A.k.a. The Rick and Andy Show

Another year, another slew of creationist efforts toget creationism taught in public schools through state legislation – usually under the guise of “teach the controversy”,which does not refer to an actual controversy among those who know anythingabout the subject, of course. In Missouri, 2013, for instance, the mostsignificant attempt was throughHouse Bill 291,sponsored by Rick Brattin, a high school graduate who operates Brattin DrywallCompany, and Andrew Koenig, who owns a paint company and who has a license tosell health and life insurance.They had also sponsored a previous creationist bill.

The bill started out defining evolution in one paragraph –ascommon descent – and withoutmention of anything specific concerning mechanisms or evidence but insteadstating that evolution denies “operation of any intelligence, supernaturalevent, God or theistic figure”. That paragraph is followed by 12 paragraphsdefining Intelligent Design, primarily by pointing to biological processes andphenomena and claiming that they are the result of intelligence – with scantdiscussion of, you know, scientific status or research programs – concludingthat “course textbooks [should] contain approximately an equal number of pages ofrelevant material teaching each viewpoint.” They did require that all theIntelligent Design claims be backed up by evidence, which makes therequirements contradictory (no they wouldn’t know). However, in line withDiscotute guidelines, they asserted that “[i]f biological intelligent design istaught, any proposed identity of the intelligence responsible for earth’sbiology shall be verifiable by present-day observation or experimentation andteachers shall not question, survey, or otherwise influence student belief in anonverifiable identity within a science course.”

Of course, no textbook is going to meet that requirement.But Brattin and Koenig have a solution: They will put together a committee thatwill provide supplemental material on creationism of equal weight to thetextbooks, to be written by a select team of “nine individuals who areknowledgeable of science and intelligent design and reside in Missouri.” Now,all experts on the field would know that Intelligent Design is bunk, butsomehow we suspect that Brattin & Koenig didn’t haveexperts on biology in mind when they mention “individuals who areknowledgeable”. They did, for the record,try a similar bill in 2012 (discussedhere).

The bill didn’t meet with much success, so theytried again in 2014,this timerequiring that “[a]ny school district or charter school which provides instruction relating tothe theory of evolution by natural selection shall be required to have a policyon parental notification and a mechanism where a parent can choose to removethe student from any part of the district’s or school’s instruction onevolution.” It is notable that geocentric parents or holocaust denying parentsdon’t get the same opportunity. They also submittedthis one.Neither worked out for them.

As a solo stunt, Brattinsubmitted one of the strangestanti-evolution bills ever in 2013, one that basically asserted that nature is really complex (includingthe noteworthy claim that amino acids are “recurring discrete symbols”),so evolution cannot be true,therefore God.

Koenig went solo in 2015 with House Bill 486, which wouldconfer “academic freedom to teach scientific evidence regarding evolution” to teachers, thereby encouragingscience teachers with, uh, idiosyncratic opinions to teach anything they pleasewithout responsible educational authorities intervening. Once again, the billspecifically cited “the theory of biological and hypotheses of chemicalevolution” as controversial. And once again,the bill died a sorry death.