Debate: Should students be allowed to choose to be taught creationism?
Side: No

Well, I'm not sure that Creationism would be taught in a science class. Many supporters of creationism wish it to be. Also, I already allowed room for it to be taught in other types of classes. And if you believe in the Bible, Science isn't supported by the Bible, therefore all believers should disregard science.More like the Bible isn't supported by science. But it wasn't meant to be since it was written waaay before modern naturalistic science was refined to operate in accordance with the scientific method. That being said, people who believe in the Bible tend to cherry-pick what science they don't believe in. Anything that appears to conflict with the Biblical teachings is disregarded, but science that appears to confirm Biblical teachings is applauded. This seems like very ineffective reasoning to me. What I don't like about this argument is that we are deciding what children should think.No, we are deciding that public school science classes should present the arguments that are best supported by lines of evidence in. Since that is how science operates, it is a valid model. Science isn't about opinions, its about observations. On the other hand, those parents who tell their children that evolution is false and not to listen to their teachers, to ignore the evidence, they are the ones telling their children what to think.And, as my very first post pointed out, there are numerous avenues of learning about creation science outside of school. They aren't being denied the opportunity to investigate the other side, and I seriously doubt there are very many children who are completely unaware of the controversy. They can both be, and are, true. This depends on how creationism is defined and presented. If it is thought of as a God designing the first life forms and using or allowing evolution to lead up to the present variety of life over the course of billions of years, then the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Science in general can't really have one opinion or the other about the existence of God, and evolution specifically is only about the method of life's diversification, not its origin.If, however, creationism is described and defined in the fundamentalist sense that all life was created simultaneously and in its current forms...well that IS mutually exclusive with the theory of evolution and refuted by the same evidence that supports evolution. There was a time where I stopped believing in God and tried to answer my questions scientifically. Oddly, the science brought be me back to God. Have you ever considered that this may be an example of confirmation bias?If there isn't a creator, who created the concept of a creator? Why did this concept come about and why not after almost 17,000 years has it not died? Did "nature" create this idea?Humans created the "creator" concept because we create things, we manipulate the environment. Ancient man simply anthropomorphized the universe in an attempt to make sense of things and answer the inevitable questions regarding the origins of the universe. After all of these years it hasn't died because a lot of people simply fear that they couldn't be happy or moral if there was no God, or are unwilling or unable to investigate the more complicated naturalistic explanations. But if there isn't a distinct 3rd party creator, then Nature is the creator. Yes. Now let's go back to something you said earlier:Creationism tells the story of intent. Evolution tells the story of method. The biggest difference here is just that. A naturalist argues that this all happened without specific intent, a creationist says that this was all done by intelligent intent and design. The naturalist gains an advantage every time we discover something that happened naturally. As our understanding of our natural world increases, the need for an intelligence behind it decreases. This doesn't rule out such an intelligence, but the claims of the existence of such a being have never been properly substantiated. It is not impossible, but also not necessary, and Occam's Razor inclines us to not add unnecessary steps that are not observed. Nothing man ever does will be his achievement, because no matter what he does it will always just be Nature at work.Even if this was true, so what? If that is how it really is, so be it. Naturalistic accomplishment can still be awe-inspiring and worthy of a pat on the back. This is very narrow minded. There are so many awesome things that have nothing to do with logic or reasons. I'm not saying logic and rationality are the end-all-be-all of human existence. I do irrational things all of the time because they are fun or exciting. But I feel we are best served by also sharpening our ability to arrive at objective truth and analyze the data we are presented with.