West Virginia had a bill in the works to explicitly allow the teaching of intelligent design creationism.
Teachers in public schools, including public charter schools, that include any one or more of grades kindergarten through 12, may teach intelligent design as a theory of how the universe and/or humanity came to exist.
Never fear, Americans United is on the case. It didn’t pass, not yet at least.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State President and CEO Rachel Laser issued the following statement in response to the West Virginia Legislature adjourning without passing Senate Bill 619, a bill that would have authorized public school teachers to teach intelligent design creationism:
“We at Americans United are thankful that West Virginia public school students won’t be forced to sit through lessons on intelligent design creationism – an inherently religious doctrine that has no place in public schools. Public schools are not Sunday schools; their purpose is to teach students sound science, not preach religious beliefs.
“While the intelligent design bill failed this session, it’s alarming that the bill got as much traction as it did. The bill’s supporters blatantly ignored the Constitution’s promise to separate church and state – the protector of religious freedom – and would have flouted decades of court precedent that bars the teaching of religious doctrine in public schools, including an Americans United case that successfully proved intelligent design was simply creationism rebranded.
“If legislators insist on resurrecting this bill, Americans United is ready to defend the Constitution and protect public education and the religious freedom of West Virginia families. Using our public schools to impose religious doctrines like intelligent design on a captive audience of schoolchildren is part of the Christian Nationalist agenda to force all of us to live by their narrow beliefs. We need a national recommitment to the separation of church and state. Our public schools and our democracy depend on it.”
The creationists are persistent little buggers, that’s for sure.
It ought to suffice to point out that they’ll vlbe allowing the muslim and hindu versions of creationism, if they do that. The faithful forget that the establishment clause is for their own protection – religious bigots having a bad tendency to prove their doctrinal truths by murder. The catholics and protestants unity on any topic is at best only temporary, once you get past creation. It ought to be enough to ask if the schools will need the pope’s nod for the curriculum…?
Oh, that was another favorite subject of one preacher that we were accosted by weekly. That our society is in decline because prayer was removed from schools.
Why, Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated JFK because prayer was removed from schools, thereby eroding his morality.
A rather odd view, as to impact Oswald, one again would require a time machine, as JFK was assassinated in 1963, which is one of my earliest memories and the decision in Engel v. Vitale was in 1962. But, religionists love to try to rewrite history in such odd ways that would require a time machine in order for their thesis to be able to work.
Of course, this zany guy also told us weekly about how his wife’s dream, allegedly from the Holy Spirit, awoke her warning her of a defect in the aircraft her son was flying on, alerting a ramp attendant in Colorado at that very moment from Pennsylvania and somehow saving the flight. Something, something, something hanging from the wing, something, something, something.
Of course, something hanging from a wing likely would be an open service panel, which would have to be closed and latched in place and decidedly not endanger a flight and howinhell her yammering in the wee hours of the morning in Pennsylvania alerts someone on a ramp in Colorado is far beyond my comprehension, save if he was trying to claim her voice was so shrill and loud that it was heard on a noisy ramp thousands of miles away.
But then, he believes that speaking jibberish is speaking in tongues, gets history wrong (In God We Trust was on money when the Constitution was penned (no, that was added in 1955, which is decidedly not 1789, when the Constitution came into effect) and well, gets the history of the nation and bible so wildly off as to fully qualify as Not Even Wrong.
Oh well, at least he isn’t the one everyone called The Screamer, who sends people with PTSD running from the room and they were ordered to return or go sleep on the streets. A nastygram from the VA got that tamed down a bit.
Apparently, money from the government that they deny is coming in to support their shelter appears to be more important to them than mere matters of faith, as that income is quite well documented in their financials that they post on the shelter’s organizational website.
Which is likely part of the justification as to why the use of any electronic devices on their property by residents is prohibited.
@ 2
But don’t you see? The need for school children to daily stroke Gawd’s ego against their will is so great, America began to collapse into bedlam and sin the second the SCOTUS banged the gavel! /s
Of course, they’re waiting for a case like this to make it’s way up to the SCOTUS where they expect the 6 theocrats to reverse Edwards v. Aguillard they same way they reversed Roe and they hope to reverse Obergefell.
New rule: they only get to suggest a creationist bill if they spell out how old they think the Earth is.
And they have to explain the buildup of lunar craters on the Moon. Was it the result of a heavenly war between Lucifer and God as some fundies claim? Make them go on record with their dumbest, most embarrassing shit.
“The creationists are persistent little buggers, that’s for sure.”
So are cockroaches, and the similarities don’t stop there.
I have a question – how do you “teach” ID, a subject with no evidence and no hypothesis?
@5, especially as we’ve got video of multiple lunar impact events, they’re still fairly frequent. Maybe they’re still shooting at each other in heaven or something?
@7 How do Catholic schools and Liberty University and Jesus camps teach what they do? It’s really not a mystery if you think about it.
@7 ” how do you “teach” ID, a subject with no evidence and no hypothesis?”
I actually think it’d be a lot of fun, spelling out exactly why it is bad science. You could compare it to flat earthism at the same time. Engage the class in the exercise of coming up with the most ludicrous “theories” imaginable, and then get the rest of the class to pick them over and debunk them “equally” with creationism. Really demonstrate why a theory that allows you to make no potentially verifiable predictions about the world is meaningless and pointless, even though it by definition can’t be disproved.
The problem is, letting me have my fun would also allow the Legions of the Dumbed to preach in schools. Its not worth it.