal life” as knowing the Father and the Son, (John 17:3), which is the greatest of all the gifts of God (D&C 14:7). His infinite atonement is the path to bring us and our loved ones to the fullness of joy promised: Is there anything more important to learn, to live, and to share? Let us balance the secular appropriately with the spiritual with the focus, “But seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matt. 6:33)
David W. Allan
See his website here: https://itsabouttimebook.com/
