Legislating Biology

Creationists, sorry, Intelligent Design proponents are attempting to do with law what their ideas could not do by themselves. Their ideas could not stand the glare of scrutiny, and experimentation, so they are legislating their views into existence.
When Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana runs for president in 2012, I want leftists to hammer home the fact every day of his campaign that he signed the very inappropriately named Louisiana Science Education Act into law. I want this done so often that the phrases Bobby Jindal and Intelligent Design become forever linked in Yahoo! Concepts searches. This classic wolf-in-sheep clothing law allows Intelligent Design to be taught in Louisiana Schools. Intelligent Design no more belongs in a biology class than the Turtle Island story belongs in a geology class. Intelligent Design is clearly religion masquerading as science.
Iowa and Alabama are trying to get Intelligent Design into the back door of higher education under the guise of academic freedom as well. In similar bills the law is being used to protect students and teachers because:

current law does not expressly protect the right of instructors to objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding
chemical and biological evolution.

And
existing law does not expressly protect students from discrimination due to their positions or views regarding biological or chemical evolution.


Which of course is completely false. You can express any fool thing you want, just do not expect to get tenure, because you obviously have not kept current in a field whose current body of knowledge was established about 150 years ago. Also do not expect an A on a biology exam because you are willfully disregarding the content of the class. Other than that, believe what you will, write it all up and get a regular stint writing for Townhall.com, because you are the latest victim of leftist intolerance.

The idea that scientists do not critique their own science is patently false. The latest cover of New Scientist magazine proclaims in no uncertain terms that Darwin Was Wrong! It does so while stating in equally uncertain terms that evolution, like plate tectonics, like the atomic theory is still pretty much sound. Science can stand the gaze of scrutiny, which is why no legislation was ever introduced to allow the theory of the germ to take hold. It became evident over time.

I know why evolution bothers the religious. It is because God is no longer necessary to explain the origin of life, any more than Thor is required to explain meteorology. God is merely conjecture at this point. I am not even sure that God is required to explain ethics. For my money, social contract theories developed during the Enlightenment, provide a perfectly valid, god-less
basis for ethics. Read the Age of Reason by Paine sometime.

Secularists of all stripes need to get together to defeat these bills. Iowa and Alabama, get out there and make sure they remain bottled up. Louisianans can use the Dover decision to fight the constitutionality of their new law. Better yet, start a new bill that overturns that one and get it right under the nose of Jindal in time for 2012.

Intelligent Design is not science. Let us not have the laws treat it as such.