re: #81 Dark_Falcon

Not in my eyes. Creationism is but a small loss compared to the gains.

Sorry, bro’, you know I love you but you could not be more wrong this time.
Creationism is dangerous in many ways, but the most dangerous might be what critical analysts call “assumption of the consequent,” that is, “If this is true, what else could be true?”
Creationism necessarily postulates a massive conspiracy of fraud by the global scientific community. Teaching creationism gives the state’s approval to at least the possibility of such a conspiracy. What would be the result of this belief? An example: In my experience almost every health supplement quack is a creationist of one kind or another. Some adhere to exotic New Age forms of creationism, but a rejection of biological and medical findings is at the heart of their claims, and attacking the very basis of those sciences is apparently a good way to accomplish that. It is the same with global climate change and vaccination and a host of other basically scientific issues that make it into the public realm. If the scientific enterprise, and the scientific community in general, are guilty of massive, worldwide fraud in terms of the history of the Earth, why trust them in other areas?
We see this in fundamentalist circles, where there are already people who reject the heliocentric model of the solar system, the vast distances of the universe, and a host of other basic facts. The findings of scientists mean nothing to these fundamentalists, since the fundamentalist belief in creationism convinces them that scientists are just organized liars and monsters whose ideas spring from “the pit of hell.”
Creationism in education is the wedge issue that will open the door to a hellish world of pseudoscience and superstition.