Web site has 'guide' for intelligent design

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Web site has 'guide' for intelligent design

By David Ranney, Lawrence Journal World, November 15, 2005

Step aside Dorothy and Toto.

A new Web site - www.KansasMorons.com - has the potential for stirring up more ridicule than Ms. Gale and her pooch-in-a-basket ever thought possible.

"We are a laughingstock," said Tim Miller, a Kansas University religion professor whose attention was called to the satirical site Tuesday.

"This is simply evidence of that," he said.

The site includes a six-page "Kansas Teacher's Guide to Intelligent Design" that cites 17 religions' takes on creation, all of which it presumes are now fair game in the state's classrooms.

A sampling:

Babalonian (sic) Intelligent Design - "The god Marduk arms himself and sets out to challenge the monster Tiamat…

Hmong Intelligent Design - "A long time ago the rivers and ocean covered the Earth. A brother and sister were locked in a yellow wooden drum."

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Intelligent Design - "The Flying Spaghetti Monster created all that we see and all that we feel, and the universe around us."

Preceding the guide is a mock introductory letter on State Board of Education letterhead that has conservative board member Connie Morris saying, "This learning package was also supposed to include a Ouija Board, candles, incense, and a Magic 8 Ball, but the budget wouldn't permit it. If I'm re-elected and not ousted by some fancy 'book-learnin' elitist, sexular-humanest,' I pledge to get you those things, God willing."

"Boy, somebody's been hard at work," said Jack Krebs, president of the Kansas Citizens for Science, a group opposed to adding intelligent design to the state's science standards.

Krebs, a math teacher at Oskaloosa High School, said he didn't know who was behind the site.

"Different people respond to ridiculous situations in different ways," Krebs said. "For some it's indignant outrage, for others it's humor - the only thing left to do is laugh at it."

Krebs compared the site to Comedy Central's television program "The Daily Show." Both, he said, show "it's easier to swallow the news with a dose of humor than it is to just swallow the news."

Thomas Fox Averill, an English professor at Washburn University and editor of the 2000 essay collection "What Kansas Means to Me," said the Web site underscores the growing notion that Kansas has locked itself into a not-so-desirable image.

"We're like California, Texas or Massachusetts in that we've become the instant adjective of choice," he said. "If somebody calls somebody a liberal, they don't call them a New Jersey liberal, they call them a Massachusetts liberal. When you think of a cowboy, you think of a Texas cowboy, you don't think of a Kansas cowboy."

Though other states have wrestled - and continue to wrestle with - the debate over intelligent design, the anti-evolution label has most noticeably stuck with Kansas.

"Ten other places can do the same foolishness we're doing, but you'll hear about it first when Kansas does it," Averill said.

State board member Sue Gamble, a moderate Republican, laughed out loud when she viewed the Web site Tuesday.

"OK, it's funny," she said. "But you know what? I really don't have time for sarcasm or anger. I'm trying to stay focused on providing quality education for Kansas kids and on making sure the board returns to its senses in 2006."

Four of the 10-member board's six conservatives face re-election next year.

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