Religious conservatives who decry postmodernism in the academy, and object to what they see as identity-based scholarship, such a Marxist school of history or African American Studies, have no problem trying to push their own Christianity-based science on academic institutions. These efforts hit a major legal setback recently, as a California judge ruled that it's OK for the Unversity of California system to reject creationist high school biology classes as valid pre-college course work.
An association of Christian schools had sued the University of California for not considering creation-based high school biology classes as adequate preparation for college classes. Kudos to the University of California for holding firm on academic standards - the students who attended these classes no doubt need serious remedial biology coursework to straighten out all of the lies about science that are in their Bob Jones University-published biology textbooks. As the defense witnesses argued, the problem with these books is not just that they peddle creationism; they also fail to accurately teach the basic science that is expected of any college preparatory class.
These religious schools are free to teach students irrational ideas about science, but they can't expect top universities to lower their standards for students from these schools.
One more interesting thing about this case: Intelligent Design "theorist" Michael Behe was again an expert witness for this case, just as he was in the Dover, PA case (and he was on the losing side in both instances). Here is a guy who is perhaps the most well-positioned scientist in the Intelligent Design community to attempt to do some actual intelligent design science. What does he do instead? He becomes a professional PR guy for Intelligent Design, giving popular lectures, testifying in hopeless legal proceedings, and writing popular books. Behe, in his first book, claimed that his intelligent design work ranked up there with the work of Einstein. I suppose once you hit your scientific peak in a mass-market popular book, there is no more reason to go back to the lab.
