Here’s another argument for requiring educational, intellectual, and emotional testing of people who want to serve in public office. A Republican (of course, again) is sponsoring a bill to force the teaching of creationism in school classrooms, which is not unusual from the intellectual Neandertals on the right, but this one has an ugly twist to it.
It would require science teachers to address scientists’ “political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism.”
The bill’s sponsor, Republican Jerry Bergevin, explained:
I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the ideas to be presented. It’s a worldview and it’s godless. Atheism has been tried in various societies, and they’ve been pretty criminal domestically and internationally. The Soviet Union, Cuba, the Nazis, China today: they don’t respect human rights. As a general court we should be concerned with criminal ideas like this and how we are teaching it… Columbine, remember that? They were believers in evolution. That’s evidence right there.
Believing in evolution is evidence of criminality? Believing in science means you are a criminal? What’s next from these brilliant thinkers – legislation demanding that we burn witches?
Two other Republicans have introduced another bill that is fairly standard fare for the brain damaged religionists of the right. From the Huffington Post:
As the Concord Monitor noted, "[Representative Gary] Hopper points to the state constitution and its order that teachers support their students’ ‘morality and piety’ for the justification of his bill." The article goes on to explain, "He would like to see intelligent design – the idea that a creator controlled how early life on Earth developed – taught in classrooms, but hasn’t been able to find an example of the philosophy being successfully legislated into schools."
Gee, Gary, there’s reasons for that. One, it’s not a philosophy, it’s simple ignorance. Two, the courts, including the Supreme Court, have said over and over that you can’t foist your religion on students in public schools.
Unfortunately New Hampshire is not the only state these dim bulbs of the religious right are attempting to pollute with their profound desire to return to the tenth century, or perhaps they have the Stone Age in mind.
Apparently the old religious saying is still true: “The dumbass religionists we will always have with us.”
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