I think a lot depends on how you teach kids about alternative interpretations. One speaker at the conference stated that kids as early as 5th grade have negative views of science if in that environment. That then can lead to rejection of the church so indeed can be harmful. Here is a link to the presenters blog, which expands that point.
http://www.discoveryandfaith.org/a-different-narrative/
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I totally agree. My wife and I tried to steer our kids in the Christian Faith (as Catholics), but it usually surprises parents at how quickly kids mature and need to make decisions on their own. Whether or not they accept evolution as âtrueâ will not be crucial in how each lives a good Christian life, Ashley. But you keeping a loving, peaceable relationship with your husband will be important to them for as long as they live. My wife & I will celebrate our 70th wedding anniversary this summer (the Good Lord willing), and are more in love than ever. Thatâs a legacy that you two can pass down to several generations. Please donât let unnecessary arguments interfere.
God Bless
Al Leo
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Youâre not alone! And welcome to Kansas! Thanks for your testimony â a good balance of relationship and respect for truth.
I just added another homemade poster to my classroom wall timeline; this one featuring St. Augustine. There are a few students in at least one Christian school (and I hope not the only one!) in Kansas who I hope are being challenged to engage the evidence at a higher level. Iâll paste what I wrote below.
Augustine converted to the Christian faith as an adult and consequently exerted more influence in its spread and development than perhaps anyone since Paul. In fact, it was Augustine that heavily influenced how we now read and understand Paul. He was venerated by Catholics and respected by Protestants too and with very good reason: Augustine brought faith together with logic and reason, bringing Greek thought to bear on Christianity. Much of Platoâs philosophy about body and soul, the earthly and the heavenly would later become tightly intertwined with western Christian thought itself. For better or worse, we have Augustine to thank for this marriage of Hebrew and Hellenistic (Greek) philosophy.
Augustine also insisted on reading scriptures literally. But this may not mean what some today think it means. What he meant by this was that one should try to discern the intended teaching of the author. So, for example, in his commentary on Genesis 1, Augustine maintained that the intent of the author was not to tell us God would need six whole days to create everything (Augustine believed God actually must have done it in an instant!) but that the literal intent here is metaphorical, to teach us about the different dimensions of being. So, long before any influence of modern science, church fathers (Augustine wasnât the only one) were discerning literal teachings in Scriptures that go deeper than what some today have taught themselves to see as a âplain reading.â In fact, almost as if he was anticipating the coming Copernican revolution and Galileo debacle, Augustine wrote this in his âThe Literal Meaning of Genesisâ:
If they [non-believers] find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?
This sentiment would find later echoes from John Calvin, and perhaps even in controversies surrounding science and faith today. One should not think for a moment that Augustine was skeptical about miracles â he wasnât. He was a champion of experience and reason helping to illuminate our understandings of Scripture which cannot, after all, teach falsehood. This would also anticipate the later âtwo booksâ metaphor â see Francis Bacon. Do you think modern issues over deep time or evolutionary origins would change Augustineâs mindset if he were around today? Why, or why not?
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Just as a data point: in 1998 when I visited the Stephen Birch Aquarium in La Jolla (San Diego), California, I saw that the staff had placed a small, inconspicuous white sign at the entrance to one particular exhibit. Of course I donât remember the exact wording, but I remember the gist of it clearly: âPlease note this exhibit talks about evolutionâ. I was quite startled; this was in California in a major suburban (and upscale) neighborhood of a major city, and the Birch Aquarium is affiliated with the famous and secular Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
I suppose it was explained by San Diegoâs deep-red Republican roots (yes, sorry my Republican Christian evolutionist friends, but then, just as now, evangelicalism and creationism correlate with Republican, more than Democratic or independent, party identification). The younger generation may have been trending more liberal (as today), but the older generation (where all the donor money is) was still Republican and conservative, and most Christians among them would be creationists. After all, this was in the day that San Diego (Santee specifically, IIRC) was the home of the ICR (Institute for Creation Research), the most significant young-earth creationist organization in America at the time (ICR has since moved to Texas and, IMHO, faded and been replaced in that role by Answers in Genesis).
I donât live in the area and havenât ever had the opportunity to go back, but Iâve often wondered if they still have that sign up.
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Crazy! Iâm no Northerner (grew up in Missouri), but I donât remember anything like that going on. Pretty sure I was taught evolution in school⌠I never liked science while in school so I didnât pay a lot of attention!
Interesting! So itâs not just super-conservative Kansas 
Thank you for this, Mervin! And thank you for welcoming me to Kansas My husband is much more well-versed in the writings of the church fathers and the (non-canonical Biblical) writings of the early church than I am (he is very interested in Orthodoxy) and I think it definitely influences his thinking about the age of the earth that there was no âliteralâ interpretation of Genesis among them.
70 Years! Amazing! Congratulations to you, and God bless you as well
I have every intention to read this but donât have time at the moment (getting ready for church!) but I agree with you on that it depends how the alternative interpretations are presented and it IS dangerous and doing kids a disservice if a literal âplainâ YEC interpretation of Genesis is enmeshed with the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy as a non-negotiable tenet of faith. Then, of course, the danger is that if one begins to question this interpretation, the whole house of cards and faith in God himself could fall because itâs been sold as a package deal, so to speak. And that is tragic!