Earlier this month, West Virginian Kenneth Smith filed a lawsuit against everyone he could think of involved in teaching evolution to his daughter.

That list included the Jefferson County Board of Education, the State Superintendent, the U.S. Secretary of Education, and the Director of the National Institutes of Health. (If he were alive, I’m sure Charles Darwin would have made the list.)

What did they all do wrong?

Smith says that by promoting evolution, they’re ruining his daughter’s ability to get into veterinarian school, thereby stopping her from earning a good living.

Their actions during the 2014-2015 school year affects my child’s future directly through the state grading system to enter college and ability to earn economic security and a good job in her chosen veterinarian medical field of work, by being taught a faith base (evolutionary ideology) that just doesn’t exist and has no math to back it. … While denying the Plaintiff’s accurate scientific mathematical system of genetic variations that proves evolution is a religion. It will benefit our government economically and efficiently increase our judicial and law enforcement departments in many ways.

I have no idea how that makes any sense… or if Smith knows how to speak the English.

Smith, who’s not a lawyer, will be representing himself in court. Because, I’m guessing, no attorney would touch this case with a ten-foot pole.

If you’d like to learn more about Smith’s philosophy, just check out his 2013 book The True Origin of Man. Here’s just one meaningful excerpt:

In much the same way, as the number of whitish blond-haired people began to increase the number of people with pure white hair dwindled. The more the number of redheads increases, the more the natural blond-haired adults will be absorbed by decreasing into extinction, because of the effects of Kendihuchrodnamixgenesis.

Obviously.

(Can someone introduce this guy to the woman who sued all homosexuals? I feel like they’d become good friends in no time.)

Might as well get the obvious out of the way: No, learning evolution will not hurt your chance of getting into vet school. It will only help you. Not only will your biology classes make more sense, evolution helps us understand how life came to be, which gives us insight into how things can go wrong. If you don’t understand that, it becomes much harder to treat animals that need your help.

I would love to hear what his daughter thinks about all of this. Is she on board with this lawsuit or is she super-embarrassed by it?

Either way, you can bet this lawsuit will be thrown out. There’s just no legal basis for Smith’s rant.

(Image via Shutterstock. Thanks to Kristian for the link)



