We noted a few days ago that Kansas University's Paul Mirecki, the atheist who headed the religious studies department, had planned on teaching a course on "Creationism, Intelligent Design and Other Mythologies" until e-mails were uncovered in which he used insulting language to describe his potential students. Since then he's lost his position as head of the department and now he's claiming to have been beaten severely by a couple of toughs in a pick-up truck along a lonely road. The attackers made it clear, he maintains, that the beating was in retribution for his contemptuous views on intelligent design.
Well, the fundamental premise here sounds highly dubious. The number of people likely to stalk a university professor and beat him "to within an inch of his life" because of his views on ID seems to us to be asymptotically close to zero. Such thugs are not usually conversant with the term "intelligent design" or the debate between ID and Darwinism, much less do they give a rip about it, so we have our suspicions.
So, evidently, does Michelle Malkin who has done the legwork and has the whole story, so far as it's known at this point, here. Take a look and see whether you don't think Mirecki's story smells just a wee bit fishy.
