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

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 ...


TOPICS: Heated Discussion
KEYWORDS: academia; apology; crevolist; dems; evocreeps; fundies; highereducation; ku; libs; mirecki; pubs; scienceeducation
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To: editor-surveyor
Proper diet, dump the sugar, pasta, french fries, and any manufactured drug, or cosmetic junk, cleaning products, etc, supplement calcium if necessary to achieve a near 7.0 body ph, and ALS and MS dissappear.

You can't be seriously suggesting nutricional supplements can cure multiple sclerosis and Lou Gehrig's disease.

421 posted on 11/30/2005 1:00:10 PM PST by Liberal Classic (No better friend, no worse enemy. Semper Fi.)
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To: Liberal Classic
Proper diet, dump the sugar, pasta, french fries, and any manufactured drug, or cosmetic junk, cleaning products, etc, supplement calcium if necessary to achieve a near 7.0 body ph, and ALS and MS dissappear.

So that's why all those biblical people lived to be 900 years old. :)

422 posted on 11/30/2005 1:01:55 PM PST by Thatcherite (F--ked in the afterlife, bullying feminized androgenous automaton euro-weenie blackguard)
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To: Thatcherite

#####Saying that something seems random to us doesn't preclude God as the controller. God may be guiding the result of all events that seem random to us. That would be God's prerogative, and we would not necessarily have any way of detecting such actions.#####


So it's possible that evolution isn't true, or even if it is true, that it's the result of God's guidance and it couldn't exist otherwise.


423 posted on 11/30/2005 1:13:22 PM PST by puroresu (Conservatism is an observation; Liberalism is an ideology)
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To: CarolinaGuitarman
"Nutrition will not *cure* most diseases"

That is a lie from the pit of hell.

Nutrition is the only thing that stands a chance of curing anything, short of prayer. Drugs don't help anything, and each and every one of them has incrementally fatal side effects. Give up the scientology crap; it's just fringe lunacy like evolution. Is Kevin Trudeau your irritating brother-in-law? Nutritional healing is well established, and it's only failures are those who expect an immediate miracle for a condition that took most of their life to develop.

Your sister (if you do have one) may have come in contact with more toxins than you did, particularly cleaning chemicals. Detoxifying her body could take a year or more, depending on what her condition is. Detoxification is an established science, and much has been researched and written up on the subject. I know people who have overcome severe MS that made it impossible for them to even hold a pencil without a special appliance. An engineer that I frequently work with had prepared to die; she had put everything she owned into trusts, and was deteriorating at a visible rate. She now walks more than a mile every day. It's all from proper eating and detoxification, and she ain't no scientologist either.

You sir are deliberately ignorant.

424 posted on 11/30/2005 1:15:48 PM PST by editor-surveyor (Atheist and Fool are synonyms; Evolution is where fools hide from the sunrise)
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To: Thatcherite
So that's why all those biblical people lived to be 900 years old. :)

I thought it was the vapor canopy

425 posted on 11/30/2005 1:20:15 PM PST by Quark2005 (Science aims to elucidate. Pseudoscience aims to obfuscate.)
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To: CarolinaGuitarman

In case you hadn't noticed, "Quackwatch" has been busted and de-quacked. The good 'doctor' it seems had his license to practice revoked, and now several court cases in which he testified will have to be re-tried due to the incompetent testimony he has been giving. Nothing on his web site has ever had any truth to it.


426 posted on 11/30/2005 1:22:39 PM PST by editor-surveyor (Atheist and Fool are synonyms; Evolution is where fools hide from the sunrise)
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To: Coyoteman; editor-surveyor
In response to your challenge that no evidence has been posted on these threads, I posted some evidence.

What evidence? Thise are skulls of variuous apes, and show variation within the ape species.

427 posted on 11/30/2005 1:24:13 PM PST by Oztrich Boy (Paging Nehemiah Scudder:the Crazy Years are peaking. America is ready for you.)
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To: Oztrich Boy

Are your left and right jaws parallel?


428 posted on 11/30/2005 1:28:04 PM PST by editor-surveyor (Atheist and Fool are synonyms; Evolution is where fools hide from the sunrise)
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To: Sub-Driver

I sent an uncomplimentary EMail to pmirecki@ku.edu this morning and it has not come back.

I do not know for sure, however, that that is his address.

Anyone who would like to vent can try it.


429 posted on 11/30/2005 1:28:16 PM PST by 2Am4Sure
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To: P-Marlowe
I suspect that if a professor wore an "Ichthus" shirt <>< to class at the University of Nebraska (or even an Ichthus lapel pin) that the administration would be all over him like white on rice and he would probably be hauled before some committee who would be more than happy to revoke his tenure and give him the boot.

Revoke his tenure for wearing a Christian fish tee-shirt? Are you joking?

I think you may have a seriously distorted idea of how things work.
430 posted on 11/30/2005 1:29:11 PM PST by aNYCguy
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To: teawithmisswilliams
Me: once life was present on Earth, it had no choice but to evolve.

You: Except that no "choice" was involved, right? Only completely random chance, since no intelligence was involved.

LIke I said, as soon as there are imperfectly reproducing replicators and limited resources, evolution happens. "Choice" only applies to sentients; evolution applies to all systems of imperfect replicators.

Thnk about it. How could evolution fail to happen? Some combinations of existing genes and mutations will produce more offspring than others; hence, these combinations and mutations will be present in a higher percentage in the next generation; of these, some combinations, ... Repeat.

If the environment is completely static, eventually some sort of steady state (dispersal around a mean) will result; if the environment is gradually changing, the mean will change in response. Since the environment includes other living things that are going through the same process at their own rates, the combinations are unlimited and never repeat.

431 posted on 11/30/2005 1:29:37 PM PST by Virginia-American
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To: Oztrich Boy
In response to your challenge that no evidence has been posted on these threads, I posted some evidence.

What evidence? Thise are skulls of variuous apes, and show variation within the ape species.

You are more correct than you know.

432 posted on 11/30/2005 1:29:54 PM PST by Coyoteman (I love the sound of beta decay in the morning!)
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To: Coyoteman
You are more correct than you know.

Not "more correct than I know"

433 posted on 11/30/2005 1:31:48 PM PST by Oztrich Boy (Paging Nehemiah Scudder:the Crazy Years are peaking. America is ready for you.)
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To: PatrickHenry

Reminds my Former Lurker and his breakdowns over crop circles and vaccinations.


434 posted on 11/30/2005 1:32:05 PM PST by balrog666 (A myth by any other name is still inane.)
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To: Right Wing Professor
...Dinosaurs are too much to hope for, but we might be able to do a mammoth or even a saber-tooth. How cool would that be? :-)

Very!

Back in the mid '70s I was working on a survey of all the museums in the USA. One of the questions was something like "are you engaging in breeding programs to try to recreate extinct species?"

435 posted on 11/30/2005 1:34:12 PM PST by Virginia-American
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To: PatrickHenry
From AIG:

Why do rabbits have digestive systems that function ‘so poorly that they must eat their own feces’?

This is an incredible proposition. One of the most successful species on earth would have to be the rabbit! The rabbit's mode of existence is obviously very efficient (what about the saying ‘they breed like rabbits’?). Just because eating feces may be abhorrent to humans, does not mean it is inefficient for the rabbit! Indeed rabbits have a special pouch called the cecum, containing bacteria, at the beginning of the large intestine. These bacteria aid digestion, just as bacteria in the rumen of cattle and sheep aid digestion. The rabbit produces two types of fecal pellet, a hard one and a special soft one coming from the cecum. It is only the latter which is eaten to enrich the diet with the nutrients produced by the bacteria in the cecum. In other words, this ability of rabbits is part of their design; it is not something they have learnt to do because they have ‘digestive systems which function so poorly’. It is part of the variety of design which speaks of creation, not evolution.

‘Vestigial’ Organs: What do they prove?

More:

Bad Designs in Biology? Why the "Best" Examples Are Bad

436 posted on 11/30/2005 1:34:33 PM PST by Michael_Michaelangelo (The best theory is not ipso facto a good theory. Lots of links on my homepage...)
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To: editor-surveyor; CarolinaGuitarman
"Nutrition will not *cure* most diseases"

That is a lie from the pit of hell.

Nutrition is the only thing that stands a chance of curing anything, short of prayer. Drugs don't help anything, and each and every one of them has incrementally fatal side effects. Give up the scientology crap; it's just fringe lunacy like evolution.

I'm sorry, but I think you're the one who is approaching the lunatic fringe here. I'm a believer in good nutrition and in the avoidance of food allergens and artificial flavorings, but to say vitamins cure disease and drugs don't help anything is wrong. Way wrong.

437 posted on 11/30/2005 1:34:59 PM PST by Liberal Classic (No better friend, no worse enemy. Semper Fi.)
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To: puroresu
Would you find it outrageous if, in science classes, it was suggested that... science can neither prove nor disprove God's existence, so He MAY be necessary for the universe and science itself to exist?

You're correct that science cannot address supernatural causes, and if I understand your suggestion in this paragraph I agree with you. Students should learn the definition of science, which will include understanding that it does not address any attributes of supernatural forces whatsoever.

That is what you're suggesting, correct? Students learning that science does not include deities in its scope?
438 posted on 11/30/2005 1:36:25 PM PST by aNYCguy
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To: editor-surveyor
How can totally unrelated skulls be evidence of anything? The differences between them is in most cases quite striking.

So then, which of these are animal skulls and which are human skulls? (They are marked with letters to make it easy to answer.)

14 hominid skulls (again)

439 posted on 11/30/2005 1:37:49 PM PST by Quark2005 (Science aims to elucidate. Pseudoscience aims to obfuscate.)
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To: CarolinaGuitarman

I have a very good lady friend with MS. She has struggled for years, mentally and physically, with it and has managed to mitigate, somewhat, some of its physical problems. But the hardest was the mental part and she still struggles with that.

These diseases that might be auto-immune and more prevalent in women are both interesting, medically, and a scourge. I am sorry for you and your sister and I hope modern medicine will get a handle on these things soon.

I really feel sorry for the people who will try the "coral calcium" (was that it?). Might as well try dehydrated toad urine. Not only do some Creationists wish to live in a society defined by 4000 year old scriptures, but it appears they want to live in a 4000 year old herbal medicine/witchcraft medical environment also. How could such a person even touch a computer?


440 posted on 11/30/2005 1:40:57 PM PST by furball4paws (One of the last Evil Geniuses, or the first of their return.)
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