> They're already teaching one such story as if it were fact (evolution). Might as well put the other theory on the table, too.
Which "the other theory?"
1) The Raelians: Aliens put us here
2) Scientologists: Aliens put us here (sorta, I think...)
3) The Hindus: Ummmm....
4) The Nation of Islam: White People were Intelligently Designed by a mad scientist
5) The Great Green Arkleseizure: The universe was sneezed out his nose.
6) Communists: Lamarkian selection
7) Spiritualists: We're degraded forms from the Golden Age
8) Christians: Poofism
There seem to be a LOT of "theories" to rate alongside Creationism. Of course, only Natural Selection fits the standards of science, being verifiable, disprovable and observable, while all the rest are faith-based handwaving, but hey... so long as we're gonna teach one form of Creationism, why not teach them all?
What can you possibly be afraid of?
Not a thing.
Anyone who looks at creation and fails to acknowledge the Creator would do well to be afraid.
By the way, natural selection is not a religious theory. Even the curly-stemmed, shorter-than-the-mower-blade dandelions in my lawn provide evidence for natural selection. However, "Evolution" is at least as much unprovable religious theory as anything else you mentioned.
Of course, you're completely wrong. For example, scientists have successfully added jellyfish genes to monkey DNA. Natural Selection does not explain such a thing -- nor should it, since it is a true case of Intelligent Design.
And in this example lies the problem with a Theory of Evolution that explicitly rules out the possibility of intercession by intelligent agents. A thought experiment will show you why. Suppose that these monkeys escape into the wild -- on an island, say -- and over the next 1000 years form a large population. A scientist finds the population, and discovers this special "glow in the dark" gene. You and I know that this gene was explicitly a product of human intervention, but I suspect that our future scientist would not be able to test for human influence in the monkey gene. Would it therefore be "scientific" for the scientist to think up an alternative, purely "natural" explanation? Would it be "unscientific" for him to suggest that somebody placed the gene into the monkey DNA?