How did Sean Carroll manage to survive Villanova?

[Simfish]

He's one of the most outspoken atheists on the Internet (far more hardcore than most atheists I know), and yet he graduated from a religious university. Hmm, this sounds interesting.

 

[Pengwuino]

Did the physics department not do physics?

 

[Simfish]

Of course it did physics. I'm just wondering how he managed to survive the student culture there.

But then the student culture might have influenced that. Someone just told me that Michael Shermer also went to a religious college.

 

[Pengwuino]

How does one... not survive a student culture?

I mean, you have to be pretty insecure to leave a university just because it's a religious university unless people are throwing bibles at you while you're trying to do homework.

 

[jtbell]

There are religious-oriented colleges and universities that don't enforce a religious lifestyle, and there are ones that do (e.g. Bob Jones University).

 

[Simfish]

Interesting points. Do a lot of religiously oriented colleges (like Emory, Villanova, Notre Dame, etc) have atheist faculty?

 

[Vanadium 50]

a few minutes with Google (a useful tool...I suggest you take a look at it) says that Notre Dame's faculty is 47% non-Catholic. You can get corresponding numbers for Villanova, SMU, etc. You might spend a few moments looking at even their theology departments and you will see a number of scholars who are adherents of Islam, Buddhism, etc.

 

[DevilsAvocado]

He's one of the most outspoken atheists on the Internet (far more hardcore than most atheists I know), and yet he graduated from a religious university. Hmm, this sounds interesting.

Maybe he didn’t "survive"... maybe this "hardcore attitude" is a result of this...?

Well I don’t know, I’m just guessing here, but as a layman I always got the 'impression' that it’s not the task for science to find out if "Mr. X" exist or not, and maybe that’s what Sean is really saying:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCVqJw7T1WU

On the other hand, Creationist has stepped into the domains of science. Maybe there’s a need to "sharpen the arguments"... I don’t know...

Personally I’m very fond of jarednjames https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3088174&postcount=40".