According to Alice Roberts, president of the Association for Science Education, refusing children a choice of perspectives by not looking at creationism is “open-minded”. But Professor Roberts is dangerously naive.

Knowledge is not about facts alone but also about how human beings order their understanding of the natural world. I myself have experienced many unusual interventions in my life as a teacher and missionary, but if I told scientists some might deny the validity of such evidence because it is not statically experimental but life-experiential. Yet it is no less real.

For example: once, in South America, an internal voice told me not to go through a door, so I did not. The police told me that armed drug dealers had been waiting for me on the other side.

If a scientist could tell me how likely such events are on the grounds of probability, I would listen, but many prefer to find improbable rational alternatives to preserve a tissue of beliefs they call “truth”. Millions of folk have awareness that rationalists want to deny in order to “prove” that science alone is valid. Should closed minds limit our humanity?

Let children compare perspectives and discuss them freely. Christian children attend classes on Darwinism and do not call for them to be banned. Why should Darwinists attack creationism? Discussion of it as one perspective seems to be the best way. This does not undermine education; it advances it.

Rev Dr Bruce K Gardner, Aberdeen.