Faith and science - a response to "Anonymous"

I was going to respond to you on the comment that you left, but this got so long I decided to make it a general post. I'm sorry you didn't leave your name. You needn't have posted anonymously. As long as someone uses a respectful tone, I am open to anyone posting comments. I don't expect everyone to agree with me.

Anyway, "Anonymous," thanks for your response. Once I got going, I did get off on the Santa Claus tangent :-) - which is definitely a more emotional topic. But I don't believe I ignored reality at all.

The reality is that my worldview is increasingly under attack, and my concern is that this ruling, which today may be directed at specific students and their specific high school texts, will ultimately be redirected to penalize all Christian high schoolers, and Christian home schoolers who would like to attend UC schools.

Here is another reality: "As California goes, so goes the nation." Once the first inch is ceded, it is only a matter of time before they take the mile as well. So "all UC schools" could eventually become "all schools".

I firmly believe in evolution, if defined as the observed changes in populations of organisms over time. But I did teach my children that they were under no obligation to believe the "Theory of Evolution" as dogma.

I tell a story earlier on in this blog about using Bill Nye the Science Guy in my elementary science curriculum, which provided many opportunities to talk about science and faith and that the two are not mutually exclusive. In oversimplified terms, we considered science the "how" and faith the "why." Once in high school, we used an excellent science curriculum that supported our worldview, but I still made a point of familiarizing my children with the evolutionary curriculum and terminology they were expected to "know", using texts that contained evolutionary material.

In public schools this is called "teaching to the test." Perhaps this is what you meant by "adapting the teachings to fit the requirements." See, we didn't disagree after all!

I guess my main beef is that the theory of evolution has evolved - pardon the pun - into a kind of competing religion from which no dissent is tolerated. Kind of like the Inquisition, minus the burning at the stake.