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Kansas Anti-Creationism Professor Resigns
An anonymous reader writes "A Professor of religion at University of Kansas has resigned from his position at the university because of his anti-creationism views." From the article: "Mirecki had planned to teach a course in the spring that examined creationism and intelligent design after the State Board of Education adopted science standards treating evolution as a flawed theory. Originally called 'Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies,' the course was canceled last week at Mirecki's request." The article goes on to explain that Mirecki evidently sent poorly worded email with anti-Christian sentiments around to people interested in the class, and was subsequently beaten for his troubles.
Mirecki evidently sent poorly worded email with anti-Christian sentiments around to people interested in the class, and was subsequently beaten for his troubles.
All he had to do was stick to science and his ideas would have won. Instead, he played into the stereotype that 'scientists are anti-Christian' and has paid the price.
But there are really three sides to the issue:
1. Dogmatic Christians pushing their belief system as the anti-science.
2. Dogmatic Athiests pushing their belief system as the anti-religion.
3. The Rest Of Us.
resigned
Remember, there are a lot of Books in the Bible. Some of the older ones (Old Testament) have a lot of stuff about smiting and even killing or enslaving your enemies.
It all depends upon what part of the Bible the church you attend wants to focus on. There's as much legitimacy in focusing on God's Rightous Wrath as there is in focusing on Jesus Forgiving.
Someone else was beaten or killed in the name of religion! *gasp*
What's the total up to now? A few billion?
Question everything
The choices of prefix for this post... I'm curious, why is he anti-creationist rather than pro-evolutionist? Now, this may be innocuous, but choice of words can reveal bias.
Also, anti-fundamentalist is not the same as anti-christian. Being opposed to a specific, fanatical, often belligerent sect of a religious denomination is not the same as being opposed to the entire faith.
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
"attacking a given faith"
He attacked "faith run amok". The problem isn't that people have this faith. The problem is that some of them try to pass it off as science and to make laws out of it. Their zealotry goes against what this country stands for.
The only difference between religion and mythology is that mythology was the nonsense that people used to beleive, and religion is the nonsense they beleive today.
Keep your religion out of our science! You beleive what you want, but anyone that thinks they have a right to force what they beleive on someone else needs a swift kick in the ass (and yes, that includes other people's children, its tragic enough that parents are allowed to brainwash their own children)
I would have downmodded the parent (yay! Mod points!) but sadly there isn't actually a moderation option for 'bollocks'. You'll note that, of the parent's links, one is just Mirecki refusing to speak to a fundamentalist journalist (this is what we call "following the lawyer's advice", and from the tone of the subsequent interview I can only say that I would have done the same). The second is a Conservative activist incisively pointing out that not all information on brutal beatings is immediately made available to the public (or it would be incisive if that's what he realised he was doing) and suggesting that the request for Mirecki's resignation (which iirc occurred before the beating) indicates he's a shifty sort of fellow.
This is complete trash. It barely even suggests that Mirecki lied, let alone naturally pointing towards that conclusion. There are no inconsistencies. There is no need for double-quotes round the word 'beating'. There is only a respected member of the academic community, who planned a controversial course (and then made a stupid comment about it on an obscure mailing list), getting beaten up by two punks and a heavy object for suggesting that their beloved Creationism might, just possibly, be classed as a 'myth' in Religious Studies circles (which happens to be factually accurate, and wouldn't even count as tactless if he hadn't made the aforesaid dumb remark). This is unjustifiable and I'm mildly shocked to see anyone other than the monosyllabic perpetrators fighting Mirecki over this.
More, I'm deeply worried by the chilling effect this will have on other courses similarly critical of Intelligent Design and Creationism. Evolutionary biologists critique evolution every day - why should ID and 'scientific creationism' be exempt merely by dint of being scientifically vacuous?
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
People seem to confuse the very tiny number of people who attacked this professor and who maintain a non-scientific militaint anti evolusionist stance with the much larger group of people who call themselves "Christians".
People are extrapolating the actions of a small group of hateful idiots to an entire class of people who happen to have an overlapping characteristic and disparaging the entire group as stupid, backward, or violent.
I suspect those same people would be horrified if the actions of a single minority member were to be unfairly extrapolated to their entire race or culture.
The problem is that evolution is not like a tool. Instead it is a self-propelled dynamic that needs no outside maker/creator etc. The prerequisites for evolution (differential reproduction of heritable variation) is both basic and abundant in all biological systems of all levels of complexity (it even applies to "nonliving" prebiotic chemical systems such as RNA soups and lipid mycelles). The point is that even the simplest bacteria has all the tools it needs to make itself a different species given enough time.
That is what upsets the religious. Evolution doesn't need any gods.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Maybe you are looking for the abortion clinic bombers and doctor murderers, I believe they are fundementalists. And the Muslum world (By and large) condems terrorism as well, even though extremists still perpetrate violence. Very little difference.
This is an important point that I think people aren't paying enough attention to. He has resigned only an extra administrative position that he may not particularly have enjoyed anyhow. In American universities (outside of the medical schools) being Chair of the department is usually not that big a deal. It isn't like some European universities where the Chair is really the person who runs the show. Mirecki still has his job and his academic rank - all he's done is stepped out of the limelight a little, whether to make life easier for himself or to keep himself from being a lightning rod for anti-University sentiment.
Oh Hell yeah.
I happened to catch a book-signing talk by John Gibson about his new book "The War on Christmas," a few weeks back. In his talk he mentioned several incidents where people had removed references to Christianity or Christmas from a public place and subsequently received death threats. He even said that one of those men had to move his wife and kids out of town for the holidays because he feared for their safety. Let me reiterate, the ones getting threatened were the seculars and they were getting threatened by people who were presumably very much Christian.
My girlfriend raised her hand and asked why Gibson was claiming seculars were perpetuating a war when his own examples showed Christians doing all the threatening behavior and she pointed out that he had said several times how nice the seculars seemed to be when he interviewed them. Gibson gave a very watered down reply that there are two sides to any war while the crowd proceeded to turn around and try to shout down my girlfriend. They neither noticed the substance of what she said, nor the fact that the she was taking every part of her point directly from the rhetoric of the author they had come to see. They didn't seem upset in the least that Christians were engaged in threatening behavior.
I certainly don't have an agenda against Christianity, but I must say that in my mind Christians are doing very big damage to their reputations with these kind of antics. Death threats and beatings are so over-the-top wrong that it amazes me when I hear Christians give the contradictory proclamation that Christianity is about Love. That it's about turning the other cheek.
I'm not against Islam, but I'm very much against Muslims who fly planes into tall buildings. I'm not against Christianity, but I'm very much against Christians who beat college professors on country roads. I don't think there's anything remotely like a war on Christianity right now, but if Christians keep insisting on beating and threatening people who disagree, they shouldn't be surprised when we eventually fight back.
TW