Ignorance for the Lord: Florida’s new Board of Education chair is an anti-science Christian extremist who denies evolution.

Andy Tuck, an ignorant conservative Christian and a citrus farmer, is Florida’s new Board Of Education chair. Tuck, a self-identified “person of faith” has little if any scientific education, and demonstrates a profound ignorance that should disqualify anyone from serving in public office.

When Tuck was serving as a school board member he made his ignorance clear when he proudly declared:

As a person of faith, I strongly oppose any study of evolution as fact at all. I’m purely in favor of it staying a theory and only a theory. I won’t support any evolution being taught as fact at all in any of our schools.

The stupid, it burns.

Tuck demonstrates a profound confusion common among the ignorant and uneducated when it comes to the nature of a scientific theory. A scientific theory, like the theory of evolution, or the theory of gravity, is not some guess or wild hypothesis. Instead, such theories are the foundation upon which scientific knowledge is based.

Indeed, evolution is the single, unifying scientific explanation for the diversity of life on earth, and constitutes the foundation of the biological sciences. To deny the reality of evolution is to deny the foundation upon which modern medicine and the related biological sciences are built.

If there is a controversy about evolution, it is not scientific. The controversy is not about science, but religion. The fact is that once the theory of evolution is accepted, a literal, fundamentalist reading of Biblical creation is rendered untenable. Many conservative Christians like Tuck are simply unable to accept evolution as a scientific fact for this reason.

Tuck was originally appointed to the board by then Florida Governor Rick Scott. Tuck was appointed to a second term on the board in early 2018, and replaces Marva Johnson of Winter Garden as chair.

Bottom line: Andy Tuck, Florida’s new Board of Education chair, is an anti-science Christian extremists who denies evolution.

And, as always, it will be the children who suffer.