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Yeah. I think they should receive poor grades for not mastering the subject. If I took a math class and I insisted that Pi was 3.0 because the Bible said it was then I shouldn't be surprised if I failed that question.

The Bible doesn't say pi is 3.0; the Bible is not a scientific or mathematics textbook.

We'd probably all agree that it is best for students to master the subject matter of the courses they take. But what is troubling about the manner in which Darwinist evolution theory is often taught these days is its presentation as tantamount to a sort of "proof" of the non-existence of God (See???? You don't need a Creator after all; you just have to understand everything that exists is random, yet chemistry, physical laws, mutation, and natural selection are the sufficient causes of its "order" such as we observe in the biosphere today. We are told the theory taught in this fashion allows one to be "an intellectually fulfilled atheist," as Richard Dawkins put it. For some professors, this is most definitely a big part of evo theory's "charm" — especially among "Lefty" professors.

If the teaching of evolution theory were confined to the subject matter of actual science per se, then there would be few objections to it, I imagine. The problem is many promulgators of evolution theory leave the scientific reservation and proceed to smuggle philosophical doctrine (e.g., materialism. positivism) and religious doctrine (e.g., atheism) in through the back door. Now I'm all for the First Amendment. But clearly, that is cheating....

Creationism is neither irrational nor indefensible on the basis of empirical observation and experience. Here's something interesting I came across recently, Justification of Theism, by Richard G. Swinburne, in reply to the late J. L. Mackie, an evolutionary biologist (and inveterate proselytizer of atheism).

Now Swinburne is a creationist and accepts evolution theory as propounded by Darwin. I can only give the briefest sketch of his ideas here (see the above link for details); but in a nutshell, he thinks a "personal explanation" of the origin of life and the universe is perfectly reasonable. By "personal," he means a purposeful creative agent is at work, which is why the universe has the "order" it has — i.e., "is the way it is, and not some other way." The supposition of a creative agent also answers the question, "why is there something at all, why not nothing?" [Answer: because it is the will and purpose of a free creative agent that such should be so.]

Swinburne points out that "the personal explanation" would actually be the simplest logical explanation of all (cf., Occam's Razor), and has the added virtue of being consistent with the way intelligent human agents experience their own existence. Which is to say, for instance, that when we see a complex object such as a machine, we don't expect to discover that it created itself. We sense intuitively that it had to have been built by a conscious agent who wanted to build a device capable of enabling him to execute his purposes, his goals.

Needless to say, Mackie isn't "buying" any of this. Again, I won't go into the details of his counter-argument. Maybe you can infer something about it from Swinburne's response (below); in any case, the article at the link is a fascinating read.

I argued that the totally regular and simple ways of behavior of physical objects; or, as we should say in order to avoid hypostatizing laws of nature, the vast coincidence that there are objects of a very few kinds (electrons, photons, and so forth) all of each kind having identical powers and liabilities, is a very striking coincidence, which is a priori very unlikely. And I went on from there to argue that the hypothesis of a common creator explains the coincidence, since He has the power to bring it about and reason to do so.
Mackie objected:

Inductive extrapolation would not be reasonable if there were a strong presumption that the universe is really completely random, that such order as we seem to find in it is just the sort of local apparent regularity that we should expect to occur occasionally by pure chance, as in a series of random tosses of a coin we will sometimes get a long run of heads, or a simple alternation of heads and tails over a considerable number of throws. Swinburne holds, and his argument requires, that inductive extrapolation is reasonable, prior to and independently of any belief in a god. But, I would argue, this would not be reasonable if there were a strong presumption that the universe is completely random. So he cannot consistently say that, without the theistic hypothesis, it is highly improbable a priori that there are any regularities; for the latter assertion of improbability is equivalent to saying that there is a strong presumption of randomness.

Mackie's argument seems to be that in holding that the regularities which we observe are typical of wider regularities in regions of space and time outside the region immediately observed (as I do in rebutting the suggestion that we are observing an untypical segment of space and time) I am already committed to denying the strong presumption of randomness.
Before showing what is wrong with Mackie's argument, it is worthwhile to show it in action in another case. Suppose that there are before us, ready for use, many packs of cards. On examining some of them at random we find that they are all arranged in order of suits and seniority. That allows us to infer that the other packs which we have not examined will also be so arranged. Any normal observer would then immediately suspect that these coincidences are to be explained in terms of something beyond themselves — for example, an agent or a machine constructed by an agent which arranged the packs in order. Mackie, however, if we are to take his argument seriously, would not so react. The mere fact that we can reasonably predict that the unobserved packs will be arranged in order shows that order in packs of cards is a normal thing to be expected, not in need of further explanation.
What has gone wrong? Mackie has misconstrued the argument for design. There is indeed a strong presumption of randomness. But then we observe the regular and simple behavior of all of the many objects which we observe. We argue that if all objects behave in regular and simple ways (h1) our observation will be made; but if only a few objects behave in regular and simple ways (h2) our observation is very unlikely to be made. Although a priori h1 has a much smaller probability than h2, the observations are so much more likely to be observed if h1 than if h2 that the posterior probability of h1 (that is, the probability of h1, given our observations) significantly exceeds that of h2. We then inquire how such an unlikely hypothesis as h1 comes to be true; we seek a higher hypothesis which explains it. Faced with the choice between saying that there are simply brute coincidences in the behavior of objects, and saying that their behavior is brought about by a common cause, a person — we choose the latter on the grounds that its simplicity is high and it gives some probability to what we observe. That after all is how we argue with regard to the packs of cards. Analogy demands that we argue in the same way with respect to the regularities in nature. [Bolds added for emphasis]

Mackey's alleged expectation that "order in packs of cards is a normal thing to be expected, not in need of further explanation," is the sort of thing I really detest because, of course, it explains nothing — except for the "unexamined" presupposition that anything science can't get at, ain't "there" to be got at in the first place! He stops at the water's edge, so to speak. And because science cannot explain, say, the origin of life or design in nature, therefore, such things ought not to be asked.

No wonder so many parents of publicly-educated schoolchildren are hopping mad about this travesty that passes for "education"....