Here we go again. Creationism or intelligent design, as it’s now called, again is being raised before the Kansas State Board of Education in connection with our youngsters’ education requirements.

Imagine the guffaws about the “hicks in the sticks.”

Kansas got enough media attention when it had an attorney general, Vern Miller, who popped out of car trunks on drug busts. Once he got on board and waited until an airliner was over Kansas air space to collar “the guilty” for serving drinks “in” what then was a dry state.

We managed to live that down, though with difficulty, but not too long ago a state school board with a conservative majority managed to remove the teaching of evolution from the state’s science requirements.

That again drew derision from countless quarters, many of them in the state. Before long, however, more moderate members regained control of the board and stopped the nonsense.

But they’re b-a-a-a-c-k! The social conservatives are back in control of the state board, by a 6-4 margin, and the evolution issue is back on the table.

Again the focus is on science, with a bid for equal time for creationism and evolution theories. It is well for so-called Christian zealots to remember that God allegedly created earth and all its accouterments in the Old Testament on the basis of Jewish fundamentals long before the Gospels — with their heavy Christian impact — emerged years and years later.

This is simply a matter of religious fundamentalists asking that their Bible-based views of how the earth and all its creatures came about be considered by those in public schools — except this time around many are trying to appear less fundamental with their more cleverly conceived “intelligent design.”

Although more states than before now are studying similar educational requests, Kansas has enough problems without having to face this international joke again.