When you refer to teaching evolution, are you implying that humans evolved from other primates? I'll take the liberty to assume that you are. Why would we teach something that we don't know to be true? What do we know to be true? Do we know that first there was an ape, which for some reason or another turned into a more human-like ape one day a few million years later, then one day a few million more years down the road turned into a Neanderthal (presumably for the same reason that the ape became more human-like the first time around), and so on and so on (mind you, I'm spotting you the few billion years that it took from when lightning first struck the ocean or the "primordial ooze" or whatever evolutionary scientists are referring to the initially lifeless earth as nowadays until when we arrived at the ape stage)until, voila! Here we are: mankind! Now, if you're willing to teach your kids THAT because you just KNOW that's how this whole thing went down, well, whatever. Go ahead. Makes no sense to me, but I'm open minded and I see that some people just have to feel like they are in control because they know how these things work. And if I want to read a Bible to my kid and say God says it's this way, but deductive reasoning from some scattered skulls in Madagascar or E. Africa or wherever that some sci-fi radio carbon dating system says is 2 million years old while this other skull is 4 million years old can only mean that we all descended from a drop of water, I can expose him to both points of view and let him decide for himself. Personally, both ideas are pretty far-fetched to me, and as one of those old Renaissance-era risk managers who struggled with these same issues 300 years ago once pointed out, what are the consequences of believing in God and being wrong vs. not believing in God and being wrong?
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When you refer to teaching evolution, are you implying that humans evolved from other primates? I'll take the liberty to assume that you are. Why would we teach something that we don't know to be true? What do we know to be true? Do we know that first there was an ape, which for some reason or another turned into a more human-like ape one day a few million years later, then one day a few million more years down the road turned into a Neanderthal (presumably for the same reason that the ape became more human-like the first time around), and so on and so on (mind you, I'm spotting you the few billion years that it took from when lightning first struck the ocean or the "primordial ooze" or whatever evolutionary scientists are referring to the initially lifeless earth as nowadays until when we arrived at the ape stage)until, voila! Here we are: mankind! Now, if you're willing to teach your kids THAT because you just KNOW that's how this whole thing went down, well, whatever. Go ahead. Makes no sense to me, but I'm open minded and I see that some people just have to feel like they are in control because they know how these things work. And if I want to read a Bible to my kid and say God says it's this way, but deductive reasoning from some scattered skulls in Madagascar or E. Africa or wherever that some sci-fi radio carbon dating system says is 2 million years old while this other skull is 4 million years old can only mean that we all descended from a drop of water, I can expose him to both points of view and let him decide for himself. Personally, both ideas are pretty far-fetched to me, and as one of those old Renaissance-era risk managers who struggled with these same issues 300 years ago once pointed out, what are the consequences of believing in God and being wrong vs. not believing in God and being wrong?