OPEN-MINDED INTOLERANCE

 

 

 

Rudy Takala
December 3, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

The University of Kansas is establishing a new course, called, "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationisms and Other Religious Mythologies.” Its purpose, according to an e-mail sent by Paul Mirecki, chair of the KU Department of Religious Studies, is to “slap” the “big fat face” of “fundies” by teaching it under the category of mythology.

One teacher in the religious studies department agreed with the course, stating, "[Christians] want their religion taught as fact,” and “That's simply something you can't do in a state university."

KU Provost David Shulenburger explained further, saying, "My understanding was that [Mirecki’s message] was a private e-mail communication that somehow was moved out of those channels and has become a public document.” In other words, the fact that the course was designed to mock Christians isn’t something we were supposed to know, so no one should be offended.

Bringing academia’s derision of Christianity to light is something that amuses me, because those who engage in it are rarely willing to tolerate dissent. Last time I wrote on the topic, one evolutionist called me a f***wit in a posting on his Website. Following an expletive-laden polemic, he declared that homeschoolers weren’t socialized and couldn’t handle the “real world,” where people had different opinions. Evidently, evolutionists believe that you’re only good at handling other people’s opinions if you can curse at them when they disagree with you.

Never mind that evolutionists, not creationists, are attempting to suppress the opinions of others using tax dollars. I’ve encountered the same phenomenon in my own college biology class; in order to reach the eight or so chapters concerning evolution, it was necessary to skip about half a dozen other chapters to reach them.

The teacher was proud to tell us that her graduate thesis argued for evolutionism being taught to the exclusion of creationism. When she asked if we had any idea why she took that position, the first reply was a dutiful reference to the separation of church and state.

Of course I mentioned that, legally, atheism is a religion – that fact has been reaffirmed in a number of court decisions, from lower courts to the Supreme Court. In Kaufman v. McCaughtry, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier this year that those who don’t believe in a supreme being should still be considered religious. In United States v. Seeger, the Supreme Court ruled that disbelief in the existence of a God did not signify a lack of faith in anything whatsoever. The list could go on.

Sadly, she didn’t seem to be listening. Her reply, roughly, was, “Right, so that brings us to a second reason.” She proceeded to explain that learning about evolution would make us more open-minded. She told us that there was some compelling evidence in favor of it, and that if we were just open-minded, it could “really make you question your beliefs.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time for being open-minded, so I left early. That seems to describe most of her students, as more than half of the class we began with no longer attends the lectures. (“But don’t forget to take Biology II next semester, because no one’s signed up yet!”)

For one to become truly “open-minded,” one would think that it’d be necessary to understand more than one viewpoint. However, sanctimonious liberal professors have a propensity to believe that anyone who disagrees with them is stupid, and simply isn’t aware of the “right” opinion.

It’s reminiscent of Chairman Mao’s each-one-teach-one method of bringing literacy to China, for which he used the works of Darwin as his primary instruments of instruction. Indoctrination wasn’t particularly relevant to learning how to read, but the two objectives did happen to converge. The same is true of teaching evolution as science today. The moral is that evolutionists have never really cared how their beliefs were taught, so long as they weren’t taught as theories along with everyone else’s.

The problem with teaching evolution as a fact is that, when people are the self-professed descendents of apes, they begin to act accordingly. That’s why progressive liberals don’t see anything wrong with ridiculing their opposition, abusing their power, using vulgarities, and, when possible, paying themselves with your tax dollars.

If you’d like to send an e-mail to the Kansas provost, you can reach him at dshulenburger@ku.edu. If you’d like to reach the fine example of a liberal intellectual who chairs the KU Department of Religious Studies, you can find him at pmirecki@ku.edu.

Sources:

1, KU prof's e-mail irks fundamentalists
2, Read
3, United States v. Seeger

© 2005 Rudy Takala - All Rights Reserved