I think that we're beginning to drift from the topic. My point was that education could be more than what you described, and that logic and critical thinking are taught implicitly and by example even in grade school whether such courses are offered or not, which is already a bit off topic, since I didn't suggest a course that I thought should be added to the high school curriculum.
But I'll address your post anyway
Do I care about evolution or creationism?
I understand what they are, and am glad that I do.
Perhaps. Left to my own devices, I might not have gotten a formal education at all.
How do either of these questions pertain to what I posted or any of the rest of the thread?
Disagree. I have profited from considering each, although not equally. Understanding Darwin's theory, as the church well knows, goes a long way to supporting an atheistic worldview. As Dawkins noted, "Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."
Also, I disagree that evolutionary theory is flawed. Darwin's basic idea that the tree of live evolved over deep time from a single common ancestral population through genetic variation and natural selection still holds today. That is the theory.
The fact that many questions remain unanswered is not a flaw in the theory. We don't know, for example, which hominan (sic) fossils were ancestral forms that evolved into later forms and eventually into Homo sapiens, and which were branches from that line that died off, but that is irrelevant to the status of the theory, not a flaw in it. Darwin merely asserted that man evolved from earlier forms through the power of natural selection acting on genetic variation, and that is still the prevailing view, the details notwithstanding.
I understand what they are, and am glad that I do.
Perhaps. Left to my own devices, I might not have gotten a formal education at all.
How do either of these questions pertain to what I posted or any of the rest of the thread?
Disagree. I have profited from considering each, although not equally. Understanding Darwin's theory, as the church well knows, goes a long way to supporting an atheistic worldview. As Dawkins noted, "Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."
Also, I disagree that evolutionary theory is flawed. Darwin's basic idea that the tree of live evolved over deep time from a single common ancestral population through genetic variation and natural selection still holds today. That is the theory.
The fact that many questions remain unanswered is not a flaw in the theory. We don't know, for example, which hominan (sic) fossils were ancestral forms that evolved into later forms and eventually into Homo sapiens, and which were branches from that line that died off, but that is irrelevant to the status of the theory, not a flaw in it. Darwin merely asserted that man evolved from earlier forms through the power of natural selection acting on genetic variation, and that is still the prevailing view, the details notwithstanding.
