Update, Tuesday evening, 31 Jan: The Indiana Senate just passed the bill with a 28-22 vote. Now it goes to the House. See Indiana Creationism Bill Passes in Senate.
The whacked out creationism bill we last wrote about here: Indiana Creationism Bill Moves Forward has just been amended.
The original bill, which passed the Senate’s Education Committee by an 8-2 vote, said this:
The governing body of a school corporation may require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the school corporation.
The amendment (by Senator Simpson) can be located at this page of the legislature’s website. By following this link we see the proposed amendment, which says:
I move that Senate Bill 89 be amended to read as follows:
Page 1, delete lines 4 through 5 and insert “offer instruction on various theories of the origin of life. The curriculum for the course must include theories from multiple religions, which may include, but is not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology.”
We don’t see a marked-up version showing the end result, but looking at the original bill, Senate Bill 0089, we think the effect of the amendment is this (deleted language is struck through, and the new language is in bold):
The governing body of a school corporation may
require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the school corporationoffer instruction on various theories of the origin of life. The curriculum for the course must include theories from multiple religions, which may include, but is not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology.
If we’re reading the effect of the amendment correctly, this bizarre curriculum change won’t be mandatory unless a school teaches “theories of the origin of life” — which the Senate thinks means evolution. If that’s taught, then the curriculum must also include “theories” from multiple religions, an exotic mix that will surely include creation science. In their supreme ignorance, the Senate’s Education Committee doesn’t know the meaning of evolution or theory. What they’ve crafted is basically an “equal time” law, which has already been declared unconstitutional (see Edwards v. Aguillard). But this bill is designed to assure less than equal time for evolution.
In an attempt to “cure” their original crazy bill, which has generated a storm of criticism, the legislative geniuses in the Indiana Senate have gone from mandatory creation science (which is crazy enough) to that plus creation myths from several other religions, including Scientology. They imagine that by tossing in stuff like Hinduism, their abominable bill can’t be criticized for promoting Christianity. It’s equal opportunity creationism.
Copyright © 2012. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
The changes in the amendment are still religion and will not pass muster in Federal courts. It is not just ‘Christian’ religion that is not allowed in previous court decisions.
vhutchison says: “The changes in the amendment are still religion and will not pass muster in Federal courts.”
You know that. I know that. The Indiana legislators seem not to know that — or anything else.
Are you sure the creationists did this? Maybe it was an anti-creationist legislator forcing them to live up to “teach the controversy”–someone who won’t let them get away with “wink wink nudge nudge”.
Now the creationists have to explicitly REQUIRE that Allah and Vishnu be included in science class on equal footing with YHWH, or vote against their own bill.
If so, this is a level of magnificent bastardry that it would be futile for me t aspire to. I am awed and humbled.
Gabriel Hanna asks: “Are you sure the creationists did this?”
Pretty sure. I understand that the guy who wrote the original bill voted for this amendment.
The bill says a school corp. may “offer instruction on various theories of the origin of life. The curriculum for the course must include theories from multiple religions, which may include, but is not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology.”
Sounds like a Comparative Religion class to me. Just as long as it’s not in any kind of a science class. I’m not that familiar with any scientific “theories of the origin of life”. A few hypotheses, perhaps, and maybe a random untestable assertion or two, but certainly no theories.
These turkeys in the Indiana Senate are wasting my tax money debating this crap. They haven’t got a clue, and even if it were to pass, they’d have a tough time enforcing its provisions.
I wonder — do they really want the “christian” account of creation compared to that of other religions? I think most students would see it for what it is — just one myth among many.
Gabriel, you posted your response above as I was writing. I think you’re right — they’ve killed their own bill.
Oh, this is rich! Scientology? Seriously, Scientology? That’s the cult invented by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, right?
Scientology has an origin of life theory? Oh, yeah, the Thetans who were deposited in volcanoes or something like that.
I think my degree from Purdue just lost a few points.
Doc Bill: “I think my degree from Purdue just lost a few points.”
My alma mater as well, Doc. I think we’re ok, though — hardly anyone seems to know where Purdue is. It’s the IU alumni who need to worry.
No, wait — they’re probably the geniuses behind this bill!
Of COURSE they do this now that I’ve sent off all of those letters to the different Indiana state senators, plus the one to Daniels.
Good grief.
What really irks me is if the “Excellence in Education” report is correct, Indiana gets some of the highest marks in the nation for science instruction. And they want to flush that down the terlet.
Oh, and Doc Bill? Purdue is a university. Creationism can’t even cope at the high school level; it’ll never reach the university level. Which means our Purdue degrees are (and will remain) untainted. We Boilermakers are fine.
I can’t imagine that a legislator would seriously propose that Islam and Scientology would be put on an equal basis with Christianity. (He did stop short of including Pastafarianism, I will admit.) This has to be a way of killing the bill. The fact that the originator of the bill voted for it only means that he is too dense to comprehend when he is being put on.
They want to force biology teachers to teach religious myths. Another reason for Europe to laugh at Idiot America.
What a great bill. Their thinking seems to be that it’s okay to include religion in a class if you include a sufficient number of different beliefs so as to not appear to be promoting any specific one. (btw – Christianity and Judaism do not count as two different origins “theories”) To avoid the appearance of promoting any one religion over others, teachers would be required to give them equal weight and legitimacy, else they would be accused of pushing their own faith. It’s an impossible situation (except, perhaps, for a Pastafarian, who can laugh at all of them equally).
I cannot imagine this ever being passed, but if it does, hilarity will ensue if anyone tries to implement this in their district.
Gabriel Hanna: “Are you sure the creationists did this? Maybe it was an anti-creationist legislator forcing them to live up to ‘teach the controversy’–someone who won’t let them get away with ‘wink wink nudge nudge’.”
I admit that I’m always one of the first to suspect a Poe, so I would not rule out your possibility unless there’s a good reason. One might be that evolution-deniers are so conditioned to tune things out (Morton’s Demon) that, even after 25 years they have not “read the memo” to avoid explicit religious references. But even the most clueless rubes backpedal from creationism (or creation “science”) to ID or “strengths and weaknesses” after the more savvy activists step in to do damage control. So this is an odd one by any measure.
BTW, I recall a bill a few years ago, whereby some of those more savvy activists made sure to demand “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, while specifically stating that “origins of life” would not be taught. Unlike these rubes they knew that evolution and abiogenesis were separate concepts, but the words were chosen carefully so that most nonscientists would interpret it that “evolution won’t be taught as ‘fact’.”
TomS: I can’t imagine that a legislator would seriously propose that Islam and Scientology would be put on an equal basis with Christianity.
Of course not. But the amendment doesn’t really require any teacher or school to take other creation stories seriously. The wording allows them to build a curriculum that covers Christian creationism for, say, 17 weeks, and then all the others in 1 week.
Another possibility: if this is supposed to be implemented in a science class (vs. a separate class), then adding a bunch of others will cut down on the time given to evolution. Most teachers aren’t going to cut away other non-evolution units to make way for this crap; they’re going to shove it all in the time allocated for evolution. The legislators may know this; the secondary purpose of adding other religious ideas (primary = attempt to make it constitutional or hide their religious motives) may be to further dilute the teaching of evolution.
Or they may be killing their own bill, as multiple other posters have suggested.
SC says:
“If we’re reading the effect of the amendment correctly, this bizarre curriculum change won’t be mandatory unless a school teaches “theories of the origin of life” — which the Senate thinks means evolution. ”
This might be an overly-narrow reading on my part of the whole thing, but-
If it can be pointed out to the Senate that nothing in either the original or amended wordings of the bill even address evolution, wouldn’t that perhaps elicit a response as to their reasons for wanting the stupid thing passed? Is it just to get religion into the classroom? If not, why must “[t]he curriculum for the course… include theories from ” ANY religion, much less the one I suspect they have in mind?
Here’s an interesting report on the state of science education standards in the US. The states are graded A-F. I was a bit surprised to see such a poor showing in the north east.
Sorry…here’s the link:
http://ncse.com/news/2012/01/fordham-evolution-state-science-standards-007181
“We don’t see a marked-up version showing the end result …”
Go to the page you linked to and click on “Latest Printing.” You had it right anyway.
What ever the intent of the senators, we can safely predict that the law, if it gets that far, should be renamed the “Suicide Pact for School Board Members.” Just imagine if a local school board announces that they’re going to teach Islam, Hinduism and Scientology to little Jane and Johnnie.
John Pieret says: “Just imagine if a local school board announces that they’re going to teach Islam, Hinduism and Scientology to little Jane and Johnnie.”
They won’t, of course. But if they teach about the origin of life (which they think is evolution) then they’d have to. So to the legislators, this is a way of forbidding evolution.
Either this is an attempt to keep (evil materialist atheism promoting) abiogenesis out of science classes, by saying it is equivalent to a religious belief, or the dimwits sponsoring and voting for this thing are conflating the ToE with the “origin of life” and do not realize that the the ToE says nothing about the “origin of life”. Probably both.
@eric: I think you nailed it. I’m thinking the senators are thinking, “We’ll change it to include everyone. That’ll appease everyone’s sense of fair play. Once we have our law, we can do whatever we want.” The senators must be reading the comments on the news web sites. People are commenting, “Why just Christian creationism? Why not Buddhism? Hinduism? Shintoism? Muslim?” The senators, just like Sheldon on “The Big Bang Theory”, are lacking a sarcasm filter. (Then again, perhaps some of those people are serious? Shouldn’t rule that out.)
The problem is that no one gets to teach religion in the science class. Period. It’s not that they (meaning those senators and those behind the senators) don’t understand that. I’m certain they do understand that. It’s just that they don’t care, they want to prosleytize in the science class and they believe this is the best and fastest way to get there.
I’m going to call Suicide Bomb on this one. The MoCrat deliberately tossed in obvious religious references and nonsense into the wording of the bill to make it such an obvious violation of the establishment clause that it will go up in flames in even a cursory legal analysis. An L1 could win that case.
“Why, it’s so stupid it just might work!” Uh, I think not.
Jack Hogan, my email is malfunctioning. I said: “Thanks for the information.”
Yowie! The Indiana Senate just passed the bill with a 28-22 vote. Now it goes to the House.
Wow. That was unexpected.
If the Senate passed it I assume the House will. On the bright side about ten R’s had to vote against it, since there are only 13 D’s in the Senate and one voted for it in committee.
What will Daniels do?
Daniels seemed non-committal four days ago. He probably hoped the issue would go away.
Governor Daniels talks right-to-work, presidential election, creationism
…We spoke to Daniels about teaching creationism in public schools – he said right now, he’s waiting to see how the legislature acts on it…
http://articles.wsbt.com/2012-01-27/governor-mitch-daniels_30669222