Quote:There is evidence of evolution. Obviously not all of it has been observed to this point and are still predictions based on the data and experimentation that has been done to form the current theory of evolution.
Evolution might as well be a scientific fact. We can see evidence of it in the fossil record, in DNA and simply by looking back at human history. Society itself has spent millennia evolving from small bands of hunter/gatherers to launching itself to the moon (and then stopping because it's apparently very expensive to launch oneself to the moon). There is, in my mind at least, no doubt that evolution takes place not only amongst lifeforms, but also on the scale of the universe itself. Entire galaxies evolve from a collection of stars to a cloud of stars around a black hole, then into spirals and ultimately spherical clusters as they age. The notion that the universe came into existence 6,000 years ago is patently ridiculous. Even a very, very prominent figure who has long been opposed to the idea of evolution cedes that point and suggests that people who cling to it are making themselves look "ridiculous".
The question that no one has an answer to is what took place before evolution. Where did the singularity come from? Was it the crushed remnants of a previous universe? Or was there a singularity at all? What if our universe was created by impact of two parallel dimensions/strings? If so, where did those strings come from? How far back do we have to go for an answer?
Likewise, if an intelligence or some sort were involved in "pushing the button" on the processes that led to this and other universes, where did that intelligence come from? There had to be a zero point somewhere in time, right? But the very concept of a zero point throws Einstein's widely-accepted theories out the window. According to Einstein, mass is a form of energy, and the law of conservation of energy suggests that energy cannot be created or destroyed. So then, by default, there was no zero point. Existence and all the energy contained within it, then, must have always been and will always be. That alone completely defies human concepts of time and, frankly, bends our notions of science far beyond the breaking point.
Confused yet? Good. I've just presented a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the completely unanswerable questions facing science about the origins of the universe at this point in time. Science has no answers. Philosophy and theology have no answers. All anyone has are theories, and while some theories have been ruled out as infinitely improbable at this point in time (the 6,000-year argument being one of them), there are still countless more floating out there that we're no closer to answering now than we were 13.6 billion years ago, when the theoretical singularity theoretically popped.
Point being, the purpose of education should be to expand children's minds and expose them to as many viewpoints and ideas as possible. One can subscribe to the idea of an intelligent creator without affixing an ideology to it. In my mind, there's nothing wrong with teaching kids that a universe (or parts thereof) created and/or sculpted by an advanced intelligence is a viable theory regarding where the universe--and, by definition, we--came from, even in public schools so long as it's taught scientifically and not ideologically, and as long as the arguments for and against that theory are presented just as they would be for the Big Bang or string theories. If children want to affix a certain ideological identity to that advanced intelligence when they go home at night, that's on them. There is, imo, nothing wrong with a teacher saying, "We don't know where the universe came from, but there are lots of theories out there. Here are a few of them."