It drives me crazy every time religious fundies talk about evolution. The only thing they seem to understand about it is that it threatens their view that their creator god made the world as it is today. So, rather than actually try to bother to grasp the fundamentals of the most tested and verified scientific theory of all time, they instead argue that their “version” of cosmic events is being suppressed.

The latest dummy to chime in is Minnesota state Representative Glenn Greunhagen. Fresh off an ethics complaint for sending a video of graphic videos of gender-affirming surgery, he’s now arguing that creationism is being undermined by the big meanies in the sciences. And because the man has absolutely no idea what the Scientific Method is, he says dumb shit like this:

“In science, I find a lot of censorship, lies, and deceit. You know, there’s lots of scientific evidence that points to a creator or God and I’ll just give you two. One is the law of cause and effect. For every effect, there’s a greater cause… You have the Earth. Somebody made it. You have the universe. Somebody created it. That is a repeatable, observable, scientific fact. And yet we censor that from our students.”

Let’s quickly deal with his first argument. We’ve all gotten pretty tired of the “First Cause” argument, since it never actually solves the problem. Claiming that God is the first cause only opens up a larger problem of what caused “God”. The classic response that offers no answer at all is always the same: God doesn’t need a first cause. The problem with this pathetic answer is that it destroys the very premise of the argument: that all effects need a cause. Clearly, that isn’t true for at least one part of the Universe, so why should it be for the rest? Answers that only lead to more questions do a poor job of proving anything. In any case, this type of argument belongs in a philosophy class, and not in a biology one.

As for his other comments about censorship, creationists fail to realize that in order to teach something, you need to actually have a working theory. The “God did it” answer is just about the laziest, and least satisfying thing a person can “learn”. There’s a huge difference between discussing a scientific theory like evolution, and arguing that sky-daddy made everything. A Theory (with a capital “T”) is falsifiable, testable, and can be demonstrated using multiple different threads of evidence. Creationism, on the other hand, is unfalsifiable, unprovable, and worst of all, makes absolutely zero predictions. That means that research into genetic diseases, anti-biotic resistance, and other vital discoveries would all be useless if we spent even an iota of time on the ridiculousness that is creationism.

Of course, Glenn is not a scientist. There is no test measuring the intelligence of US senators or congressmen. I have a feeling if there were, half of their members would test no better than a cocker spaniel would. Intelligence is in short supply in government, and Greunhagen is yet another poster child for why it’s so important to actually teach people reality rather than fantasy.