while i'm still unsure regarding the proposition of a literal or figurative time period (i do believe that our language & translations, when compared to the initial language the OT was produced in, do affect many of these nuances that are now widely debated... because when God created the universe, there was no sense of time until after he had begun creating... that's not to say i don't believe he could possibly have, since he is all-powerful, but these 2 circumstances--language & perspective--do leave it open for interpretation.... not to mention the doubt on the part of some that anything is fathomable and that, instead, a whole bunch of nothing went kaboom)... but i digress.......
my issue is with the opposition to the teaching of intelligent design or creationism in public schools. as with any subject, students are not forced to believe what they are taught. while some of the more objective subjects (such as math) do require a bit more faith in the teacher's abilities, interpretations of other subjective material (politics, history, philosophy, etc, etc, etc) are certainly wide-ranging. i went to a public high school; i was taught evolutionary theory in my freshman bio class. inasmuch as evolution is a theory, and not a proven scientific fact, so too is the creation of the world a theory (belief held by a number of people), and unable to be scientifically proven (i will admit this; but religion, or at least christianity, is a matter of faith, not science). i have no problem with the instruction of evolutionary theory, creation theory, etc, so long as each is presented equally, and the students are made aware that, even if any of the theories is, indeed, true, it is not up to the instructor to decide this for the students. in a history class i took last fall (the history of the world, dating from prehistory thru 1400), our professor used a text that included the creation myths of a number of world religions, past and present. one of our tasks, after reading these myths, was to list the similarities and differences between all. and while no two were identical, they certainly bore a number of similarities.
a side point to this debate is the issue of acceptance. this seems to be one idea which liberals are always pleading neo-cons for: acceptance of homosexuality, acceptance of racial equality, etc. however, it's unusual that, when an issue such as acceptance or acknowledgement of certain religious views are pressed upon irreligious liberals (and some conservatives as well, i suppose), they are flatly refuted, such as with this issue over the instruction of creationism or intelligent design in a public school setting.
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