Via Pam’s House Blend comes the latest stupid bill in Texas: Bill Would Allow Texas School to Grant Master’s Degree in Science for Creationism Blasphemy. The bill, HB 2800, is proposed by Representative Leo Berman (R-Tyler) and would allow schools that meet certain criteria to grant degrees without authorization from the state’s Higher Education Coordination Board. Berman proposed the bill after he learnt that the Institution of Creation Research was denied authorization to grant Master of Science degrees by the HECB.
Unsurprisingly, Berman is a creationist. ”‘I don’t believe I came from a salamander that crawled out of a swamp millions of years ago,’ Berman told FOXNews.com. ‘I do believe in creationism. I do believe there are gaps in evolution.’”
I’ve already commented about this at PHB, but I’ll reiterate what I said here. The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. Indeed, “…the theory pf evolution by natural selection is so broadly supported by different lines of inquiry that biologists accept it with as much certainty as they do the theory of gravity. The theory of evolution is particularly important to biologists because it provides the conceptual framework that unifies biology as a science.” [Raven, Peter; Johnson, George. Understanding Biology, 3rd edition. Wm. C. Brown Publishers. 1995. p10] Berman’s quote also shows that he probably has no idea about what evolution actually is. Humans did not evolve from swamp-dwelling salamanders any more then they evolved from monkeys or paramecia. Instead, humans, salamanders, monkeys, and paramecia share a common ancestor.
Since the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, creationism is a indirect way of claiming that God is deceptive. As I’ve mentioned before, isn’t this akin to saying that God is a liar? And isn’t this blasphemous? It’s not me who’s asserting this; it’s Theodosius Dobzhansky, evolutionary biologist and member of the Russian Orthodox Church.
