But this year's bill, above, is a bit different. He's trying to argue that since both the US Declaration of Independence and the WA State Constitution mention individual rights as coming from a Creator, then any high school science textbook that doesn't teach creationism should be illegal! AFAIK, this is a new tactic on the creationist legal front.
This is the kind of argument that's sure to get lots of traction in, ah, certain circles here on FR. Unfortunately the argument is just plain wrong.
Sure, we've been endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. It's just that our creator was a natural process, not some supernatural person. The critical part of that claim is that we are endowed with rights. This means that rights are necessary for our survival, because of what we are: Human beings.
Humans - because of our human nature as rational thinking beings with few other advantages against the beasts of the wild - requires civilization to survive & thrive. An advancing & robust civilization requires individual freedom. No successful modern civilization has been based (or could be) on slavery or dictatorship.
The Founders, being children of the Enlightenment, knew this 200 years ago. But since they were all theists (to varying degrees), of course they said we were endowed "by our Creator".
Fixating on the phrase "our Creator" and concluding that rights can only be a gift from a supernatural person, instead of the phrase's clear meaning that our rights are simply inherent in our nature as human beings, is a mistake. IMO it's exactly the same mistake that gun grabbers make when they fixate on the phrase "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State" and conclude that the 2nd Amendment only means that states can have a National Guard.
This guy is making a mockery of my faith.
Nature? Good point. Jefferson is on the same track:
WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
The problem with these fantasists like this politician, they assume the word "creator" in the Declaration of Independence means what they think is the "creator." Blind projection.
And they bristle when we note that so many of them don't understand how science works at all.
I completely agree, this is really ridiculous.
Washington state Bump
The exclusion of one over the others is concerning, however.