Anti-ID Kansas professor beaten by cowardly thugs

Here's some disturbing, if unsurprising, news from Kansas:

A professor whose planned course on creationism and intelligent design was canceled after he sent e-mails deriding Christian conservatives was hospitalized Monday after what appeared to be a roadside beating.

University of Kansas religious studies professor Paul Mirecki said that the two men who beat him made references to the class that was to be offered for the first time this spring.

Originally called "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies," the course was canceled last week at Mirecki's request.

The class was added after the Kansas State Board of Education decided to include more criticism of evolution in science standards for elementary and secondary students.

"I didn't know them," Mirecki said of his assailants, "but I'm sure they knew me."

The Carpetbagger Report provides the background: "A couple of weeks ago, Prof. Paul Mirecki chairman of the Religious Studies Department at the University of Kansas, took a firm stand against intelligent-design creationism by including it in a class on 'religious mythologies.' A week later, the course was cancelled after Mirecki mocked creationists on a website."

I'm hardly a fan of so-called intelligent design, which has been an abject failure and which is really just a convenient euphemism for creationism without any of the supporting theology, but Mirecki probably shouldn't have made those remarks -- at least not publicly. However, it almost goes without saying that this kind of violence is simply unacceptable. (I say "almost" because some people clearly believe that it is acceptable.)

By the way, I certainly wouldn't say that these thugs represent everyone on the other side, all the supporters of ID/creationism. I disagree with the supporters of ID/creationism -- I think their opinions are hazardous to the cause of truth and to the health of our society -- but these thugs are clearly the exception, not the rule.

We need to expose ID for what it is, but let's do so in a civil manner. But --

Here's a thought: How would the right -- the O'Reillys and Coulters of the world -- have responded if a pro-ID professor were beaten by hardcore secularists? Would they have been fair and balanced in their comments? Would they have refrained from attacking all secularists and blaming secularism for all the ills of the world? Doubtful.

(See also Shakespeare's Sister and Pam's House Blend.)