Missouri bill aims to ban science from public schools

Show me a half-dozen morons, and I'll show you the sponsor and co-sponsors of House Bill No. 656 introduced in the Missosuri General Assembly this month. Yes, it is yet another "teach the controversy" bill adapted from the Disinformatory Institute's boilerplate. As such, it's pretty much entirely worthless, but this paragraph stands out for not getting it:

3. This section only protects the teaching of scientific information and this section shall not be construed to promote philosophical naturalism or biblical theology, promote natural cause or intelligent cause, promote undirected change or purposeful design, promote atheistic or theistic belief, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs or ideas, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion. Scientific information includes physical evidence and logical inferences based upon evidence. [Emphasis mine--Pupdog]

The true intention of this bill is to allow teachers to introduce Creationist materials and arguments and to encourage students to swallow the lies that some teachers apparently are prepared to feed them (Funny--that didn't work in Dover, Pennsylvania, where science teachers cited an ethical obligation not to lie to students, forcing the Superintendent to read the Cdesign Proponentsists' statement).

These efforts are not designed to promote "critical thinking," even if they are self-labeled as "teach the strengths and weaknesses," "academic freedom." or "Creationism must be science because the guy talking about it was wearing a white lab coat!" It is a sad state of affairs indeed when life imitates The Onion (source of the picture for this post).