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A building naturally starts with its foundations. For this reason, for the idea of evolution to stand up in the mind of a student, he/she will expect the theory to have a solid foundation, root or beginning.- This is where it becomes dodgy to justify teaching only evolution in its present form as anything more than an idea, and a bad one at that. When one re-traces the "rivers" of evolution they end up at their source which is this fanciful puddle of primordial soup which is where all life was supposed to begin.
Of course you are confusing intellectual foundations with historical foundations. Interestingly enough tha confusion only seems to apply to evolution. I've never seen anyone argue that we can't say that the planets orbit the sun because we don't fully understand how the planets form or that we can't say that Jesus existed because we don't know where or when he was born.
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My feeling is that if we cannot agree on the origins of life then we cannot teach evolution, we need to teach on issues where we have common ground, ie on the facts that we currently observe from current evidence that can not be open to conjecture in any way.
Which would seem to either allow the teaching of evolution or rule out very large amounts of science - perhaps all of it. The fact of the existence of transitional fossils, for instance, depends not at all on how life began. Indeed, none of the evidence for evolution depends on that, so obviously that is not the real problem.
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It is merely speculation and arguably and ironically religious in itself (because through evolution some "seek" to obviate religion) for "evos" to push ideas/agendas on such fanciful ideas as the big bang theory and primordial soup for the origin of life, etc as theories when in fact they are just ideas that defy common sense.
On the other hand I'd say that the idea that your uninformed opinions have anything like as solid a basis as a strong consensus of expert opinion is an expression of pride, and nothing more. I don't think that your pride is a sound basis for educational policy.
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Would it not be more ethical albeit a compromise, to include a separate subject (or as a subject within a subject) of beliefs, hypotheses and even theories that could be studied to embrace ideas from all quarters. I fail to see how spending so much time and resources fighting over the past can be of use to man or planet.
I'd say that dishonesty is rarely ethical. And it would be dishonest to pretend that science is on the same low level as the religious apologetics of creationism. Putting both in your hypothetical class would do just that. The current status is fair and ethical- and yet you wish to keep fighting about it. Why should those who disagree surrender just because you say that the fight isn't worth it - when you clearly don't believe what you say.
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