zen_tom

Harry, how many of those children who believed in the Easter Bunny 10 years ago still do?

At the age that proper Darwinism is taught (guessing at least 16) I think that given the option, most people are going to go with the common sense view. My point is that if both were taught at the same time, Creationism would quickly become as ridiculous as belief in the Easter Bunny. If this thread shows anything, it's that people are not being taught evolution properly. Seriously in this day and age, this sort of discussion really should be moot. And teaching both ideas at the same time really ought to speed that process along. The sooner the better. The people who still believe this kind of fairy story were obviously the victims of a poor and unbalanced education. What's wrong with advocating a more full and worthwhile curriculum? If evolution was taught properly in the first place, this kind of discussion would not be necessary - I honestly believe that children (at whatever age) are capable of reasonable thought - of course, there are always going to be the fundamentalist kind of schools that choose to indoctrinate the youth into believing unpalatable ideas, but given a truely balanced curriculum, I honestly believe that kids would be able to work things out for themselves.

The best way of educating people is for them to be shown the options and let them decide for themselves.

At the end of the day evolution IS still a theory, it's just a better theory than that proposed by the Creationists. The problem is that people are under the false impression that science = fact. The truth is that science is much more subtle and modest than that. There isn't room for fundamentalist thought in science, but instead it is the rigorous persuit of abstract models that are testably closer to the truth.