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Thib writes "As widely reported everywhere, University of Kansas chairman of religious studies Paul Mirecki has withdrawn the "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies" course that he was preparing for the upcoming Spring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

[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.

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!

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/

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.

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: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.