@Matthew What science say is "God is not needed for science". Science doesn't speak into a human person's existential life: being moved by beauty, inner witness in conscience, desire for meaning, life-after-death, wonder about origin, etc. Science has no jurisdiction over those domains. Neither does science any business on constructing theology; it's theology that uses science as she chooses. Neither does science has authority over how churches should be run: their ideals, goals, etc.

@Matthew I would teach my kids a history of science and the associated development of philosophy of science of which Francis Bacon is the "founding father", which has its root in Christian origin, with articles such as this one, though I'm not that happy with the 3rd model he proposes.

@Matthew There is an important gradation that I know you heard but don't accept: "fairy tales" <> "theological message in a mythological garb" <> "literalistic and narrow understanding of the story". Christians have to be willing to have the Bible not to participate in science, but for worldview and faith generating purposes in which science is only a part. There is no overlapping magisteria, only that theology gives license to scientists not the other way around.

Rather than debating without concrete proposal, here's one proposal on how to "prime" a child's worldview: defend to the death the coherence, importance, and the reality of ontological truth, or better known as the doctrine of the transcendentals. Excellent lecture Truth as Transcendental: Ontological Foundations,

handout here, based on his published paper which later became a 2023 book chapter.

That would I tackle the materialism problem by going to the root that is even deeper than scientism, at the level of philosophy itself.

@Matthew What that demonstrates is how frustrated electorate is willing to sacrifice truth and character for power, which if non-Christian bystanders look on how churches are complicit with it, would do tremendous damage to Truth, to corruption of justice by power, to inhumane treatment of minorities, etc. a bad Christian witness.

@GratefulDisciple If you really believe that... I don't know what to say. "Science" (i.e. materialism, scientism, humanism; all of which claim to be "science" and have a strangle-hold on "science" curriculum) most certainly say that God doesn't exist, or at least, that God is unobservable and impotent, and had nothing to do with Creation.