According to The College Fix, three University of Colorado professors teaching an online course called “Medical Humanities in the Digital Age” have a message for students signing up for the class: If you don’t believe in man-made global warming, you should keep your opinions to yourself.
“The point of departure for this course is based on the scientific premise that human induced climate change is valid and occurring,” the professors wrote in an email to students. “We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change, nor will the ‘other side’ of the climate change debate be taught or discussed in this course.”
The professors fired off the email after several students complained about the opening lecture, which took a one-sided view of the issue.
“Opening up a debate that 98% of climate scientists unequivocally agree to be a non-debate would detract from the central concerns of environment and health addressed in this course,” they said. “If you believe this premise to be an issue for you, we respectfully ask that you do not take this course.”
Unreal.
There’s a peculiar bit of arrogance in human beings that assumes, on a deep, subconscious level, that we basically know everything there is to know about existence. We look around at our modern world and basically feel like we’ve got it figured out.
Human beings a hundred years ago had the same feeling.
They had it a hundred years before that.
And a hundred years before that.
In 1633, that feeling included the belief that the sun orbited the Earth, and the Roman Catholic Church considered it heresy to advocate any model of reality that proposed the opposite. Using a handful of Bible verses, the Church insisted that heliocentrism went directly against the teachings of God. When a scientist named Galileo refused to abandon his belief in that model of the solar system, he was arrested and confined to house arrest for the rest of his life.
Today, we look back at those medieval times and shake our heads. What primitive fools, we think.
But we think that while simultaneously and blindly believing everything modern scientific “consensus” tells us about the universe.
The problem is, our scientific community is just as susceptible to groupthink and political influence as it was in the days of Galileo. And while every scientist will tell you they are driven solely by curiosity and a thirst for truth, they don’t see the millions of assumptions they’ve made already – assumptions they have never questioned and never will. They don’t see that, like every other human being that has ever lived, 99.9% of what they “know” is just stuff other people have told them.
These professors aren’t deviously attempting to indoctrinate their students with deliberate lies; they believe wholeheartedly that man-made global warming is real and that it will have disastrous consequences for humanity in the very near future. And since this theory is indeed supported by the vast majority of climate scientists, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be taught in a course such as this.
The problem isn’t the subject matter or how they teach it; the problem is that they’ve shut the door to any debate. People do that when they can’t defend their beliefs.
Students who disagree with the theory of man-made climate change should indeed drop this class. But so should students who do believe in it.
Unless, of course, they’re interested in joining a cult.
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