Ohio State Board of Education has an ID lesson plan on the books. Ohio Citizens for Science has been fighting it, but at a recent meeting, the Board voted to maintain it’s anti-science position.

A friend sent this scan from the Columbus Dispatch. It does show the ignorance, the contempt, and the arrogance of the creationists.

Richard E. Baker, a member of the State Board of Education, displays his apparent lack of interest in arguments for changing the state’s science standards being put forth by fellow board member Martha W. Wise. Baker, who later voted to maintain the current standards, did not speak during yesterday’s afternoon session, choosing instead to read the newspaper throughout.

This Richard E. Baker:

“Richard Baker, an avowed creationist and vice president of the OBE,
disagrees. ….Baker accused the scientific community of wasting time
debating the plan. “We spend all this malarkey and baloney when 99 percent
of all the people who are taught this have nothing to do with the rest of
their lives. These scientists, they don’t care about wasting their own time
or anybody else’s time. In business we don’t waste time. To me, [the lesson]
is not a big deal.” According to Baker, the real reason scientists want to
do away with the lesson plan is, as he said to a group of scientists at a
board meeting concerning the lesson plan, “[They] think [they] know
everything. [They’re] just a bunch of paranoid, egotistical scientists
afraid of people finding out [they] don’t know anything.””

That’s a man who does not belong on the Board of Education.