WWFSMD?

That’s the question that residents of Dover, Pennsylvania and TV evangelist Pat Robertson must have asked themselves.

Robertson recently made headlines for an on-air tirade against Dover’s voters.

Why? Because they recently voted out eight of the nine school board members who’d ordered the introduction of Intelligent Design in high school science classes.

The board had ordered a statement about ID to be read to all ninth-grade biology students, spurring eleven parents and the American Civil Liberties Union to sue.

They contended that ID was camouflaged Creationism and the school was trying to impose religion on students.

A judge will decide the fate of the case, but the fate of the board members was sealed by voters.

Enter Robertson. Last week he told the “good citizens” of Dover, “If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God; you just rejected him from your city.”

Forget the fact that Robertson implies God is malicious and unforgiving, and that voters rejected God not from the city, but from the science classroom.

Robertson’s comments still reveal what many see as the central paradox of ID: If voters kicked “God” out of Dover, then Robertson is revealing that ID is exactly what its critics say – a flimsy disguise for Creationism.

Most ID supporters insist their hypothesis doesn’t refer to a Christian God – rather, an anonymous divine “intelligence.”

This concept, however, leaves itself open to scrutiny, as is evidenced by a growing sect of “Pastafarians” – an apparently worldwide group of devotees who satirically claim the world was created when an intelligence called the Flying Spaghetti Monster reached out “His Noodly Appendage.”

Yes, I’m serious. Google “Flying Spaghetti Monster.”

In an open letter posted on their Web site and addressed to school boards across the nation – including Dover’s – the group claims to hope for “the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One-third time for Intelligent Design, one-third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one-third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.”

FSM adds some much needed levity to the ID debate. And it makes a compelling point: If ID isn’t about a Christian God, then why shouldn’t its teachings include something as ridiculous as a Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Unfortunately, Pat Robertson wasn’t the only person wishing destruction on a community last week. Proving that there are plenty of people deserving to be flogged by a “noodly appendage,” Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly went “Robertson” on San Francisco.

The city just passed a proposition discouraging public schools from allowing military recruiters on campus.

The purpose was to limit what Mayor Gavin Newsom calls “predatory recruiting” in schools.

O’Reilly, who presumably doesn’t have any high school age children of his own, was incensed.

On national radio, he said to San Francisco, “If al-Qaida comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, ‘look every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower, go ahead.’”

His choice of landmarks was a poor one – the Coit Tower was erected in honor of firefighters. But his vitriol is itself irresponsible and out of line.

One has to wonder how people would react if a liberal did the same thing, encouraging a terrorist attack on American soil.

What if Michael Moore didn’t like a new Oklahoma law and suggested terrorists crash planes into the Murrah Building memorial in Oklahoma City?

O’Reilly’s hypocrisy is heightened still further because just last winter he condemned controversial professor Ward Churchill. O’Reilly claimed, in effect, that Churchill said America deserved the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.

Apparently, only Bill O’Reilly is allowed to determine who should and should not be attacked by terrorists.

To me, it seems like that should be left up to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.