That teacher is teaching theology, not science. Unless he says the same for gravity, astronomy and other science topics -- which just makes him an idiot.
Actually, I think it would be good--and professional--for teachers of a subject to, at the start, frankly admit, that what they are about to teach is not necessarily the final answer, the final Truth.
"To be a good teacher, one must first be humble."
I used to think that above quote was from Albert Einstein, but since figured out it was from an eastern European Yiddish folk-tale, but it pretty much describes Albert Einstein anyway.
The primitives on Skins's island the other week had a long discussion, squibble-squabbling around a particular bonfire, at the Biblical phrase, "fear of God [or the Lord] is the beginning of wisdom."
We all know how amusing the primitives are, when they try to "explain" Christianity (or any other religion) to us; in fact, probably about one-tenth of the threads in the DUmpster forum here involve such cases, because the primitives are so funny, and so willfully ignorant and voluntarily stupid.
In this case, the primitives conveniently forgot that the word "fear" in 1608 meant something different than what the word "fear" means today in 2008.
It meant in 1608, awe and respect and acknowledgement, not what it means today.
"To be a good teacher, one must first be humble."
In college, I had a rabid hard-core Marxist-Leninist teacher of Elizabethan drama, a visiting professor from Yale. He seemed old to me, but probably about the time he was only circa 40 years old.
Despite his absurd political ideology, he was a great teacher, and as the year went on, a great friend. I think it had to do with his attitude, "This is what I know, and this is what is generally accepted [about Elizabethan drama], but no one person, no one group of people, knows all, and so I, or we, just may be wrong."
A great teacher.
The Evolution Establishment is, fundamentally, viciously liberal, and I'm surprised they don't pay more attention to one of their icons, Mao Tse-tung who, in the mid-1950s, declared "Let a thousand flowers bloom, let a thousand schools of thought contend."
Of course, Mao Tse-tung, being a liberal and a socialist, didn't really mean all these pretty words, but they were pretty words.
I on the other hand mean it, and encourage it in any way I possibly can; since no human knows all, or can even know all, for the maximum possible human enlightment, it's necessary to include, and consider, as many points of view as possible.
I've already said here, and elsewhere, that I have no problems with the theory of evolution; it all makes sense to me (the point being that I do have problems with proponents, advocates, propagandists, of the theory of evolution, who do more harm than good to their cause by their strident narrow-mindedness).
However, I'm always uncomfortably aware that many things that "made sense" to me in the past, have since been proven wrong.
It's okay to be 90% certain about something, but to be 100% certain about something is sheer folly.