Atheism and Footbaths, on campus and elsewhere

Two articles I linked today from the NYT: More stuff about God. Or, at least, about religion.

First, the fellow who wrote an article about a construct in physics sometimes referred to as "the God particle," because it is very "fundamental," reports that he has been castigated for using the term "God." In fact, the physicists who use the term among themselves are not happy when journalists use the term. Most of the complaints from scientists appear to arise out of fears that others will see them as actual believers in "God" (and of course that means many different things to different people, so I use the quotation marks), or as using religion to sell science (or even vice versa!). Again, we see the prominence of an increasingly aggressive form of atheism.

And, it could be argued, these highly vocal atheists get their current star power in part from our reactions to extreme fundamentalism among some of those who do claim to "believe in God." Intolerance, bigotry, and even violence inspired or fueled by religious dogmatism and xenophobia is hardly new; yet it seems startling to many of us when it presents itself in the clothes of 21st century humanity.

Shift, then, to the other NYT article today that I linked on this blog: about universities building footbaths for Muslim students. Apparently it is customary (or perhaps some consider it necessary? I don't know) for Muslims to wash their feet five times a day, prior to their prayers. At some universities, students were sticking their feet into bathroom sinks, and washing them, and this resulted in dirty sinks and wet floors. Maintenance folks were worried, especially about the wet floors (safety issues). Solution: build foot baths in the bathrooms. Resulting problem: some were upset because they believed that one religion was being "accommodated" while other religions were being disrespected (Christmas music banned from one university coffee cart, apparently).

We have a fair-sized population of Muslim students at Avila University, and this group is (I believe) growing in numbers. Will we, and should we, build foot-baths? And, how about that Christmas music?