Summary
June 11, 2009: At the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, there are courses for Intelligent Design offered by William Dembski which require the following work from the students:
AP410 This is the undegrad course. You have three things to do: (1) take the final exam (worth 40% of your grade); (2) write a 3,000-word essay on the theological significance of intelligent design (worth 40% of your grade); (3) provide at least 10 posts defending ID that you’ve made on “hostile” websites, the posts totalling 2,000 words, along with the URLs (i.e., web links) to each post (worth 20% of your grade).
AP510 This is the masters course. You have four things to do: (1) take the final exam (worth 30% of your grade); (2) write a 1,500- to 2,000-word critical review of Francis Collins’s The Language of God — for instructions, see below (20% of your grade); (3) write a 3,000-word essay on the theological significance of intelligent design (worth 30% of your grade); (4) provide at least 10 posts defending ID that you’ve made on “hostile” websites, the posts totalling 3,000 words, along with the URLs (i.e., web links) to each post (worth 20% of your grade).
In other words, the students are required to troll online forums to promote a specific ideology to pass their course.
Given the prevelance of 'new media' in so many people's lives, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that a seminary should want its students to have experience of using them for evangelism.
See Also
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Game and Story Use
- In an ideologically charged setting, people might be required to "preach to unbelievers" and prove it in order to attain higher ranks within their organization.
- A requirement to have performed missionary work before being selected for ordination is quite normal in many religions and denominations, and even where not required it's certainly regarded as a good thing.
- If this approach spreads, this might strongly impact online culture in a Twenty Minutes Into The Future or Cyberpunk setting. For example, students who received stipends from corporations (or whose universities are sponsored by them) might be required to promote the products of that corporation on online forums to pass their grades.
- Conversely, students who hold 'unapproved' opinions can be (and are) denied credit by dogmatic teachers - even in those subjects which claim not to deal in objective truth.