You can't understand this because it’s written in English.

A friend of mine recently shared her college experience with me.

She had an English Professor at the University of Arizona who enjoyed attacking Christian beliefs as a part of his class. He taught that there are no incontrovertible truths and that language could not possibly convey ideas between people due to the vagaries of our own narratives. Evidentally, he liked to pick on Christian kids taking apart their ideas, leaving them confused and unsure.

She said that she had to do a lot of debriefing with her youth minister and that the class was a real struggle because of the way he pressured students to believe like him and his regular attacks on anyone who believed differently or even questioned what he said.

I have toyed with the idea of driving to Tucson to audit one of his classes.
I don’t think that I could sit long in his class without challenging his credibility. He is either ignorant or a fraud.

I’d like to stand up in the middle of his class and ask him a few questions;

“How can you stand there, speaking to us about an idea, expecting us to understand what you are saying if you don’t believe that ideas can be conveyed by language?”

“How can you teach an English class (a language), expecting students to write papers expressing ideas in that language, that you will then grade (an idea) in the same language assuming they will be able to understand the grades that you gave them?”

“How can you grade papers for grammar or spelling based on the idea that there is a true and correct way to phrase ideas and spell words when you don’t believe that there are truths?”

Now, I’m a believer in being the devil’s advocate in arguments, challenging people to defend ideas, and asking students to think through positions that they hold. However, this professor is presenting ideas that he cannot even live by. Why, he couldn’t even drive to work in the morning, because road signs communicate ideas with the assumption that other people can understand the idea and the people who made his car assume he can learn how to operate it based on communicable truths. He couldn’t find his classroom on a campus map because it is communicating ideas from one person to another. Heck, if he was really honest, he wouldn't bother trying to cash his paycheck from the university because the value of money is an idea that is agreed upon by people.

I have to come to the conclusion that he doesn’t live by the beliefs that he professes (because it is impossible) which then makes him a fraud, teaching an idea that isn’t workable while attacking principals and ideas that are.

I wonder if it is worth four hours of driving time to drive to Tucson and back so I can attend his class.

Probably not.

If I argued with him, he probably couldn’t understand the ideas that I communicated to him anyway.