Every now and then I’m reminded that there’s this strange parallel world of religiously driven “science” education. One example that recently came my way is the The Quest for Right series of texts, advertising itself as “the ultimate marriage between an in-depth knowledge of biblical phenomena and natural and physical sciences.”

Apparently, “physical science” opposes evolution. But what the texts mean by physical science is very different from, well, physics. They appear to oppose quantum mechanics, indeed almost all of modern physics. High weirdness.

This is just one example. Presumably a good number (how many?) of Christian and homeschooled kids in the United States get this sort of thing in the name of science education. It won’t directly affect scientific institutions—we only need small numbers of people eventually going into basic science, and religious distortions of science tend not to affect applied science as much. But I expect this sort of thing does not help the cultural position of science, in the end.