Intelligent Design in Missouri: A Proposed Solution
The creationists – sorry, IDiots – are at it again. This time, it’s Missouri that’s the chosen battleground, and once again, their complaint is that science classes are unfairly dismissive of their preferred evidence-free fantasy.
We’ve been over this before, far too many times, and the reasoning in Kitzmiller v Dover looks pretty robust to me, so Rep. Rick Brattin is either totally ignorant (aside from his promotion of ID, I mean), incredibly optimistic, or deeply cynical, blowing a fundie-friendly dogwhistle in the knowledge that he’ll never have to actually follow through with it and take responsibility for the resulting mess. Whichever it is, it’s quite revealing that on identifying what he sees as a discrepancy between typical beliefs in the US and what science tells us, Brattin thinks it’s the science that needs to change.
It’s puzzling that people believe this sort of crap in the 21st Century, and utterly depressing that they think it’s appropriate to promote their unsubstantiated ideology, in science classes no less, despite the very clear message of their own constitution. But while this proposal is a serious threat that needs opposing, I can’t help thinking that maybe it would be even better to give Brattin exactly what he says he wants. He says his bill’s about teaching both sides of the argument “in an objective manner”, and it includes instruction to “give equal treatment to biological evolution and biological intelligent design” – so what would that look like, exactly?
My first thought was a lengthy explanation of all the evidence for evolution, then the heading Evidence for Intelligent Design, followed by a blank page, but that could be described as unequal, so how about asking the same questions about each theory in turn? Maybe something like this:
Brattin can have that for free. We’ll have a balanced, objective comparison in no time.
Note: It seems that the text I worked on was lost in some housekeeping. I’ll work on replacing it, but in its absence, I’d just like to say it was the funniest thing I ever wrote. 
