SubscribeAfter the Kansas Board of Ed added intelligent design to the state's education standards, the chairman of religious studies at the University of Kansas proposed to teach a course on "Intelligent Design, Creationisms and other Religious Mythologies", which he told his student atheist group would be "a nice slap" in the "fundies" "big fat face". The fundies didn't like that much, and not only has he been forced to cancel the course, he has been driven off the road and badly beaten. Are neoconservative creationists just manipulative hypocrites?This makes it clearer that the Reason article is an afterthought and we could have told what the post is about without a lot of work. Just sayin'.
Thus I must contradict you when you go on to argue that men are completely unable to do without the consolation of the religious illusion, that without it they could not bear the troubles of life and the cruelties of reality. That is true, certainly, of the men into whom you have instilled the sweet—or bitter-sweet—poison from childhood onwards. But what of the other men, who have been sensibly brought up? Perhaps those who do not suffer from the neurosis will need no intoxication to deaden it. They will, it is true, find themselves in a difficult situation. They will have to admit to themselves the full extent of their helplessness and their insignificance in the machinery of the universe; they can no longer be the center of creation, no longer the object of tender care on the part of a benificent Providence. They will be in the same position as a child who has left the parental house where he was so warm and comfortable. But surely infantilism is destined to be surmounted. [Freud, The Future of an Illusion, tr. James Strachey]
Kristol [...] crisply restated his belief that religion is essential for maintaining social discipline. A much younger (and perhaps less circumspect) Kristol asserted in a 1949 essay that in order to prevent the social disarray that would occur if ordinary people lost their religious faith, "it would indeed become the duty of the wise publicly to defend and support religion." [from the Reason FPP article]It's a nice little Soma religion, of precisely the sort your magic button would provide. He wants to keep you docile, harmless, weak. The shepherd wants you to be his little sheep. Sheep, he thinks, are docile animals, and easy to lead to slaughter.
“The sheriff’s office takes these things very seriously, so we investigate them thoroughly,” Wempe said. “Our hope is that we end up finally at the end of a successful investigation and find the truth.” [emph added]Maybe it's just me, but I feel as though I see a pretty clear bias at work there.
Mirecki’s resignation comes as some call into question the accuracy of his police report.Note that Mirecki is being criticized based on things that one would expect to actually happen following this chain of events: Faculty fading into the woodwork in fear, confusion in the aftermath of an assault (if he were faking, I'd expect him to have more details, not fewer), difficulty in identifying people who look like anybody else...
According to John Altevogt, a conservative activist in Kansas, Mirecki has been unable to even identify the street on which his alleged beating occurred.
“There’s also confusion about whether or not he called from the spot or whether he called from the hospital,” Altevogt said. “If he can’t tell them where the alleged assault took place — the closest he’s come is two different streets, two rural roads — so how are they going to collect evidence? He couldn’t [even] tell them where on those rural roads it was.”
Altevogt also said Mirecki’s description of his attackers — white, 30-40 years old, wearing jeans and driving a big pickup truck — fits “half the population of Kansas.”
Also odd, Altevogt noted, is the lack of support from Mirecki’s colleagues at KU, epitomized, he said, by his fellow professors’ requests for him to resign as department chair.
“At a time when you’d think his colleagues would rally around the flag, they in fact have asked him to resign,” he said. “If this is a ‘for real’ thing, you would think they would rally around him in the face of this horrendous attack and do something.”
Lt. Kari Wempe of the Douglas County (Kan.) Sheriff’s Office would not comment on Altevogt’s speculation and added there has been nothing new to report since Mirecki first spoke of his attack.
“That is a public opinion,” Wempe said, adding she has not been told of any inconsistencies in the professor’s report. “That’s not a law-enforcement opinion.”
ParisParamus: The real twits are those who can't see that evolution was most likely started by God.I agree if you replace "most likely" with "could have been."
ParisParamus: Who is calling whom arrogant, and sure of themselves?If it's not clear, I'm calling neo-cons arrogant and sure of themselves. Are you saying that it's inherently arrogant to call someone else arrogant? Kind of makes the word a little useless, doesn't it? Careful what corners you paint yourself into, PP.
« Older iTunes Gets NBC Shows.... | The USC-MSA Compendium of Musl... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
It is no coincidence that education and religious fundamentalism are inversely related. Critical thinking is a reality based tool.
posted by ewkpates at 6:34 AM on December 6, 2005