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Professor Who Drew Fire for Proposed Course Debunking Intelligent Design Says He Was Beaten

By THOMAS BARTLETT

The University of Kansas religion professor whose proposed course on the "mythology" of intelligent design sparked an uproar last month said he was beaten up early Monday morning by two men who were angry over his disparaging remarks about Christians.

The professor, Paul Mirecki, said his assailants were two white men between the ages of 30 and 40. They had been tailgating him in a large pickup truck. Both wore blue jeans, according to Mr. Mirecki, and one wore a red cap with a visor. They hit him with their fists and possibly with a metal object, the professor said.

"I'm just shook up over the whole thing," Mr. Mirecki said on Tuesday. "My bruises are coming out a day later."

Mr. Mirecki declined to go into further detail about the attack or the extent of his injuries. But last week he told The Chronicle that he had received hundreds of e-mail messages, many of which were angry and even threatening, in response to his comments about the course.

A spokeswoman for the Douglas County Sheriff's Office also declined to provide details, citing a continuing investigation. She did confirm that officers were searching for the two men Mr. Mirecki described.

Mr. Mirecki, who is chairman of the religious-studies department at Kansas, had proposed a course called "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism, and Other Religious Mythologies." The title itself angered intelligent-design proponents, who objected to being lumped in with "other religious mythologies."

The professor also sent a message to a private e-mail discussion group in which he referred to fundamentalist Christians as "fundies" and wrote that the class would be "a nice slap in their big fat face." The message was leaked. Later, other messages that were insulting to Christians, and particularly Roman Catholics, came to light.

"We went through enough of the postings to know that there were other e-mails that damaged Professor Mirecki's suitability to teach the course," said Lynn Bretz, a spokeswoman for the university.

Mr. Mirecki canceled the course last week, saying that the publicity would make it impossible to teach.

Intelligent design is the notion 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 intelligent design say it is little more than creationism, and is in any event not a scientific theory.