Whenever I hear Christians saying that we should teach children both intelligent design (the creation story in the bible) and evolution, and then simply let them decide which one that they choose to believe, it always takes me back to the day when I first heard the story of “Noah’s Ark” and the “great flood.” I had already learned about the dinosaurs, and how they had gone extinct over 65 million years ago, and yet, this Christian lady was telling me this horror story of how a god had flooded the earth about 4000 years ago, and killed everyone and everything on earth, with the exception of Noah’s family and the pairs of animals on his ark, and how the earth was only about 6000 years old; and just how confused that I became. Later that same day, I asked my dad which of these stories was true; was the earth 6000 years old, or was the earth millions of years old. My dad then took me outside on our front porch, and he then pointed at Mount Rainier, and he asked me if I could see all the snow and ice that was on the top of the mountain – he then told me, that even if there was enough water here on earth to cover the whole planet, and to a depth which would cover the top of Mount Rainier, that the water would have frozen, and today, the earth would simply be a dead ball of ice floating in space, and that the earth was in fact much, much older than a few thousand years.
Today, when you ask most Christians about this silly story; and with the exception of the most profoundly ignorant and deluded, most will say that this story should only be taken in a metaphorical context. So okay, then what about dirt-man and rib-woman, and the 6000 year old earth – should they be simply taken metaphorically as well, and if so, then what is left, (these silly and deluded stories, are the bedrock of 3 religions, including Christianity) isn’t it just time to throw the baby out with the bathwater then?
My point being, we shouldn’t even be teaching children this deluded thrash in church, and least of which in our public schools – there is a big difference in believing something on faith, and believing in something that can be tested and understood. I trust science because I understand science, and believe that the most important thing that we should be doing as atheists, is demanding that science be taught in our public schools with the same intensity as all of the other subjects, and stop entertaining this creation nonsense.
