State Reps Fight For Fixed Earth Education

Via Talking Points Memo, a story that may make you doubt not only what year this is, but maybe what century, and possibly even what millennium.

First Georgia State Rep. Ben Bridges (R), and then Texas State Rep. Warren Chisum (R), circulated around their respective state legislatures claims that evolution is really a Jewish conspiracy and that the Earth doesn't rotate or orbit the sun.

Barnes' memo pointed fellow state legislators to the information at fixedearth.com which rails against the "a mystic, anti-Christ 'holy book' of the Pharisee Sect of Judaism" and claims that "the earth is not rotating ... nor is it going around the sun." They've even caught on to the "centuries-old conspiracy" on the part of Jewish physicists to destroy Christianity.

That fixedearth.com site is awesome. With the aid of a breathtaking assortment of every font, color and means of emphasis known to man, it is "Exposing the False Science Idol of Evolutionism, and Proving the Truthfulness of the Bible from Creation to Heaven... since 1973"

Now that the word is out, our intrepid statesmen are trying to backpedal somewhat. I can almost see the Texan passing something along without "vetting the material more carefully," -- it's stupid, but we can almost give him the benefit of the doubt -- but that nutjob in Georgia had this to say (emphasis mine):

Asked if he agreed with the Kaballah evolution conspiracy theory and the earth's lack of motion, he told the Atlanta Journal Constitution, "I agree with it more than I would the Big Bang Theory or the Darwin Theory. I am convinced that rather than risk teaching a lie why teach anything?"

That statement defies belief. That it was uttered by a grown man, duly elected by other grown people to represent them in, well, anything at all, but especially in their state government, in 2007, defies imagination. Trying to grasp that the speaker was prompted by religious faith to warn of the risks of "teaching a lie" may, in fact, cause blurry vision, dizziness and loss of bowel control. If I were you, I wouldn't try it.