Buttars is unfazed by Dover decision

The Deseret News has the best coverage on how Judge Jones decision will affect Utah. They report in regards to the decision:

But that won't affect a Utah legislator's plans to challenge how evolution is approached in public schools here.

"That ruling won't affect my bill at all. . . . My bill isn't written in that manner," Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, said. "Never did I say I thought we ought to teach any other faith-based program in a science class."

Last fall, Buttars did propose teaching intelligent design — the concept that life is too complex to be explained by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution alone — in a separate class, such as philosophy or humanities.

But he said even that idea will not be contained in his bill, which he revealed in a private Senate Republican caucus meeting Tuesday but declined to discuss publicly.

"It does challenge the school board, that they're going to have to rewrite their position on evolution to some degree," Buttars said. "Let me put it this way: There is no consensus in the scientific community regarding how life began . . . (so) to have a teacher teaching how life began and calling it fact really offends me. . . . I'm going to stop that. That's all I'm going to say right now."

He’s doing a Kansas maneuver folks – take out “natural causes” and make the school boards position statement deliberately vague. The point is to get their foot in the door, open things up for ID without mentioning those dangerously pesky little words, words like ‘intelligent design’, ‘creationism’, or Buttars personal choice ‘divine design’, or possibly the one we will probably be seeing more of here in the future ‘sudden-emergence theory’, words that can get his legislation in trouble with a federal court. Buttars bill will make Utah like Kansas – a laughing stock in the science world. Who would want to be like Kansas! Of all places – Kansas! Why would we want to do that to ourselves? There’s a bunch of crazy fundamentalist rednecks out there!

Also, in the news the Salt Lake Tribune cues in, the Daily Herald gives their opinion and Utah Representative Steve Urquhart blogs on the issue.