We recently got a weekend subscription to the Kansas City Star, and the biggest story the past few days has been the Kansas Board of Education deciding whether Creationism should be taught in science classes as an alternative to Evolution.

The debate has raged for years, so there's no need to rehash it now, but there are a number of issues that make this debate unique. First of all, the members of the Kansas Board of Education, who presumably get to decide what Kansas children will learn in school, were quoted in yesterday's paper as having not read the majority opinion in this case (the case for teaching only evolution in science class) because it was "long" and "complex".

Not surprisingly, these same board members are publicly in favor of teaching creationism, so even if they did take the time to read and/or comprehend it, they wouldn't be swayed from their opinion that the children should be taught both and "choose for themselves which to believe". This sounds like a great idea. So great, in fact, that we should apply it to other classes. Instead of teaching kindergarteners that 2+2=4, we should also give them the dissenting opinion that 2+2=5 and let them choose for themselves which is accurate.

The other interesting part of this debate is that proponents of creationism are framing their belief as the "theory of intelligent design". So they attack evolution itself as being "only a theory, therefore it's not true", then try to posit their own belief as a scientific theory despite the fact that it has no scientific evidence to back it up.

I have a theory too, it's called the theory of cyclic idiocy. In it, I propose that Kansas does whatever it can to perpetuate the notion throughout the rest of the country that it is a bunch of backwards hicks who cling desperately to an idealistic time that never existed anywhere except in their heads. I think this should be taught in schools too, and it doesn't even matter which grade since at this rate Kansans will be back in one-room schoolhouses before you know it.