John,

THere is a world of difference between teaching a god-free world, which would be highly unscientific and presumptuous, and teaching without any reference to religion in matters of scientific data and hypotheses.

If education is to be s state-sponsored activity, as it seems the Federal government wants it to be, then it, by constitutional necessity, must teach no preference toward any religion. A science teacher would be remiss to assert science had disproved the existence of Allah, or any other deity, without being extremely explicit about what research he was citing. I have never heard anyone claim science had disproved god. I wouldn't know how to frame such an experiment, since by definition the realm of natural phenomena does not (in the usual sense) include spiritual beings of any kind, let alone super-beings. There is simply no such proof anywhere within science or claimed by science and I would dearly love to see it if you have seen such an experiment or even such a claim.

Unless your kids are going to a religious school, which would not be one that is paid for equally by all taxpayers, they should not find ANY indoctrination in their studies bearing on one religion or another, or their inverses, in a preferential way. Studying many religions across different cultures can be an eye-opening and educational experience in terms of understanding the human beast historically but that full-spectrum study is a different matter altogether.

A