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Course Debunking Intelligent Design Canceled
Thib writes "As widely reported everywhere, University of Kansas chairman of religious studies Paul Mirecki has withdrawn the "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies" course that he was preparing for the upcoming Spring semester. From the AP: "Mirecki recently sent an e-mail to members of a student organization in which he referred to religious conservatives as "fundies" and said a course depicting intelligent design as mythology would be a "nice slap in their big fat face." He later apologized, and did so again Thursday in a statement issued by the university." Mirecki was inspired to offer the course after the Kansas Board of Education moved to back intelligent design in state science standards in November."
If I.D. is religion - and it is - then you doun't get to debunk it in public school on the goverment dime. Otherwise the next class might be "Islam, why it's a steaming heap of camel dung" or "Christianity and other ridiculous middle-eastern folk tales".
The trouble with Kansas is; you can click your heels three times and repeat "There's no place like home", but you'll still end up in Kansas.
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Sigh. It always saddens me when great ideas and concepts are clouded by irresponsible speech. I think such a course would be a great benefit to students in Kansas. However, when someone (and professor of all people!) utters such uselessly degrading and unprofitable remarks, he destroys his own credibility. How many debates have decended into childish name-calling so that no-one is listening to anything that is being said? How many people, defending a just cause (such as environmentalism) have failed to pick their battles and have rabidly pursued a course to such an extreme as to alienate otherwise sympathetic folk?
C'mon, if you have something valuable to say or important to do, then say it or do it with prudence and wisdom at least!
Unity in Diversity
FSM
'nuff said.
I just pooped your party.
"Professor Paul Mirecki, chairman of religious studies"
This is like the chairman of the math department making fun of people for studying the work of Gauss, Galois, Ramanujan, Hilbert, etc.
Having been a college student and teacher, I have a hard time beliving that anyone who feels like mocking people that are passionate about his subject is very effective as a professor. I don't trust his apology, either.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
No, "everyone here on slashdot" (whoever that is) complains that ID is put forth as a "scientific theory".
You see, Creationism can't be taught in schools officially because it's a religious belief, and we have separation of church and state (short short version). So, Creationism, version 2, relabeled "Intelligent Design" is put forth (to the best of my understanding) as a *scientific theory*. Since it's now "scientific", the claim goes, it can be taught in schools as an alternative theory to evolution.
That's what the critics are complaining about - that it's being pushed through as being "scientific", though at it's core (the criticism goes) it's nothing more than Creationism wrapped in pseudo-scientific language. Presumably, the course would take the "scientific theory" angle and attack ID in terms of science (i.e. to be a theory it must be verifiable by experiments, be predictive, etc..) A real pity it got canned over some (from what I understand) private emails.
I just have to mention this, thought: In one of the articles, someone criticizing this professor says "he is so full of hatefullness for religion". George Carlin moment here: WTF is "hatefullness"? Would that be something similar to...I don't know..."hate"? This person must have studied at the George W. Bush school of "Higherest Linguistication of the English Language".
It's too bad that now fundamentalists are going to have this news story as a weapon against proponents of science. This is despite this person apparently having nothing to do with science. We need better representatives, like the following:
Skeptical Inquirer: The Magazine for Science and Reason
http://www.csicop.org/si/
Discussion and debate of biological and physical origins
http://www.talkorigins.org/
Understanding Evolution
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/
Isn't the complaint that everyone here on Slashdot makes against it that it's unfalsifiable- unable to be proved false?
People tend to get confused when there's so much nonsense being generated by both evolutionists and creationists alike.
Someone who is religious can say that God created the world and the creatures living on it. This can't really be proved or disproved by any scientific means. However, some other people who are religious are taking that one step further and saying 'how' God did it with claims that can be (dis)proved (eg, saying the Earth is 6000 years old and created in a week). People criticize creationists for being unscientific and being highly dogmatic, but in truth I have seen the same kind of crap from evolutionists too. People in both groups have some very good arguments though -- if you are willing to be objective about listening to them.
Many Christians I have spoken to (including some highly respected university lecturers), don't think it matters whether the earth is 6000 years old or 4.5 billion years old. To them the Bible is about saying why God made the world, not when or how he went about creating it. The book is highly poetic and not necessarily written to be scientifically accurate. Most of the media these days with headlines like 'Evolution vs God' and stuff are just needlessly promoting a facile view that religion is incompatible with widely promoted scientific theories.
This certainly underlines the double standards of the ID right. They want religious criticism of evolution put in science classes, and are using the ID trojan horse to do so, while trying to silence those who point this out in those self same classes.
If ID is to be taught as science, it must be subject to the same tests every scientific theory is subjected to. You can't wave your arms and yell "My religion is being oppressed" simply because ID gets the same treatment as any other theory.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
High school science classrooms are not a forum of scientific debate. What bothers me most about this entire discussion is the assertion that, for some reason, a board of education decides what is science... that introducing it in classrooms is somehow equivalent to having it published in Nature... and that, for some reason, this is a valid way to discuss what is and isn't science.
It just isn't. Classrooms are for teaching science. Science has its own forums for such debates.
Now, when you put it in that light, the question becomes "do we want material that is not accepted by the scientific community taught in classrooms.
For those of you digging at religion, remember that a good portion of the religious community, including the Catholic Church, do not accept ID.
Excuse me for summarizing the complaint improperly. The full complaint then, I suppose, is it's "not falsifiable" and therefore can't be a proper scientific theory. Which still leaves us at 'not falsifiable' and a Slashdot headline claiming the course was nevertheless going to 'debunk' it, which is just Slashdot misleadingness, though I suppose it is in the Religion department and "subject to being debunked on religious grounds" as you have mentioned... this'll teach me to read Slashdot headlines, in any event.
Catholic college? Are you presently Catholic? What denomination was this professor, out of curiosity?
You got it wrong. Please try again, or better yet don't.
Well, those are really touching words. Great way to encourage healthy dialogues and understanding!
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
And the people promoting this intelligent design crap are not putting it forward as just their opinion. They are trying to pass it off as though it were a respectable scientific theory. They deserve to be called names.
I am glad this guy made this comment and wanted to have this class. Intelligent design is not backed by any biologists. It is only so we can have creationism taught in our schools. What a bunch of shit. bunch of shit.
When they have more than the bible and a few theologians then maybe it could be considered.
If they worked with biologists to understand organisms and all of the stuff already studied, then maybe it could be considered.
If they didn't just deride evolution instead of studying real things and relating them to the world, then maybe there could be a discussion considered.
But when some jesus waving ignorant religious fanatic undermines hundreds of years of study with a good catch word, that pissed me off.
If I were him I would not have apologized. I WOULD HAVE TELEVISED!!!
"It strikes me as interesting that he's out to "debunk" intelligent design. Isn't the complaint that everyone here on Slashdot makes against it that it's unfalsifiable- unable to be proved false?"
There is a nearly universal skepticism in Academia (and, well, the world at large) for things that have no evidenciary support. Demonstrating that I.D. has no evidenciary support is the same as "debunking" it. A serious claim need not be falsifiable to be wrong, it simply must have no support. It is up to the scientist to demonstrate "the burden of proof".
Intelligent Design as a "theory" has never once offered any proof that has ever stood up to any intellectual rigor. More importantly, as a "scientific" theory (as proponents claim), it has never inspired or guided the production of new, published, empirical data.
This is what is so hateful in Darwinian evolution to religious folks. It's not just that it opposes religious teaching, but that it appears to promote a selfish, self-centred (or, if they're more sophisticated, gene-centred) teaching in its place. You don't find the same opposition to humanism, do you?
I wrote a JE on this.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I think this story nicely illustrates how you needn't be religious to be ignorant, insensitive and over-zealous. Also, I have a feeling that if this course was presented in an neutral and objective manner (with a nice boring title like, "Comparing and Contrasting Different Paradigms of Origin") nobody would've cared - not even the students. Indeed, I imagine the talk around campus would be "Don't take Origins, Mirecki's a dick" or "I wrote a 20 page paper where one of my points disagreed with his and he gave me a D!". I'm sure we can all relate to similar professors.
http://www.talknerdy.org
What makes FSM a straw man?
The supporters of ID clearly want people to draw the conclusion that they cannot explicitly state in the classroom: God is the "Intelligent Designer". But once you've accepted arguments for some manner of supernatural intervention into the evolutionary process, anything that has the power to make such interventions is a viable possibility. God, Flying Spaghetti Monsters, space aliens, superintelligent hamsters with tiny guitars. It's all the same.
Since The Flying Spaghetti Monster is omnipotent, any evidence for the Judeo-Christian concept of God (the Bible, the ubiquity of belief in God, etc.) must have been created by the FSM in order to test our faith in His Noodly Presence.
If FSM is a straw man, it's a straw man that the God Hypothesis is strapped inside. Because any blow you can land that would discredit the Flying Spaghetti Monster can be turned against any other supernatural agent.
Disagree? Feel free to demonstrate to me, a humble believer, that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not the creator of our Universe.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
The comments on this story are full of this type of misinformation spouted as fact with no links for support. I'll provide a rebuttal with fact for a change. NPR has done a few stories about the hostile environment toward intelligent design in the academic community. There are many biologists who see credibility in the idea of ID, but are afraid to speak up for it because of the anger and intolerance from their institutions and colleagues.
Here is a story from NPR about a scientist with a PhD in biology who was attacked for publishing this article in a peer-reviewed scientific journal PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. (Read the introduction of his paper at least. These lines indicate some of the direction of it.)
Now back to your rant.
That has been done, contrary to your belief. In the article I linked to above, Steven C. Meyer considers the biology aspect of ID, which is a bit misunderstood by people who are antagonistic to creationism. ID does split off the science side from the religious side of creationism. ID looks at the structure of organisms--plant, animal, etc. and sees indications that the structure of these things is so complex that it seems unlikely that it could happen at random from a pure evolution perspective.
I'll use the FSM as an illustration of this difference. The FSM is compatible with the scientific aspect but not with the religious. Intelligent design still applies, in that nature shows itself to be too complex to be random. There is a level of structure and organization that indicates a directing force for this design, rather than random interaction. That designing force could take any form(FSM or God or unknown), as far as intelligent design is concerned. That is why it has equal credence with theoretical evolution as the basis for the origin of life forms. Natural selection has shown to cause differentiation of existing species, but there is no proven cause for origin, so any proposal as an explanation of that is theory.
So the religious side is that people choose to believe what form that "designing force" takes. Various religions attribute that to the specific character and personality of a deity, but that is outside the scope of intelligent design.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
I believe the issue is that the ID group *is* not arguing about any evidence of the judeo-christian concept of god but arguing that instead that there is "evidence" in the paleontological record that shows "irreducible complexity" which proves the existence of a creator in the sense that is outside of evolutionary history. ID argues *just* this. The extrapolation to a judeo-christian god is explicitly and carefully not made by the ID community (though you and I know that that is exactly what they are thinking). The proper ID response to the use of FSM would be to state in fact ID states only that there is evidence for a super natural creator in the paleontological record and moreover in "machinery" of living organisms (an argument that can be done scientifically). Most importantly, whether that creator is FSM or a judeo-christian god is outside the realm of ID and science and is simply religion. Hense FSM is may be defined as a new religion and not science. while ID is not a religion but an examination of the archeological record and biological complexity for evidence of "supernatural tampering" and is therefore science.
Of course ID is not science but the reasoning has nothing to do w/ the any suppositions of a creator (FSM or judeo-christian or turtles all the way down) which ID explicitly never talks about. The problem w/ ID is the use of "irreducible complexity" as a "proof" for "that which makes irreducible complexity." This argument is a variation of the "god of the gaps" proof for god. The problem of course is its not so much a proof but a definition of "god" or "evidence for a supernatural creator" is defined by that which does not seem to have evidence naturalistically, where for people like Behe that complexity of DNA and amino acid interactions is that evidence. As our understanding of complex systems and evolutionary processes addresses the specific "irreducibly complex" evidence that behe and their cohorts they will move to another gap. Their definition is not a proof for the existence but a definition that is based on human ignorance that is that "gap".
In this sense, and it is much weaker is FSM relevant because FSM can be defined to be the god of the gaps in the same sense that any other creator but again that is not what ID is arguing, what they are arguing is that the god of the gaps argument is legitimate not *what* the god of the gaps is.
The FSM is funny, I am about to buy one of their shirts because they come off well and have a good sense of humor but I think its a mistake to argue that FSM is a "counter-proof" for ID.
Mirecki recently sent an e-mail to members of a student organization in which he referred to religious conservatives as "fundies" and said a course depicting intelligent design as mythology would be a "nice slap in their big fat face." He later apologized, and did so again Thursday in a statement issued by the university."
It's funny how people fully support this kind of forthright talk about any number of groups when it's done by politically-motivated radio and television personalities with license to broadcast over public airwaves to millions of people, but when a man with a doctorate of theology uses similar language in an email discussion with the atheist student group to whom he is an advisor, it causes an uproar.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
You cannot test for the existence of God, a pre-requisite for ID (otherwise, to what does "intelligence" refer in the title?).
Aliens. I kid you not. When I've heard this taught (in my intro-to-science class at a religious university) it was made clear that "intelligent design" doesn't refer to a particular source of the design, only that it is intelligent, as opposed to mindless (that is, evolution.) It could be aliens, it could be a previous civilization of humans, it could be a trans-dimensional spaghetti monster -- they don't care. ID itself doesn't set out to prove what it is, only that evolution is wrong (on the grounds that it is impossible) in order to set the stage for a later debate (once ID is accepted) as to which intelligent designer makes most sense. At that point, yes, their goal is to prove that their god (as opposed to aliens or anyone else's god) is the intelligent designer. Slightly before that, their goal is to give people who already believe in creationism a way of saying "well, this ID stuff is -compatible- with what I believe, and sounds convincing to me, so I'm okay." Not "true", just "compatible".
That is exactly correct. ID squelches all continued inquiry. Every time the problem gets hard (possible gap), ID proponents simply flash the "Then a miracle" occurs cartoon. There is no motivation or incentive to advance the state of knowledge.
My take on why the general population just can't grasp evolution is that they can't grasp the notion of really, really large numbers as in the time it takes for evolution to occur. If human beings can "evolve" a wolf into 200+ breeds of domestic dogs in 5,000 years, what can nature accomplish in 4 billion years.
...wasn't intelligently designed, then?
[deem grinning, ducking and running all implied]
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Please read this before you say that he shouldn't have spoken out. This is what has happened to him since the incident.
h ospitalized_after_beating/?breaking Mirecki hospitalized after beating
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/dec/05/mirecki_
He was beaten down and sent to the Hospital by 2 people who where upset about his anti fundamentalism/anti ID stance.
THESE ACTIONS are the real problem, as they represent the blindness of religious fundamentalism when pressed by the freedom of speech.
The reason I think ID is an issue, is that fundamentalism doesn't allow for an other opinion, it is intractable in its stance about what is right in religion. (whatever the religion).
Even thought Dr Mireki might not have been the most tactful person in his approach to counter the ridiculous decision in his state; it is NEVER acceptable for anyone to be terrorized because of his/her opinions, and the reality in America is that anyone who EVER confronts the religious rights ideals, gets taken down by any means necessary.
This can be seen in the horrendous actions of anti-abortion activists; the pervasiveness of anti-sex education & the ineffective yet over emphasized abstinence movement; the obvious miscarriages of authority that are happening at the FDA in relation to the abortion pill; the rise of intolerance of religious differences; or any idea that goes against "Christians".
In effect, this is the reflection of the Christian fundamentalist leader currently in power.
So its all grand to have people here criticize his actions, when the reality is that in his particular environment (the middle of the bible belt in Kansas), he actually has to deal with the effects of these religious fundamentalist directly, especially working in the field of religion.
Whether it is from the possibility of loosing his jobs from the university who feels public pressure trough their funding, or attacks on his and his loved ones physical person, this is not like being on slashdot with an alias and saying whatever crap and then disappearing.
If you cross them they go after you especially if you have clout.
Personally I really wish had not backed down, and given the course; furthermore the University should really support him no matter what as this directly reflects on their credibility as an independent institution of learning.
Maybe Iran or China are worse.... or are they?
Content + Container; Content = Container; Content â Container... which is the question?