I hate defining myself by what I’m not, but in the case of secular homeschool curricula, especially science curricula, it often really does come down to finding something that is not-religious. The options for homeschool science are pretty much all either religious or the supposedly neutral curricula that are really anything but. The issue is that there is no such thing as neutrality about science — you should be as impartial (in your methodology and interpretation of data) as possible, you can be avoidant (get around that pesky evolution issue by just not mentioning it) of those issues that are the source of dissent — but you can’t really be neutral when it comes to the issue of scientific theory versus religious doctrine.
If you discuss biology (though many Christian curricula call it “life science” or “zoology”) without mentioning evolution, you’ve made a decidedly un-neutral choice. If you present both the theory of evolution and the doctrine of creationism, you’re still making a choice that isn’t neutral — you’re presenting both as equally valid options, two “beliefs” of equal weight between which to choose, and which involves having made the choice to place religious dogma on the same level as evidence-based science.
Once you’ve made your choice, stick with it. Creationism and evolution are incompatible. Literal 6-day creationism and evolution, even less so. Either God made the Earth and its inhabitants in a divine wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am or not. Either the Earth and its inhabitants evolved over time, or they didn’t. Your science text needs to take a stance one way or the other. Anything less is hypocritical and a little bit condescending. A secular science text shouldn’t even address the topic of creationism (or it’s half-assed, fence-sitting cousin, “intelligent design”). There’s no need to bring it up in order to dispute it, because if your text is evidence-based and scientific, religious doctrine has no bearing on it.
Let your argument for your belief stand on its own merits, instead of basing it on how mine is wrong. There’s a time and place for the refutation of fallacies, but I don’t need to see the points of creationism discredited one by one in my child’s science text. The same should go for the creationists, who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to discredit evolution. The wrongness of someone else’s belief isn’t argument enough for the rightness of yours. What I want is evidence, not faux neutrality. I want rigorous, secular science that addresses real scientific theories, rather than ignoring them to appease both sides. I’d like to have my scientific chocolate peanut butter free of any theological chocolate. That’s decidedly hard to come by in the world of homeschool materials.
