Kansas class calls intelligent design "pseudoscience"

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Kansas class calls intelligent design "pseudoscience"

Associated Press November 27, 2005

LAWRENCE, Kan. - An anthropology class at the University of Kansas will include discussion of intelligent design, which the instructor calls a "pseudoscience."

"Archaeological Myths and Realities" will cover such topics as UFOs, crop circles, extrasensory perception and the ancient pyramids. John Hoopes, associate professor of anthropology, said the course, which will be taught in the fall, will help students learn to differentiate science and "pseudoscience."

Hoopes said intelligent design belongs in the latter category because it can't be tested and proven false. Intelligent design says some features of the natural world are so complex that they are best explained by an intelligent cause.

"I think this is very important for students to be articulate about - they need to be able to define and recognize pseudoscience," Hoopes said.

But Brian Sandefur, a mechanical engineer in Lawrence who is proponent of intelligent design, says the theory is rooted in chemistry and molecular biology and should be discussed in science classes.

"The way KU is addressing it I think is completely inadequate," he said.

"Archaeological Myths and Realities" wouldn't be the first course at the University of Kansas to include discussion of intelligent design.

A course in the religious studies department called "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies" was added to next semester's curriculum after Kansas Board of Education adopted new public school science standards that treat the theory of evolution as flawed. The course has drawn criticism from proponents of intelligent design who say it should not be treated as mythology.

"The two areas that KU is trying to box this issue into are completely inappropriate," Sandefur said.

Hoopes said his class would be a version of a course he helped develop when he was a graduate student at Harvard University. It will look at the myths people have created and how they can have negative effects, such as the "myth of the moundbuilders."

In early U.S. history, some people believed earthen mounds found mainly in the area of the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys were the works of an ancient civilization destroyed by American Indians. Hoopes said that contributed to the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which relocated American Indians east of the Mississippi to lands in the west.

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