Academic Freedom for Politically Correct Professors Thrives at KU

My old college town paper, the Lawrence Journal-World, reports that two new classes at the University of Kansas will work to discredit the theory of intelligent design. One class, taught by religion professor Paul Mirecki, chairman of KU’s religious studies department, was initially titled Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies. In an e-mail to an atheist listserv, Mirecki wrote: “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.”

Stop CNN Before They Edit Again

CNN strikes again, delivering a completely biased story about the debate over intelligent desgin. In their treatment of Dr. Behe, CNN’s editors used short quotes from Dr. Behe interspersed with factually inaccurate voiceovers to mislead viewers about Dr. Behe’s views on intelligent design. Rather than let Dr. Behe in his own words define intelligent design, and his work related to it, CNN correspondent Delia Gallegher puts words in his mouth wrongly stating: “Michael Behe is a major player behind intelligent design, the movement that’s trying to bring the supernatural into science.”

Krauthammer’s ID Strawman

Charles Krauthammer’s syndicated essay against intelligent design ran opposite mine in today’s Seattle Times. The piece is full of problems, which Tom Gilson and Lawrence Seldon explore in loving detail here and here. Now I would have framed a couple of points in their otherwise fine analysis a little differently. In one place,

Students Let the ID Genie out of the Lamp

Faced with a realization that support for “diversity” at
Cornell does not extend to academic viewpoints, some 80
students have organized an IDEA chapter on campus and are
educating themselves.