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Exploring the Big Bang and similar theories is science, but it's not proven fact, and teaching as such only comes off as brainwashing, telling children that what their mommy & daddy taught them isnīt true.

Your assertion that the Big Bang is taught as fact isn't how I was taught, nor does it appear in any science textbook I've ever read.

That's probably true for the Big Bang, but not for other, better-attested conclusions of science. As a better example of Billy's [edit: not Jeff's] point, the children of some fundamentalists get told at home that dinosaurs coexisted with humans, and became extinct only at the time of Noah and his flood. These same children then get told at school, as plain fact, that dinosaurs and humans never lived at the same time, not by millions of years.

To anyone paranoid or insecure enough to perceive such education as "an assault on their faith" -- well, yes, such assaults are widespread in the US (I'm guessing -- if Calvin and Hobbes are anything to go by, palaeontology is a big thing for US children) and nothing short of ubiquitous in the UK. In a way, a school hasn't done its job unless the children of young-earthers, like the children of flat-earthers before them, go home with the conclusion that what their mummy and daddy told them isn't true. But it's nothing personal, not a specifically anti-Christian agenda: I'd expect the education system to clear up all such misconceptions irrespective of origin. (Watch East Is East for a good film about the conflict between strict religious parenting and modern secular public education.)

Peter


Edited by peter (22/12/2005 14:30)