California Dreamin'

As I mentioned the other day, the University of California has decided students who have been educated in a Christian worldview that rejects evolution and relies on the Bible renders them unfit for matriculation at any UC school.

This week, a federal judge agreed with them.

The ruling declared that the University of California can deny course credit to Christian high school graduates who have been taught with textbooks that reject evolution and declare the Bible infallible, according to the article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Rejecting claims of religious discrimination and stifling of free expression, U.S. District Judge James Otero of Los Angeles said UC's review committees cited 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.

Failed to teach critical thinking? Do you have any idea how important we Christian homeschoolers consider it for our children - indeed, ourselves - to be able to explain why we have considered the historical or scientific "evidence" and rejected it in favor of believing in God and the Bible? In this unbelieving day and age?

So it is interesting to me that a judge and a bunch of academics have decided that students who attended a school that taught something THEY don't believe is true are not worthy to attend UC schools.

Funny thing is, they probably taught their children to believe in Santa Claus - something that they knew in advance was not true.

Not only that, nobody can actually prove that the thing they believe instead - evolution - is true. A lot of people believe it, but that doesn't make it true.

The object of your faith is more important than the intensity, or even the sincerity of your faith. Intensely and sincerely believing that a nice old fat man lives at the North Pole, knows what I am doing all year, comes down my chimney once a year after circling the whole world in a flying sleigh powered by reindeer, one of which has a light bulb in his nose does not make it true.

I can remember being criticized when my children were small for not teaching them to believe in Santa Claus. "They have to have something to believe in," they sniffed.

They DO have something to believe in.

Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."

A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."

Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"

Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." John 20:24-29 (NIV)