They should outlaw the teaching of “Intelligent Design”!

I’m reading American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America by Chris Hedges, and came upon a passage about homeschoolers (my emphasis on the bolded words):

“Unlike the animals, mammals included, man is an immortal being who will live somewhere forever,” reads a passage in Biology: God’s Living Creation, [christianbook.com] a creationist textbook popular in Christian high schools. Human beings are discussed in isolation from other mammals, and brief passages interrupt the chapters with headings such as “The Wonders of the Human Hand.” ... The textbook, with an index of scripture references, states that “according to the laws of probability, the probability that evolution occurred is essentially zero. Yet, evolutionists believe sincerely that it did somehow happen. We marvel at their faith in the impossible.

Creationist publications such as this one blame Darwin for spawning most of the evils of modernity including racism, apartheid, Stalinism, the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. It was evolution, the textbook states, that “exploded into a worldwide philosophy of ‘kill or be killed’ as expressed by Adolf Hitler and the proponents of the religion of Communism.” Darwin is usually presented as mentally unbalanced and sadistic. An article put out by the California-based Institute for Creation Research is typical: “Was Charles Darwin Psychotic? A Study of His Mental Health.” Believers are told that Darwin, and all evolutionists, were behind the genocides unleashed by all modern tyrants from Hitler and Stalin to Pol Pot. And Christians must be prepared for battle, for war, against satanic forces that lie incubating within America’s secular, evolutionist, materialistic, godless society, forces getting ready to begin a new round of mass exterminations, this time of American Christians ...

And yet, coming from the modern age, the fundamentalists cannot discount science. They employ jargon, methods and data that appear like science to make an argument for creationism. They have created research and scholarly institutions designed to parallel legitimate scientific organizations. They pump out articles in self-published journals to provide “evidence” that homosexuals can be cured, that global warming is a myth, that abortion can cause breast cancer, that something they call “post-abortion syndrome syndrome” leads to deep depression and suicide, and that abstinence-only education is an effective form of birth control.

I’m all for freedom of speech and all, but it’s really harmful to teach this bullshit to kids! Of course with the administration we have now, the point is moot I guess, but with a potential change coming in 2020, would it be worth considering tightening federal educational standards just a little, at least?? Although, keep in mind the Shrub was president when this book was published (2007) and in eight years Obama didn’t clamp down on this idiocy, but I suppose, in his defense, if he’d tried the right-wing would have bitten his head off (more than they already did). But someone needs to push back on this! These people have TOO MUCH power and lawmakers shouldn’t be kowtowing to them! THEY’RE TEACHING LIES IN SCHOOL! Kids are supposed to leave school SMARTER, not DUMBER!!!