State Sen. Glenn H. Gruenhagen demanded his religious mythology be taught in science classes

May 15, 2024

A Minnesota Republican lawmaker opposed a major education bill that, among other things, would prevent book banning by school districts because he argued that public schools are already in the censorship business.

For example, he argued, science classes censor Creationism.

The lawmaker is State Sen. Glenn H. Gruenhagen, a climate denier and Christian Nationalist who falsely “believes that our rights come from God and not from man or government.” I last wrote about him in early 2023 when he proposed a “critical thinking” bill that would have forced educators to teach children “how sickness, disease, pain, suffering, and death are a consequence imposed by the Creator…” (That bill thankfully went nowhere.) He has also fought against anti-gay “conversion therapy” bans, saying they enable “pedophilia.”

This time around, he’s very mad about SF 3567, an “Omnibus Education policy bill” that passed the Democrat-led State House last month and was up for a vote in the State Senate on Monday.

Gruenhagen specifically brought up a particular section of the bill concerning book bans. That part of the bill would still allow parents to restrict material for their own children. It would also allow librarians (or other qualified individuals) to make decisions about what material was made available to students, as long as there was no censorship based on “viewpoint, content, message, idea, or opinion conveyed.” It’s all extremely sensible and clearly intended to prevent right-wing mobs from removing books that involve LGBTQ characters or mention sex, as they’ve been able to do in so many red states.

But Gruenhagen argued that preventing censorship wasn’t really a concern for liberals. After all, he claimed, they didn’t even want students knowing about the Christian foundation of our country!

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But our public schools, in general, do a lot of censorship, lies, and deceit as far as their curriculum that's being taught to the children…

One of the things I found is that we do a lot of censoring in our public schools of our founding documents…

In fact, if you remember, I brought a recommendation forward on one of the education bills to teach that we're founded as a God-given rights, constitutional Republic versus a mob democracy, just encouraging that to be taught to our students. And that was voted down by… the people on the other side of the aisle.

Stupid democracy, always getting in the way of Christian Nationalists eager to impose their will upon the masses...

Our rights don’t come from God no matter how many people want to believe otherwise. We are a democracy, even if we’re not an entirely direct one, and that is taught to students. The fact that a lawmaker used “mob” in conjunction with the word “democracy” tells you a lot about the popularity of conservatives’ ideas.

(It won’t surprise you to learn that Greunhagen is an avid follower of Christian pseudo-historian and notorious liar David Barton.)

But Greunhagen really lit up when it came to the supposed censorship of science.

Another area is in science. I find a lot of censorship, lies, and deceit. You know, there's lots of scientific evidence that points to a Creator or God. And I'll just give you two.

One is the law of cause and effect. For every effect, there's a greater cause. So you have a computer. Did somebody make the computer? If you'd never seen it before, did somebody make the computer or did wind, rain, time, and chance blow the computer into existence? Well, the logical conclusion is someone made the computer. Well, your eyeball is millions of times more complex than that computer, and therefore, the law of cause and effect has never been contradicted.

You have this building, somebody built it. You have the Earth, somebody made it. You have the universe, somebody created it.

That is a repeatable and… observable scientific fact. And yet we censor that from our students.

You know things are bad when a sitting senator is using Christian Apologetics 101 to push for why religious fiction ought to override actual science.

The “cosmological” argument he’s using here has been rebutted for ages. In short, though, if God created everything, who created God? Why is God exempt from that line of questioning? More to the point, there’s no scientific evidence that points to God. That’s not how science works. Just because Greunhagen denies the Big Bang doesn’t mean the evidence for it isn’t overwhelming.

As for the eyeball, Gruenhagen is victim to the age-old watchmaker analogy and the fallacy of irreducible complexity. Yes, the eyeball is complicated. It is the product of evolution. Contrary to Christian belief, “half an eye” would still be enormously beneficial to our ancestors.

In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. The Scopes trial was held in 1925. Yet today, some Christians still haven’t figured out the basics of evolution or why their mythology doesn’t qualify as science.

Greunhagen is just angry because his delusions aren’t treated with respect among people who actually know what they’re talking about. There’s no deception or lying involved. His ignorance is not a good justification to misinform children. It’s not censorship to withhold religious mythology from students in a science class.

The good news is that the majority of the senate wasn’t persuaded by his rant either.

The education bill passed 35-31 with all Democrats (and one Republican) supporting it. It’ll now head to the governor’s desk.