Just a few days ago, Matt Drudge did his usual 'thing' and misleadingly titled a link through to an interesting news article about a professor at the Universiy of Texas being accused of looking forward to, perhaps even thinking about helping to make happen a 90 percent die-off of the human species.

Apparently, a widely-published "amateur scientist" named Forrest Mims III attended a conference and heard professor Eric Pianka speak. Mims says that professor Pianka seemed to enjoy his prophecies about extreme overpopulation too much. He says it is likely that as many as 90 percent of humans will someday die from a virulent disease. His first choice is Ebola.

Professor Pianka's career is in studying population and disease and he teaches in class the same views and research that outraged Mims. It seems impossible to find any students who will complain about his classes or ideas, and his student evaluations are at the highest possible levels. As well, his campus and disciplinary colleagues think highly of him.

I was willing to give some of Mims' issues enough credence to keep an open mind, but for some reason I got curious about that title: "amateur scientist." It turns out that Mims is a prolific and very good writer about science, especially technical or engineering science. In 1990 he was within moments of being hired by Scientific American to write its "Amateur Scientist" column. During the final interview, Mims mentioned some of his writings for Christian magazines.

You couldnt tell by reading any of the recent news stories, but it turns out that Mims is an ardent devotee and proselytyzer of Creationism. Scientific American was confident that having Mims on its staff would be an embarassment at best. Worst case scenarios ranged from anger and revolt among SA's customer base of professional scientists to a concern that a Creationist could not possibly write appropriately about modern biology, to concern that such a prestigious position at SA would lend credibility to his proselytization.

I suspect that there is a lot in the teaching and theorizing by professor Pianka which annoys Mims' religious sensibilities. I think it's reprehensible for Mims to misrepresent someone's work and put them in the kind of erroneous negative spotlight that has shone on professor Pianka.

And it's getting worse. Professor Pianka has an appointment coming up with the FBI. It seems that someone has made a complaint that Professor Pianka is a terrorist.

Now, what could possible go wrong from here? Look how close to being in trouble with the authorities professor Pianka is merely because his work conflicts with someone else's religious beliefs.If this was Pakistan or Afhganistan in the months after 9/11, someone who disagreed with Biankas research due to religious beliefs could have told American solders that he was a terrorist to get rid of him. And Bianka would be sitting in Guantanamo Bay right now.

Instead, Biankas got a date with the FBI and a lot of threatening calls and email messages. Mims is apparently one of those people I consider to have Old Testamentatis. They call themselves Christians, but they act as though there is no New Testament. (They fail to understand the illogic of it, since the Christ part of Christian is only in the New Testament.

But you see, its okay to be punitive and deceptive if you take the Old Testament as your guide. Did you ever ask yourself what happened to the thousands of inhabitants of Jericho after the walls came tumblin down? Wonder  no more: The inhabitants were completely destroyed after rape and torture which included gutting the bellies of pregnant women. By the good guys.

You could ask an Old Testamentist What would Jesus do? and the likely response would be, as I recently received from an attendant at a gas station store, We dont care too much for the New Testament.

I wonder which major new outlet, if any, will pick up on Mims background and prejudices and if theyll publish if it they do?