My oldest daughter is a junior in high school and does very well academically. She is in the National Honor Society and has close to a 4.0 average. However, we have been having problems with about every aspect of public schooling (you would not believe the BS hassles we have endured). My wife and daughter both are very adamant about not attending her senior year at this school. The options are to send her to another public school (about 30 miles away) or home school her.

My wife really wants to home school her and is very capable since she has been a substitute teacher on and off for years. We could also sign her up for online learning as well. My daughter’s preference is to go to the next closest public school (like I said, 30 miles away) but would home school as a second choice.

My main concern is that my daughter is up for an honors diploma at her high school and if she home schooled she would only get a GED. I’ve always looked down on GED’s but maybe I’ve been wrong. She is definitely planning on college and hopefully scholarships.

Opinions?

Another school, if only for the social interaction. I also don't believe a parent should be the primary curricular teacher for their own child, regardless of how capable that parent may be as a teacher. The parent-child relationship is always going to be there and it's just not as objective as with a third-party.

If it's her preferences and she can drive herself there and back, I can't see any reason that you would want to home school her.

Well my wife is not a fan of the public school system in general. She believes that individual learning gets better results than a classroom experience. The student can learn at their own pace, concentrate on what interests them the most, and not have to deal with the distractions of other kids and the drama that goes with it. Plus I agree with her that most teachers seem to just be putting in their time and don’t give a rat’s ass about the student. I can’t blame them a lot on that seeing the crap they have to put up with from most of the kids.

The other concern I have is money. It will cost about $1k for the other school plus a lot in gas/car costs. That money could be better used for her college education. Plus she might just run into the same shit at the other school.

I will just throw in that I have been working very closely with a home schooled teenager at our church, and she is one of the brightest, most reliable, well spoken people I have ever met. Her siblings (4) were not home schooled, so I don't know why they decided to do it with her, but she has certainly not suffered in terms of either her education or her ability to relate socially with others. I have seen plenty of examples of home schooled students who struggle with social skills, but in this case I think she has quite a few social outlets (she is involved in the youth group at church, the worship team with me, and performs regularly in a local theater group). The most surprising thing to me is her independent thought from her parents- we have discussed numerous things that her parents have very strict beliefs and she differs, and they are comfortable with this. I would have figured in a home schooling situation this would be a difficult thing- you would expect the child to parrot the parents.

From talking with her, the only thing she regrets is missing prom

I know there would have been no way in hell my parents could have been my teacher. I just would not have listened, but that's me. My daughter and wife are definitely of a different mind set.

The one thing a parent-teacher has going for them rather than a stranger-teacher is the concern the student. If 10% of the teachers I’ve had over the years gave any thought to my welfare in any way I’d be surprised.

We've already started home schooling our four year old and will continue down that path with her (She is at a first grade level already). The wife and daughter attend a home school coop that meets every Friday. She gets different perspectives from other teachers and socialization with there as well as gymnastics.

Hopefully this will be enough interaction with other kids. I think it may cut down on the over interaction that leads bullying and other anti-social behavior.

I think for the youngest home schooling is the way to go since she does not wish to be as outgoing as the oldest.

Doesn't that mean that the "different" perspectives she gets are from other children whose parents have the same opinion on home schooling...

I'm referring to the "different" perspectives of life and learning. At four years old the concepts of home schooling verses public schooling are a bit beyond her.

These home schooling people are definitely not all the same. I was nervous that they would all be religious cult nuts but that is not the case.

We’re going to try to see how this goes with the second child. If it doesn’t work out we’ll just enroll her in school. I just think for the oldest she has been in a school environment her entire life and I think the change will not benefit her in the long run. But I’m trying to keep an open mind.

According to my wife, who has nearly 40 years public schools experience as a school psychologist, with the GED you can forget about scholarships.

She says there are many other alternatives, and you should be able to find an accredited on-line program, perhaps in conjunction with home-schooling, that would maintain her eligibility for scholarship assistance.

I think Bruno made a good point about the parent-child relationship interfering with teaching objectivity.

tanstaafl.

I would be more worried about the social aspect with a younger child that has only been home schooled. I would guess the older kid has friends already.

The relatives I have that home school are the religious nut types

I'm hoping we can send our kid to a private school.

Home schooling is fundamentally about investing a huge amount of your own personal time and energy into your kid. That's not something that I or my wife could do, simply because our jobs are too demanding. If you've got the option, and you think you can do it properly (versus having the usual parent-child squabbles and such), then it's worth considering.

That said, doing it "properly" is tricky at the high school senior level. You don't necessarily have access to the science labs, nor can you hope to have all the skill and expertise of the school teachers in each and every subject that the school teachers.

It sounds like you're satisfied with your school, from an educational perspective, but you're unsatisfied with the student culture. At that point, shifting to a different school might be a valid response to the problem.

For what it's worth, I was perfectly happy (*) going to public schools all the way through, but my sister hit a wall in 10th grade, when she felt the arts and literature in our public high school just didn't cut it. She talked my parents into sending her to the local private girls' high school ($$$), which was much better at this sort of thing.

(*) Well, as happy as I would have been anywhere else...

Why would the other public school cost $1000? I can understand the concern about the travel expenses. That is going to be about $10 a day in just gas.

This is what I would worry about too. I would think if you were a parent who'd been homeschooling for years, you'd probably have had enough practice with the dynamic when going over the easier subjects, then by the time they were in high school the two of you would know how the relationship works. You'd also have time to prepare for the more challenging coursework a senior *should* have.

Along those lines, Redrum, what kind of courses is your daughter taking? Would she be taking any AP classes next year? In the area I went to high school, AP courses were a pretty big deal. I had what was considered a pretty light load of AP's and 3 out of my 7 senior courses were AP. Most of my friends had more like 5 and took one or two in their junior year. Courses like that would be extremely challenging for a parent to teach, as theoretically they should be college-level.

What part of the country are you in? 30 miles is pretty far between high schools...

IMO, I just can't help but feel like home schooling is a little weird. I know that probably isn't fair and that there are success stories, but I can't help but have this impression that it's mostly religious types who aren't even happy merely having their kids excused on the days their Bio class talks about evolution.

College Financial Aid and Scholarships is mostly based on your Standardized (SAT/ACT) test scores. Maybe some scholarships that don't take those tests into account might not be available but that is a small portion of them. I know several people with GEDs and very high SAT scores- they had no problem getting plently of Financial Aid.

I don't think the social aspect is really the issue it used to be,
though it depends on the area. In places where home-schooling carries a
broader acceptance, it's no longer little Johnny at home by himself all
day with mommy. Instead, it's starting to approach a traditional education
class structure, with home-school co-ops forming, and different parents
teaching different sections.

I've seen a little bit of the teaching materials, and for the most part, it
seems reasonable, although there is still a pretty heavy emphasis on putting
God and Bible references all over. The last one I picked up, I think, was
something similar to "God and Phonics."

Yes, unfortunately we called and the transfer fee (or whatever) is $750 plus another approximately $500 for books and the like. It seems like public schools have taken the same stance as colleges and are charging for books and all kinds of other fees. Especially in the honors classes. I don't like to know what money goes out (the wife handles the bills) so when she told me how much money we shell out now to the public education I was shocked.

Yes, this is one of my augments as well. Jumping in to home schooling at a high school honors level is too much. I believe all my daughter’s classes are all at the highest AP level. We have pushed her hard over the years and my wife has made sure she has been in the hardest top classes every year.

Unfortunately, in some respects, we live WAY out in the country. The nearest Walmart is 35 miles away. The next nearest half way good school is 30 miles away.

I too have thought of home schoolers as mostly religious nuts but the more I learn about the mainstream home schooler the more I’m finding out there is a growing number of them that for a multitude of reasons believe our current system is not working. When you think about it schools where primarily to train kids to work in factories. The bell rings you move on to the next task. Churning out kids to work in a factory just isn’t going to cut it in the USA anymore. Most of the schools even look like factories

My wife has argued the SAT/ACT scholarship route as well and has talked with colleges that confirm that is what they now mostly use.

I don’t know, I’m still old school and look at a GED (or home school diploma) as someone who couldn’t make the grade in a real school. I'm on the fence here

The wife is a social bug. She draws the kids into all kinds of social activities. I really don’t have any concerns about social interaction. I know many people label home schoolers as socially inept but I think that is just a stereo type derived from the nut jobs that home school in commune/cults.

And, of course, there is that set of kids who are home-schooled explicitly because they have emotional problems.

So my brother-in-law and sister-in-law chose home school for their junior and senior years of high school. In their case, the public schools in their part of the DC area are pretty bad. So much so, that most people who can afford it choose private schools or other alternatives.

They found a home school co-op (sounds like you are already part of one for your younger child.) This particular co-op was a classical education where they study logic and rhetoric and other classical subjects. They would go to class at the co-op 3 mornings a week and do home school for the rest.

I was extremely impressed with the quality of the education. They were far more prepared for college that I was. They had already a high skill level in research and academic writing, they were skilled in self-learning and budgeting their time. My sister-in-law is now flying through college and excelling. Their co-op had opportunities for sports, prom and most of the things they'd miss out on at a traditional school. Even got a regular diploma.

As open-minded as you guys are about most things, I'm surprised how many of you are so closed to alternative avenues for education. Shame, Shame. Surely you can't think that our public school system is the pinnacle of educational opportunity? Also, learning to self-educate is a valuable skill for college and life in general. Surely it's not a terrible idea to start that transition in a more forgiving environment?

I'd say to make an honest evaluation as to whether she has the motivation and work ethic to home school. If she does, then go for it. If not, the cost of the transfer pales in comparison to private school tuition. It's not a bad option if the school culture is that much better than the local one. Just take it out of her clothing budget

EDIT: I'm going to have to home school my kids if I live here long enough. Really, we've already started. We have learning time with my two-year old every day (about an hour a day). It'll be interesting to see how my thoughts on it develop. She'll still attend the village school at least part-time, but many finish primary school with a third-grade level education, and I'm not willing to settle for that with my kids.

I expect that our viewpoints on public schooling and home schooling are based on our own experiences at primary schools. I feel like I was given a good education by public schools. I know people who I believe are giving their children good educations by home-schooling, and I also know people who I believe are hobbling their children with poor home schooling.

The coop situation, does put things into a new light. At least in my opinion. I'm already taking it for granted that the parents doing the teaching are going to be good at what they do, given the forum of discussion.

I don't see anyone here who's closed to the idea home schooling as a general rule. A dozen or so posts in, all I've seen are very real concerns about the lack of socialization, the concern that parents would have difficulty being objective and adequately measuring progress, etc. Those are just two of many reasons why the decision to home school should be considered very carefully.

Now, my wife and I don't have kids, and won't for some time, so I don't have personal experience with any of these issues. But I do happen to have three coworkers whose wives home school their kids (which is quite a statistical aberration) and I've had a fair number of conversations with them about the pros, cons, etc.

Let's start with the easiest and least refutable knock against home schooling, which is that it's completely out of the goddamn question for single parent or dual parent, dual income families. If home schooling your child isn't taking up at least a full time job's worth of your time and effort, you are Doing. It. Wrong.

So, for those lucky few for whom a parent can put in the time and effort required to be a good home school teacher, you also need that parent to understand enough about all of the subjects to teach them. At early grade levels, this is easy, but I'd imagine by the time you're getting to high school level classes, college AP material, etc. the material becomes challenging for anyone who hasn't already been a professional teacher or homeschooled their other kids. At this point, the teacher must become the student, and not all parents will be able to keep up. This is also one of the benefits of home schooling, that it motivates the parents to keep learning, but not everyone is going to have the kind of focus necessary to learn the material well enough to teach it properly.



I think one can simultaneously believe that (a) our public education system is very troubled and (b) home schooling is not the answer for an overwhelming majority of children. I think (b) almost proves itself just when you factor in its lack of applicability to most dual-income and single-parent situations, leaving aside the admittedly more difficult to prove critiques pertaining to social aspects, the lack of objectivity, parental teaching aptitude, etc. I also think that resolving (a) by focusing on improving the public schools rather than abandoning them is better for our society than everyone turning inward and fending for themselves.

Redrum, for your situation specifically, I just can't see how changing horses mid-stream (or toward the end of the stream) makes sense. What is so bad about this school? Your daughter has managed to do very well academically in this supposedly terrible environment. She's got one year left. What could possibly be so bad to cause you to try to make this change at the 11th hour? Not to take anything away from your wife, who I'm sure is a very capable teacher, but is she going to have enough detailed knowledge of all the subjects your daughter is going to want to learn, and is she going to have the time to learn the portions she needs to bone up on in time to teach them to your daughter?

This, combined with the possibility of colleges / scholarships looking down on a GED, or questioning the decision to home school the final year, I just don't see what's really gained by making such a drastic move this late in the game.

I don't think the schools are the same as when we went.

Yes, your 11th hour reasoning, the scholarship/GED issues and one other main thing I haven’t brought up – my daughter’s lack of self-motivation are the three main reasons I don’t think we will home school her. I’ve tried to keep an open mind though.

With the youngest we are going to give it a shot. If we/she can’t handle it we’ll ship her off to the factory.

In regards to our objectiveness of our daughter I don’t think that will be an issue. When something “happens” we are the first to blame our daughter. Kids lie, cheat, steal and are basically rotten animals (well maybe not that bad but…. ) . We are definitely not blind to what our daughter is capable of and not capable of. I know some parents think there kids can walk on water and do no wrong. We don’t fall into that mold.

Yes, I did not bring it up earlier but she is not a self-motivator. While her work ethic is good (as long as she is working for someone else, working for us, forget it) her lack of motivation and typical teen age disobedience are definitely a factor in the decision.

We do have a good private school that would be an option if money wasn’t. The school would run close to $10k a year. We did send her to a private Catholic school until the eight grade (Even though we are not Catholic). It was a great school and ranked well above any school in this area. Unfortunately it only went to the eight grade.

It was even run by a nun with a ruler in hand .

That's also a different situation than most of us have. The DC school system is abysmal (even when it isn't receiving envelopes with white powder in them). Private schools are big in this area and the main alternative, but they're also insanely expensive, often costing more than an out of state university!

I count myself lucky that I went to the best public school in the state of Virginia (that wasn't a magnet school). I was given a fantastic education, even if I didn't always receive it so well I can't speak to the challenges of a bad schooling situation, but despite having a great school system in my area, there are still those who choose to home school, and that doesn't make sense to me. That's why I note that every one of those families has been very religious, so that colors my impression of why a family would choose to home school. It's not the same in other areas, but that's what it seems to be in this particular area.

very religious != evil

very religious education != bad education

bad education == bad education

There are good public schools and there are bad public schools. There are good home-schoolers and bad home-schoolers.

I know a socially well-adjusted home-schooled guy who started university at age 16, graduated Summa Cum Laude and proceeded to earn his doctorate in mathematics by age 25. He was my professor for 'data structures and algorithmic analysis'.

I know another home-schooled kid that is socially inept, poorly educated, and otherwise unable to function effectively in society. He's basically doomed to live with his parents for the rest of his life.

I could come up with equally successful and harmful stories from public schools. Just because one can find bad examples doesn't mean it's a bad form of education. I'd be very interested to see statistics on standardized test scores on home-schooled kids vs. publicly educated kids. Also would be interested to see how that translates to future careers. Don't know where to look for those stats though.

What I do have is 10 years of experience working in education and a father who was a teacher and school administrator for 15 year. He has his doctorate in educational administration and did his dissertation on parent-assisted education. Experience tells me that home schooling can be either good or bad, but works out very well for the student a high percentage of the time.

Another option, one I wished I had done, is to just drop out and go directly to community college. A high school diploma is not required for that (at least here in Cal) and once you've done the GE classes at the JC, you can transfer as a junior to a university. An architect friend did this and skipped two worthless years at high school and got his masters two years earlier.

He went to the same worthless high school I did, which was really worthless. My public schooling was so bad that I sent my kids to private school until the economy dictated that I not do that any more. Thankfully, the public schools here in Fullerton are pretty good. My kids are, unfortunately, learning the laziness that it seems public schools are good at teaching...

Religious education does not inherent mean bad education, you're right. But we're talking about parents teaching their kids that Jesus rode dinosaurs.

This science reader examines dinosaurs from a Creation Science viewpoint. Discover how fossils are formed, dug up, and assembled for museums. Travel with the dinosaurs as they board Noah’s Ark and then enter the strange new world after the Flood. Find out what happened to the dinosaurs and if there are any alive today.

This isn't education, this is indoctrination. And I'm not cherry-picking here. That was from the first result from Google for "home school books", and the first (claimed) high-school level book I saw in their "Creation Science" section. And the only evolution-related books they offer seem to be titled things like "Evolution: The Lie".

As John points out, home schooling, when you're got a good community to do it with, can work great. One of my former grad students was a Mormon with three kids, and his wife was their full-time care-giver/teacher. He talked at great length about how the community would come together for things like science classes, including trying to get access to real high school labs.

In his opinion, the big benefit of home-schooling was that you could pace the learning directly with the student's needs. If they can go fast, you go fast. You don't need to saddle better students with make-work, and you can spend the extra effort when there's confusion.

I'm entirely sold on home schooling... except that it's completely infeasible for my own situation. Also, I'm freaked at the thought of teaching college freshmen because they don't know very much yet. Teaching high school or lower just wouldn't fit me.

I never said that. I was offering an observation about why I thought people in my area, which is filled with nationally-ranked public schools, might choose to home school.

If I appeared to inject any personal bias, it certainly wasn't that I thought this practice was evil, and it's insulting that you say I did. If I have an emotional reaction to religious home schooling, it's that there are two solutions I don't believe are healthy: 1) separating yourself societally from those who think differently from you (home schooling**), and 2) insisting that everyone else thinks the same as you (campaigns for school prayer, equal time for creationism, etc).

I prefer the "believe what you want, but don't force me to believe what you do." Sadly, the absence of religion always seems to be seen as an indictment of it.


** And I apologize for turning it into a religious issue, when there are clearly other reasons for home schooling, as I was implying in the first place when I said that not everyone has access to excellent public schools like the people in my county.

And why is this invalid? Are people not allowed to teach their children alternative theories of origin? It's not as if the theory of evolution has been undeniably proven, despite the massive amount of resources that have put into trying to do so. So if the parents believe in Creationism and are willing to teach their kids good science and not shoddy science, why is it bad to pass on that belief?

I'm truly sorry that loving Jesus is so offensive to you. It's really not so bad. You should try it sometime

Then I sincerely apologize.



Here we agree. There are other good reasons to home school. I don't think that should be the primary one. I think I could make a pretty good scriptural case against it.



truly ironic.

I'm mixed on the whole "creation science" thing. Fundamentally, science, the way real scientists do it, is all about falsifiable hypotheses, for which we design experiments or otherwise collect data. "Creation science" is no such thing since you can't falsify it.

I have no objection to teaching your kids any religion or belief system you want, but if you teach them "creation science", you're undercutting what science is all about, and you're creating a kid who's going to be at a serious disadvantage if and when they ever want to be a real scientist.

Of course, there's a fundamental problem when science has very particular things to say about the history of the world and of the universe, backed by solid evidence, and religious systems also have very particular things to say, based on... other things. If you teach your kid what it means to do science, then that's going to have some incompatibilities with certain religious beliefs.

Needless to say, plenty of religious scientists have no trouble threading that particular needle, but they're not "creation scientists," either.

What he said.

Short answer: "creation science" is inherently shoddy science. So is the notion that dinosaurs and humans coexisted.

Dan pretty much summed up my thoughts as well. The popular attack on evolution is that "it's only a theory", and that statement alone proves the speaker has no concept of the basic scientific principals. What bothers me about creationist based "science" is that it invites people to pick and choose what to believe in regarding science. Gravity is also "just a theory", but I don't hear the creationist side trying to disprove it as strongly as they try and disprove evolution.

This is another issue I have with creationism vs evolution. Evolution is not an origin theory in the same way creationism is. Evolution only describes an observable system for biological change on this planet. Creationism tries to explain how, and why everything came to be. To me, the why questions belong in a philosophy class, not a science class. Sadly philosophy classes are pretty rare prior to college, and more and more teachers seem to be shying away from teaching proper evolution due to the controversial issue that it has become, again. Starting to wonder when we will have a repeat of the Scopes Trial in this country.

Can the theory of evolution be falsified? Not if you add in enough time.



And yet, it doesn't. There are exactly 0 incompatibilities between scientific laws and Biblical Christianity (other than what are clearly described as supernatural events.) I embrace good science as much as the next man. Furthermore, if science didn't reinforce my beliefs, I would discard them immediately in favor of science.



That would, of course, be your opinion based on your starting premise that there is no creator.



Didn't you watch the Flintstones? Of course they did

No, that would be a statement about what is science and what isn't, based on the definition of science used by essentially all actual scientists. Dan's post above sets out pretty clearly what something has to be in order to be science: a rational (i.e. constructed from logic) system of gathering knowledge based on falsifiable hypothesis tested by experiment.

While there are some who would claim that nothing extrarational is true, that in itself isn't the argument against Dinosaurs By Design. The point we're making there is that nothing extrarational is science.

Peter

Sure it could. For example, any solid evidence that a species spontaneously occurred. Creationists try to use this exact method to disprove evolution. The most compelling example is the bombardier beetle's high-pressure steam defense mechanism.

Something I haven't figured out, is why this obviously brain-dead idea of "creationism" even exists.

I mean, the religious and Christian people I know see it as total rubbish, and not founded on any reasonable basis in their religions. These are very bright people, not given over to putting on blinders when something appears at first to contradict their knowledge and/or religion. They see (real) science as 100% compatible with God -- no conflict there.

So.. this creationism crap. It's not the sort of design that any intelligent and educated person would genuinely come up with on their own. So, like most things, somebody is pushing it out there, for some reason.

I wonder what that reason is?

Control and power are the two normal motivations for propaganda crap like this. But I'm having difficultly seeing the exact links here.

Is it being used simply as a way to "unite" a vocal population subset against a "common enemy", for political gain? And perhaps to distract those voters from far more disdainful (or "evil") activities hiding underneath?

It does seem born from the idea that one might impeach a party/president for fibbing about sex, but retain one who takes much of the planet to the brink of war. Given something like that was possible, why not invent a similar "moral" way to distract voters again.

Or something like that. As I said, I'm having trouble figuring this out.

Cheers

Because a strict literal interpretation of the Bible is in conflict with evolution. Wikipedia has a good article on creation science.

I think it's an old problem. Just look at the Catholic church's condemnation of Galileo for the heresy of... heliocentrism. The church taught that the sun revolved around the earth and, well, it just doesn't work that way.

Evolution is the current version of the same issue. Evolution is one of the most rigorously tested theories in all of science. Evolution, alongside theories of the Big Bang and so many other things, completely and utterly disproves Young Earth Creationism. However, there's still lots of room under the Old Earth Creationism banner for religion to thrive.

Just as the Catholic Church turned around on heliocentrism (although if Wikipedia is to believed, their first formal apology wasn't until the 1990's via Pope John Paul II), it's just a matter of time (perhaps centuries) before Young Earth Creationism is left behind as an anachronism, and religions adapts themselves to reality as we best know it.

I've never read an original copy of Genesis, and I really doubt that anyone alive has.

I have read many translations of translations of copies of translations of it, but I don't put on blinders and "believe" things word for word from those.

Besides, really only the word "day" is in conflict there. If one substitutes "stage" (or "phase") for "day", there's hardly any disagreement at all.

So why is this bizarre fantasy being heavily promoted all of a sudden (past decade or so)? Who is trying to gain what from it?

Cheers

The real reason I think that creation science (and the more marketable offshoot known as "intelligent design") are being promoted so heavily is actually quite simple: to spread the word of Christ into public schools. Proponents of these movements feel that Jesus gets short shrift in science class, so they find a way to make religion look science-y.

It's got nothing to do, IMHO, with any tension between the Bible and science itself -- it's all about getting more Jesus into the classroom. For Christians, that is its own reward -- they are commanded to spread the word of Christ, and by getting it into science curricula, they've succeeded in doing that.

That is always how I have thought. They don't really say how long a day is.



I think it's backlash because when someone is very religious they are often seen as a nut by a large percentage of the population now a days.

Tony's theory, that it's all about getting religion into school, has some interesting consequences that don't seem consistent with what we're seeing. Otherwise, religion would be cropping up in all kind of other classes where it arguably really does belong, like the basis for the modern legal system.

Nope, I see this creation science and its derivatives as an attempt to fight back against science. These folks really don't like it when the progress of science challenges their religious beliefs.

Side note: I'm amused when they talk about "teaching the controversy" in science classes as if there's any scientific controversy. The discussion of this particular controversy belongs more properly in classes that consider religion and society. And, for that matter, one place where "teaching the controversy" would be truly appropriate in school is economic theories. My (boring!) high school economics class, once it got into macro, taught a very watered down version of Keynsian macroeconomics. This would have been a fascinating place to present Keynes vs. Hayek. (I really hope modern economics teachers are leveraging these cool videos.)

What I don't get is that, given the choice between creationism/"intelligent design" and evolution, I'd be far more impressed with the "intelligence" of a creator who "designed" for evolution and natural selection in the first place. That seems like a smarter system.

I suppose, but even with the compelling examples like the bombardier beetle, someone comes up with a theory of how it could have evolved (took me moments to find a couple on google). No matter how improbable the theory is, throw in a few million years and suddenly it seems plausible, nay believable, if you want to believe enough.

Truly, the theory of evolution can not be falsified because no one was there to observe it. If you start with the premise that evolution is true, no one can convince you otherwise. That's why it's more or less useless to band about supposed proofs in these sort of arguments, because each person interprets the data differently based on their starting premise (worldview).

I appreciate the acknowledgement of a compelling example. At least you haven't discarded objectivity. Some otherwise very intelligent people simply react with vituperation at the mere suggestion that there are compelling evidences of design in nature. I suppose both sides are just as bad in that sense. It's obviously a touchy issue with huge ramifications.

No, there is a ton of factual evidence for evolution out there, and more being accumulated daily as viruses mutate and livestock / grains get bred for one attribute or another. That's evolution in action.

Dig around at fossils and one can piece together evidence of past evolution, and so on.

There is absolutely zero evidence out there of any truth whatsoever in "creationism". That makes it a "belief system", not a science.

Totally different things.

Back to the question of who and why.. Religion is Big Business in the US of A, with numerous multi-millionare (billionare?) TV "preachers" and the like, and huge big-budget bricks and mortar style churches.

All of this depends upon people continuing to wear the blinders and "believe" in something for which there is zero scientific proof.

So I suppose perhaps this "force kids to believe (religion) rather than question (science)" thing is a way to try and keep the money flowing in the longer term.

Shame really, cuz crap like that probably turns way more people off religion than being more open and honest would. Not a lot of people like being labelled nutcases by association, so .. Just Stay Away from it all.

-ml

Mark,

Should I attempt to reply to these broad accusations and conspiracy theories?

Would it matter if I did?

I'm willing to, but debating if it's worth the time. I'm certainly not the most knowledgeable person on all these matters, but could give you honest perspective from the "other side."

Sorry I'm going to have to break my rule on commenting on religious threads where Americans post, and say WHAT !!!!

It's quite scary to me that you truly believe that.

Incompatibility No.1 - "God created everything, full stop" vs "We are not 100% sure yet but here is what we think at the moment...and why...but we could be wrong which is why we still have people looking into it"

As for taking time out of the argument for evolution, what about taking the Bible out of the argument for Christianity, what have you got left then ???

I think France have the right idea, ban all religious teaching in schools and let the kids make their own minds up. The results could be an enlightened generation with a healthy out look on life not obsessed with I'm right and your wrong so lets have a massive war about it!

Cheers

Cris

I'd say it would be worth your time if you could do it without using reference to (the) God, The Bible or anything your haven't experienced first hand or weren't able to provide hard concrete evidence for.

Edit - Oh and without using any story that begins with "Well explain this..."

Cheers

Cris.

How are they going to make up their minds about it if they aren't going to be told about it.

Ok here is goes....

I completely agree with Bruno.

Wow, I never thought the day would come

Cheers

Cris

If they go to a school that mainly/only teaches Christianity how are they going make up their minds about all the other options out there ???

If people are taught to find their own solutions to questions they have, surly the world will be a better place ???

There is no such thing as a (insert religion here) child, just (insert religion here) parents/schooling.

Cheers

Cris.

I think it's worth pointing people to that article, as it was a good refresher for myself. It does fill in some of the information towards Mark's question of why, along with summarizing the reasons people oppose creationist based science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_Science

There are many scientific laws. I'm open to examples, but this isn't one.



Let's leave out the fact that this is an apples and oranges comparison.

1. You've got thousands of years of brilliant minds observing nature and coming to the conclusion that there is a Creator.

2. Even with current knowledge and technology you'll find many brilliant people making the same observations and coming to the same conclusion. It's simply two sets of people looking at the same set of data and coming to entirely different conclusions.

I've been intentionally trying to do this. As far as I can tell, I haven't referenced a single Bible verse and only referred to God as little as I can while still discussing a concept like creation (which requires a creator).

I can stay away from the "explain this" stuff also. I understand burden of proof.

No, I don't think you do.

There is no proof at all, apart from that written by the hand of man, that there is any sort of creator. That is my whole point.

You can't, ever, explain it to me without reference to something that has been written in the Bible by the hand of man and translated many many times through the ages. In referencing creation itself you are referencing the Bible. There is no evidence that creation is true, but plenty that it is false. It doesn't matter how you twist it, religious belief is not science, of any sort. It's a way to make the belief system more relevant to modern times, many people rely on the Church organisations for their way of life to survive, so it makes sense that belief system evolves with the society it's within (Old Testament, New Testament anyone???).

And just because people have done something for thousands of years does not make it fact.

I can totally understand how a total U-Turn of belief is almost impossible for most religious people, the social pressure they are under makes it that way. Words can be twisted and twisted but the hard truth of the matter is there is no proof, there never will be, because there is no truth to be found.

I'm not going to comment any more, as experience has shown me it will be fruitless. Unless that is we both concede that if each of us provides enough hard evidence for our way of thinking we would be willing to truly abandon our existing belief system in favour of the one with the most conclusive evidence. I'll let you go first...

Edit - I should point out that anything written in scripture is not hard evidence in this debate. If anything a story becomes less true over time, not more true.

Cheers

Cris

I so concede that if you can provide hard evidence that the earth was not created, I will abandon my beliefs and curse God.

Gotta babysit the kids... taking a break for a while.

Ummm, easy....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

Of course this is far from complete, the moment the process began is still being investigated. But all the hard evidence currently available all points to the fact that the world around us is part of an ongoing process of building blocks in our universe organising, and reorganising themselves. All build on a foundation of gaining better understanding through exploration of every avenue available.

Clearly, we don't yet know what came before the moment we currently call the big bang. But not knowing that doesn't make the belief that a creator must have done it any more valid than it was in fact my cat that did it.

Now if you can provide 10% of the evidence available for my way of thinking I'll be impressed.

Cheers

Cris

Excellent, Jason. You brightened my day.

But please don't interpret this as an indication that I am in your camp on this issue -- I am thoroughly on the opposite side.

I promised myself I would stay out of this discussion, but like Bitt [I presume] it is one of my hot buttons. But when you said the temptation to respond became overwhelming. Not just yet, I need to compose my thoughts, but stay tuned... Oh, and Jeff, are you going to jump in here, or are you going to abandon poor Jason to us heathen unbelievers to fend for himself?

tanstaafl.

Wow, what an old school thread I've missed . . . I have so much to say- sorry in advance for the wall of text.

First off, regarding quality of education and AP stuff, ect. I can tell you that the girl I was referring to earlier took AP tests this weekend and is likely going to be able to skip college courses. And I can also say this- her mother does not seem to be extraordinarily learned or brilliant. I assume that they made heavy use of co-ops and whatever, but I know she got a better education than I received.

Regarding Christian education, at some point it is impossible to provide an education without siding one way or another on fundamental issues. Studying history (and most other subjects) without the context of God's movement within it is vastly different than studying it with a belief in a Christian God. It is certainly not correct to subject non-believers (or believers of other faiths) to a state sponsored education which preaches Christianity, but it is equally incorrect (in my opinion) to deny a believer's viewpoint- there are some subjects in which your belief in God does impact what is taught. This is an impossible situation in a public school situation (because you have to pick a side- choosing to leave God out of it has ramifications), but private and home schools do offer options for believers.

Regarding Creationism, the argument for Creationism is a philosophical one (and in my opinion, pretty air tight), not scientific OR Biblical. The Bible gives almost no argument for the existence of God as a creator- it just assumes He did and tells how he did it. Evolution, if accepted as true, does not come close to denying a Creator. It states how life came to be as it is, but not how it got there in the first place. The philosophical argument is that every created thing must have a creator, which is a self evident statement. It logically follows that at some point, the stuff that makes up our existence must have been created by something that itself was not created. This is the argument for a creator, though not necessarily the creator who is personally involved in the creation and falls far short of establishing the creator is the God of the Bible.

In my opinion, the issue with evolution and the Biblical account (if you accept the Bible as the rule of faith) is not one of the literal account (the John will probably disagree with me here). There are plenty of examples where our understanding of scripture has changed due to the findings of science- Galileo being a prime example. It is not that the Bible was was invalid- the scriptures that people were interpreting to disprove Galileo were being interpreted by flawed human beings and used against their intended (by God) purposes. When science and the Bible seem in conflict, it is not the fallibility of either that is in question; it is the result of flawed people interpreting either science or scripture. One big issue I have on both "sides" is that rather than approaching this stuff with humility it's easier to lob grenades at one another and hide behind assurance of superiority, either of understanding of science or faith.

Back to evolution, though, the reason that it is difficult for me to swallow as the way humans came about is a theological one. That is, for humans to have been evolved (even by God through theistic evolution), this requires that death exist within creation BEFORE the fall of man and the entry of sin into the world. For the redemptive story to make sense as presented in scripture, death is the result of sin and therefore there could be no death before the fall of man. This rules out evolution as a pre-condition for humans, but it does not rule out evolution in a fallen world.

My own personal opinion (not backed up by any theologian or deep thinker, and so probably not true!), is that we can probably tell next to nothing about what a pre-fallen universe looked like because the instant sin entered the world, the game changed completely. What we observe today is the natural world as the result of human sin, not the perfect world God created (that had no sin or death), and therefore any conclusions we might draw as to what happened before the fall is invalid. I have 0 issue accepting evolution is alive and at work today, but I do not think it was in operation before the fall of man and sin's entry into the world.

When it comes down to it, since I believe that a study of what happened before the fall of man from a scientific perspective is worse than useless, I do not want my child to expend time trying to make sense of teachings that do not line up with what he accepts as the truth, assuming he ends up sharing my faith (which I acknowledge, he may not). On the other hand, if someone does not accept the fall is what put us into our current state where death exists in the world, it makes all the sense in the world to explore beginnings, as impossible a task as I think that is. It's an impasse, though, and one that demonstrates how a public education system cannot help but take sides. It's not a great solution, but private education certainly allows everyone to get the education that makes sense for them.

All of what I'm saying here might be tainted by this next statement, but I always have been honest to a fault. You should know that right now I am going through a MASSIVE struggle of faith. The above is what I believe as best as I can state it, but the circumstances of my life are pressing me very hard right now. None of my faith struggle is related to the stuff we're discussing right now, but it may affect how passionately I defend my position in the next few weeks/months.

Why can't they teach both? I went to a public school that taught evolution like every other one does and in the same school there was also a class that studied the bible.

Because now you've only covered two opinions of the countless that are available. What about other faiths? How are Buddhists going to feel studying the Bible? We could reduce our schools to complete uselessness if we honestly try to address every faith option. Unfortunately, removal of all religions for many subjects is just as problematic as fixating on one- or at least, that's my opinion.

MY answer to the original question is that I don't really value my child's opportunity to "make up his mind". Now, I don't want to FORCE his belief (because that isn't really belief), but if he comes to faith in Christ after being exposed to it all of his life, I will count that as a successful handing down of the truth by myself, much as I would the acceptance of any other truth in which I believe. The difference with faith is that there are a lot of people out there who disagree, but their disagreement does not make it any less true. And if it IS true, I want my child to believe it so it can positively impact his life.

I know what you are saying studying the bible covers more than just one religion though. The class wasn't a religion class either it was studying the bible as a piece of literature.

This is why I always say getting rid of the public schools and finding a way where everyone could send their kid to whatever private school they wanted would be better.

Just to add to my post a bit, I think it's close to self evident that at some point, if you keep going back, eventually you have to find something that created but itself was not created. This, in broad terms, is a creator, though as I said before, is not necessarily the God of the Bible, or even a God who personally interacts with His creation. To get to that step is a far greater task, and at the least requires establishing the Bible as generally reliable, if not infallible. That is a completely different discussion, though would be important to establish for any education system that teaches Biblical Creationism.

I have heard idea that the universe is self created, which I personally see as a little grasping intellectually, but even if we accept the notion as reasonable, it does not preclude a creator, merely it makes the universe itself "God"' which would certainly appeal to some belief systems.

On the face of it, a privatized education system where everyone recieves an education but has options as to the type of education makes a lot of sense to me. I do not know if that kind of thing could work in practice, though.

Unless I misunderstand your argument and premises, this is not true. Evolution does not require death. All it requires is that a genetically coded attribute be preferentially reproduced.

As an extreme example, assume an organism is born that has a genetic mutation that causes it to be unable to reproduce. It does not require this organism to die for it to fail to pass on that attribute.

In a less extreme example, assume "twin" anteaters are born. One has a significantly longer tongue than the other. The one with the shorter tongue isn't in danger of starving, but it does take him a lot longer to forage than his brother. While Shorty is still at the dinner table, Longo is out carousing with the lady anteaters, passing on his long tongue attribute. (Incidentally, the ladies really like his long tongue regardless of its ant-extracting abilities. This probably doesn't help Shorty out very much, either.) A few years go buy, and Longo is paying child support for a dozen kids, all from different mommas. Fortunately, Longo's ant-foraging abilities make him able to keep all those kids' tummies full. Meanwhile, Shorty has settled down with his one special lady and they have a kid together. A very nice little nuclear family. But the Longos outnumber them nearly a dozen to one. And in a generation, it will approach a gross to one, and keep expanding geometrically, even if none of them ever dies.

So: TL;DR summary: evolution functions on preferential passing on of genes, not the death of those with worse genes. Death is not required.

I think this is bang on the money, just this little sentence. I often think when I am photographing a wedding and listening to a ceremony of some sort, just who do we think we are anyway ??? If you step back from it all religions are a bit crazy and self important. They all presume that humans are something special, sure we are the dominant species on this planet, but maybe we just don't have the brain power to understand the world around us.

I suppose you could see the atheism as an evolutionary step forward of the human mind, willing to accept the unknown and explore all the possibilities. I'm not saying that as an atheist I am much smarter than a creationist, but maybe the fact that I am totally at ease with my place in the world (and my insignificance in the universe) and do not need the mental support a belief system offers is some kind of advancement to the next level of understanding ???



Again, this is just twisting things to make it fit. In my eyes having to move things around like they do just proves that they are just justifying their existence and soon the options will run out.

Cheers

Cris

I think you misunderstand my argument slightly, though I completely understand what you are saying. I don't have any issue at all with evolution, but I do have an issue with death without sin in the world. As a means of producing humans, the theory of evolution would certainly have worked through death before humans came about, and thus before sin entered the world. But my issue with evolution ends there. If, in Eden, evoltion was at work shaping animals and humans over time, I don't necessarily have an issue with that (though it sounds weird- but who really could know anything about the laws of nature in a world without death?).

Hang on, let me get this clear. Your belief is that if there were no sin in the world there would be no death ??? At all ???

Cheers

Cris

I actually agree with your questions, but not your conclusion. That is, the first thing form me is that, as mentioned, I do believe there had to have been at some point an uncaused cause. This I label as 'God' and go from there. The next step is figuring out whether this God is personally involved in His creation, and if so how he relates to us. The short answer is, I believe that the Bible is reliable enough to establish God IS the personally involved in His creation and the redemptive work of Christ is His most important interaction with us.

The thing is, I am not at all confident of my ability to understand and comprehend the world around me on my own. I require outside help if I am to truly get what this life is all about. While there are logical and intellectual reasons I trust in scripture, I do believe that it is only by the drawing of the Spirit that I have come to faith, and that faith is all about trusting in the Creator of all things and understanding His relationship to us.

I think this is an attitude many atheists take, but.I don't think it is that accurate. Looking back at the great philosophers in the last two thousand years there have been thinkers on both sides of the line, and it seems somewhat arbitrary who was in the faith and who was not. Often if you compare the intellectual prowse of the great thinkers they are equal in their levels of intelligence. The determining factor appears to be not the intelligence of man, but the drawing of the Spirit. I do think it is flawed to consider that existential humanism is the great evolution of thought of recent times. These issues have been wrestled with many times throughout the ages, and by people much smarter than you or I (in fact, the book of Ecclesiastes deals with the same concepts 19th century Existentialism would focus on centuries later).

As far as being at ease with your significance in the world, this is equally true of many believers. You see it as a step forward to not find you worth in an external being, but many believers would say exactly the opposite. Who is to say what is right?



Well first off, obviously the notion of the universe as god is not something I accept. But to your point, I do agree that the more shifting you have to do to make things fit, the more difficult it is to accept the system overall. However, I find that no matter what view of the world I take, I end up having to deal with pieces that don't seem to fit right. I admit this I true of a faith based on scripture, but it is also true when I consider a world where scripture is not true. I have experienced too many things that confirm the accuracy of scripture to feel denying it would be intellectually honest. I am not without my faith struggles, but at some point I have to move beyond what I can understand and trust in something, and the most honest thing for me to trust in based on my experience of this life is the teaching of scripture.

Yes. This is actually a pretty fundamental Christian belief.

So does this just apply to Humans ??? Or are single cell organisms also committing sin ???

Or is it that we humans are so important to God, that because we sin everything suffers ???

Cheers

Cris

Again, this is a pretty failed argument, used a lot my many belief systems. Just because it's old doesn't make it right. For years people thought the earth was flat you know. But they were wrong.

For years our society was poorly educated and needed structure, balance and moral guidance for the members of that group. Churches were formed to do that, as well as collect tax! But now we can (almost) see we don't need that anymore. So "God" becomes less and less relevant, just as Thor and many many other mythical Gods of years gone by.

As for trying to solve the problem of who created God, which is the big tumbling block of any creation theory, by saying he created himself! Are you being serious, or just attempting to wind me up ???

Cheers

Cris

The last statement is true. Christianity is without a doubt a human centric belief system. Whether death only entered for humans verses all of creation-I do not know if there is a differing of opinion on that point, though I believe most Christians hold that when man fell, all of creation fell as well.. Scripture teaches that death is the result of sin, but there may be Christians who only hold this to be true where humans are concerned. Only humans sin, however- I've never hear of anyone who would think a dog or cat could sin.

So the ageing process then death is the result of the sin of human beings ???

In your belief system then, if there no sin at what age would stay at forever ??? I am of course assuming that if sin went away then so would death. Or are we all paying the price for the first ever sin committed by the first ever man ??? And we can never correct that ???

What I am struggling to understand is that how someone with even the most simple reasoning could think this would all be true.

Cheers

Cris

My argument is NOT that everything every brilliant person has said is correct- in fact I directly stated that I think a lot of these people were wrong. However, we ought not to pretend that all great thought has sprung up unaided in the last 20 years. Are you going to argue that Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, Freidrich Neitzsche, Aurrelus Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas were not great thinkers and that we are not today massively influenced by what these men said and believed?

What I AM saying is that there is nothing new under the sun. We have not evolved into greater thought that does away with the need for God. The things you are saying are thousands of years old and philosophers have been wrestling with them for centuries. Brilliant men have argued on both sides, Christians and non-Christians; Atheists and believers.

You are standing on the shoulders of Neitzsche when you make this argument (whether you realize it or not) and I doubt he was the first to argue such. My point is that such thinking is not evolved or new- it is the re-engaging of ideas that believers and non-believers having been throwing about for as long as people have held beliefs about God.

I did not say God created Himself- I said He was uncreated, which is a huge difference. And I did not arrive at this by saying "God exists and is the Creator, therefore He himself is uncreated." Instead I (or rather Aristotle, who historically first made this argument) started with the law of causality, that every effect must have a cause. Mill argued, as I believe you are, that God must have a cause if everything has a cause, but this is not quite the law of causality. The law of causality does NOT state that everything must have a cause; rather it states "every effect must have a cause", a statement which is self-evidently true. However, it does NOT say that everything is caused. For the world we live in to make sense, there must exist something that is not an effect- something that was not caused. This thing is not self-causing- it was never caused at all. While everything that surrounds us is an effect from some cause, we cannot go back indefinitely and expect to find every cause to also be an effect. At some point, we must reach an cause that was not an effect, and that is truly the beginning. That is also what we label the Creator, whether that is the God of scripture or a strange eternally existent singularity from which all that exists sprung.

So my logic is "There must have, at some point, been an uncreated being to explain how all the created stuff got here, and that is God". This has been debated through the ages, but I've not read a single convincing argument against the law of causality and the existence of an uncaused cause.

Regarding your last statement, many, MANY very smart people have believed this to be true. The concept of the fall of man and the restoration through Christ is front and center in scripture. The book of Romans goes through this very logically, clearly, and methodically (though is certainly not the only scripture to deal with these ideas). No great thinker who has accepted Christiantiy has accepted it without accepting the concepts of sin that we are talking about.

Simply put, here is Christian belief about sin and death:
1. When man was originally created, it was in a sinless state in which there was no death. Humans would not get old and die, nor would they die for any reason. They were created to be in a perfect love relationship with God forever.
2. Man was given a choice to choose self over God, and this choice man did make. The result was that sin entered the world and creation fell. People got old, sick, and died. Violence entered into the world, not as part of God's original intent, but as a result of man's sin.
3. Every human since Adam has followed in his footsteps, commiting sin and earning death. We could perhaps assume that if someone were to live a sinless life they would not die, but no man has, or can, achive this, as we all partake in our spiritual heritage of sin (Jesus would have been the exception, in fact, except that he chose to give his life in exchange for ours). As you say, we cannot correct this because we are all, in the final analysis, selfish beings that choose ourselves over God.
4. We are lost in physical and spiritual death because of our sin, destined to remain separated from God forever. We have no hope of overcoming sin and defeating death because all have chosen emnity with God.
5. Jesus lived a sinless life (He is God and was able to achive what fallen man could not) and offered himself as atonement for sin.
6. As a result of sin, man must still experience physical death, but spiritual death is overcome through the redemptive work of Christ. Those who accept the atonment of Christ will live forever in a love relationship with God.

This is about as core to Christianity as it gets- the central theme of the Bible is man's fall through Adam and the restoration through Christ.

That is very interesting. Not something I can say I see any sense in, but interesting non the less.

The Bible and any scripture and be put to one side as been written by the hand of man, so does not for part of any evidence of this. Can you provide any evidence for this at all apart from what is written in the Bible ???

That is why I couldn't take this any more seriously than any other tale, fable or story I've ever been told. In the course of my current job I have the chance to ask questions of a few faiths, they are all the same, they basically say "It's written here, it has been for thousands of years, so it's true" It just isn't. Sorry.

Cheers

Cris

We had a huge thread on our internal news server at work on how schools changed because of the 'No Child Left Behind' program. If I have children, I don't think I would have any choice other than to send them to private schools and supplement that with home schooling in subjects we, as parents, would be able to.

Edit: I went to private schools from third grade on. That was mainly because we went through several zoning changes on base, so I was with a different group of kids each year from K-2 and my parents had enough. They wanted some semblence of stability, especially since we were projected to move every three years on top of it. After that, I went to a private college. I have no first hand knowledge of public schools other than K-2 and some classes at a local university (where I thought the professors were absolutely horrible compared to what I had for my undergraduate courses).

I would rather send my children to private schools than home school them. I don't see how I could objectively teach them in subjects I don't like or agree with. For instnace, I can't stand literature. As my mom once said, 'How in the hell do they know what the author meant? Sometimes a river really is just a damn river and a bridge really is just a damn bridge'.

That might be okay, just keep the religious philosophies away from the science curriculum, and openly name them as "Religious Studies: Buddhism", "Religious Studies: Waging Jihad", etc..

When I went to school, we studied the usual secular stuff for five days a week. On Sundays, I then spent another three hours at the church, learning religious topics. Eventually I was (surprise!) headmaster of the Sunday School.

There's nothing to prevent western societies from continuing with such an approach today.

Err, no, I don't believe so.
It may be a particular fundamental tenant of a specific brand of fanatacism, but it has little to do with Christianity. God, the Bible, perhaps, but not Christ.

Cheers

It depends on what question you are asking. If you are asking about arguing for a Creator (uncaused cause), then you will note that not once have I appealed to scripture, for in fact scripture assumes a Creator and gives little to no evidence for God's existence. My arguments for a creator mainly come from philosophy, and not necessarily the philosophy of Christians.

Regarding my understanding of the nature of sin and the fall, I am unashamedly appealing to scripture. While some truth of God's story of redemption can be acquired through natural law, I think the Bible is the end all be all of such understanding. In "Mere Christianity", for example, C.S. Lewis makes arguments appealing to human's innate sense of rightness (and our non-adherence to it) to give evidence for the idea that we fall short of our Creator, but this is only a portion of what the scripture argues regarding sin and redemption.

In fact, the Bible itself claims to be the sole authority on the question of God's plan for and relationship to humanity. I do not think this is unreasonable- to understand God's interaction with His creation, religious text seems to be the appropriate place to go. The question to be answered is how you get to the Bible as being the correct text by which to know God, if such a text in fact even exists. The short answer is you determine whether the Bible is generally reliable (I believe it is and this is evident if viewed objectively) and then you move from there to the question of whether or not it is, as it claims to be, the word of God and infallible for understanding God's interaction with humanity. The even shorter answer is the conviction of the Holy Spirit brings us to faith in Christ and the Bible, but I do not believe that it ends there- that is, faith in scripture is logical and reasonable, even if arrived at by the drawing of the spirit.

That being said, I think the challenge of Christianity is "Do you believe you have a sin problem, and if so, what are you doing to deal with it?" If the answer to this question bothers us, the Bible provides answers we may choose to consider. If not, the Bible probably isn't going to say much to us that is compelling.

To label belief in the teachings of the New Testament (which clearly teaches this- I can provide scripture references if they will help) as a "brand of fanaticism" seems disingenuous to me. Historically the word "Christian" implied a general trust in the teachings of the New Testament, even those who do not regard it as the infallible word of God.

You would have to throw out the entire book of Romans and much other New Testament text to achieve a Christian faith that does not teach death as the result of sin. Which is fine to believe, but it is wildly inconsistent with historical Christianity.

Now that I think about it, there's one thing that's been instituted in schools since just after I left them a little over a decade ago: SOLs (Standards Of Learning tests). We didn't have standardized testing when I went through (just the "test" tests to see how everything might shake out). The sad part for my area is that everyone passes the tests easily, but because failing them means you don't move on to the next grade (and no child can be left behind), the curriculum begins to focus on teaching to these tests.

That really saddens me, because it brings my old school down and doesn't do much to bring the schools at the bottom up.

If in a million years from now someone dug up Apple’s “computer dump” they would find that the earlier computers were less sophisticated and the later computers were of a higher complexity. The conclusion could then be reached that computers evolved, which would be correct. However it would also be correct that a creator(s) were the one’s responsible for the evolution.

I my mind both camps can be correct.

Jesus riding a dinosaur is just nuts. However maybe 165 million years ago God might have had a dino-saddle.

I don't know the details of "No Child Left Behind", but I can tell you one of my best friends left teaching because of it, and one major thing he talked about was teaching to tests rather than actual learning. He says that it pretty much killed any joy he had in his job.

In fact, the only teachers I have ever met that are happy in their jobs are those who teach at private schools, and they are lucky to have spouses who can support them because they make even less than public school teachers.

We’ve pretty well decided to try another school. If transportation or something else throws up a roadblock we’ll fall back on home schooling and starting her in online college classes.

She took her SAT again Saturday. Hoping for good numbers. She got close to 1800 last year. I guess that’s pretty good for a sophomore. Not really sure.

The way I understand it is that the teachers are forced to teach the tests instead of teaching the pupils how to 'learn' or the schools start to lose federal funding. If a school doesn't have a certain percentage of kids passing the tests, they get reduced funding. That part is absolutely brilliant, if a school needs more help, cut the funding so they are in effect receiving less help. That is the main reason I wouldn't be able to send my children to a public school.

I don't even know anymore! I was one of the last school years to have the long-standing "out of 1600" scores, and now I have no idea how they're graded!

How will I compare myself to everyone I meet now?

I know schools and scholarships need to have a yard stick to measure a student but it does seem like this score is a life shaping number. Talk about putting a kid under pressure.

FWIW, I was raised in a Christian family, hung around a lot with fairly Christian people, and was a Christian myself for several years -- and discussions on this BBS were the first time I ever heard of Christians who believed that death was caused by sin.

Edit: Though when I went and looked, Romans ch5 does say so. Though it's not of course even reported as being the words of Christ. Those Christians who aren't young-earthers (Catholics and most Anglicans, for instance) are pretty much obliged to concede that, even just on this planet, death existed long, long before any humans did, and thus before any sin.

Peter

It's a known bug. People are scared of death. Really scared of it, whether it's their own deaths or those of loved ones. When religion comes along with a comforting story about death, people go for that. And because religion, like love, promotes "throwing yourself heedlessly into it" as a virtue (Dawkins suggests that religion might have originated as a misfiring of the brain's falling-in-love mechanism), the very implausibility of religious precepts becomes a badge of honour for the person who believes in them. And it's certainly the case that if you tell yourself often enough that you believe in something, or that its truth is in some undefined sense "your only hope", then you do end up actually believing it.

Peter

I went to a Catholic high school and had 5 years of theology class. We were never taught anything even remotely close to this idea.

That's very surprising to me because the notion is all throughout the New Testament (not just Romans 5) and the concept is found in plenty of Christian writings, both contemporary and historical. There are several verses in Romans (not just Romans 5) and more in James and 1 Corinthians (notable in that James is a different author, so the idea cannot just be attributed to Paul). That being said, Romans 5 is probably the clearest writing on this concept in scripture.

We also learned about proper evolution and legitimate science in the appropriate classes. To attribute death to sin would have been absurd, regardless of what it says in the Bible.

We were always taught not to take the Bible literally as well. Though none of the classes was a deep Bible study at all.

Also, this was high school. I didn't attend a Catholic grade school, so it's possible the had already covered this theme there and everyone was just supposed to know it. I just find it strange that I'd never even heard an inkling of it throughout all of high school.

Everything I remember about sin in a religious context from school, involved the afterlife. And in Catholicism not all sins are equal either.

Ditto. I find it rather quaint. Either reproduction wasn't part of God's plan, and God added sexuality post-sinning (which we already know isn't true, because God created Male and Female, it was only post-sinning that they got red-faced about being nekkid), or God doesn't understand the concept of exponential population growth.

Cris, I think the problem is that this thread is like watching a car crash - it's morbidly fascinating...

Like I told a Reverend friend of mine, I think the best way to relate science and religion is to use Venn diagrams:

O O

There's simply no point in debate as an attempt to persuade or find agreement since there is no common foundation upon which to build consensus.

Most religion sits on dogma(*) with which, *given its tenets*, you can prove anything in an otherwise self consistent manner.

However that tenet is wholly inconsistent with a purely scientific view that, by definition, challenges (and hence rejects) the dogma and this prevents any meaningful comparison.

You can apply the same logical transformations within the religious framework but the results as a whole are meaningless outside it even though vast swathes will be identical. So a "religious view" of semiconductor theory probably doesn't have a problem with dogma until you follow it down to the "so how old is a proton then" - by which time you've left semiconductor theory far enough behind that you can ignore the discontinuity and still make decent systems to broadcast your evangelistic TV on.

Science accepts this framework is fuzzy and open to challenge.

However religion cannot - dogma cannot be wrong. Evolution is the elephant in the room. Religion is *designed* to ignore inconvenient little things (not many Christians don't believe in protons or claim that nuclear energy is miraculous... ) but some things are just so clearly fudged that once you say "well actually god was only relevant several billion years ago to light the blue touch paper and *everything* else is explained by science"... things kinda start to crumble.

The predictable human mob response to a social threat: deny it by whatever means necessary and, essentially, get violent. (Not that the US is particularly prone to this kind of response at this point in their cultural evolution. Hey, we Brits had the crusades a while back!)

Anyhow, that little dig aside .... why are religion and science in such conflict again?

My opinion? In ages past religion provided a much more comprehensive and consistent view of the world. Occams razor favoured the polished and refined stories presented by the array of religions in the world.

This conflict did arise a while back until Galileo taught the church a lesson that Microsoft claim as their own : embrace and extend.

However, over the last few decades humanity has, through science, expanded it's collective comprehension of the mechanics of the universe to an astounding degree. The balance has shifted and whilst religion has learnt to manipulate our emotional responses and focus on the ethereal it simply cannot explain anything in the tangible world better than science.

I think the writing is on the wall and the religious meme doesn't like that one little bit.

(*) Amusingly, in an ironic way, the dogma appears to have been (intelligently?) designed to evolve through the gift of imperfect interpretation by mortals, without which religion would be stuck with a somewhat malaprop set of rules.

Regardless of one’s religious beliefs I find it very insulting to the religious community that someone should suggest they believe in God because of a mental defect.

I guess it is very convenient to squelch someone’s opposing views by calling them mentally deficient.

Hitler tried to “squelch” the Jews that way.

I don't think that's what he was trying to say, really. Our brains are geared to find humanity where it doesn't exist, and I personally feel that religion is an element of that. I am not religious, but I don't have a problem telling you that I see a face when I look at a power outlet any more than telling you that this appears to be moving.

I wanted to jump back to an older message:

This sounds vaguely like the "voucher" proposals that have been bandied about. Public education, much like the various debates on national health insurance, is one of these things where everybody pays in (via property tax) and even those without kids in the system see a benefit (a better educated society). If/when you start allowing people to pull money out of the public pot and spent it privately, you're creating an odd scenario. You have public money going to less-regulated private schools. Arguably, public money should come with public constraints i.e., the very constraints that private schools often exist to work around. The biggest example constraint is that public schools don't recognize any one "true" religion to the expense of others. Private religious schools, pretty much by definition, would find such constraints unacceptable.

As a secondary issue, something like choose-your-own-school would be relatively effective in large cities, where there's enough demand for just about any possible kind of school. In smaller towns, though, there simply isn't enough student demand for schooling, which would mean that a bunch of competing private schools would never achieve the sort of critical mass that you need to have specialized teachers, making everybody poorer as a result.

(Aside: I was about to add "successful sports teams" as another side-effect of the lack of critical mass, except there are a number of sports-first private schools around the U.S. these days where other educational goals are unquestionably of secondary importance. Such parents will sometimes uproot themselves and move hundreds of miles to get their kid into one of these sports-focused schools. I'm confident that this isn't a good general-purpose solution to the school choice problem.)

Which is why the support for this has sorta died out. Most religious schools have administrators that recognize that with public money comes government control (which is not necessarily bad). But, if your institution primarily exists because you don't want the government removing your religious beliefs from education, you've got a problem.

Hence the public schools don't want a voucher system, since they'll lose funding. Most religious private schools don't want a voucher system, since they'll lose control. So pretty much all you have left is the non-religious or marginally religious schools that still want it, and that's a huge minority.

I don't think Dawkins was suggesting that religious people in particular are mentally deficient or defective compared to others: I read it more as saying that this defect is common to all human beings. Religion, after all, appears to have evolved independently multiple times: every remote and hitherto-uncontacted human society ever discovered has practised it. Which I guess means that if being defective is defined as being abnormal, it's atheism which is defective when compared to the broad span of human existence during which religion and its precursors held sway. Rationality itself is to some extent a battle against human nature.

Peter

There are many different explanations as to why humans have always had religion. Believers will point to this and say that part of being human is the desire to be in touch with our Creator, and the differing religious views are a product of a broken world that glimpses the truth, but only sees it dimly. On the other hand, were I not a believer, the view that I would tend to gravitate toward is Nietzsche's notion that humans require religion in order to have meaning and value, thus it was a tool that ensured our survival as long as we could accept it. The great tragedy in this view is that (as I see it) once man gets "rational" enough to question religion you are going to end up with nihilism, a pretty bleak end. This perspective makes more sense to me than than to view religion as a defect. It is either real or a tool- in either case it has provided value to us to get us to where we are as a race. The question is whether atheism is a step forward into rational thinking or a step away from the Creator who intends us to have a relationship with Him.

What I find most distressing is that most people end up somewhere in the middle, and that is the worst place to be. One of my favorite lines from my favorite band in a song about not believing in religion is "If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice"; while I disagree with the song in general over it's rejection of organized religion, I think that point is critical. Most people seem to not accept OR reject religion- they simply live in the middle where they go through the motions of faith, but they don't really believe in anything substantial. These are the people who do not realize that "God is dead", at least in they way they relate to him, but they keep attending church, saying prayers and signing songs, and doing all the other religious stuff they deny with the rest of their lives. I don't mean to be judgmental- it just seems a waste to sit in the middle where faith exists as a ritualistic adherence to something that really doesn't make a difference in your life.

I think it is genetic, to some part. That is why I think it's the next step of evolution. We can't continue to expand our knowledge as a race by standing still. Atheism is the next step towards a better understanding of our world and the other humans we share it with. Far from closing the door and ANY theory it opens it up to investigate all possibilities and seek the evidence to prove the theory.

I've always felt that what other people see as their god I see as my own internal dialogue. Your subconscious mind seeping into your conscious good be seen as divine guidance from a creator I suppose.

Cheers

Cris

The voucher program didn't exactly die.....

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Education/Default.aspx?id=1342966

I live in Indiana. Never thought of it as a "ground breaking state."

Vouchers are alive and well, because, regardless of whether the schools themselves want them, the politicians want them, and many religiously-motivated voters want them, because it means more money for religious education. I don't think they're really worrying about issues of governmental control -- I guess they figure they can always deal with those issues after they have a foot in the door.

The voucher concept is making its way to healthcare as well, though the red team is finding that it's not politically popular to take away guaranteed benefits and swap them for only a guaranteed contribution toward that category of benefits, with the recipient being responsible for paying the remainder. It will be interesting to follow these education voucher programs for a few years to see if they run into similar problems, especially as the "haves" flee the more troubled public schools.

Agreed. I quit the church scene, because I found it a waste of time. I find it much more worshipful and have always felt a deeper connection with any notion of a Creator, by going out into nature, and interacting with the stuff that was created, than by sitting around singing hymns and listening to a preacher (not that the latter couldn't be interesting). Over time, I came to the realization that I don't honestly care about the notion of an after life. If I am choosing my behaviour based on whether or not something will further my chances of getting into heaven, or bringing me closer to God, or whatever, then I'm not doing it because it's the right thing to do, but because I have the ulterior motive of going to heaven. It feels like I'm trying to buy my way in. I'd rather just live my life as ethically as possible, and do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. If there is no heaven, so be it, I didn't waste my life trying to please a non-existing god. If there is a heaven, then I either make the cut because the way I lived my life pleased the god, or not, in which case the god and I don't seem to see eye to eye, and I'm unconvinced I'd want to be there anyway.

I will just point out that the Bible does not teach us to choose our behavior based on whether it furthers our chances to get into heaven, though people have continually attached this concept to Christianity over and over again. Admittedly, some of the language Jesus used might lead to this conclusion at a cursory glance, but it doesn't take deep diving to realize his goal was to convict of sin rather than prescribe a recipe for entry into heaven.

In fact, your goal of living as ethically as possible because it's the right thing to do is completely consistent with the Christianity I believe in; the only difference is the idea of the necessity of salvation and how you determine what it means to live ethically. But insofar as gaining entry into heaven, at least according to the Bible, if you are making so-called ethical choices to gain heaven, you're doing it wrong.

The reason I go to church and participate in Christian activities is because I believe it pleases God and brings me closer to Him (which I realize you stated is not a reason for you to change your behavior); for me, closeness with God is a reward in and of itself. I can tell you that the best moments of my life are Tuesday evenings and Sunday mornings when I participate in corporate worship of my Creator and Savior. Heaven is more of the reward I receive now in this broken world, but made perfect.

Ok,

I definitely agree that the fear “nothingness” after death is a contributing factor to the desire to believe in a higher power as well as an afterlife. However I have always thought the other driving factor to “religion” was the need to herd. I’ve really never thought that a “love” feeling was obtained from religion (maybe for some). It seems like religion goes hand in hand with a communal activity (church). Most religious practices take place in a group setting. Most religions don’t have many individual worship activities and if they do it is usually something to boast about to the group. I’ve always then concluded that the friction, or at times violence, between religions erupt from the “our group vs. them” mentality. That’s how two seemly peaceful groups that teach love and kindness can end up killing each other.

I’ve never been one to have a strong herding desire so team sports, organized religion and to some extent politics have never interested me much.

In response to the original question, you should see if your state offers Post-Secondary Enrollment Option, often referred to as PSEO. This program lets honor students like your daughter take college classes on a college campus instead of high-school classes in their senior year. The state and school district pay for tuition & fees, though you may need to buy some books. A couple of my friends went to college full time in their senior year and basically had 25% of their degree paid for through this program. Certainly, this will be more expensive next year than home schooling or going to the other public school, but it's nothing compared to what you save by missing an entire year of college expenses. Long term, this is a fantastic value.

I really thought Paul Graham's essay " Why Nerds are Unpopular" perfectly described my experience in high school. In this essay, Graham makes the point that public schools are basically places to store children while (usually both) parents are off working. Anything they learn is purely secondary. That basically makes public schools prisons, which is exactly what my high school looked, felt and smelled like. The cruel, "bullying" schoolkid culture has gotten some publicity lately, but nobody seems to notice how similar the schoolkid culture is to gang-based prison culture, and for essentially the same reason: people forced against their will to be in a useless institution with tons of petty rules and bureaucracy with very little control over their own lives. Violent criminals may deserve to be in such a place, but I sure resented it when I was in high school.

Graham's advice to us nerds is to hang on and wait it out, because high school is a dystopian fantasyland that bears little resemblance to real life, which begins in college. Graham assures the kids that things will be instantly different in college, and again, this was my exact experience.

In my opinion, there is absolutely no positive value in the high school "social" experience. Get your kid out and into college where they can develop real relationships, where ideas and thinking is valued and where they can begin to see the bigger world that is around them. Aim higher than just a high school diploma or GED for your daughter and see if she can finish her last year of high school with a year head start in college.

I also find the rest of the discussion on this topic very interesting. It's amazing how quickly the debate goes to school policy. As an anti-collectivist person, I can't help but point out that the root of the problem is having the federal government up to its neck in school policy. Not only does the federal government have no authority to meddle in schooling, but when it does, groups will battle for ideological control over curriculum.

Why not let individuals at the community level create the schools in the image they please? Let the Christians make Christian schools, and let the reason-minded create secular schools that actually prepare kids for the technical world. Then let the parents choose where to send their kids. If a community wants a public school, then let them build one and create a community school board to oversee it. When the federal bureaucracy controls things, we get schools in the image of drivers' license bureaus, watered down, inefficient behemoths that accomplish nothing except political correctness. The result is America ranked 37th in math education, despite being among the highest per-capita spenders on education. A genuine free market in schools and school labor would solve this almost overnight.

Colleges don't escape federal meddling either. I hear many news stories about the "soaring costs of college", but not a single one manages to see the obvious cause. Just like government-created expansionist monetary policy of essentially zero interest rates caused a huge boom in housing prices, artificially-low interest student loans with easy qualification and ever-increasing limits are causing a boom in tuition prices. It's no more complicated than that. Money expansion leads to rising prices. Period.

The result is 22 and 23 year old college graduates saddled with over $100k in debt that can't be bankrupted away. That kind of debt, at that age, basically condemns a person to a hand-to-mouth life. Have you seen the studies that show how if a person in their twenties contributes to a retirement fund from 20 years old to 30 years old and then stops, and another person starts at 30 years old, then the 30 year old contributor will never catch the 20 year old in savings? That's compound interest, and the same applies to debt, only in reverse. Policies that encourage that level of indebtedness by young people are totally reprehensible.

I would also recommend the movie "Waiting for Superman", if you haven't seen it yet.

Jim

Thanks for your input on the PSEO. My wife, who is way farther down the road on this than I, has mentioned this option. It's good to hear positive feed back on these programs. As it stands now I believe my daughter is ready for college however my stance has been "Well if you can take it for free in high school why pay for it in college."

If she can attend college (which is a way better option) and have part of the tab picked up I am all for that.

At lease we have until next fall (guess that's not really to far away seeing how early schools start).

I had quite the opposite experience -- I had a great time in high school, and loved being there. I certainly wasn't one of the social elite, and spent my share of lunch periods playing D&D in the library. I don't think I ever went on a date, and was never invited to any parties. I was less than fashionable. However, I played on the basketball and volleyball teams, ran track and cross-country, did lighting and other technial stuff for theatre and fashion shows, and did all the math and programming competitions. My final semester was calculus and the top level art class. So despite being on the lower end of the "popular" range (certainly above the smelly kid who was rumoured to have come to school one day with the afterbirth of his dog's puppies still on his clothes), I interacted with a pretty broad range of people (including the smelly kid). I recognized the petty rules and bureaucracy, and just didn't put up with it. I basically did what I wanted, but the reason I got away with it when most other people didn't, was that I had the grades, so it was largely overlooked.

I recognize that we have different viewpoints on this, but in case it was a question asking about what our reasoning is, this is mine:

Primary education is an infrastructure issue. The more well educated our populace is, the better our society will be. As someone who believes that the role of government is to provide for society-wide infrastructure, educating children falls in the same vein as building roads. While there are certainly benefits to individuals provided by both of those programs, it is the betterment of the whole that is the purpose.

Oregon does this, with the charter and magnet school program. It's popular enough that entrance to the school is based off a lottery.

So I'm doing woefully at keeping up with this thread. Living so remotely, much more of my time is spent just keeping everything running and working just so that we can live. Doesn't leave much time for internet.

To add to that, someone stole one of our backup generators last night. Pushed it about half a mile down a sandy dirt road in a wheelbarrow at around 2am to a waiting truck. Spent the morning dealing with the police, who I had to pick up since they don't have a vehicle. I had to write my own statement because he was too lazy. Pretty much an exercise in futility since they won't do anything. I know exactly who did it because I recognize the vehicle tracks. He has three different tires with very distinctive and different tread patterns and one wobbly wheel. Unmistakeable. I know he's going to get off scott free. I also know he'll smile and greet me next time I see him as if nothing happened. The temptation to take out some vigilante justice is quite strong right now.

Anyhow, all that aside, Jeff's doing a good job expressing views that align with mine exactly, and with much more eloquence and substance. I'll get back to add in more as I have time.

We do, and that's ok. I enjoy our conversations. I hope you feel the same.



I don't think the role of government is to provide a continual "betterment" of the whole. I think the role of government is to protect individual sovereignty and liberty to the maximum possible extent. I assert that the authors of our constitution agreed with this, and intended to create a very strictly limited government for the United States.

One reason I believe this is that the notion of "betterment" is inherently subjective and changing, and thus best left to the individual to pursue according to their own values, with tolerance for others and never using coercion against their fellows.

Also, while I acknowledge there are roles for central authority to achieve this end (such as national defense, enforcing contract and property rights, etc.), I do not accept the notion that all infrastructure must be provided for by government. In fact, most of our best infrastructure has not been. The electrical grid, telephone infrastructure, cell phone infrastructure, New York subway system -- all were developed by private businesses. So while I agree that an educated population is a good thing, I reject the notion that it is SO good that coercion should be employed to see that it exists. If the people want education (which they do), then they will provide for it privately or at the local government level, as they did for decades in America before the federal government got involved.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have schools. I'm saying this is not an appropriate function of a central government and it doesn't justify coercion.

Federal government (Rural Electrification Administration) was part of the rollout of a true national electric grid, and later the agency changed into the Rural Utilities Service to assist with full deployments of telephone and other utility services.

My personal opinion is that there needs to be a good balance of both federal government and business driving key infrastructure. Businesses left on their own to create critical pieces of modern infrastructure tend to stop when the profits dip below a certain level, leaving rural America without power. A good balance prevents the corporations from running wild (creating Enron energy crisis situations), and also avoids the federal government from growing too large.

I think had the FCC stepped up a bit back in the late 90s and guided the private cellular companies towards a unified standard, we'd have a much more competitive mobile phone market today. Instead we are faced with a situation of having only 4 national providers, possibly down to 3 in the next year.

They have to have a lottery because the government limits the amount of charters it authorizes, and essentially maintains a monopoly on school operation. Why is a government-sanctioned charter necessary? Why can't I open a good school and let parents send their kids? The "Waiting for Superman" movie is about charter schools in New York and is excellent.

Notice how it's mostly private colleges where people are clamoring to gain admission? Could it be because those schools are better?

So I directly questioned the home schooled graduating senior about some of the stuff in this thread. First off, she is very happy having been home schooled and feels it was a great experience. It turns out her mother taught for years before home schooling her, so that was something I did not know. It was definitely a Conservative/Christian influenced education, including not only criticisms of evolution, but also global warming (which is a conservative issue, not a religious one). We talked some about micro versus macro evolution, but she admitted that the teacher who taught on this subject (I don't know what that means, but apparently at least some subjects were taught outside the home) was not very strong in her presentation (likely the teacher was actually an evolutionist teaching material she didn't quite agree with). She also said that Biblical creation was taught, but she did not remember if this was part of a science class or religious teaching. I also asked what the Christian objection to theistic evoltion was and got a deer in the headlights response, and then proceeded to get much the same response from the rest of our worship team (I was asking questions while rehearsing). This of course I found discouraging, but it seems to be a larger problem of the church, not just home school education.

Now, if this sounds like she didn't have a good education, let me assure you that is definitely not the case. Her standardized testing scores are very high, she is an excellent communicator, and she is placing out of college courses. However, it does sound as if some of the criticism of religious based teaching are somewhat valid, which would undoubtably be true in a private Christian school as well. It is not surprising (nor does it bother me) that she would be taught about evolution from an assumed standpoint that man was not evolved, but it does bother me that if the objection to evolution is based on faith, those reasons should be clearly taught. At least at that point you have a clear line of thinking that can be examined and questioned or strengthened. The global warming stuff was surprising to me, but that kind of underscores that this isn't purly religious influence.

What was encouraging, however, is that when I began to dive a little deeper and ask questions about this stuff she was not afraid to engage and even question the material. At the end of the day, I am still very impressed with the quality of her education and believe she is set up well to enter into the college world. She has strong convictions, but also is thoughtful and open to new and challenging ideas. I can honestly say that I wish I'd had been as prepared for college when I was her age.

Just one person's story, but I thought it might be interesting to thos ewho don't get much of a chance to see the effects of a Christian based home schooling experience. It doesn't sound perfect, but it does sound like her experience was overall very positive and educational.

For one thing, prestige begets prestige. Plenty of people apply to Harvard and MIT because they're big names that they've heard of, and, hey, maybe they win the lottery and get accepted. Most of them don't, a feature that pushes up the rejection rate, which makes them more selective, which makes them more prestigious, and the circle of life continues.

Furthermore, private colleges and universities are generally smaller in enrollment than public colleges and universities -- part of that is that the small private schools take a cue from their public sector counterparts in other industries and constrain the supply, so that they can be more selective, and therefore be more prestigious and... (see above)

Well said, Tony, and I'd like to add that there are plenty of people clamoring to get into public colleges/universities too! I would be shocked if the private vs public issue even entered the minds of 90% of graduating high school seniors. All they're looking at are the names, the reputations, the courses offered, how far from home, etc.

All the best schools reject thousands of students.

Jeff, I have a question about home schooling that you or someone else might answer, and I don't think it's come up yet: is there any accountability?

Who does the home school teacher report to, if anybody? How do they report? Does the state have any requirements of a home school education?

Are you suggesting that the major difference is exclusiveness and there isn't a material difference in education quality, or just that the exclusiveness becomes valued in itself? I agree (somewhat) with the latter, but it's kind of like any time you hear the "you're paying for the name" argument, there's usually a *reason* that brand is regarded more highly. I mean, a Toyota Corolla and a BMW M3 are both "cars", but to say that the BMW only costs more because of the BMW logo (which I have heard said) is preposterous.

I don't know, but I can certainly ask. My information is very limited- I actually haven't been a big fan of home schooling and it was only meeting a few very impressive home schoolers at our current church that has started to open up my mind about the benefits.

Even public school bureaucrats will tell you that parental involvement is critical in how a kid does in school. I think with home-schooled kids you are seeing some selection bias. Parents who home school are, by definition, *extremely* involved in their kids' education. With that kind of parental involvement, they'd probably be honor students in public school, also.

All of the homeschoolers I know made the decision with ideological reasons as the major factor. They reject the ideological orthodoxy that is in control of setting school curriculum and school policy. Again, when the federal government determines the rules for everyone, then special interests will vie for control. Though I personally disagree with my homeschooler friends in many ways (I am a non-theist), I think they tend to be pretty bright, serious, earnest people. Just misguided and with a very limited view of their own theology. :-)

But as much as I personally disagree, I think it's their business what they want to teach their kids and in the name of tolerance and non-coercion I support their right to do as they please. I also think it's wrong to force people to pay for an educational system they disagree with, as is required with a one-size-fits-all, centralized, federally mandated approach.

I think this raises another point. Whose responsibility is it to educate children? I contend it's the parent's responsibility. Even if the public school system is out there, it's still the parent's responsibility to make sure their kid is learning what they need to be successful in life.

If we're going to get anywhere with this tangent, I think we need to be very precise about the metrics we use to measure "education quality." Your suggestion was that there's a direct relation between students "clamoring to get in" to private schools, and those private schools being "better." Now, with the Toyota/BMW example, you seem to be shifting your argument to saying that anything people are willing to pay more for must be better. Those are very different arguments.

You're right that, at the higher end, private schools are probably turning away more applicants. But I don't think that demonstrates a relationship between that and quality of the education, especially if you factor in the cost of tuition (as most people would in any five or six figure spending decision.)

Of course it's the case that many private schools provide the best education that money can by, but it costs more money to buy that great education. I think being better in absolute terms (however you measure better) doesn't mean a lot without factoring in how much it costs to go there (obviously if your kid qualifies for scholarships or grants, that's a different story.)

I'll pick two schools I'm familiar with to use as examples. I work for a school in the "highly prestigious, private" category (Carnegie Mellon) and earned my own degrees from a school in the "somewhat prestigious, public" category (Penn State.) CMU tuition is $43k a year, while Penn State tuition is $15k for PA residents (3/4 of the stuent body) and $26k for non-PA residents -- we'll say, on average, $18k a year.*

So, some day, I'll have to decide where to send my kid(s) to college. Should I send them to the school I work at, or the one I graduated from?** Is CMU's extra prestige worth paying 150% more in tuition over Penn State? If you go for computer science, it might be -- CMU's comp. sci. program is superior to my alma mater's, so maybe a CMU CS degree puts you on the path to greatness in my field -- it certainly doesn't hurt.

On the other hand, say you enter as a CS grad and decide to switch to mechanical engineering. CMU's got a great ME program -- 11th in the country -- so you're still good. But Penn State's ME program is 16th. Are those five spots in the rankings (basically a rounding error) really worth $120,000 a year in additional tuition? Doesn't seem like it. If you just look at a generic CMU degree vs. a generic PSU degree, is there that much difference to an employer? I'm not sure -- I got a job here without a CMU degree, and many of my coworkers got jobs here with degrees from schools far down the prestige scale from CMU.

So, we can talk about whether there's something innately better about private vs. public universities, and we can talk about whether higher education is truly a "you get what you pay for" endeavor where the more expensive and more exclusive schools get you a better result (either in absolute terms or relative to the dollar spent on tuition) but I don't think we can debate all of those issues simultaneously -- there are too many variables in the equation to have a productive conversation.


* Tuition at a state school is partially offset by state funding, of course, but tuition at private schools is usually similarly offset by a much larger pool of scholarship money made available to applicants. I don't know that it's a complete wash, but I doubt it changes the equation that much.

** Actually, as an employee, I'd be able to send my kids to CMU for free, but unless they're way smarter than I am, they won't get in -- that damn private school selectivity!

100% agree. I specifically chose a non-religious school for my kids, so they have learned about Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity etc on an equal footing as part of the school's cultural awareness program.

At some point if they decide to become religious, fair enough, but it won't be through indoctrination before they know any better.

I think this is a large part of the reason why Jeff sees so many people in the middle, who go to church once a week, wear the cross around their neck, and dedicate their Oscar to God, but otherwise display no other Christian morals or ethics in their lives.

These people never had the opportunity to find their own truth, as it's immensely more difficult to do if you have to first strip away the indoctrination. Consequently, the religion is essentially meaningless to them.

Is it really? Which car is "better" depends to a great extent on what parameters you choose to establish value.

If you compare on the basis of fundamental purpose, i.e., the moving of people from one place to another, the Toyota is superior to the BMW in fuel economy, comfort (you pay a price for that BMW's superb handling and cornering ability!), reliability, and most especially total cost of ownership (overall cost per mile considering fuel, insurance, depreciation, maintenance, etc.) that is maybe 1/4 the cost of the BMW.

Only when you consider less tangible aspects of ownership does the BMW show superiority, things like pride and exclusivity of ownership, the knowledge (that only a tiny few owners will ever actually utilize)* that their BMW will corner at .9G whereas the best the lowly Toyota will manage is maybe .8, the satisfaction of amenities like leather seats and electric mirrors... all these things are nice to have but contribute little or nothing to the fundamental purpose of the car.

Of course nearly all of the supposed advantages of the Toyota disappear if you take cost out of the picture. In that case I guess I would concede the BMW is a "better" car.

tanstaafl.

*A Michelin tire engineer was quoted in Car & Driver magazine saying something to the effect of "Given the choice of cornering at more than .4G or hitting a tree, the majority of people will hit the tree." Most drivers obtain no benefit whatsoever from BMW-like handling prowess. Naturally everybody on this BBS is excluded from that generalization, the only reason we're not racing in Formula 1 is because we're just too busy to take on another hobby.