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[quote=Anonymous]First of all, the SAT doesn't test science knowledge.  I think the ACT does rely more on content knowledge, but I have no direct experience with it.

Secondly, while evolution, being commonly accepted, is something your child should be taught as part of a solid education, it is not that demanding a topic.  I think most kids don't get much about it until middle school or high school (both common points to switch schools), and then I'd guess it's a week or two, if that, of direct instruction on evolution within a broader science course (life science, biology, etc.)  It may be an underlying theme of such a course, but it's not a subject in and of itself like Algebra, French, or Chemistry.  I suspect you could supplement at home if you chose.  I also assume you can share with your child what your family does and does not believe.  I suggest you contact the school and find out what they teach and when.  Right now we're speculating.  In my public school World History class they taught us the underlying principles of the major religions, even though they clearly were not endorsing any.  For all I know the private school may give a thorough background on evolution as an alternative, prevalent theory.

As to the disparate theories, there is a great deal of overlap between them.  The evidence for evolution could also be seen as evidence for Creationism and I find it interesting that the ones who are supposedly basing their arguments on &quot;objective&quot; science are the ones who seem closed-minded about the possibility there could possibly be a God.  Whether the Big Bang happened randomly, was ordered by God, or was some manifestation of God himself, I have no idea, and frankly I don't know that it matters.  I know that there weren't any eyewitnesses  (unless you accept the Biblical account).  I know that in quantum physics, weird things happen with time and space, matter and energy.  I know that when you mathematically factor in extra dimensions, different forces start to unify.  Frankly, matter and energy converting back and forth, across dimensions of time and space I can't perceive, encompassing every force we know of,  sounds a lot like God or a &quot;place&quot; for God to exist that I am to limited to perceive (like somebody in a two-dimensional world would have trouble perceiving me in three-dimensions).  You don't have to believe there is a being out there beyond your perception, but can you be positive there isn't?

As for me, I went to a public magnet school (non-local).  As the parent of a Blair student, I can say that while we didn't have as many specialized science courses, our basic magnet science courses were far more rigorous than Blair.  You can be certain that I was taught evolution.  I am also &lt;&lt;gasp&gt;&gt; a Baptist.  I maintain that if you &quot;objectively&quot; compare the two theories you'll find a great deal of common ground.  (If you're stuck on the six days, the Bible makes it clear that God views time differently than we do.  The bible doesn't specify 24 hours.  Do I think a God who is so much more than I can even imagine, who may transcend time itself, could have created everything in six 24-hour days? I think anything is possible.  Do I think God could have used days as a term for a cosmic timescale?  Again, it's possible.)

I think the issues here are so great that I can't ever fully wrap my head around them.  I have trouble visualizing a fourth spatial dimension.  Trying to picture a tesseract makes my head hurt. Physics theories allow for the possibility of 9 or more spatial dimensions and some suggest there may be more than one dimension of time.

Does it really matter, from a scientific perspective, if evolution happens randomly, or if God directs every mutation, or if God set up the process to happen randomly?  It's like asking if God makes it rain.  We can scientifically describe the water cycle.  Water vapor evaporating and condensing are matters for science.  Whether God set it up that way is a matter of faith.
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