Friday, April 1, 2005
The University of Kansas Alumni Association announced yesterday that an anonymous donor gave the University $10 million to fund a building and start a new science department devoted to the research and study of the theory of intelligent design. The building/department still have to be approved by the Board of Regents and Chancellor Robert Hemenway. If given the green light this would create the first science department of its kind at any accredited university in the United States. According to the current plans, the building would stand where the Multicultural Resource Center currently is located. The MRC is already scheduled to move into the expansion of the Kansas Union between the Union and the Union’s parking garage in August 2006.
If plans go smoothly, crews could demolish the old MRC building and start construction on the new building as soon as summer 2006. An early design shows a three-story building with classrooms on the first level, a church on the second level and research labs and offices on the third level.
“This is a glorious day which proves science and religion do not have to be opposites, but can study and learn from one another,” Reverend Paul Brown of the First Divinity Church of God said in a phone interview. “Intelligent design will finally be taught and scrutinized with the same scientific tools that evolution has been. Maybe this can finally allow scientists to come to a conclusion based on science and not on their own biases against Christianity.”
The design shows the building would have a 20-foot-tall statue of praying hands at the base of the entrance, which the donor requested, saying it represented “all scientists who pray that man will one day find the real truth about its past.”
“I think it is a good idea,” Robert Biggums, Hutchinson sophomore, said. “I always hear all this talk about all this proof about evolution and how studies confirm it, but they always use big confusing words like primordial and environmental adaptation. The Bible explains it in two simple words, ‘Adam and Eve.’ I’ve never seen evolution, but I have seen the Bible.”
“We will be the laughing stock of every other science department in the country,” Alan Gentry, assistant professor of biology, said. “I’m praying that this does not go through, though not in the same way that these people pray. There’s so much real research that’s in desperate need of financing.”
“That’s just the small minded simpleton reasoning we’ve come to expect from those scientists,” Reverend Brown said in response to Gentry’s comment.
The chancellor’s office had no comment when contacted yesterday, though it is known that the chancellor keeps a pair of praying hands on his desk.
April Fool’s!
Edited by Jennifer Voldness
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