Slashdot Mirror
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.
Could've used a bit of intelligent design.
He resigned as department chair, but as of that article, hasn't quit entirely. Just in case you don't want to RTFA (not that that happens here).
I read this story earlier today on HNN. He resigned as department chair, not as a professor. He's still doing all the same stuff, but with less paperwork. I know that in many departments, chair is a generally detested position because although it carries some prestige it often carries little real authority and ALWAYS comes with scads of paperwork that prevent academics from spending time on their first love (research or teaching, as the case may be). So the guy isn't out of a job or anything; the move is largely symbolic.
Make cheese not war 8:)
Then again, Im agnostic and havent attended church and base all my knowledge on written word and whatnot. Maybe in church they are saying to strike those evil doer anti-christians down like the wrath of god?
'I actually did that act one night in the south, then after the show these three rednecks came up to me. "Hey buddy, we're Christians and we didn't like what you said." I said "Then forgive me." Later on, when I was hanging from the tree...'
--Bill Hicks
"Dear Auntie Em: Hate your Intleligent Design, Hate Kansas> Took the dog" -Dorthy
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
A recent e-mail from Mirecki to members of a student organization referred to religious conservatives as "fundies" and said a course describing intelligent design as mythology would be a "nice slap in their big fat face." Mirecki apologized for those comments.
Me thinks "poorly worded" is an understatement. It's one thing when you're a troll on Slashdot using that language. It's a completely different thing to be in a respected teaching position and acting like a Slashdot troll. And he wonders why people are upset with him. *shakes head*
(P.S. I do hope they catch the assholes who beat him. That's not exactly acceptable behavior, either, no matter what he said.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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
The United State of Kansas.
U SOK?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
That's the part that confused me enough to make me read it twice. The CHAIR of the Religous Studies Dept. was saying things like:
- referring to religious individuals as "fundies"
- "a nice slap in their big fat face"
- others described as "repugnant and vile"
That boggles the mind. No excuse for beating the man, for any reason.-theGreater.
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"
A recent e-mail from Mirecki to members of a student organization referred to religious conservatives as "fundies" and said a course describing intelligent design as mythology would be a "nice slap in their big fat face." Mirecki apologized for those comments.
It's too bad he had to be so unprofessional. I'm all in favor of his class, but I can't sympathize with someone who acts like that. He's basically ruined it for other universities that may want to do something similar because he made it into a personal issue instead of an academic one.
So what are you alleging? That he beat himself up? Do you think that "a conservative activist in Kansas" has more credibility with respect to the investigation than Lt. Kari Wempe of the Douglas County Sheriff's Office?
Does smear have no bounds in this country?
Very well; let this abomination unto the Lord begin!
When a whole nation is dedicating itself to anti-Islamism, while Christianism is fucking it up the ass (how's that for "poorly-worded"?), it's only fair that in a state like Kansas, made infamous worldwide by that ludicrous anti-science christianism, scientists would have an anti-Christianism sentiment and it's only fair that they make it heard by all concerned. If they won't, who will?! Don't kid yourself, Science, and scientists are under attack by the deliberate liars and peddlers of self-serving nonsense.
But as head of a religious studies department, attacking a given faith is just unprofessional.
You can teach Greek Mythology without always speaking the name of "Zeus" with reverential awe.
You can even poke fun at your subject matter, depending on the focus of the course - I fondly remember my 1st semester physics professor ended practically every topic with something along the lines of "and of course in the days since Newton, we've discovered that most of this counts as complete rubbish, but I still expect you to know it for the test".
In the case of the topic under consideration, I (and any potential studend would) have every expectation this professor did not plan to merely present it as an objective overview of the tenets of ID (though students should of course have come away understanding those); but rather, a thorough debunking of a laughable-yet-popular ("popular" in the sheer-number-of-fools sense) topic, possibly broad enough to include a general overview of the roots of the dangerously antiintellectual attitude currently brewing in our culture.
here in Mexico. There was a student riot and strike (or something similar), they (the "students") shut down school. Some of them participated in violent protests against the government, and were sent to jail.
A law professor was going to give a talk about "Difference between political prisoners and criminals". The pseudo-students didn't let him start the talk, and he had to run away because they were all throwing him rotten food.
Lesson: Unless you're willing to become a martyr, never tell an angry mob they're WRONG.
I can't wait for the F Games on ESPN. Sports to the Fundament.
After all, I am strangely colored.
I know, he had his friends beat him up! Or, err... He managed to convince a hospital to fake a report or something.. err... and the police department too! Yeah, that's it! Obviously anybody who's beaten up is going to remember the exact road it's on and everything. And you're going to remember exact details about your attackers too, even when it's at night. Nobody's confused, frightened or panicky after being physically assaulted, especially atheists!
Perhaps we ought to test out these theories on the stupid idiot who's trying to cast some sort of cloud over the guy's credibility without having any hard evidence to back it up.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
...would people be equally outraged if the Religious Studies Chair at a religious school, let's say BYU, were to badmouth atheism? My guess is that it probably happens all the time.
"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)
The two men on a country road sound like the kind of christians who do say "turn the other cheek" as well as "squeal like a pig, boy!"
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Reverence wasn't what I expect. For that matter, there are lots of courses in college that exist specifically to question a subject.
The mistake was not the class, it was sending insulting email in a professional context, that's all.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
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.
What would Jesus do?
He'd lie on the ground bleeding, same as Mirecki did.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Exactly right. Altevogt is the fellow who was lurking on the email list to which Mirecki sent the note about "fundies", and who then shared the email publicly in order to discredit Mirecki. Whether or not that tactic is ethical, he's hardly an objective observer.
And I can't believe that the townhall.com column is the transcript of an actual interview; it's obviously satire. We're supposed to believe that Mirecki listened patiently to a couple dozen questions and replied "no comment" to each one, rather than simply cutting short the conversation at the outset?
What "oddities"? I read both articles you linked, as well as the badger herald article you linked above, and none of them cast doubt on the beating. There is one conservative activist whining that a guy who ran to the hospital after being assaulted can't remember what street he was on, but nothing suggesting he made anything up. The second article from the Kansan said the cops no longer consider it a hate crime, but that does not mean they don't think it occurred. My guess is that to be a "hate crime" in Kansas, like here in California, the target of an attack must be a member of a protected minority, and secular humanists don't fit the bill. But there is nothing suggesting he made up the attack except insinuation on the part of an activist.
College professors aren't supposed to be wishy-washy and neutral: the reason for tenure is to encourage them to have opinions, even strong ones. It's the interplay of multiple strong opinions, sometimes polar opposites, that makes the university experience useful.
That's why, for example, the University of California not only tolerated, but defended Angela Davis and her pro-Comummunist party views, despite the current "governator" being one Ronald Reagan.
So maybe he didn't say it very well. It's what he believes.
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.
Rule #1:
Never argue with people that have imaginary friends.
The attack on Professor Mirecki is heartbreaking. Violence in the name of God is disgusting. I think that the rift between members of academia and radcial Christians is growing. We are becoming the society that as a nation, we most actively despise: a society driven by radical religious fundamentalists who have misinterpreted the tenets of the locally dominant religion.
Kansas has always been a little weird. Nobody can debate that. However, Lawrence has been proud to stand out from the rest of the state and see things more thoughtfully. This most recent regression has hurt what Lawrence has always stood for: freedom. Freedom to live, freedom to express one's ideas, freedom to explore the unknown, and the freedom to stand up for those things.
Whatever your current thoughts are about Professor Mirecki, the criminals who attacked him, or the course he was trying to teach, you should probably get your news from sources a little closer to the action. The Lawrence Journal-World has covered this quite thoroughly and has some very interesting blog posts from a wide variety of bloggers (myself included) discussing the articles. I recommend it if you want to get a better view of the scenario.
Plenty of stupid things have taken place in Kansas this year. Let's work to fix the problems that we have caused here and try to move forward.
Nick M.
Research Assistant
Kansas NASA EPSCoR
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.
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
Damn. I thought it was 2005.
If you look at Mirecki's areas of expertise his irritation with fundamentalists becomes all the more understandable. His areas areas are Ancient Mediterranean Religion, Early Christianity, and Coptic Papyrology. That means that he knows a lot about about religion in the area in which Christianity developed about the origins of Christianity, and about branches of Christianity that either died out (e.g. gnosticism) or have followed a rather different course from the one that led to fundamentalism (e.g. Coptic Christianity). For someone with this background, the belief of fundamentalists that their interpretation of the particular compilation of texts that they consider holy is God's Truth must seem particularly crazy. I can't speak for him, but I bet that to him fundamentalists seem ignorant, naive, and arrogant even if one looks just at the religious texts and their interpretation, without concerning oneself with the conflict between fundamentalist beliefs and science.
Or more importantly...
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
This space unintentionally left blank.
As someone who is both interested in dismissing the conspiracy theories and was enrolled in the cancelled class, I think it is time to post some real information.
First, Paul Mirecki is a well-respected scholar in the field of Christianity. He is regularly chosen as the lecturer for the week that covers the Old Testament of the Bible in an Honors Western Civilization I course. Mirecki's personal beliefs regarding religion never came up in that lecture - he stuck to the facts. My experiences echo those of nearly every student who has taken a course taught by him. In his 20+ years as head of the Religious Studies department, Mirecki's scholarship and teaching have been praised by scholars and students alike.
Second, the email in question was sent via a Yahoo listserv to members of the KU Society of Open-Minded Atheists and Agnostics (SOMAA). While the group may be a part of KU, it is about as disconnected from the everyday processes of the University as can be. Student groups are funded through the KU Student Senate, which means the University's own democratic processes (which include plenty of Christians as voters) elected a body of individuals who sanctioned funding of SOMAA. The Christian individual who released the one paragraph of the email had no business doing so. The released text was taken out of any context (the vast majority of the message had nothing to do with the class in question). In addition, complaining about SOMAA being anti-Christian is akin to me joining the listserv for any of the multiple Christian student groups and then whining when they mention God or Jesus in their emails.
Third, the Kansas legislature has a history of trying to destroy the University of Kansas. Several years ago, a state legislator claimed a student came to her and accused the professor of a popular Human Sexuality course of promoting pedofilia among other things. After much hubub and threats from the state, it came out that the 'student' was actually an aide of the legislator in question, had been encouraged to falsify her claims, and an investigation by the University found zero evidence to back the claims. Keep in mind here folks that we have more than one legislator without so much as a high school diploma. A prominent representative from wealthy Johnson County has vocally voiced her opposition to the 19th Amendment and women's suffrage. The conservative majority in our state legislature is uneducated, inept, and scary - only our governer is keeping things from getting too out of control.
And finally, the beating is real. I notice one of the sources often cited for inconsitencies in stories is www.kansan.com . That is the online version of our student newspaper, and I would shudder to think that The Kansan would be used as a serious resource. The journalists on our newspaper staff have difficulties differentiating between their/there/they're, much less getting their facts straight on a criminal investigation. Please, if you're going to cite a Lawrence paper, at least go with something more reputable like the Journal World. After visiting with several faculty members of the Religious Studies department, they all gave similar accounts of Mirecki's injuries. Sorry to say, but I trust the accounts of professors with whom I have developed personal friendships over CNN journalists who probably did not even know where Lawrence was before this whole incident occurred.
You're very right. And I've always wondered why Christians are so intent on getting ID taught. It very clearly contradicts the Bible. And if you're willing to accept that the Bible isn't literal truth, then what the hell is the problem with thinking God made the laws of physics, hit the on-switch, and sends a Jesus or two every once in a while? You don't need gaps in the fossil record for that.
There are so many things wrong with Intelligent Design, there aren't even words for it.
Lets just take two:
1) It leads to an infinite regression. If complex things cannot come to being by themselves, then the creator can't come to be out of nothing either. And so forth. Que the infinite regress of creators.
2) As a scientific theory, it lacks all predictive power. Apply the theory of evolution to, for example, Avian Flu, and you can imagine that, during the course of it's fluish mutations it will hit upon the combination that will make it contagious among the dominant species on the planet, thats natural selection among countless flu variations.
What do you get when you apply ID to Bird Flu? The Creator is a bastard? The Creator is annoyed with us because there's too much sex on television?
I sat in a coffeeshop listening to an ID advocate committing logical error after error. He was sitting there,and reasoning backwards from any number of existing things to their inevitable nature as created things. Hilariously bad science. I have in my hand a hairbrush, it is made of a substance I will call plastic. I cannot imagine making such a thing, it is not wood, nor stone. Therefore there must be a magician involved somewhere! Oooo, look a landbridge! Could something so useful have come about by accident? No!
I sat and tried not to listen, while eating my damn lunch, and trying to imagine how any Intelligent designer could design a creature as foolish and ignorant as man.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Do not vote for a politician who claims special communication with higher beings.
"A man got religion, and asked the priest what he must do to be worthy of his new estate. The priest said, "Imitate our Father in Heaven, learn to be like him." The man studied his Bible diligently and thoroughly and understandingly, and then with prayers for heavenly guidance instituted his imitations. He tricked his wife into falling downstairs, and she broke her back and became a paralytic for life; he betrayed his brother into the hands of a sharper, who robbed him of his all and landed him in the almshouse; he inoculated one son with hookworms, another with the sleeping sickness, another with gonorrhea; he furnished one daughter with scarlet fever and ushered her into her teens deaf, dumb, and blind for life; and after helping a rascal seduce the remaining one, he closed his doors against her and she died in a brothel cursing him. Then he reported to the priest, who said that that was no way to imitate his Father in Heaven. The convert asked wherein he had failed, but the priest changed the subject and inquired what kind of weather he was having, up his way."
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