The reply I would like to send

I don't know if or what I will respond to the disgruntled parent I mentioned last time, but I thought I would be fun to write the things I'd really like to say here, without worrying about politics or politeness, so here goes.

You say that the terms Christian and evolutionists are mutually exclusive. That's interesting, because there are about 100 million Christian evolutionists in the US, according to most polls. The portion is much greater outside of the US. Mostly I am amazed at the rudeness of openly telling people you don't think they are Christians or approve of their beliefs. Imagine if someone said to you that they think anyone who takes the Bible literally isn't a real Christian. You would probably take offense, yet you have no problem telling 100 million people that they aren't real Christians.

Other than Bible colleges and a few Muslim colleges, every university in the world teaches evolution as a fact. As I told your son, I do not require that you believe in evolution. But if you are to be educated, you should at least understand one of the most important theories in science. If you take a philosophy class, you will learn the views of Plato and Locke and Hume and Kant and many others. You are not required to think they are all right (they can't all be right), but in order to be educated, you should understand their views.

You said that some of the question content in my class was a departure from the truths you have learned. That is because you have learned lies. You are systematically lied to by creationists and science is misrepresented. As I told your son, it's fine not to believe in evolution, but you should at least know what the theory says and what the facts really are, rather than misrepresentations of it.

You sent me material from Answers in Genesis, apparently thinking I wasn't aware of their arguments. I am sure that I am much more familiar with every argument AIG makes than you are and have looked at their web page in much greater detail than most people you know. I have seen how they misrepresent the science, misquote, and almost always omit very important information from their readers. They know that their readers won't bother checking up on things. All that they want is someone to tell them that someone smart has an answer out there, so they can be comforted that they need not confront the actual science. All I do in class is make sure that students are exposed to the actual science.

You are alarmed that I am teaching young people these views. I am upset and discouraged that I must constantly deal with the ignorance and lies that have been instilled in students by well meaning but uninformed people such as yourself. Evolution is a well supported fascinating science. I can't spend as much time doing my job of teaching the science because I am forced to do remedial work.

If you have any specific complaints about any of the material I used, or any specific argument you would like me to address, I will gladly do so. I know the creationists view point very well and do not believe I have misrepresented it. However, if there is any thing that I have wrong, I will gladly correct it.

You sent me material, which I did look through, and I have read massive amounts of material from creationists. I assume that you would consider it fair that you should also read material directly from evolutionists. I would send you some material, but I suspect it would not get read.