The start of every year brings with it a new round of creationist craziness. Unfortunately, this craziness originates not from the bowels of America’s churches as you might expect but from the very people entrusted to uphold, maintain and support the law – our state legislators. The creationist bills they author tend to have one thing in common besides the fact that they are written to circumvent the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause or our right to the separation of church and state.
The wording is typically mined from a database provided by the radical Christian right organization Discovery Institute, which, critics charge, seeks to bring the United States under Christian theocracy. To that end, this well-funded institute has in its arsenal stock phrases designed to undermine what is taught in public school science classes. Climate change and evolution are often targeted in order to force reality into a biblically-inspired world view. Similar bills were passed in at least two states last year.
These anti-science bills are crafted under the guise of “academic freedom” ostensibly to provide guidance to teachers who are “unsure” about how to approach the “controversies” with respect to evolution and climate change. However, it falls within in the job description of science teachers to address alternate theories – those with evidence, that is – so these bills attempt to codify that which is already standard professional practice and therefore redundant. Additionally, academic freedom cannot be used to justify violating federal law. Nevertheless, you can bet teachers with a religious agenda will try to use this wording as a legislative loophole to impose their religious views on America’s kids.
Discovery Institute’s semantic tool kit also includes the phrase “strengths and weaknesses” with respect to addressing those sciences. In reality, other than some relatively minor points, evolution hasn’t been debated for half a century and climate change is similarly noncontroversial. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a mainstream, non-industry-supported climatologist who disagrees global warming is man-made. How can a 34% increase in heat-trapping gasses lodged in the lowest atmosphere since the start of the industrial age not have an impact?
So where do these “controversies” originate? They are conjured up mainly by a cabal of creationists in the Republican Party (big surprise), who seek to shove their particular strain of Christianity down the throats of our vulnerable youth. Additionally, their alliance with corporations makes them beholden to that group of benefactors opposed to carrying the costs of controlling their CO2 emissions. Democrats get funded by corporations too, many will point out, but Republicans generally rake in far more.
The standard disclaimers in these bills stating they “may not be construed to promote” religious or nonreligious doctrine is laughable considering their authors typically have legislative histories that belie those assertions.
This year, creationist legislation has been averted in Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Indiana, Montana and Oklahoma.
The next “Whew!” moments will hopefully follow MO bills HB 179 and HB 291, which aren’t on the legislative calendar at the moment. Those bills that are dead (for the year) were defeated thanks in large part to atheist and other secular organizations acting at the local level.
In order to promote reason in American society, we need to be as vocal as the right wing faction. Writing letters to editors, testifying at hearings and calling state representatives and senators all have positive impacts. The right wing understands this and is among the major reasons their wheel gets greased.
Radical Christians may be incapable of reasoning but since they are in the minority, we can still have plenty of influence with those Americans more rational – and fortunately, they are in the majority.