What’s God got to do with it?

I didn't realize how long this was until i word counted it. But i was on a roll...

“In God we trust”…”One nation under God.” God is a part of the very foundation American was built on. His name is on our money and in the pledge of allegiance that every elementary school kids is forced to memorize word for word pretty much from day one of their schooling. Gods name shows up when foreigners take the step to become American citizens. The constitution declares the freedom to your own religion. God is in our history books, in our ethic books, in our law books, and in our novels…so does he deserve a place in our science textbooks?
Religion from the stories of Moses in Egypt, to the religious extremists of today, has its place in our history books. Religion shapes the actions and lives of many of the people who are huge parts of those books. People choose to do something or not because of what they believed God wanted them to do or because God told them to. Religion is a constant in our world since the very beginning and what that religion dictates in any given era reflects the moral and beliefs of that time. If you take religion out of history, a lot of it doesn’t make sense. The Inquisition doesn’t make sense nor do the Anti-Abortion/Pro-Choice debates. Religion has a place in history; it is a piece of a puzzle, without which, history is incomplete.
The Ten Commandments was written thousands of years ago yet it is still known and quoted pretty reliably today. God says, “Do not kill,” “Do not steal from your neighbor”, etc. Our law system based our law books on those of the church at the start of our country. As long as religion is not used as a reason of guilt, it has a place with Law.
Countless books reference or full out explore the powers of God and his effects on his followers on earth. He is in movies, comics, and television shows. God is a father figure when all is lost. He is the light at the end of the tunnel. He is that voice in the main characters head that says don’t shot that man, let him live. He is the priests and nuns that consoles the confused characters in a candle lit church, or a confession booth. He is made fun of, he is revered and he is theorized about. He has many faces and many names but he is always, in the end, God.
From our history to our laws to our pop culture, God and religion have found a comfortable balance. It doesn’t overwhelm but it is always there quietly making its presence known. So where does this leave science? Science is based on facts. Religion is based on faith. Science is based on things we can see with our eyes. Things we can disprove and things we can’t prove but are pretty darn certain about given the physical facts at our disposal. There is no physical, irrefutable evidence of God. There is personal testimony but no quantifiable evidence. But that does not mean religion and God do not have a common ground where they can meet and coincide with science. Science must first be based on what we can explain and test, if after that we choose to decide that God or an intelligent designer caused those things that science has proved to happen then that is an individuals right as an American citizen. Many describe the formation of a child as life’s greatest miracle. We know how a baby grows from a simple egg and sperm. Many call it a work of God, and maybe it is, but the important part is we figured out how it works and then God is put in the picture. Evolution explains how we and our world came into existence. If we choose to say God helped make those changes happen that’s fine. Science must come first and then religion so the facts aren’t fudged so they fit into a perfect religious size hole. Intelligent design does not do this. With Intelligent Design it says God exists and some really old guys from practically the prehistoric ages wrote about him and how he formed the world. Then it uses these texts to try and describe the world through “science” using what it wants and discarding what doesn’t match their preconceived notions. That’s just bad science. If I ignored evidence in my study because it didn’t fit my hypothesis I would be laughed out of the field of psychology and so the same has happened to Scientific Creationism.
America is the land of the free, which means we have the right to believe what we want and teach our children what we want. It is our right to believe in Nazi propaganda just as much as it is our right to believe in scientific creationism along with unicorns and vampires if we so choose. However where those rights end is with how they affect other people. Non-scientifically proven theories do not have a place in the science books of elementary and middle school kids in the public schools. In the public schools God and religion should stay in the history books and lit class books, not in the science books. We need to teach them good strong empirical based ways of learning in the schools and if they chose from facts gathered from their parents, their churches and the internet along with what we teach them in school to believe that Scientific Creationism is what happened and not Evolution, then that is their right as Americans but they don't have the right to teach it to my future children.