May the government fund scientific research on evolution?

“She said we could give ourselves airs and get ourselves all rigged up and we were like race horses and we were just mules in horse harness and we didn’t fool anybody.”-Scarlett O’Hara

Not content with his outright lie in his previous post, to the effect that I believe schoolchildren in government schools ought to be taught that there is no God–something I do not believe and have never advocated–Dr. Egnor has now moved on to argue that the Establishment Clause forbids the government from funding research in evolutionary biology.

His latest post is really a scattershot of typical religious right stuff that I’ll get to in a second, but the overall point appears to be that my interpretation of the Establishment Clause (which he calls “angst” for some reason I can’t cipher out) is inconsistent because I believe that the government may conduct research on evolutionary biology but may not teach religion in schools. Or, rather, as he puts it, scientists may receive government funds to go dig up transitional fossils, but cannot “teach those same questions to students.” This assertion is typical of the distortion, vagueness, and rhetorical manipulation which is Dr. Egnor’s stock in trade.