March 06, 2012 | permalink

Alabama Republican Blaine Galliher introduced House Bill 133, which would, if enacted, “authorize local boards of education to include released time religious instruction as an elective course for high school students.” The point of the bill, he said, was to “balance” the presentation of evolution in public schools. Leading authorities on religious liberty are not impressed. Douglas Laycock of the University of Virginia, pointed out that “The only state credit for religion courses should be objective study of what each of the great religions does or teaches….There’d be an entanglement problem with the school trying to regulate these courses, trying to tell the churches what kind of religion they can offer.”

Of course, many students are receiving school credit for junk science—on the public dime. Religious schools across the country receive public funds through voucher and corporate tax credit programs, and many hundreds of those use fundamentalist textbooks that teach creationism. A. Beka, Bob Jones University Publishing, and Accelerated Christian Education are three of the most popular, and all three teach biblical Creationism in their science curriculum.

Private religious schools and home-schoolers are entitled to teach whatever kind of “science” they like. But should we, the taxpayer, have to pay for it?