University of Kansas ‘IDs’ a myth

November 23, 2005

A few weeks ago, Kansas’ State Board of Education voted to adopt weaker science standards that specifically seek to undermine evolutionary biology.

The new Kansas standards press beyond the broad mandate for critical analysis of evolution that four other states have established in recent years, by citing specific points of contention that doubters of evolution use to undermine its primacy in science education. Among the most controversial changes was a redefinition of science itself so that it is not explicitly limited to natural explanations.

But, while the state board is turning back the clock in Kansas, the University of Kansas is doing its part to correct the mistake. The good news for creationists is that “intelligent design” creationism will be part of the university’s curriculum. The bad news, for them, is the context.

A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled “Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies.”

“The KU faculty has had enough,” said Paul Mirecki, department chairman. “Creationism is mythology. Intelligent design is mythology. It’s not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not.” […]

Mirecki said his course, limited to 120 students, would explore intelligent design as a modern American mythology. Several faculty members have volunteered to be guest lecturers, he said.

Good for Prof. Mirecki. There’s no problem with including creationism in an academic setting, so long as it’s offered in the appropriate — and accurate — framework.

I can only hope other universities will follow this example.

Can a university be give the Medal of Freedom, collectively? If not, they should. These folks are the best!!

  • And before everyone runs out of work, or wherever you are, early today, Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and to you CB.

    Frankly, I will be giving thanks for things like Carpetbagger Report, Eschaton, Rawstory, TPM, TWN, Washington Monthly. May they write long and prosper.

  • First off I hope Professor Mirecki is tenured. If not I bet he is fired within the next year. Second, This will be fodder for the “liberal” university argument. Bob Jones U won’t be adopting this take on it. If anything this is only ratcheting the issue up a notch. It will not change the fundamentalists and it will not resolve the issue.

    That said…Good Job Professor!

  • A while ago I read where some christian funadmentalist was taking another university to court because their science standards for admission did not give any credence to “intelligent design’ or as it is more rightfully called the christain theory of creation. Don’t remember hearing how that turned out. But I would think an institution of higher leraning can set its own admission standards. I’m also sure this man’s child would be accepted quite readily into Bob Jones U…Go Christains!!

  • I applaud the teaching of ID in an appropriate
    course, e.g. religion, philosophy or metaphysics,
    but I think the choice of the word “mythology”
    is unfortunate. It prejudges ID before it’s
    even defined. ID goes all over the lot from
    strict creationism to a God that created the
    universe and all its laws, including evolution,
    through the big bang, and then just sat back
    and let ‘er rip, or maybe went on to build some
    other universes. They are not all equally
    silly or disprovable.

    The idea is great, but the term “mythology”
    might simply fan the flames of the debate
    and cause the fundies to redouble their efforts
    to put ID in the science classroom, where
    it absolutely does not belong.

    Hey, happy Thanksgiving CB, everyone.
    Great site here. Much to be thankful for.

  • One point in the Kansas course description is crucial: it describes ID “as a modern American mythology.”

    Recently, out of curiosity, I did a Google search on ID and scanned down the hits. Admittedly I only looked at the first thousand or so, but found that the only foreign references were to news stories in foreign papers reporting on events in the US.

    ID is just a claim for something as a universal when it is really a product of a specific culture. True science is a concept that crosses borders and cultural contexts whereas ID does not. It’s ridiculous that this issue has gotten this far and points to the decline that we are in. If you have ever wondered how the dark ages came about wonder no more. We’re living that history all over again!

  • Yes yes ditto and all that. AND HAPPY TURKEY DAY TO ALL THOUGHTFUL PEOPLE who may, if they organize, pull our collectivity back from the brink of the abyss.

  • This is all too rational. Wait for it, somebody may be in line for a good swiftboating here……..
    Either way, there will be some major push back on this.

  • hark said “…ID goes all over the lot from
    strict creationism to a God that created the
    universe and all its laws, including evolution,
    through the big bang, and then just sat back
    and let ‘er rip, or maybe went on to build some
    other universes.”.

    Actually, hark, ID’s core belief is completely incompatible with the second option you listed. Since ID believes in irreducible complexity in multiple biological structures it has to believe that those structures could only exist because a Creator made them that way, not that the Creator set the rules and let those structures evolve. The entire point of the belief system is that they couldn’t have evolved but necessitated direct intervention by the Creator.

  • Hark just doesn’t get it. ID requires a belief in something that can never be proved.

  • I agree with serial catowner. “ID requires a belief in something that can never be proved.” That is, the existence of a creator.

    However, evolution also assumes a belief in something that can never be proved: that there is no God.

    I believe that ID, creationism, and evolution fall into the category of philosophy, or metaphysics.

    Just something to think about.

  • Quick question: If intelligent design is such an implausible, groundless theory, why are you all so afraid to have it taught AS A THEORY to intelligent, free-thinking students? Evolution is shoved down our throats and for those of us who like to think for ourselves and can see serious flaws in the THEORY of evolution. I’m sorry if being given an alternative offends you, but being asked to swallow a flawed theory without question offends my intelligence. Such a biased class as the one proposed at the University of Kansas only makes free-thinkers who have come to their own conclusions feel attacked, ridiculed, and disrespected. I’m sure if there was a class debunking evolution, you would all be up in arms. Every theory presented requires some great leap of faith. Either believe that there is something out there that created everything, or believe that somehow this incredibly complex world fell perfectly into place all by itself. Your choice.
    An Intelligent Student

  • ID is only a theory and quite early in its infancy being still fine tuned. Defineable and reasonable hypotheses have been put forward, even testing has been attempted to prove one of them, Professor Behe wrong. So far all attempts have failed. If its not science and they say its not falsifiable, then why are they trying so hard to do just that?

    Can someone please tell me how macro-evolution is empirically tested? No one is arguing here about genetic variation, all creationist(old and young earthers), IDers, Structuralist accept genetic variation and the LAWS put forth by Mendel – you know, the Christian Monk who formed the laws of heridity by being the First to apply Math and Scientific Methods.

    Unlike Darwin, he tested his theory and it is now known as a Laws which all geneticist are aware of and follow. They attribute the beginning of their field to Mendel, not Darwin. In fact evolution and Darwin are not needed or required based upon Mendel’s laws.

    [Edited for length; 1,600 words is a little too long — CB]

  • Calli asks why some of us are afraid to have ID taught if it’s such “an implausible, groundless theory” — well, we’re afraid precisely because it’s implausible and groundless: what kind of a god creates decayed dinosaur bones and buries them underground to trick people who are only using the sense of reason with which He endowed them? Calli champions the idea of offering alternatives to free-thinkers, but lines have to be drawn: college courses are not offered on all kinds of hare-brained theories that people have clung to over the years, and for good reason. Let professors teach what they think about the ideas in their field! I find intelligent design offensive from a humanistic perspective: it promotes ignorance of people whose “design” seems unintelligent — babies born with exposed spines who die hours after their birth, born without limbs, born into extreme poverty, etc.

    There are certainly elements in our cosmos that seem REALLY amazing — the human eye or brain, spiders, redwoods, etc., and we need something vast, something huge to explain their existence: let’s opt to explain them with reference to the vast, huge fossil record, and the MILLIONS OF YEARS of history that scientific evidence allows us to project into the past, rather than projecting (and, alas, worshipping) an “intelligent” designer who saw fit to create human beings with all kinds of birth defects, who suffer and die painfully through no fault of their own, to create a nature red in tooth and claw (the praying mantis EATS its mate — soooo intelligent! I have two nostrils that sometimes get stuffy because of allergies — PERFECT!), and a human race generally bedeviled by what must be the intelligent designer’s policy of planned obsolescence.

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