[lbo-talk] myth in Kansas

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

> Chronicle of Higher Education - web daily - November 23, 2005
>
> U. of Kansas Draws Media Frenzy With News That It Will Offer Course
> on Intelligent Design as Myth
> By THOMAS BARTLETT
>
> It's rare for the announcement of a new college course to spark a
> news-media frenzy. But that's exactly what happened on Tuesday, when
> word spread that the University of Kansas would be offering a course
> next spring titled "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design,
> Creationism, and Other Religious Mythologies."
>
> The course will be taught by Paul A. Mirecki, chairman of the
> religious-studies department. "Creationism is mythology," Mr. Mirecki
> told the Journal-World, a newspaper in Lawrence, Kan. "Intelligent
> design is mythology. It's not science. They try to make it sound like
> science. It clearly is not."
>
> The professor did not return calls for further comment on Tuesday.

The course hit the spot.  Teaching intelligent design as a myth in a  
religion studies course is a good move.


> Intelligent design is the theory that some aspects of living
> organisms are so complex that they could not have evolved according
> to the principles of evolution laid down by Charles Darwin 150 years
> ago, but must have been designed by some superior intelligence.
> Critics of the theory say it is little more than creationism, which
> considers God to have been the designer, and is in any event not a
> scientific theory.

Why do the liberal media such as The Chronicle of HIgher Education  
keep referring to intelligent design as a "theory"?  That's a wrong  
term used in this context, because it creates an unwarranted  
association between intelligent design and a scientific theory which  
it isn't.

Yoshie Furuhashi
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