Should we teach both evolution and religion in school?

When I say "Religion" I mean the topic of Religion, not teaching religious dogma as truth. You can't teach about the Pilgrims, for example, without talking about their religion as a motivation for why they did what. To explain the Crusades you have to talk about religion, what people believed, and how it motivated them. That isn't a course in Comparative Religions (which would be ok to teach also), rather it is teaching about the role of religion in history.

And yet what Mike the Wiz suggests teaching them is both conclusory and false. But that wouldn't work.Consider chemistry for example. The conclusions we have are the result of enormous effort, of thousands of experiments, and insights of genius.To teach chemistry, we teach the conclusions. We teach the kids about the atomic theory of matter, about the structure of matter, the periodic table, valence electrons, covalent and ionic bonding, and, nowadays, a bit of quantum theory. If we just gave them lots of chemicals and said: go, figure it out, then they wouldn't figure it out. They wouldn't end up discovering chemistry for themselves, they'd each produce a half-assed alchemy. Unless, of course, they went behind their teacher's back, found some books, educated themselves, and learned chemistry. Well, I'd want someone to know the rules of chemistry before giving them a job as a chemist. If instead they told me that there were four elements, earth, air, fire and water, and that they have this great scheme for turning base metals into gold, I'd hire someone else.

Very well said, and I agree.
I think that in chemistry for example, we could demonstrate most of it, and I am fairly certain that if the conclusions we have today - accumulated by much time and effort, are correct as I believe, then the students cannot help to make the same conclusions by observing.But when it comes to defining something which is not demonstrable like the evolution theory, then we could show how things can change over time, and leave it up to the students to work out whether it was millions of years or something which happens in our world on a generational basis, and remarkably quickly.

I suppose a majority vote can define a belief, but am wondering how a majority could decide how old something is based on any sort of science or critical thought.

How do you demonstrate and observe sp3 hybridization or van der Waals force?That shit's pretty abstract...Man up: You just don't like evolution because of its implications to your religion. This has nothing to do with how children are educated. Chemistry gets like that too. Why though? Just because you don't like evolution? That's retarded.

Leave it up to students? Hah! What do students know about radiometric dating and all the other techniques for establishing age? ^*Students need to be told what science has established, whether some fringe groups accept that evidence or not.The evidence shows that the earth is very, very old, not some thousands of years old, so that's what students should be told.^* Probably a lot more than creationists!

Well, you'd have to tell them what you were demonstrating: you'd say, here's the theory, now let me show you (a tiny proportion of) the observations that prove it. (And you would only have time to show them a tiny proportion.)But this is just how evolution is taught too.Now in both cases if you just showed them a tiny proportion of the evidence and invited them to figure out the theory, they wouldn't get very far. Here's what happens, you say, when you add zinc to sulfuric acid, here's what happens when you drop sodium in water, then they would not all by themselves replicate the conclusions of Mendeleev or Kerkule or Pauling. After all, very few professional chemists managed to come to those conclusions after a lifetime of study, that's why we call the ones who did geniuses and give them Nobel prizes --- because out of our entire species, after hundreds of years of doing chemistry, only Linus Pauling was able to deduce what he did about the nature of chemical bonds, although when he had done so other people were able to understand it. So we have to supply the students with the theory, and then argue that it's supported by observation.

Show them under the microscope the tiny creatures that make up chalk. Then show them how high the white cliffs of Dover are and let them do the math. The millions of years will be pretty obvious.

Addressing the title of this thread, isn't the clamor for equal treatment for religious topics such as creationism simply an admission of failure on the part of parents and churches to teach these subjects?Edited by edge, : No reason given.

Sigh.That would not educate the children. It would reinforce the idea that 'Chairman Mao' can make the Sun come up even when they are at the Great Wall of China.How do you not understand why this is wrong?Edited by Larni, : spelling

Source please.

It is within your interest that I remain immature and disadvantaged, so that your species has less competition for your ultimate survival.Is that what the platform of education should be?

I think some things like the age of the earth, don't matter when you have to get up for work Monday morning, and there does not have to be a majority consensus on these issues.
I suppose some OC people would find it irritating that they cannot classify and categorize every thing and test people on it.

I'm glad you said "probably" - that's scientific and safe for education.

That makes absolute sense, we could just say that so and so came to this conclusion, as we do in education. Why they came to a certain conclusion is essential. But I would not say that it is forcing a conclusion if it is presented as said.How something is taught is as important as to what.
And if it was done I am pretty sure the two views of religion and evolution would be incompatible.However, most modern religious organizations have officially recognized Evolution and accepted it as part of their curriculum. That is because they do not consider the Bible as an authority any longer.Going by modern standards we might as well dispense with religion altogether.