Dorothy Left Just in Time

So I don't know why I'm weighing in on this issue, but hell, if it's good enough for Sen. Bill Brady, it's good enough for me. According to CNN.com, the Kansas Board of Education has voted to allow the teaching of alternate theories to evolution in their schools.

Even more baffling to me than the fact that this vote is being cast in 2005, is the stated underpinning of the concept:

The 6-4 vote was a victory for "intelligent design" advocates who helped draft the standards. Intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power. (Emphasis added)

Listen, I don't know how my plasma television works either but I just figured that it was some really smart guys in a lab somewhere, not devine intervention.

Let me be clear - I am NOT making light of anybody's deeply held religious beliefs. But some of the most fervent Christians I know do not support the teaching of intelligent design. So what do you call it when religion and faith don't exactly jibe? Faith. Even members of the leity concede that there is not a way to perfectly harmonize the scriptures and science. But just as scientists shouldn't go around trying to debunk religion, people should not use the Bible to attempt to discredit established scientific constructs.

But that premise apparently doesn't apply in the Sunflower State. Figuring that they were on a roll, the Board decided to keep going in their version of education reform:

In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.

That's right, we don't want to restrict science to using provable facts. That would take all the creativity of it.

Now I'm not going to get any further in the midst of this debate, so let me just close with the words of one of the dissenting board members:

"This is a sad day. We're becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that," said board member Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat.