Thoughts in a Haystack: Careful What You Wish For

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Careful What You Wish For

It has been the not-so-secret desire of the Intelligent Design crowd to have ID taught in public schools (despite the Discovery Institute’s mealy-mouthed opposition to "mandatory" teaching of ID). Well, Kansas University intends to do just that and guess whose knickers are now in a knot.

KU has announced a new course entitled "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationisms and other Religious Mythologies." Of course, the Ideologists had in mind throwing some hokum up against the wall in high school biology courses in hopes some will stick, while simultaneously taking time away from the precious little devoted to evolution in public school curricula, not a full academic treatment of ID in all its deficiencies.

Reaction has been predictable, if laughable. An early comment by Kansas State Senator Kay O’Connor (R-Olathe) shows that she never got the memo from the Discovery Institute about the "Designer" not being God and especially not being the God of Christianity:

Why poke a stick in somebody’s eye if you don’t have to? If you’re going to have an intelligent design course and call it mythology, I think in the very least it’s a slap in the face to every Judeo-Christian religion that’s out there.

If ID is science, Senator, why would criticism of it be a poke in the eye to Judeo-Christians? (The esteemed Senator might also explain which religions have aspects of both Judaism and Christianity that are not Christian denominations. But that is a bit of foolishness for another day.)

Naturally, the Senator is ignorant of the academic usage of "mythology" (not her only failing when it comes to academics, I suspect) and is no doubt offended by the "common usage" meaning of the term as something false and superstitious. All I can say to the senator is: think Joseph Campbell.

All this would be merely amusing if the fangs behind ID’s smile weren’t coming out. Threats to the funding of KU are already circulating and Sen. O’Connor, after noting that anything was possible in the Legislature, said:

If they press forward in this area and continue to kick sand, the ultimate will be a negative of some sort. I don’t know what the negative will be ... You can’t kick sand in someone’s face and then expect a positive. And that’s what this is -- a sand-kicking contest..

If the Senator wants to destroy the reputation and the reality of a great university, she could not have chosen a better way to set about it. Rational conservatives who are interested in a free marketplace of ideas had better wake up to the viper they have clasped to their bosom.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:21 AM