[llama64]

Originally Posted by photon

Well a comet hitting the Indian ocean would certainly cause flooding within a limited (though huge) area.. which is fine but certainly not the same as the claim of a global flood where the waters covered the land above the highest mountain and every animal except those on the ark died.

Think about the context of the time. The world was really tiny to the people who would write the story of a flood down. The bit about Noah and the Ark could certainly be fully made up, but the concept of a "great flood" exists in nearly every culture and seems to tie in to the same time period. It's an interesting theory despite having no evidence beyond supposition and mythology to back it up. The scientists are in the process of trying to prove it though.

This is kinda what I mean when I said that some elements of a book like the Bible could be factual while others are unscientific.

I guess I disagree somewhat.. I agree that even atheist cannot dismiss the Bible with respect to its impact on history and current culture, but I wouldn't say that an atheist who decides the Bible isn't relevant to his own life is living in an unreasonable fashion. There really isn't anything an atheist is missing by not partaking in religion other than the religion itself.

The only thing a person is missing by dismissing the bible is an understanding of a significant part of Western Civilization. It's in a person's best interest to investigate everything they can. Or at least that's what I think

Re-reading my statements... I'm a little hard on religious people. They can still be reasonable in general but on certain issues they become irrational, which casts doubt on their authority in other matters.

I agree, though I'd say they can talk about various creation myths. ID doesn't deserve any place in any classroom any more than the flying spaghetti monster does. Other than maybe to say that ID is something created by a group to try and integrate their ideas where they don't belong.

I have training in History, which gives me a great appreciation towards understanding things in an artistic and scientific sense. Personally I'd like to pass that appreciation on to kids at a younger age so they can grow up with a better understanding of how to critically rate new information. Understanding the significance of religion to our culture is something that I think a lot of people disregard, which leads to a lot of distrust of people who choose faith over other world views.

I'd bet that if kids were presented ID and other more scientific theories of "creation", the ones based on science would win out, especially in the context of the rest of the curriculum. Kids arn't idiots. The more information available to them at an early age, the better the understanding of issues at a later age.