a backlash against creationism in texas?

The state of Texas may finally be pushing back on overzealous creationists trying to hijack their school board.

After flirting with creationism long enough, the state of Texas appears to be thinking about purging the head of its Board of Education, Don McLeroy. A former dentist who's efforts in making creationism part of the state's official curriculum prompted heated debate and a backlash from state legislators, McLeroy is being grilled during his confirmation hearing as to why students are being made to study what scientists emphatically reject, and whether he's trying to impose his religious beliefs on pupils.

His answer? That his goal has never been religious indoctrination. Really? You don't say? Well, let's have a look see on his official website where he empties a whole lot of very passionate and vacuous anti-evolution rhetoric before descending into Bible verses in a call to action against "Darwinism."

No… There's no way someone who writes that "we as a church must take proactive steps in combating" whatever he brands as "scientific nonsense" could possibly get himself into a job where he could push his religious beliefs down people's throats in absolute confidence that the Earth is just 6,000 years old and everyone who thinks otherwise is being irrational. That's just impossible. When was the last time people who passionately ranted against science tried to make us throw away our textbooks?

See, this is the problem with the interwebs. Anything you choose to put out there just lies in wait, ready to be brought out when you try to deny an agenda so transparent, we can see its innards in a dark alley. I know there are plenty of creationists out there who think they're being really shrewd in using school boards and appeals to popularity or debate.

But all they're really doing is trying to hide an elephant behind a napkin, and tell us that the elephant is just a figment of our imagination and a bunch of badly strewn together fallacies built with virtually no conception of the topic being discussed make for valid arguments. Sooner or later, someone will call their bluff and for McLeroy, that time has come.

Interestingly enough, this development comes after the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board swiftly rejected an application by a creationist think tank to issue science degrees, and isn't budging even after it filed a legal complaint. Are the powers that be in Texas starting to take serious steps to keep creationism out of the classrooms?