A cou­ple weeks ago, the sec­ond cre­ation­ist bill of the “aca­d­e­m­ic free­dom” gen­er­a­tion became law. You’d think Casey Luskin, who seems to be the ring­leader of the clowns push­ing these bills, would be thrilled. But all he can seem to do is find rea­sons to be upset. 

First he was angry that Ten­nessee Gov­er­nor Bill Haslam let the bill become law, but did so with­out sign­ing it. Haslam’s state­ment refus­ing to sign the bill observed that, by the defend­ers’ own argu­ment, the bill was essen­tial­ly pow­er­less, while there are ways in which it could make things worse. Not­ing that laws ought to “bring clar­i­ty and not con­fu­sion,” and that the Mon­key Bill did nei­ther, Haslam declined to sign the bill.

Rather than gra­cious­ly accept­ing his leg­isla­tive vic­to­ry, Casey chose instead to berate the Governor. 

Now Casey is upset that Media Mat­ters for Amer­i­ca applied crit­i­cal think­ing to claims by bill defend­ers. MMFA first dis­sect­ed the Dis­cov­ery Insti­tute’s his­to­ry and the agen­da these bills help Dis­co. serve. They then took a close look at the his­to­ry of cre­ation­ist bills lead­ing up to the Mon­key Bill.

Casey objects to the pieces large­ly because they insist that the bill would allow cre­ation­ism into class­rooms. MMFA quotes an inter­view with me, where I explained the threat:

because so many key terms are unde­fined, it’s easy to see how a teacher could offer a cre­ation­ist les­son, or one deny­ing the real­i­ty or human cau­sa­tion of cli­mate change, and refuse to drop that les­son by cit­ing this law. A par­en­t’s objec­tions, or clear instruc­tions from a super­vi­sor, could be waved away with the claim that any such inter­fer­ence would vio­late this pro­vi­sion of the law.

Casey objects, claiming:

Too bad there’s a small detail that under­cuts Media Mat­ter­s’s fun­da­men­tal argu­ment: Ten­nessee’s law con­tains an express pro­vi­sion stat­ing that it does not pro­tect the teach­ing of reli­gion (includ­ing cre­ation­ism), and only pro­tects the teach­ing of science:

“This sec­tion only pro­tects the teach­ing of sci­en­tif­ic infor­ma­tion, and shall not be con­strued to pro­mote any reli­gious or non-reli­gious doc­trine, pro­mote dis­crim­i­na­tion for or against a par­tic­u­lar set of reli­gious beliefs or non-beliefs, or pro­mote dis­crim­i­na­tion for or against reli­gion or non-religion.”

As MMFA notes, sim­i­lar dis­claimers exist­ed in the last gen­er­a­tion of cre­ation­ist laws, which were struck down by the courts nonethe­less. In the Arkansas case chal­leng­ing the state’s Act 590 – which stat­ed “This Act does not require or per­mit instruc­tion in any reli­gious doc­trine or mate­ri­als” – the court ruled that such a dis­claimer was irrel­e­vant, since the require­ment to teach cre­ation­ism (or cease teach­ing evo­lu­tion) was inevitably religious: 

The Act is self-con­tra­dic­to­ry and com­pli­ance is impos­si­ble unless the pub­lic schools elect to forego sig­nif­i­cant potions of sub­jects such as biol­o­gy, world his­to­ry, geol­o­gy, zool­o­gy, botany, psy­chol­o­gy, anthro­pol­o­gy, soci­ol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy, physics and chem­istry. …There is no way teach­ers can teach the Gen­e­sis account of cre­ation in a sec­u­lar manner. …

Ref­er­ences to the per­va­sive nature of reli­gious con­cepts in cre­ation sci­ence texts amply demon­strate why State entan­gle­ment with reli­gion is inevitable under Act 590. Involve­ment of the State in screen­ing texts for imper­mis­si­ble reli­gious ref­er­ences will require State offi­cials to make del­i­cate reli­gious judg­ments. The need to mon­i­tor class­room dis­cus­sion in order to uphold the Act’s pro­hi­bi­tion against reli­gious instruc­tion will nec­es­sar­i­ly involve admin­is­tra­tors in ques­tions con­cern­ing reli­gion. These con­tin­u­ing involve­ments of State offi­cials in ques­tions and issues of reli­gion cre­ate an exces­sive and pro­hib­it­ed entan­gle­ment with religion.

Of course, cre­ation­ists of the day insist­ed that cre­ation sci­ence was­n’t reli­gious. But the judge was able to see through that claim. Sim­i­lar­ly, a judge in Penn­syl­va­nia saw through the claim that ID isn’t cre­ation­ism, and judges in Ten­nessee and Louisiana and else­where will see through such claims about teach­ing long-refut­ed cre­ation­ist attacks on evo­lu­tion. As the Supreme Court said in 1987’s Edwards v. Aguil­lard:

While the Court is nor­mal­ly def­er­en­tial to a State’s artic­u­la­tion of a sec­u­lar pur­pose, it is required that the state­ment of such pur­pose be sin­cere and not a sham.…

The Act does not grant teach­ers a flex­i­bil­i­ty that they did not already pos­sess to sup­plant the present sci­ence cur­ricu­lum with the pre­sen­ta­tion of the­o­ries, besides evo­lu­tion, about the ori­gin of life. Indeed, the Court of Appeals found that no law pro­hib­it­ed Louisiana pub­lic school teach­ers from teach­ing any sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry. As the pres­i­dent of the Louisiana Sci­ence Teach­ers Asso­ci­a­tion tes­ti­fied, “[a]ny sci­en­tif­ic con­cept that’s based on estab­lished fact can be includ­ed in our cur­ricu­lum already, and no leg­is­la­tion allow­ing this is nec­es­sary.” The Act pro­vides Louisiana school­teach­ers with no new author­i­ty. Thus the stat­ed pur­pose is not fur­thered by it. …

…we need not be blind in this case to the leg­is­la­ture’s pre­em­i­nent reli­gious pur­pose in enact­ing this statute. There is a his­toric and con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous link between the teach­ings of cer­tain reli­gious denom­i­na­tions and the teach­ing of evo­lu­tion. It was this link that con­cerned the Court in Epper­son v. Arkansas, which also involved a facial chal­lenge to a statute reg­u­lat­ing the teach­ing of evo­lu­tion. … Although the Arkansas antievo­lu­tion law did not explic­it­ly state its pre­dom­i­nate reli­gious pur­pose, the Court could not ignore that “[t]he statute was a prod­uct of the upsurge of ‘fun­da­men­tal­ist’ reli­gious fer­vor” that has long viewed this par­tic­u­lar sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry as con­tra­dict­ing the lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bible. After review­ing the his­to­ry of antievo­lu­tion statutes, the Court deter­mined that “there can be no doubt that the moti­va­tion for the [Arkansas] law was the same [as oth­er antievo­lu­tion statutes]: to sup­press the teach­ing of a the­o­ry which, it was thought, ‘denied’ the divine cre­ation of man.” Id., at 109. The Court found that there can be no legit­i­mate state inter­est in pro­tect­ing par­tic­u­lar reli­gions from sci­en­tif­ic views “dis­taste­ful to them,” and con­clud­ed “that the First Amend­ment does not per­mit the State to require that teach­ing and learn­ing must be tai­lored to the prin­ci­ples or pro­hi­bi­tions of any reli­gious sect or dogma.”

These same his­toric and con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous antag­o­nisms between the teach­ings of cer­tain reli­gious denom­i­na­tions and the teach­ing of evo­lu­tion are present in this case. The pre­em­i­nent pur­pose of the Louisiana Leg­is­la­ture was clear­ly to advance the reli­gious view­point that a super­nat­ur­al being cre­at­ed humankind.…

The leg­isla­tive his­to­ry doc­u­ments that the Act’s pri­ma­ry pur­pose was to change the sci­ence cur­ricu­lum of pub­lic schools in order to pro­vide per­sua­sive advan­tage to a par­tic­u­lar reli­gious doc­trine that rejects the fac­tu­al basis of evo­lu­tion in its entirety.…

In this case, the pur­pose of the Cre­ation­ism Act was to restruc­ture the sci­ence cur­ricu­lum to con­form with a par­tic­u­lar reli­gious view­point. Out of many pos­si­ble sci­ence sub­jects taught in the pub­lic schools, the leg­is­la­ture chose to affect the teach­ing of the one sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry that his­tor­i­cal­ly has been opposed by cer­tain reli­gious sects. As in Epper­son, the leg­is­la­ture passed the Act to give pref­er­ence to those reli­gious groups which have as one of their tenets the cre­ation of humankind by a divine cre­ator. The “over­rid­ing fact” that con­front­ed the Court in Epper­son was “that Arkansas’ law selects from the body of knowl­edge a par­tic­u­lar seg­ment which it pro­scribes for the sole rea­son that it is deemed to con­flict with … a par­tic­u­lar inter­pre­ta­tion of the Book of Gen­e­sis by a par­tic­u­lar reli­gious group.” Sim­i­lar­ly, the Cre­ation­ism Act is designed either to pro­mote the the­o­ry of cre­ation sci­ence which embod­ies a par­tic­u­lar reli­gious tenet by requir­ing that cre­ation sci­ence be taught when­ev­er evo­lu­tion is taught or to pro­hib­it the teach­ing of a sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry dis­fa­vored by cer­tain reli­gious sects by for­bid­ding the teach­ing of evo­lu­tion when cre­ation sci­ence is not also taught.

Giv­en that the Ten­nessee Mon­key Bil­l’s leg­isla­tive his­to­ry shows its advo­cates focus­ing on evo­lu­tion in the same way that cre­ation­ists in Louisiana and Arkansas did, and that mem­bers of the pub­lic tes­ti­fy­ing in the bil­l’s favor includ­ed an offi­cer of a local cre­ation­ist soci­ety and oth­ers who invoked Gen­e­sis and Sun­day school les­son, and that the state teach­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion again object­ed that the law gave teach­ers no new pow­ers, it won’t be hard for courts to reach the same con­clu­sion about this bill that they have about pre­vi­ous cre­ation­ist bills. The fact that there is such a dis­claimer will be irrelevant.

Indeed, the fact that the Dis­cov­ery Insti­tute mod­el leg­is­la­tion includes such a dis­claimer is a red flag. Most bills don’t include such efforts to hide their agen­da from courts – the bil­l’s intent speaks for itself. Say­ing “This bill isn’t uncon­sti­tu­tion­al” should just draw greater scruti­ny from leg­is­la­tors, like a dec­la­ra­tion “I’m not racist…” is a tipoff that some­one’s about to say some­thing incred­i­bly racist.

Odd­ly, even after hav­ing quot­ed the dis­claimer, Casey pro­ceeds to get it wrong, claim­ing it “express­ly pro­hibits the teach­ing of cre­ation­ism.” It does­n’t, at best it pro­hibits cre­ation­ism implic­it­ly, and that’s only if one accepts the courts’ rul­ings that cre­ation­ism is reli­gion. The Mon­key Bill claims not to pro­tect the teach­ing of reli­gious doc­trines, but so did pre­vi­ous laws that explic­it­ly stat­ed their goal as teach­ing cre­ation­ism, so how much cred­i­bil­i­ty should we even give that?

Inter­est­ing­ly, ID cre­ation­ist Car­o­line Crock­er and oth­er bill defend­ers have claimed that the bill “explic­it­ly pre­vents the teach­ing of cre­ation or even ID.” This would seem to be an admis­sion that ID is a reli­gious doc­trine, just as Casey’s state­ment grants that cre­ation­ism is religious.