[Stultis]

and this debate would be a very good subject to examine

Disagree. See my #261. Most teachers could probably handle this reasonably well, but it would invite religion and antireligion partisans to engage in "spinning" the curricula and subverting your intent. It would only take a small percentage of teachers behaving in such opportunistic faction to make a complete fiasco of your scheme.

[StJacques]

Stultis, I think your post #261 deals with how this debate would be handled in a science class. Am I right? I do not want it within a science class under any circumstances.

Now as to the larger question, "can we trust high school teachers handling a course in 'Critical Thinking' to present the debate fairly?" Well even I will admit there would be problems with that, but the alternative is to give students no training in critical thinking at all and I at least think that a good textbook would moderate errors on the part of teachers. That is one of the reasons we use textbooks by the way.

I will also point out that both the SAT and ACT college entrance exams have been reworked over the past few years to place a greater emphasis upon the development of skills in critical thinking.