THE MYTH OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN

At the University of Kansas creationism and intelligent design will be taught in a university class next summer. This would be alarming, but for the fact the class will teach the two as mythology, not science.

Paul Mirecki, chairman of KU’s religious studies department says he plans to teach the course “Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies” next semester.”

He’s doing so because he says the KU faculty has “had enough.”

Remember Kansas is the home of six state board of education commissioners who think intelligent design is science and who have mandated that it be taught in the state’s schools as an alternative to Darwin and the Theory of Evolution.

It is likely that students will line up to take the class which will be capped at 120 students, to explore intelligent design as a modern American mythology.

The Lawrence Journal World reports the course also will cover the origins of creationism, why it’s an American phenomenon, and why Americans have allowed it to pervade politics and education. Mirecki said several KU faculty have volunteered to be guest lecturers.

“Creationism is mythology,” Mirecki said. “Intelligent design is mythology. It’s not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not.”

Of course, the proponents of intelligent design are bent all out of shape by the plans.

“I would predict that (Mirecki’s) effort will go down in history as one of the laughingstocks of the century,” said John Calvert, an attorney and managing director of the Intelligent Design Network in Johnson County, Kansas.

Calvert and his supporters say the class is meant to demean them (which wouldn’t be hard).

“To equate intelligent design to mythology is really an absurdity, and it’s just another example of labeling anybody who proposes (intelligent design) to be simply a religious nut,” Calvert said.

I say if the shoe fits wear it.

Calvert questioned Mirecki’s expertise and said he wasn't qualifited to teach a course dealing with intelligent design.

Mirecki, we will again note, is the Chair of KU’s Department of Religion. He holds a Doctorate of Theology (Th.D.) from Harvard University. Professor Mirecki is an active member of several international scholarly societies, has convened several international academic conferences, and regularly searches European and American museum collections for unstudied ancient manuscripts which he prepares for publication. He has published five books, seventeen journal and book chapters, twenty-six book reviews and minor articles, and had forty papers presented at scholarly societies and universities.

Calvert is a lawyer and a Managing Director of Intelligent Design Network, Inc. He was engaged in corporate finance and business litigation with Lathrop Gage L.C., of Kansas City for 32 years. For the past four years his legal practice has focused on constitutional requirements for teaching origins science in public schools. He received an undergraduate degree in Geology from somewhere and has practiced geology in a number of legal engagements involving mining and the oil and gas industry.

Uh, am I missing something here?

Mirecki told the Journal World intelligent design proponents liked to view themselves as the victims, but that’s not the case.

“The educational system of Kansas is under attack,” Mirecki said. “All they are is oppressors. They’re not martyrs and victims ... I’m expecting insecure, threatened people to start being more and more vocal. They don’t want their beliefs to be analyzed rationally. That’s what this class is devised to do.”

Nicole Okazaki, Weber State University (Utah) zoology professor who teaches human biology courses at WSU(a hot bed of leftwing thought) notes that Calvert’s group declares, “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.”

Okazaki points out the intelligent designer is subject to interpretation, which ranges from God to aliens to a flying spaghetti monster.

“Intelligent design is not scientific, it’s not supported, it shouldn’t be taught, it should not be there. Period,” Okazaki said. “There’s no scientific reason to put it there, there’s no legal reason to put it there.”

But intelligent design could fit in a philosophy or literature or religion course, she said.

Meanwhile the Vatican’s chief astronomer (who knew they had one) has just weighed in on the controversy surrounding the teaching of intelligent design again.

Rev. George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said placing intelligent design theory alongside that of evolution in school programs is “wrong” and is akin to mixing apples with oranges.

“Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be,” the ANSA news agency quoted Father Coyne as saying. “If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science.”

Earlier in a June article in the British Catholic magazine The Tablet, Father Coyne reaffirmed God's role in creation but said science explains the history of the universe.

“If they respect the results of modern science, and indeed the best of modern biblical research, religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God or a designer God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly.”

Rather, he argued, God should be seen more as an encouraging parent.

“God in his infinite freedom continuously creates a world that reflects that freedom at all levels of the evolutionary process to greater and greater complexity,” he wrote. “He is not continually intervening, but rather allows, participates, loves.”

A columnist for Boston’s MetroWest by the name of Glenn Ickler may have hit the nail on the head. He wrote that one of the most decisive arguments against the theory of intelligent design is in fact President Bush. As he put it, “Whoever designed Doubleya's brain left a vacancy in the area that normally stores and disgorges common sense. “ Sources: Lawrence Journal World, Professor Paul Mirecki Web Site, Intelligent Design Network, Globe and Mail (Canada), Weber State University Signpost, MetroWest Daily (Boston)