religion and higher education

Here's a theory I've been kicking around for a few weeks:

Religion and university education play enormous roles in shaping individuals. A strong religious background tends to create a certain type of person. A university education tends to create a different type of person. A combination of the two seems to create a third type of person. Finally, the absence of either tends to create yet another type of person.

How strong do you think these factors are in shaping a person's identity? If you believe that there is any truth to the basic idea, how would you characterize each of the categories I listed above -- I'm interested in seeing how other people's perceptions compare with my own.

I know this is very clumsy, but I just wanted to throw something out there to get the ball rolling.

how deep the rabbit hole goes

Welcome, friends. This is an experiment that I'm starting. What I'm envisioning is a kind of cyber-tea, a place where we can post serious ideas that we find in books or films or in our heads and talk about them. I just finished reading a novel called Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell. One of the central themes of the novel is the idea that we can only come close to reality by laying our personal perspectives side by side with those of others, because reality is complex and layered. That's what I would like to do here.

I would like to talk about God, politics, literature, psychology, and whatever else may pertain to the human experience and the search for truth. I'm inviting a select few friends to start this to see how it goes.

So, what's on your mind?