There is no intrinsic merit to the statements "God created the world" and "Animals evolved from simpler lifeforms and ultimately from non-living compounds" — th

There is no intrinsic merit to the statements "God created the world" and "Animals evolved from simpler lifeforms and ultimately from non-living compounds" — their merit is entirely extrinsic, deriving from research done by scientists. It's ignoring these extrinsic factors and "letting the statements stand on their own merits" that leads to creationism being taught in school — that literally is the way the school board members usually put it. That's what I'm getting at: The more context you get for a claim, the better. In technical matters, the identity of the person telling you something is very important, because the value of an expert's opinion is extrinsic to the actual words that comprise the opinion.