Quick! Were you taught that protons exist?
If you answered yes, you're wrong, but many people believe they do, and the real answer is complex, and protons are a "good enough" answer that the entirety of chemistry pays very little attention to anything deeper. So protons and neutrons are still taught, and getting into quarks properly quite often only happens in college-level courses.
Protons don't exist? O.o I thought they were a cluster of quarks with a positive charge O.o. Naming a set of objects as one unit isn't bad.
Were you taught we're made up of cells? If you answered yes, you're wrong, but many people believe they do, and the real answer is complex, and protons are a "good enough" answer blah blah. The reality is much more complicated, with mitochondria and nucleii, etc.
My physics-fu is lacking, but I was also taught that protons are made up of quarks. If a proton is really just a silly term for a collection of quarks then it's not lying, there's just a smaller thing when we break them apart.
I was trying (badly, I admit) to point out that letting possibly over-simplistic answers sit is not equivalent to promoting creationism. Freehunter does much better above.
