David Barton is the guy who Mike Huckabee thinks everyone should be forced to listen to, at gun point if need be and the guy who frustrated John Stewart beyond avail. This is the guy who can look at our godless Constition, the one that only mentions religion to say to keep it away from government, and see it as establishing a Christian nation. Now he thinks that the founding fathers can weigh in on the teaching of biology in public schools.

Even if his quotes are accurate, they’re irrelevant. The Constitution was written well before On the Origin of the Species. How could someone possibly have an opinion on Darwinian Evolution before Darwin?

Even more importantly, how could someone ignorant of biology, radiometric dating, and genetics be considered an authority on this topic? The writings of people hundreds of years ago have absolutely no bearing on science today and they should have absolutely no bearing on the teaching of science today.

Where those ideas belong is in history classes, presented in the context of, “Look at how ignorant people used to be. Ah, crap, there are still people that ignorant.

(Via Religion Dispatches)