Deutsches Brights-Forum 2006 - 2014 (ARCHIV)

It’s Tuesday afternoon and I entered the lecture hall to attend the weekly lecture in KIT, Karlsruhe. I’m studying Informatik there. At the start of the lecture a female student stand in front of the class giving the usual advertisement about some other lecture events held in KIT. But this time, it got my attention. The title of this heavily promoted “lecture” is “Der Urknall und die Gottesfrage”, brought by Prof. Dr. Thomas Schimmel, and it is held in Gerthsen Hörsaal, KIT on 10th June 2010. Yes, it is using the University building.

For the next 5 minutes or so the student talks and talks. She said something like this, “We know how Big Bang happened, but who made it? Why he made it?” After she spread the brochure and just when I thought it was over, I have to endure another promotional message from the lecturer himself, the professor of Elektrotechnik, KIT. He said he had visited some of the lecture series and found it interesting, and after that he is babbling about the interesting topic the lecture brings.

A friend of mine visited one of the lectures, and it was actually a lecture almost without any interaction, with only five minutes or so at the end were given to ask questions. And most (if not all) of them came from the organizers of the event themselves. For example, one of them said that the lecturer said that he didn't come to believe by his historical "analysis" of Jesus, and thus they asked him how he became a Christian.

An organization called Hochschul-SMD Karlsruhe is the organizer of the (obviously Christian) lecture series. Here is the mission from their website¹):

"Uns verbindet der Glaube an unseren Herrn Jesus Christus, und wir haben es uns zur Aufgabe gesetzt, ihn an den verschiedenen Hochschulen in Karlsruhe zu bezeugen."

"Von Zeit zu Zeit planen wir gemeinsam Aktionen, mit denen wir unseren Mitstudis Gelegenheit bieten wollen, über Jesus nachzudenken und ihm zu begegnen."

They have held a lot of Christian “lectures” like this before (I know at least three of them also held using University building²)), and certainly they’ll do it again. They promote it heavily using brochures, also visiting a lot of lecture halls and asking permission to the lecturers to promote their events at the start of the lecture.

I came from Indonesia, a very religious country, in which these things happen all the time, but Germany? I came to Germany, hoping not to be proselytized again, and I was shocked to see this obvious evangelization activities happens in a state University, using its buildings, which are paid by tax payer money. I came to Germany several years ago expecting a secular country, and I’m disappointed.

Karl Karnadi.

1) http://www.smd-karlsruhe.de/ueber-uns.html
2) http://www.erlebt-in-karlsruhe.de/veran ... sicht.html

karnadi hat geschrieben:I came from Indonesia, a very religious country, in which these things happen all the time, but Germany? I came to Germany, hoping not to be proselytized again, and I was shocked to see this obvious evangelization activities happens in a state University, using its buildings, which are paid by tax payer money. I came to Germany several years ago expecting a secular country, and I’m disappointed.

Karl Karnadi.

Nanna hat geschrieben:You need either public pressure or resistance from inside the university against such missionary undertakings. However, we could try to send protest letters to the university-administration and also help you with flyers in good German in case you want do get active yourself. IF someone of us knows people or naturalistic/atheistiic organisations in Karlsruhe they could support a protest.

karnadi hat geschrieben:Sorry for not using Deutsch, (...)