-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger

David Barton is an evangelical minister and author who describes himself as “an expert in historical and constitutional issues.” Barton is the darling of the religious right receiving praise from Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, and Michele Bachmann.

In the video, below the fold, Barton makes some remarkable claims.

As far as the Founding Fathers were concerned, they’d already had the entire debate over creation and evolution, and you get Thomas Paine, who is the least religious Founding Father, saying you’ve got to teach Creation science in the classroom. Scientific method demands that!

However, Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution in 1859, long after the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The prescience of our Founding Fathers is greater than anyone suspected. Interestingly, Thomas Paine died in 1809, the same year that Charles Darwin was born.

As pointed out by Stephen Jay Gould, creation science is an oxymoron:

As a tern, CREATION SCIENCE is an oxymoron – a self-contradictory and meaningless phrase – a whitewash for a specific, particular, and minority religious view in America, biblical literalism.

In the same interview, Barton claims that abolishing slavery was the main reason the colonies wanted to break away from England. Barton also said that Jesus opposed both the minimum wage and the progressive income tax.

OK, maybe the “Deer Crossing” wasn’t a joke.

H/T: Right Wing Watch, Mother Jones, Pharyngula.