To paraphrase Clarence Darrow, creationism is always busy and needs feeding, and their lawsuits and incursions into the schools won’t stop until religion is no longer with us. Fortunately, this latest lawsuit, reported by the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), is a bull-goose loser. (The short 3-page complaint is here.) The state is West Virginia, and Kenneth Smith is asking for his daughter not to be taught evolution in her public school because it’s a “faith” that will hurt his her education. The claim is that teaching evolution itself violates the First Amendment. The relevant bit:

This is not really novel, as lots of creationists—and even some secular folks—claim that science itself is based on faith (or is a faith) and I’ve heard people argue (one of them, I believe, is my friend Larry Moran) that while teaching that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old is legal, teaching that it is not 10,000 years old is unconstitutional in the U.S.. The latter is supposed to be an unwarranted attack on religion, but I’m not convinced.

But this lawsuit has no legs. As the NCSE reports:

Absent from the complaint is any mention of the relevant case law. In McLean v. Arkansas (1982), for example, the court commented, “it is clearly established in the case law, and perhaps also in common sense, that evolution is not a religion and that teaching evolution does not violate the Establishment Clause.” Similarly, in Peloza v. Capistrano School District (1994), the court characterized the Supreme Court’s decision in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) as holding “unequivocally that while the belief in a divine creator of the universe is a religious belief, the scientific theory that higher forms of life evolved from lower forms is not.”

Let us be clear: the only reason people like Kenneth Smith characterize evolution as a “faith” is because it contravenes their own religion. As tons of evidence attest, evolution is a fact, and evolutionary biology is a well-established branch of science, no more a “faith” than organic chemistry, quantum mechanics, or cell biology. Frankly, I’m surprised the lawsuit isn’t just dismissed out of hand.

h/t: Lauren