It's not necessarily just the idea of evolution itself, but rather that it's indicative of someone's willingness to continuously and actively reject all evidence in order to maintain the beliefs they've decided are true.

"The hard thing for a lot of people to accept is that belief or lack thereof of evolution has no impact on daily life at all. "

Not accepting it leads to a profoundly WRONG worldview that bleeds into everyday life in many ways.

It’s directly correlated with young earth creationism and climate change denial. A significant portion of the population being taught "don’t trust scientists they’re lying on behalf of the literal devil" has done terrible things to American politics.

I'd broaden the group to "kids who parents feel have been done wrong or failed by the local school and see home schooling as the best choice available." I don't think this group is quite as consistently college educated as group 1.

On the other hand, my sister is a firm Creationist Christian, has a PhD and had a brilliant career in research (albeit nothing directly related to 'The Beginning of All Things').

Chances are she is less "scientifically ignorant" than many people around here, myself included.

Just like my sister's, yours is a specific case. It's sad that they didn't teach you Creation in a way that wouldn't cancel out Science, as Science itself is something profoundly Christian as well.

"O, Almighty God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee!..." - Johannes Kepler

Are you arguing that religious people are scientifically ignorant?

Such religious people like Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galileo, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Blaise Pascal, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, René Descartes, Gregor Mendel, Georges Lemaître?

So you're suggesting that religious people who home school have some sort of intrinsic characteristic that causes them to raise scientifically ignorant people? It just seems a bit far-fetched to me for someone who claims to be pro-science, especially given the number of respected religious scientists in the world.

To be fair most high school graduates might recite the “right scientific facts” while having no basis for supporting them. The earth is 4 billion years old. Survival of the fittest drives evolution. Why? How do you know?

Basically just another form of indoctrination. Children are not taught science so much as science appreciation.