Texas wingnut Don McLeroy on the march

Cartoon from The Great Realization

We've written before about the chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, Don McLeroy, the christianist wingnut dentist.

McLeroy is endorsing a new book called Sowing Atheism: The National Academy of Sciences' Sinister Scheme to Teach Our Children They've Descended from Reptiles by Robert Bowie Johnson Jr., who just happened to "self-publish" the book.

In this book students in science classes in Texas will learn, according to the Texas Freedom Network, that "Scientists are 'atheists.' Parents who want to teach their children about evolution are 'monsters.' Pastors who support sound science are 'morons.'"


This would be hilarious if it wasn't so damn serious. How does a wingnut like McLeroy get to hold the position of chairman of any state board of education?

And again, all of this is an attempt to impose and install fundamentalist christianity into our public schools.

From the book: "Creationists do not want to bring religion into the classroom... Creationists simply want the God hypothesis brought back into the science classroom, and recognized for what it is--a scientifically valid hypothesis."

Heh, heh!

The "God hypothesis" is not "religion," according to this fruitcake!


TFN summarizes: "As bizzarre and abrasive as some of these ideas may be [in the book], clearly any yahoo with a half-baked idea can write and self-publish a book. That is not the important point here. The real issue is the inability of the chair of the Texas State Board of Education to distinguish between legitimate, mainstream science - a represented by the National Academy of Sciences - and a lone crackpot with an openly religious agenda."

I disagree to some degree. I think the chair of the Texas State Board of Education can distinguish quite clearly the difference between "legitimate mainstream science" and "a lone crackpot with an openly religious agenda."

I think the real point and the real problem is that the chair of the Texas State Board of Education cares not about science and students in Texas schools, but is doing everything in his power to ensure that his particular brand of fundamentalist christianity has a gateway to spread its pernicious doctrines in Texas schools.


Read the entire article here.

h/t to Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly via Alternet.