So, it comes down to: is this something that Ancient History should teach? Neither of us are qualified to say, but I can say that the Ontario curriculum and the textbook we used 20 years ago said “Yes”. I don’t know if that’s changed now. If it has, then Ancient History has to update. If it hasn’t, then there’s no cause to criticize that field for teaching what it is relevant to that field to teach.

I mean, the equivalent would be insisting that Philosophy classes not teach Cartesian dualism because it might contradict neuroscience and introduce to them notions of a soul, and make that notion of soul seem reasonable. Well, possibly, but since that idea is so fundamental and crucial to Philosophy of Mind it would be detrimental to the field of Philosophy to actually do it.

So, if science education suffers, or if we send the kids a totally contradictory message, or seem to be supporting a state religion, so be it — it’s more important to allow creationism?

My view is that this is Ancient History, and it should teach it if it fits with its mandate the way they should teach it. If that might have an impact on science … well, that’s just too bad. We can, of course, point out that it being controversial means that they have to take care to teach it properly from their perspective and as related to their domain, but that’s their issue (and something that they have to do for any topic).

That, ultimately, is the problem here that most concerns me: the original comments really looked like “I hate creationism, so no one should ever teach it, even if it makes sense for them to”. Which I don’t approve of. Especially since my experience has been that it’s been done before without the world ending.

That’s also the case.

“I’ll reply to your skepticism and skeptical attitude with one question that, to me, causes the most issues for any skeptical approach: considering your stance that we don’t know whether it will be good or bad, what should we do? Should we allow it or disallow it? Should we just get more information? If so, how?”

I think we should be pretty careful about it, in cases where there’s the possibility that we’re leading children to believe not only that Creationism is equally supported by evidence as evolution (it’s not), and is equally rigorous a discipline (again, it’s not), and that the State and/or schools somehow have a vested interest in making sure they accept these falsehoods as being true.

If the class had already believed that creationism was true, then this is not a situation that is meaningful. It didn’t change minds or make them consider it more reasonable, the teacher’s comments notwithstanding. If it could change people’s opinions, then he might have a case … but he has yet to provide any evidence for that.

My entire chain has been basically this:

1) Myers has given no reason to think that this will be a problem.
2) It looks like it was tried elsewhere and doesn’t seem to have caused a problem (see the Ontario curriculum).
3) A personal anecdote suggests that students will not just blindly accept creationism, even if they should by circumstances.
4) There is a huge risk here of Myers trying to dictate to Ancient History what it can cover. This seems like not an unreasonable topic for Ancient History, and in light of even just the first point Myers would be being unreasonable to make claims that it shouldn’t cover it because of an impact it might have on science.

Now, if you want to argue that I don’t know that it won’t be harmful, but that you don’t know that it will be, that’s fine. I’ll reply to your skepticism and skeptical attitude with one question that, to me, causes the most issues for any skeptical approach: considering your stance that we don’t know whether it will be good or bad, what should we do? Should we allow it or disallow it? Should we just get more information? If so, how?

PZ envisions this sort of response. Personally, I don’t know — I’ve personally seen one like that, heard of one other, and now am getting a report from you that worked in the opposite manner. Three points is too little data to draw a general conclusion in this case, so I haven’t.

Also, this isn’t a situation of all or nothing; something can be 13% harmful, 8% beneficial, and 79% neutral, for example. One can reject both your view and Myers’ for now, until more evidence comes in.

“X happened in my class and therefore Y is not a concern” fails both of those criterea, so the default status, disbelief, remains in effect. It’s not personal. I’m not calling you a liar in any way. Rather, I’m adding your example to the running tally, and awaiting further input.

As for my particular class … considering the background of the area, that class should be “less rational” on the topic than almost all other areas, and it was still overwhelmingly on the side of evolution. Thus, the worries seem to be overblown, but we’d need far more data to say. But at least I have some data, from personal experience, and haven’t seen anything contradicting that from the other side. So it is reasonable — for me at least — to doubt that it will have the negative impact that Myers claims it will.