This is an update of the original post about antievolution legislation from February 19, 2013 .

It’s a new year for the individual US state legislatures, and after a relatively unsuccessful 2012 in passing anti-science laws (with the notable exception of Tennessee’s Monkey Bill), the conservative Republicans are back trying to remove real science teaching from our kids. The anti-science legislation comes in the form of either teaching creationism (or more subtle forms, like intelligent design), usually combined with climate change denialism, and, strangely, anti-human cloning (which is not exactly a serious line of research today). But the goal is, and will probably always be, to teach creationism.

Creationism refers to the belief that the universe and everything in it were specially created by a god through magic, rather than natural, scientifically explained, means. Creationism implicitly relies on the claim that there is a “purpose” to all creation known only to the creator. In other words, creationism is a religious belief, and no matter what argument is made (and I could write 50,000 words on the topic), creationism is not science because it relies upon a supernatural being, which means it can never be falsified, one of the basic principles of the scientific method. The supporters of creationism attempt to claim that creationism is a scientific theory on the level of evolution, ignoring the fact that a scientific theory is “a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment.” Creationism is generally based on a fictional book.

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, specifically prohibits any government entity from establishing a religion (which courts have ruled to include teaching religion in schools). Decades worth of Supreme Court rulings have found that teaching creationism in schools is equivalent to teaching religion. As recently as 2005, in Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District, a Federal Court continued the tradition of considering creationism as religion, and ruled against a school district, costing the Dover Area School District nearly $1 million in legal fees. That money probably could have been used to teach their students better science.

Despite these legal rulings, eight states have introduced antievolution or anti-science bills since the beginning of the year:

Let’s be clear as I can. There are no controversies with regards to evolution or climate change. Those theories are well established and are accepted by a broad consensus of scientists in the field. Even with abiogenesis, the theory of the beginning of life (which is not covered by the theory of evolution), the only controversy is in the exact mechanism, not in the fact that life arose out of basic chemicals and energy approximately 3.5-3.9 billion years ago. If someone wants to create a “scientific controversy” in these theories, they must bring scientific data and analysis from a world class laboratory staffed by world-class Ph.D-level scientists with that data published in a world class journal, subject to repetition, analysis and criticism by other scientists in other world class laboratories. A clueless politician in a right-wing state does not get to invent a “scientific controversy” by saying one exists. One has to show it.

But this anti-science strategy of the right has consequences. It further reduces the USA’s technological competitiveness in the world. In fact, the World Economic Forum report on Global Competitiveness ranks the united states as 47th in quality of math and science education (see chart image above the fold). The USA ranks 38th in primary education. And if the US produces high school and college students who think that the earth is 6000 years old or that some supernatural creates organisms, then how are they going to do research in biomedicines, geology, diseases, and hundreds of other natural sciences? Companies that need those highly educated individuals will go where those educated students are located, whether it’s in other states or move the companies to countries who don’t allow religion in teaching. Or higher foreign-educated engineers and scientists.

California, New York and other progressive states that never allow anti-science legislation should be be making sure that they promote themselves to technology companies that are considering placing facilities in these backwards states. Makes sense to me.

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