Kansas Prof. Apologizes for E-Mail [referred to religious conservatives as "fundies" ....]

Yahoo ^

[Sub-Driver]

Kansas Prof. Apologizes for E-Mail

11 minutes ago

A University of Kansas religion professor apologized for an e-mail that 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."

In a written apology Monday, Paul Mirecki, chairman of the university's Religious Studies Department, said he would teach the planned class "as a serious academic subject and in an manner that respects all points of view."

The department faculty approved the course Monday but changed its title. The course, originally called "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationisms and other Religious Mythologies," will instead be called "Intelligent Design and Creationism."

The class was added to next spring's curriculum after the Kansas State Board of Education decided to include more criticism of evolution in its standards for science teaching. The vote was seen as a big win for proponents of intelligent design, who argue that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.

Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism — a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation — camouflaged in scientific language.

Mirecki's e-mail was sent Nov. 19 to members of the Society of Open-Minded Atheists and Agnostics, a student organization for which he serves as faculty adviser.

"The fundies (fundamentalists) want it all taught in a science class, but this will be a nice slap in their big fat face by teaching it as a religious studies class under the category mythology."

Mirecki addressed the message to "my fellow damned" and signed off with: "Doing my part to (tick) off the religious right, Evil Dr. P."

[furball4paws]

"Unfitness has a tendency to be selected out of the gene pool in the most final way."

Except where the natural processes are being screwed around with. As an example, I give you modern humans through the use of modern medicine.

[js1138]

The concept of spontanaeity and abiogenesis, for example, are used to address either more or less contextual phenomena that provide the conditions for the possibility of an event.

Your propensity for postmodernist bloviation is noted. Try saying it in English.

[Thatcherite]

I received my degree in Anthropology and Archaeology so find it repugnant to mock anyones religious beliefs.

Really? Flat-earthers? People who think they are Marie Antoinette reborn? People who think they'll get 72 virgins in Paradise if they blow up a busload of Jewish women and kids? Crystal Healers? Magic Pyramid believers? Druids? People who think that George Bush Jnr is the Anti-Christ? People who belong to sects that endlessly predict the imminent end of the world? People who think that an African Dictator is Christ reborn? Numerologists? David Icke? What a sad straight-faced world you must live in.

[Right Wing Professor]

By no would I restrict his freedom of speech away from the classroom, I just question if he can be objective in his instruction with such personal animosity towards a religious belief.

Let's suppose, instead, he had a strong religious belief, say in six-day creation. Would you question his ability to be objective in teaching a science class?

[Thatcherite]

"Except where the natural processes are being screwed around with. As an example, I give you modern humans through the use of modern medicine."

The activities of humans are part of the environment. Certain correctable conditions no longer constitute unfitness, in the current environment, by definition. Likewise domestic animal fitness is determined by their suitability for answering the needs of humans. No value judgement is implied by fitness. No absolute standard for fitness exists. The fit breed, the unfit don't.

[cornelis]

Thank fitness that the earth's wobble on its axis found a nice place to persist.

[Thatcherite]

Any organism can only be fit for the environment in which it finds itself. All living things are descended from a very long line of ancestors that met the fitness test.

[furball4paws]

"You are just plain wrong here. There is no implied direction of fitness towards increasing order."

SJ Gould used to dislike the idea that evolution was a process of increasing order or complexity. After all a trilobite was highly evolved and fit its environment so well that it was one of the longest lived critters. People who are anthrocentric think all this happened so that man could emerge, but Gould said that the emergence of mammals and Man was not a foregone conclusion. Chance could have lead away from the mammalian line and today's Freepers could well have been colonial plants.

[Thatcherite]

Well, from where I'm standing most of you *are* rebellious colonial plants.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

The important point is that *fitness* is an a posteriori designation. You can only say something is fit or less fit after the genotype has already been fixed, and the phenotype has been formed, and said phenotype is placed in a specific environment. There is no way that an organism can *plan* the variation needed in order for the next generation to be *fit*. Natural selection is not a teleological (goal-directed) process.

[Thatcherite]

Thank you for making the point I was dimly groping for far clearer.

[furball4paws]

I would suspect his objectivity in teaching a religion class under those circumstances.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

Well, I'm sometimes good for something. :)

[js1138]

Fitness is preferable over unfitness. There is no "fitness," as Darwin called it, without conditions and elements that make biological motion take place toward increasing order, rather than decreasing order.

Fitness is simply another way of saying an organism has reproduced. It is not a comment on order or disorder or complexity or simplicity. Bacteria is the modal form of life on earth. There is no tendency towards greater complexity, and the cellular machinery of "higher" forms of life is not significantly more complex than that of bacteria. Even genome length is not particularly correlated with what we loosely call complexity.

[furball4paws]

I am in no way against modern medicine. But we have screwed around with the natural mechanisms of evolution because of it. The implication is that we cannot stop half way or our gene pool will be badly corrupted. So we must persist until we have the means to correct genetic defects by means other than natural selection.

[mware]

Actually I think that the topic is very well suited and the appropriate placement for the topic to be discussed.

As to the suitability of someone who has strong religious beliefs teaching certain courses, I have a very strong belief that conception begins at birth and have no problem in teaching life science.

[mware]

What a sad straight-faced world you must live in.

Respecting people, yes I can see how you would find that a sad world.

[teawithmisswilliams]

He mocked only some religious beliefs, and he did so to a group of like-minded people.

Mocking Christians--he's a real profile in courage. I'd like to hear the brave iconoclast's opinion of islam...

[furball4paws]

and you are a puppet of an effete monarchy :-)

[furball4paws]

We managed to clean this up long enough to get to 300.