Head Meets 6,000-Year-Old Desk: Louisiana Votes To Keep Creationism In Schools
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Sometimes in these stories, I’ll talk about being from south Louisiana, usually with a distinct sense of pride in the food, the culture, and the people. But never will you catch me saying this place breeds widespread intelligence, because it doesn’t. I once thought Kansas had it rough, not realizing my own backyard is apparently a cesspool of damaging thoughts. How sad to finally see Bad Astronomy’s mastermind Phil Plait mention my hometown’s name in this respect — or in disrespect, rather.
For years, governor Bobby Jindal’s “Louisiana Science Education Act” has worked to keep giving students the exact opposite of what it calls for, and has allowed creationism to be acceptable study plan material. Despite the inherent nonsense behind the “law” itself, as well as constant opposition from science-minded people, this stupid fucking law will not die, getting its third appeal voted down just last week. And while that itself is boneheaded — and these are bones that will one day go into the fossil record, not the creationism record — one Senator’s reason for voting against repealing the law goes above and beyond to prove why stereotypes exist.
Elbert Guillory (pictured above), a Democrat Senator from Opelousas — the mostly unremarkable town where I spent a third of my life — was able to make his big dumb mouth form the ridiculous words to justify his choice, which was spurred by a spiritual healer correctly choosing which medical ailment Guillory suffered from. As such, he feels reversing the act would “lock the door on being able to view ideas from many places, concepts from many cultures.” I wonder if he was able to get a prescription from that faith healer. Probably not, since they’re not medical professionals, or professionals of any field actually. Except maybe bullshitting influential politicians who care less about their state than mental voodoo. He goes on.
“Yet if I closed my mind when I saw this man — in the dust, throwing some bones on the ground, semi-clothed — if I had closed him off and just said, ‘That’s not science. I’m not going to see this doctor,’ I would have shut off a very good experience for myself.”
Normal people don’t take medical advice from half-naked men tossing around bones. They call the fucking cops, and they call them from far away, because there is definite lunacy afoot. Tossing bones on the ground isn’t even a good way of getting rid of refuse. How is it science?
Zack Kopplin runs the website Repeal Creationism, and I wish everyone would hop on board. Kopplin has fought tirelessly to keep creationism in the back of the filing cabinet where it belongs, and has given countless examples of how this behavior is harming the state in different ways, particularly financially. But here we are, on a planet billions of years old.
Science is having a hard enough time in the country at large, and I get to live surrounded by voters who remain blissfully ignorant as to how harmful it is.
