Posted on 11/29/2005 9:31:13 AM PST by 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."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Hee hee. Tangential point: I've read that in the days before Crete got a bad reputation, the "honor" when to Boeotia.
No, survival is just what happens, it isn't a directed goal. If genes were conscious and could direct their mutations then you could start talking about the goal of survival, but that isn't the case.
nonfundamentalist Christians
...And...
All Muslims
All Scientologists
All Moonies
...But does not include...
Almost all (if any) Biologists
Almost all Catholics
Almost all Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc
..His simple-minded hostility towards Christianity..
What hostility toward Christianity? The hostility in his e-mail was directed at "fundies" - I suspect that he includes Muslims in this category.
Granted, at the present time in Kansas it's primarily the Christian creationists and their ID catspaws who are threatening the integrity of science education, although even they have called on a Turkish Muslim and the Discovery Institute (which I believe has ties to the Moonies, but I'm not 100% sure) for assistance.
If this professor were in Turkey, and had the b@lls, he'd be denounced as an enemy of Islam.
AFAIK, it is already illegal to teach evolution in Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Or the latest wave of immigrants anywhere.
I am right with you there. But I suspect that if technical civilisation were to collapse those who are "unfit" in a biological sense in the wild would be the least of our problems. Not 1% of the human race would survive the decade.
You are getting your levels of explanation confused. For individual organisms survival appears to be a goal because they all spring from a long line of survivors. None of our billions of ancestors back to a primordial swamp suicided before reproducing, so a tendency against suicide should hardly be surprising.
Why is evolution considered anti-Christian? Last time I looked there were about 60 million Roman Catholics in the U.S. -- two or three times the number of evangelicals. Catholics can believe what they want about evolution, but the church leadership teaches that evolution is an historic fact.
Plenty of Freeper anti-evolutionists declare that it is impossible to both accept evolution and be a Christian. I think they are quite comfortable with the idea that Catholics and most nominal Protestants are not Christians.
I know you don't care if you are rude and obnoxious as long as you can blame others for acting like you, but when you call a freeper a troll, it is common courtesy to ping them to that post so that they can defend themselves.
If you don't want Mamzelle to post or ping to you, then you'd best not violate forum rules by calling her names and otherwise slandering her on the threads.
Don't anthropomorphize non-human processes.
I'm glad you raised the point. Knowing that science is limited in its scope of study, we can now say that the "it is" mentioned above cannot possibly be the totality of all things but exists within a context of other events.
As in don't deevolutionize motion?
Collapsing into incoherence placemarker.
Your fascist picture doesn't post properly. Fascist.
You've got a long way to go before you get a real evo-troll's tagline.
Doesn't it show up?
I prefer the ice-pick over the shotgun :)
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