Posted on behalf of Katrina Charles, BA Media Fellow
And again we revisit the question: Does religion get in the way of teaching science?
For students at Calvary Baptist School, California, it certainly does, as Judge James Otero ruled that the University of California doesn’t have to accept their biology class as a suitable entry course. Calvary Chapel Christian School also had courses rejected in English (“Christianity and Morality in American Literature”), history (“Christianity’s Influence on America”), government (“Special Providence: Christianity and the American Republic”) and an elective called “World Religions”.
The WSJ says there were "legitimate reasons for rejecting the texts – not because they contained religious viewpoints, but because they omitted important topics in science and history and failed to teach critical thinking.” (WSJ)
In an example from the LA Times, the English class was rejected in part because students read excerpts, not complete books.
The Questionable Authority blog provides some fascinating quotes from a biology text book for 10th grade from Bob Jones University Press, one of the textbook suppliers named in the ruling:
“The people who prepared this book have tried consistently to put the Word of God first and science second”, always a place for science in a science text book.
On scientific explanations of biblical events: “If the conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them.”
On evolution: “The idea of all life forms descending from a common ancestor cell that originated from non-living chemicals is absurd.”
It also includes helpful ‘science’ on how God communicates with Man.
An LA Times blog cites textbooks teaching that the earth is about 10,000 years old, and from Biology: God’s Living Creation, which advertises itself as “truly nonevolutionary”, a lesson on how dinosaurs walked the earth with people, and might have faced extinction via flood.
“No one is questioning the right of Calvary Chapel to teach what they want to teach. But what the case says is that when you do that, there may be consequences,” says David Masci, from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in Washington, D.C., in the LA Times.