This is the one we wrote about here: Oklahoma Creationism Bill for 2015. It was Senate Bill 665 (MS Word file), fraudulently styled the Oklahoma Science Education Act. The thing was sponsored by Josh Brecheen, a fanatical creationist who does something like this every year.

We included the bill’s text in our earlier post, and it was pretty much what Brecheen proposed last year. Essentially, it “encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues.” And it lets teachers present “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories.” As you undoubtedly recognized, those phrases come from the anti-science, anti-evolution, pro-creationism Academic Freedom Act promoted by the Discovery Institute.

What happened to it? Our friends at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) just posted: Antiscience bill dies in Oklahoma, which says:

Oklahoma’s Senate Bill 667 [ sic ], which would, if enacted, have deprived administrators of the ability to prevent teachers from miseducating students about “scientific controversies,” died in the Senate Education Committee on February 26, 2015, when a deadline for senate bills to pass committee expired.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! It didn’t even get a hearing or a vote in the committee. (We’re assuming NCSE meant to write about SB 665, otherwise this post makes no sense at all.)

This has been a terrible year for creationist legislation — at least so far. That means it’s been a great year for science and sanity, and a wretched one for the activist creationists at the Discovery Institute who promote this madness.

Of the handful of states that have had such idiocy introduced in their legislatures this year, only Missouri hasn’t decided yet — see Missouri Creationism: New Bill for 2015. That one is still sitting in committee, where it’s had no hearing. Perhaps it’ll just die there, but we won’t know for a while yet.

Also, we’ve mentioned two states that are considering bible bills — the sort of thing we don’t usually write about. Oklahoma is one, and Mississippi Has Two Proposed Bible Bills.

Anyway, as we’ve seen in the time we’ve been blogging, creationist bills keep appearing and then dropping — like putrid drool from the foaming lips of a creation scientist. In most cases it’s not particularly contagious. Only two states have passed such legislation — Louisiana and Tennessee — and the madness they’ve legitimized hasn’t yet been tested in court. So we’re not at all pessimistic, but this nonsense does get tiresome.

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