It's a Sad Day For the Future Of American Children.

There's quite a bit in this post that is in error. I'd be happy to expand on any of the following responses with citations from either primary or secondary (mostly books) literature if desired. In the first place, Miller's experiment was merely designed to show that a simple gas mixture could give rise to biologically significant molecules when acted upon by a "natural" energy source. Although his putative atmosphere has been called into question (rather than the strongly reducing atmosphere of Miller, a more weakly reducing atmosphere of mostly CO2 and nitrogen is more in line with the geology), a number of other researchers (such as Orgel, Szathmary, etc) have since shown peptide and amino acid formation under other conditions. Moreover, it apparently doesn't require ANY atmosphere, as discovered in the Murchison meteorite (the same amino acids found by Miller in almost the same proportions).In the second place, your statement concerning oxygen is at best misleading. Yes, oxygen has always been a component of the Earth's atmosphere. However, the existence of extensive BIFs and large pyrite inclusions in the oldest depositions show that the amount of oxygen was exceptionally low in the early atmosphere - around 1% of current levels. This state of affairs continued until around 1.8 gya - when BIFs disappear from the geological column (see, for example, the Gunflint Formation or the geology of the Belcher Islands). The presence of siderite and uraninite from gravel beds older than than about 2.2 gya - and their absence from younger beds - is another indicator of the lack of signficant quantities of atmospheric or oceanic oxygen in the good old days. Finally, the absence of red beds prior to 2.2 gya - and their subsequent presence obviously - is a final indicator that oxygen only became a factor in the second half of Earth's history.At least in the textbook I most routinely refer to (Futuyma, D, 1998 "Evolutionary Biology" 3d edition, Sinauer), especially Chapter 7 ppg 166-168, discusses both the pluses and minuses of Miller's experiments. The evolution of homochirality is being debated on another thread, so I won't bother to derail this one. Since you're a teacher, you probably have access to Bailey, JM 1998 RNA-directed amino acid homochirality FASEB Journal 12:503-507, or look up Ghadiri's work in Saghatelian, A., Yokobayashi, Y., Soltani, K., & Ghadiri, M. R., 2001, "A chiroselective peptide replicator" Nature 409:797-801. You might want to expand on this a bit - what aspects of the fossil record support "created kinds"? What is a kind, anyway? Please be specific - use reference to actual fossils to support your assertion. I beg your pardon? What does "all major phyla already formed with no transitions" mean? Which phyla, specifically, and when (relatively speaking) did these form? I actually covered a similar topic in the Micro/Macro thread here. Feel free to jump in there with any questions. If you're referring to the Grants' observation of beak variation in their Geospiza species during the early 1980's drought, then no one ever attempted to call the variation "evolution". As you pointed out, it was a temporary change in allele frequencies in the population caused by environmental pressures. It was, however, quite a graphic demonstration of the eliminative power of natural selection. It was way too short a timeframe for the changes to become permanent - although there's no reason to assume the changes wouldn't have persisted ("evolved") if the environmental change had been permanent. AFAIK, this particular example isn't taught as anything more than what it is - natural selection in action.OTOH, if you're attempting to refute the evolution of Darwin's 14 finch species from a blue-backed grassquit (Volatinia jacarina) - IOW, all of island biogeography - you'd better be prepared to refute all of the modern molecular and genetic evidence that links them. Besides, I don't think they're much more than illustrative. I prefer the Tenrecidae of Madagascar for discussion of island biogeography if you want to go down this route.Most all of the problems you mention aren't problems except to creationists. Textbooks generally only cover basic concepts and provide some examples, especially at secondary school level. They don't generally have either the space or time to deal with every single issue - they provide concensus. I'm unfamiliar with the text you said you used - perhaps you could give the complete title? However, the ones I have seen are fairly good, and most biology texts that aren't devoted specifically to evolution (like Futuyma's) generally have such a huge amount of material to cover that evolution is pretty small potatoes - although I like the treatment in Daniel, Ortleb and Biggs' 1997 "Life Science", McGraw-Hill (6th and 7th grade) that my #1 daughter used last year. Of course, she was in a good school going through a middle years International Baccalaureate program...