Well, it seems that my little-known, oft-made fun of, home state is back in the news again, and once again it has to do with Intelligent Design. With all the negative attention received, it makes me long for the time where all people knew of Kansas was the Wizard of Oz.

Kansas first stepped into the limelight recently with the huge inflation of truth that ocurred when the passing of the State's science standard's was ran as headline news worldwide. As I pointed out in a previous post here, the new standards are not what was made of them. They now sit in accordance with most other states' standards, and, contrary to the reporting, do not mandate or even allow the teaching of Intelligent Design.

This leads to the second step into the limelight...We have been getting national attention because of a professor at the University of Kansas who will be teaching a course this next fall on "Myth's". One of the main "myth's" to be discussed? Intelligent Design. This is a classic example of the naturalists refusing to look at evidence and being closed minded (which something they so often decry). To make things even more controversial, an email that he sent through a Yahoo listserv was released that exposed his true motivations for the course. Some sample quotes:

“The fundies 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,’”

He signed the note:

“Doing my part (to upset) the religious right, Evil Dr. P.”

You can find more about the whole ordeal here. The email reveals alot about the motivation of the course and calls into question whether or not the course should be taught in this manner, which is clearly not academic, but rather propaganda. I understand that KU (and most universities, for that manner) lean to the left quite a bit and so some of this is to be expected. I attended KU for a semester of Undergrad, and it really is like a San Francisco in KS. (Not that it is a bad thing, just giving a little persepective). The course itself seems to have jumped the gun a little bit with classifiying ID with mythology. It's relatively young (about 10 years), and there appears to be a lot of potential in design theory, so it seems premature to go ahead and throw it out before it has a chance. It's this kind of behavior that makes outsiders observing the whole debate wonder whose side the facts are really on, when one side is talking science and the other is talking motivations, classifications of science, etc. etc. (Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, has been blogging about this fact recently. The overwhelming negativity that he has received from the darwinists has really just proved the point he was trying to make. You can read his posts here. This linked post is the 3rd in the series, you can easily find the first 2)