Oh my! A Republican state representative in Missourri who describes himself as a “huge science buff” has introduced a bill to require that creationism and destiny get equal coverage with evolution in science textbooks.
And of course- since no textbook publisher is likely to create such a textbook, it creates an ad-hoc committee to create supplemental materials.
HB291, The “Missourri Standard Science Act” also seeks to redefine well known terms. From an article at Mother Jones:
For example, a “hypothesis” is redefined as something that reflects a “minority of scientific opinion and is “philosophically unpopular.” A scientific theory is “an inferred explanation…whose components are data, logic and faith-based philosophy.” And “destiny” … “the events and processes that define the future of the universe, galaxies, stars, our solar system, earth, plant life, animal life, and the human race.”
How ironic that this is coming out the same week that scientists pinpointed the earliest mammal- the one all others, including humans rose from. (Yes, we are decended from an aardvark/rat like critter. BBC article here and the report in Science here .
And the same week scientists narrowed the window for the extinction of dinosaurs: 66,038,000 years ago (give or take 11,000 years). Again, article at BBC here and study published in Science here
I guess he has to describe himself as a science buff. NO ONE ELSE WILL!