Creation in California’s Christian Classrooms Challenged

The case was filed three years ago in Los Angeles, at which time some California Christian schools (and the Association of Christian Schools International) maintained that the university had an anti-religious bias in how it reviewed the content of Christian high school science classes.

Judge S. James Otero, in deciding in favor of the U.C. system this week, declared that he rejected the Christian schools’ arguments because the university had, in his mind, convincingly argued that the curricula of the schools in question did not teach the required science, history, and critical thinking. The judge also said the plaintiffs failed to show anti-religious hostility on the part of the university system.

Without having had the opportunity to fully review the rejected classes or all the texts, we can’t say with confidence that the university was not accepting the coursework because of inadequate instruction. But we have reviewed some of these texts and believe their scientific and historical presentation to be adequate, and so we suspect that some good textbooks have probably been disallowed by the U.C. system due primarily to their biblical basis (e.g., teaching biblical creation).

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A careful reading of the cited article shows that the court did not rule against the schools themselves, but against the validity of the credits attempting to be transferred.

There may have been a totally valid scholastic reason for allowing the UC System to disallow the particular class credits being proffered.

The UC system has the right to set prerequisites for its courses. The graduates will have UC degrees, so it's very much in the universities' interest to ensure that graduates actually know what they should. It's fairly easy to imagine a science course in a Christian school that may mention evolution but does not give students a good understanding of it (it is possible to have a good understanding of evolution without believing in it, in just the same way it is possible for a Christian comparative religion professor to have a good understanding of Hinduism without believing in it). But since evolution is the foundation of modern biology, a science student without a good understanding of evolution cannot be said to be ready to graduate from a science course.

For me the bottom line is that everything has costs and consequences. If the Christian schools believe strongly enough in certain ideas, then they have the perfect right to teach those ideas. They also have the perfect right to avoid teaching ideas with which they disagree. But then the university also has the perfect right to decide which courses it will and will not accept for admission. Students who want to go to one of the UC universities will then have the freedom, within that knowledge, to make choices about which courses they study and which schools they study at. This is exactly analogous to Adventists having the choice of whether to work on Sabbath, and sometimes having to accept the reasonable conequences of their choice not to do so.

Seems like a system working as it's supposed to, to me.

Those arguments make sense however it is not so black and white. If this was a private university not wanting to accept credits from a Christian school, it would be a black and white argument. However since this is a government-sponsored school, the "free exercise" clause of the First Amendment plays a role. The First Amendment states the government will not prohibit the free exercise of religion. When a state university tells religion that the religion must teach evolution to their standard or they will not accept their students, the state has taken a role of prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

The claim the students are ill-prepared is really bogus. If that was the real concern, the university could simply require students coming from that school to take remedial science classes. I had to take remedial algebra classes because I didn't take algebra in high school. That is the easy solution. Since the school doesn't offer that option it tends to say there is something else, like an anti-creation agenda, behind their motives.

In the United States the government cannot discriminate in hiring or promotion because someone does not work on the Sabbath due to the free-exercise clause. Private employers cannot discriminate in hiring or promotion of someone due to Sabbath issues due to civil rights legislation that has been passed.

1. There is not one single principle in biology that can be demonstrated in the lab that has any reliance at all on evolutionism's macro mythology about the past. For example seeing what a cell is and what it does -- is very different from making up stories about how the cell came to be while not being able to demonstrate one single point in that argument inside the lab.

Hint: nothing in the lab shows us how to make birds from reptiles. Or how to turn elephants into whales. Nor has anyone shown this to happen in nature!


These are merely "stories easy enough to make up" as Colin Patterson noted about stories regarding how "one thing came from another". The fraudulent history of Simpson's 1951 horse series chart serves as a case in point "instructive" for the observant student of science history.

Since we are on the subject of how much of this myth should be allowed into public high-schools...



One might think that Dr Patterson was some kind of newly converted creationist decrying his former beliefs in atheist darwinism. But this is nothing of the sort. Rather this is a totally comitted atheist darwinist scientist lamenting the transparent fervent religious nature of the Darwinist argument to which he is relegated as an atheist and wishing he had more of an actual science argument to support his views.

Question for the group - where are the SDA science educators who are bringing this SAME information to light for our SDA students that this prominent atheist darwinist scientist is so willing to describe for us?

Surely we are not limited to having to go to these atheist darwinists to get the news out to us on the flaws in the Darwinist argument?

in Christ,

Bob

Actually Jay Sekulow's ACLJ group has effectively been able to argue cases before the Supreme court protecting the right of private Christian organizations to do just that.

Good thing we have that!

in Christ,

Bob