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Thib writes "As widely reported everywhere, University of Kansas chairman of religious studies Paul Mirecki has withdrawn the "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies" course that he was preparing for the upcoming Spring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

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!

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: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.