Kansas marches boldly into the 12th century, Pennsylvania gets it right

The fiercely split Kansas Board of Education voted 6 to 4 on Tuesday to adopt new science standards that are the most far-reaching in the nation in challenging Darwin's theory of evolution in the classroom.

Among the most controversial changes was a redefinition of science itself, so that it would not be explicitly limited to natural explanations.

If science is not limited to natural explanations, then it must include the supernatural. These anti-intellectual fundies are introducing the supernatural into science, thus perverting it's very definition to the point where science as it's been known for centuries no longer exists.

It's official. Kansas school children will now be taught belief in the supernatural as fact. The fundamentalists should be outraged! Aren't they the ones who in their constant vigilance for signs of the supernatural in popular culture condemned Harry Potter for promoting the occult? Forcing children to be taught the supernatural as fact in public schools is antithetical to their very being. They should begin a vociferous and loud protest against themselves immediately.

"This is a sad day, not just for Kansas kids, but for Kansas," Janet Waugh of Kansas City, Kan., one of four dissenting board members, said before the vote. "We're becoming a laughingstock not only of the nation but of the world."

John Calvert, a lawyer who runs the Intelligent Design Network, based in Kansas, praised the board as "taking a very courageous step" that would "make science education interesting to students rather than boring."

Why not discuss the Easter Bunny and Tinker Bell? That would make science interesting too.

Meanwhile, back in the reality based world, Pennsylvania voters get it right and send the flat-earthers packing.

All eight members up for re-election to the Pennsylvania school board that had been sued for introducing the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in biology class were swept out of office yesterday by a slate of challengers who campaigned against the intelligent design policy.

Among the losing incumbents on the Dover, Pa., board were two members who testified in favor of the intelligent design policy at a recently concluded federal trial on the Dover policy: the chairwoman, Sheila Harkins, and Alan Bonsell.

The election results were a repudiation of the first school district in the nation to order the introduction of intelligent design in a science class curriculum. The policy was the subject of a trial in Federal District Court that ended last Friday. A verdict by Judge John E. Jones III is expected by early January.