Mother Jones recently wrote about the weird things that Christian homeschool texts teach. One point was the textbook writers’ aversion to set theory (you know, Venn diagrams and such), but no explanation was offered as to why set theory is anti-Christian. I thought it had something to do with the opposition to the New Math of my childhood, but the reasons are even deeper, says this writer at BoingBoing: What Do Christian Fundamentalists Have Against Set Theory?

Instead, they see modernism as the opposing worldview to their own. They are all about tradition (or, at least, what they have decided is traditional). Modernism is a knee-jerk rejection of tradition in favor of the new. Obviously, they think a very specific sort of Christian God should be the center of everything and all parts of society, public and private. Modernists prefer ideas like secular humanism and think God is something you should be doing in private, on your own time. They believe strongly in the importance of power hierarchies and rules. Modernism smashes all of that and says, “Hey, just do your own thing. Nobody’s ideas are any better or worse than anybody else’s. There’s no right and wrong. Go crazy, man!” [Insert obligatory bongo drumming session]

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Set theory, particularly the stuff about infinity, has a bit of that wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey flavor to it. It doesn’t make sense on the level of “common sense”. It’s dealing with things that aren’t standard, simple numbers. It makes links between nice, factual math and floppy, subjective philosophy. If you’re raised in Christian fundamentalist culture, all of that—every last bit—absolutely reeks of modernism. It’s easy to see how somebody at A Beka would look at set theory and conclude that it’s really just modernist propaganda. To them, set theory is just a step on the road to godless atheism.