The Chisum-Bridges Plan to Get Creationism Taught in Public Schools

Vince has an interesting posting on Capitol Annex. The story is also to be found here. Vince has a copy of a memo being circulated by Texas State Representative Warren Chisum (R-Pampa) that is attached to a memo by Rep. Ben Bridges of the Georgia State House. Warren and Ben, it seems, are like-minded in their desire to see that teaching creation science and creation by “intelligent design” be taught in public schools.

This is not a new thing on Chisum’s part. It was only a couple of years ago that Chisum filed HB 2534, a bill to establish guidelines for state textbook adoption. One of the offending clauses in Chisum’s bill was this:

“An adopted textbook may not encourage lifestyles that deviate from generally accepted standards of society.”

That is, if society has a standard that does not accept evolution as an explanation for diversification of species, then it should not be included in a science textbook. The other one was this

“A theory must be clearly distinguished from facts and presented in an objective educational manner.”

This is an obvious strike at the teaching of evolution, which has two parts to it: 1) Evolution is a biological principal. This is the closest thing to saying that evolution is a fact. 2) Mechanisms on how evolution has occurred are theories, like the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Just one of many.

Thankfully, the bill died in committee.

But now we have a new approach, as described in Bridges' memo. The legal theory that the memos and the attachments present is absolute fantasy at its best. Time and time again, the memo says, getting creationism taught in public schools has been turned aside by courts and school boards, because the ideas are promotions of religious ideology, are not true science, and thus violate the Establishment clause in the US Constitution. Bridges, in his memo and in the attachments, make a case that evolution is not a secular science as opposed to creationism, because it, too, is a sectarian promotion of a religion “The Pharisee Sect of Judaism.” Among the teaching in this sect, are the teachings found in a 4000 year old book, The Kabbalah.

The Kabbalah covers a lot of ground. Mainly it is a book that teaches that there is greatness in everyone and teaches how people can reprogram themselves to achieve greatness. But it also covers things like how old the universe is. Stuff like that. Yes, the Kabbalah stays with the doctrine that Earth was created in 7 days. It’s just that a day may not be 24 hours in length. Here is a totaling:

The first Biblical day lasted 24 hours…it was 8 billion years.
The second day of 24 hours…was 4 billion years.
The third day of 24 hours…was two billion years.
The fourth day of 24 hours…was 1 billion years.
The fifth day of 24 hours…was ½ billion years.
The sixth day of 24 hours…was ¼ billion years.

Total: 15.75 billion years.

Bridges says that this number of years are so close to the theoretical age of the universe by “Big Bang” theorists, and that evolutionists rely on vast amounts of time elapsing in order to enable evolution to occur, that The Kabbalah is therefore in full promotion of evolution as religious doctrine.

Isn’t that just insane?

These people are writing our laws?

Nowhere in the Kabbalah is evolution as a fact or a theory mentioned. Yet because The Kabbalah makes a claim that the universe is as old as Big Bang theorists say, a number that Bridges and Chisum probably hold as suspect, that means it is tacit support of evolution.

That’s an amazing leap of logic.

Where it just goes crazy though, is that he claims that The Kabbalah mentions many aspects of physics and astronomy that also turn out to be true. Without saying it, the conclusion one could draw from his argument is that physics and astronomy are also taught in public schools, and are also supported by a book used by a religious sect, so either they should be discarded from the curriculum because their teachings violate the Establishment clause, or that creationism should be added.

Also implicit in the addendum is that followers of Judaism are the ones who are trying to keep the teachings of Jesus out of the schools:

“After all, the deepest of motives are involved here! The stated theological mission of Talmud/Kabbala-based Judaism is to destroy the credibility of Jesus and Bible-based Christianity”.

Yep, there it is, evolutionists are Christ Killers.

The next question is, where will this rear its ugly head? Is Chisum going to file a bill like Georgias’s HB 179? Will someone file a law suit?

Or maybe they’ll just go out there and round all the Jews up? They can’t work to keep creationism out of our public schools if they are all behind barbed wire.