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Thib writes "As widely reported everywhere, University of Kansas chairman of religious studies Paul Mirecki has withdrawn the "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies" course that he was preparing for the upcoming Spring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."

Comments

No double standard

[Julian Morrison]

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".

Re:No double standard

[cgenman]

You also don't get to teach it in public school on the government dime. However, this is Kansas we're talking about here, a state which has defined theology as within the realm of science for educational purposes.

This was an action taken in response to the ID religious conservatives having their religion defined and taught as a science. However, opening it up to science opens it up to rebuttal, which can be thorough and at times brutal. I'm sad that this course didn't make it through, as I see no reason why it shouldn't exist in kansas.

Rest of the world, please stop snickering at us. You wouldn't laugh at a person with alzheimers, would you?

Re:No double standard

[Apreche]

Why not? The fist amendment says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;..." It doesn't say anything about disrespecting a religion. And in no way does this college course prohibit the free exercise of religion. If you want to interpret the word respect to have a meaning synonymous with "pertaining to" then you have to get rid of the laws giving tax breaks to religious groups.

Now, as far as the others are concerned. If someone were to make a class named "Jews: The Secret Rules of the World" or "Why blacks should be slaves again" I wouldn't like it very much. It would be pretty obvious that the professor was a racist bastard and should be fired under the policies of the university. But, as a supporter of the first amendment I have to accept and allow this sort of hate speech no matter how distasteful it might be.

Re:No double standard

[Ioldanach]

I agree, this was a poor way to handle the class. I was expecting a nice scholarly look at all sides of an issue that would, as a result of being accurate, logical, and scientific, completely destroy the ability of I.D. to be taught as a serious scientific platform. Unfortunately, the instructor couldn't refrain from name-calling. With friends like this, who needs enemies?

Kansas

[mwvdlee]

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.

Choose your battles wisely

[a302b]

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!

a little background...

[Bozzio]

FSM
'nuff said.

Re:a little background...

[Anonymous Coward]

FSM is irony. Real irony, not the Alanis Morrisette kind, not hypocrisy, but actual irony. The idea is to parody intelligent design in such a way as to use the exact same arguments, but result in a ridiculous, unsupportable conclusion. That way, when the intelligent design supporters claim it's ridiculous, they have to poke holes in their own argument to show that is the case. Then you merely repeat their own words back to them when they promote intelligent design.

Unfortunately, intelligent design advocates aren't usually drawn into such discussions. They say "that's silly" and refuse to explain why it's silly. They are usually smart enough to figure out *something* is wrong, but can't figure out what exactly, which makes them feel uneasy. They blame these bad feelings on the person "making fun of them" and call them evil to alleviate the cognitive dissonance.

The sad thing is:

[QMO]

"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.

Re:The sad thing is:

[GigsVT]

It's more like the chairman of the physics department holding a class making fun of zero-point energy and free energy crackpots.

It's not like ID is some accepted scientific theory, it's just some shit creationists made up because they needed to improve their marketing. In the past it was easier because everyone was brainwashed as a child about creationism. Now that people are better educated, and generally do not attend religious schools, they needed something they could plausibly sell to people weak on science.

Brief de-confusion

[trurl7]

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".

More professionalism, please

[PurifyYourMind]

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/

Re:thank you for your apology...

[n0dalus]

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.

Double standards from the ID nuts

[squiggleslash]

Which puts science in an impossible position. Religious nuts get to pretend ID is "science" and have it injected into science classes, but scientists can't debunk it as science in the same forums because such arguments would be inherently about religions.

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.

Re:Double standards from the ID nuts

[sasami]

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.

Disclaimer: I am not a proponent of ID, and do not support its teaching in schools.

But it's rare that anyone in a rancorous debate won't have double standards. Narrowing the field to abiogenesis for a moment -- when respected nonreligious scientists espouse speculative, largely unfalsifiable hypotheses of origins that have no evidentiary basis other than (hmm) the lack of evidence for abiogenesis, they are welcome to speak publicly, and write for journals and magazines. Where is the outcry?

And you certainly can't wave your arms and yell "ID is the end of science in America!" when by far the greatest threat to science today is radical postmodernism, whose adherents thrive in overwhelming numbers on university campuses, enjoying secure and unassailable academic respectability, and teaching both implicitly and explicitly that all "so-called facts," science included, are subjective social constructions with no true validity. Where is the outcry?

Here's a personal observation. Although it's unfortunately true that most ID activists are motivated by a prior agenda, in my experience (of moderate sample size) most evolution activists are motivated by a prior agenda as well. Such people tend to be quite surprised when I tell them that I'm a Christian and that I have no overall problem with evolution -- and it is very revealing that this is often considered an insufficient response. They are ultimately satisfied only if I renounce religion entirely. Of course, I am not allowed to have an outcry.

--
Dum de dum.

Re:Double standards from the ID nuts

[Alsee]

when respected nonreligious scientists espouse speculative, largely unfalsifiable hypotheses of origins that have no evidentiary basis other than (hmm) the lack of evidence for abiogenesis, they are welcome to speak publicly, and write for journals and magazines. Where is the outcry?

Why should there be an outcry?
First of all everyone (including scientists) have the right to free speech. Secondly the sequence of developing science almost always needs to start with wild speculation, some of which bears fruit to hypotheses, some of which bears fruit to theories, some of which bears fruit to solid tested and confirmed science.

Abiogenesis is quite admittedly a weakly developed and weakly supported field. That is hardly surprising considering that it attempts to address a singular microscopic event hidden in the deep depths of time, and which has left no direct trace. And at one point nuclear fusion was a very weakly developed and weakly supported field due to it's own extreme difficulties.

There is some very good science going on in the field of abiogenesis, but as I said it is still a weakly developed and weakly supported field. As such it rates little or no place on a highschool science curriculum. And as far as I am aware it does not appear on government highschool curriculums, and therefore there is absolutely no battle and no reason for any battle by anyone over it. The current stupidity going on is over evolution and only evolution, and those involoved who drag the origin of life into it either missunderstand evolution (thinking it includes abiogenesis), or are trying to use abiogenesis (and it's weakness) as a strawman for evolution to launch an invalid attack.

The current "outcry" here is over people trying to push ID in government run highschools as science. Everyone is perfectly free to hypothesize anything they like (including ID), and they are perfectly free to burn their science textbooks and use the Bible as their science text in church or in private schools or almost anywhere else.

Highscool science class is for teaching the fundamentals of science and the scientific method, and providing a general overview of the major fields of thoroughly tested and thoroughly supported science that has earned nearly universal acceptance in the relevant professional field.

No double standard here. Evolution absolutely positively satisfies that standard. ID doesn't even make it out of the starting gate of scientific theory, much less pass the hurdles of "well tested" and "well supported", and it's acceptance in the relevant expert professional field is roughly zero-point-one-percent (as opposed to the roughly 99.9% acceptance of evolution amongst professional biologists).

The founders of the ID movement explicitly created it to circumvent the Supreme Court ruling that they could not teach Biblical Creationism in government run classrooms. It is a religious agenda attempting to don a scientific costume, and that costume simply is not fitting and it falls apart at the slightest touch. It consists almost entirely of argument-from-ignorance (I don't understand X therefore Goddidit), and attacks on evolution that have been reviewed by the experts and exposed as horribly flawed.

The government cannot take sides on religion, and highscool science classes are not a battleground for deciding science. Highschool teachers and highschool students are hardly capable of evaluating and judging competing theories of quantum mechanics. If someone believes that they have some theory as a viable alternative to evolution, or they believe they have identified some flaw in evolution, then they should present it to the PhD's and professionals in the field for peer review. The PhD's and professionals in the field *are* equipped to understand it and evaluate it and to see if it is valid or flawed. If and when it earns broad acceptance by the experts in the field then and only then should highschools teach students that this is current accepted best understanding in this field.

High school science classrooms are not...

[NitsujTPU]

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.

Re:Not acceptable

[badfish99]

Actually, bashing other people's beliefs and calling them names is about par for the course in the average University department.

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.

Politico Religious Fanatics != Scientist

[robix_mevdev]

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!!!

Good for the Goose

[joeytsai]

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.

Re:Disagreement

[An Onerous Coward]

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.

He is in the Hospital; some PRO ID people beat him

[seabasstin]

Please read this before you say that he shouldn't have spoken out. This is what has happened to him since the incident.

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/dec/05/mirecki_h ospitalized_after_beating/?breaking Mirecki hospitalized after beating

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?