One more thing I want to discuss: the idea that kids need to deal with difficult people to learn how to deal with them in adulthood. Ever read Alfie Kohn’s getting hit on the head lesson essay? I tend to agree more with that. Bad stuff happens and it is unpleasant every time no matter how much practice we’ve had. However, there really is no avoiding everything unpleasant and unfortunately even homeschoolers have to deal with difficult adults and children.

Thanks for you ideas, though. It isn’t too often that I find a logical look at the pros and cons of both.

I was predominately concerned with Nintendo, Music and girls. I got strait F’s all through public school. Due to an attention deficit that was not diagnosed until I was long dropped out. Am now a Pc repair man.

Dave was predominately concerned with Nintendo, Jesus and girls. He got nearly strait A’s all through Christian private school. He is now a Sheet rocker with his dad.

Rick was Predominately concerned with Nintendo, being weird, and girls. nobody knew what his grades were, and nobody ever saw him doing the home school thing. All his family had speech problems. all 11 kids. strange mannerisms unique to them specifically. He is now In prison.

I suppose the moral to the story is it all comes down to the parents. how they raise there kids. What they “the parents” may think they are capable of and what they are just flat out not capable of should be the issue in home schooling. I think it is pretty common knowledge that with every new generation, kids learn more than there parents knew at a younger age as well as updated information. I don’t know how a parent expects to be able to teach there kid anything beyond what they themselves know and or can even remember. Are the parents learning it themselves in order to teach it to there kids? What if they are not understanding it correctly either?

In my opinion Dave got decent socializing in Private Christian school. At least when it comes to “like minded individuals” as undesirables like teen pregnancies were kicked out. but over all a well rounded guy.

Rick on the other hand is the biggest social psycho I have ever met. Not all home schools fault but the lack of the parents with 11 kids thinking they can teach individually to there own class. of 2 through 17 year olds lol.

i on the other hand can fit into nearly any social situation, on the positive sides and or the negative sides of the fence. the ghetto and the suburbs lol across all colours and cultures. within reason of course. I think a little dose of living in Europe for a few years helped as
well. So in my opinion The social peer to peer experiences you have in Public school are better for the eventual move into Westernised Diversified Society’s.

Of course if you live on a road in the back skirts of nowhere and plan on inheriting your family’s house and don’t plan on doing anything mainstream with your life. than why go to school in the first place? You can just sit home and read the bible and stare at your wilting apple tree in wonder. =p

I apologize for my atrocious spelling and grammar, as yes I did fail school period. but it wasn’t the schools fault as much as it was my inability to concentrate. Not to mention since when were all kids capable of a well rounded education anyway? Its possible that some kids are destined to be outcasts and undesirables and others to be successful good citizens.

As far as Christians being against science, perhaps you are ill-informed as to the history of science, but it was a Christian that gave us the scientific method for goodness sake. His name was Roger Bacon. Other Christians who were and are scientists include but are not limited to: Leo the Mathematician, Robert Grosseteste, Copernicus, Galileo, Francis Bacon, Johannes Kepler, Descartes, Pascal, Robert Boyle, Leibniz, Isaac Newton, Linnaeus, Joseph Priestley, Milner, Michael Faraday, John Bachman, James Clerk Maxwell, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, Lord Kelvin, Cantor, John Ambrose Fleming, Max Planck, Edward Arthur Milne, Boyd, and more recently: Charles Townes, Freeman Dyson, Owen Gingerich, RJ Berry, Ghillean Prance, Michal Heller, Donald Knuth, Francis Collins, and many of the astronauts who served and are currently serving at NASA. I do not think that Christians are anti-science. God is the author of science and we believe is the author of rationality. The very fact that the world is not random and is orderly has lead to the discovery of many scientific principles. We actually believe that truth can be known—which is what scientific inquiry stems from. You can say you believe in reason, but reason comes from order not from chaos and randomness. It is fine if you want to practice your religion of atheism and disagree with the presence of God, but it is against logic and reason to invoke ad hominem arguments against people who oppose your view. To say teaching my beliefs is “dangerous” and “not fully educated” is not a valid syllogism given the correct premises.

All of us will die one day. You believe that after that there is nothing. I believe that after that there is something. Is your supposition more scientific? Can yours be proven any more than mine? I am not calling you a “dangerous” person for teaching your children the way you do, but perhaps after thinking about it, I should. Philosophically speaking, you believe that life is accidental, basically has no overarching purpose. I believe that life is given to us and is precious with inherent meaning. Is your philosophy more valid? Is it more “dangerous”. If you teach your children that I, as a Christian, am “dangerous” because of what I am teaching my children, how does that affect how they see my children?

Perhaps you are the one who has a narrow-minded view of those who think differently from you.

I am well acquainted with the methods of reasoning. I am not confused. You will not convince me that reason leads necessarily to a god and I have no interest in convincing you that reason dictates there is no god.

That we ARE INDEED rational being capable of moral discernment should indicate to you that we are NOT merely matter in motion. Matter in motion has no intrinsic value, but we do have intrinsic value. Now, connect the dots. We have intrinsic value, BECAUSE we were created in God’s image.

I’m not sure what I said that makes you think that I “have nothing but contempt for people as mere people.” I love mere people. Mere people are image bearers of God. I do not hold people in contempt unless they are particularly contemptible (like rapists and murderers for example).

There are different kinds of reason: deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning has nothing to say about presuppositions, axioms, and posulates, and we all have our presuppositions, axioms, and postulates whether we realize them and acknowledge them or not. Reason is a vehicle by which we proceed from certain information or data to conclusions. Again, it sounds like you might be confusing reason with what sounds good to you at any given time. But you should keep in mind that there are many people who are probably a lot more intelligent than you who (a) believe in God and who (b) use reason very well. In my particular field, I know many people who have a firm grasp on Maxwell’s equations and who also believe in God. Pitting reason and faith against each other is not reasonable.

I’m afraid I can’t repeat myself in this debate much more if for no other reason than because I am working mostly from an iPad and this site is loading very slowly or not at all for me on this mobile device.

I haven’t watched your YouTube video yet, but throughout history and in our modern day, there have been a plethora of scientists who have believed in God.

It is not very scientific to assert that it is irrelevant to distinguish between what we KNOW to be true and what we HYPOTHESIZE to be true. That the same individual would assert that reason is important to him gives me concern that the said individual confuses reason with what sounds good to him at any given time.

Science and faith are not antithetical with each other. Physics, for example, is the study of God’s creation. Furthermore, science by itself (detached from theology) is utterly powerless to provide any insight whatsoever about morality and ethics. When we start talking about the rights of man, for example, science has nothing to say. Science can answer questions about matter and energy, force, momentum, motion, chemistry, biological functions, etc, etc. But science can’t answer the questions that involve justice, the rights of man, the ethics of human behavior, etc, etc. Without faith in God, you can’t know with any certainty that man has any value or that man has any fundamental rights. If there is no God, but only physics and chemistry, then there is no basis for us to say for example that bin Laden was morally wrong to incite violence and terror on people. If we do not bear the image of God, then we are only matter in motion. If that is the case, then all arguments about justice and injustice become completely arbitrary and absurd.

But we are not arbitrary and absurd to recognize that raping women is wrong. We have common sense due to the fact that we bear the image of God. We know (without any scientific theory to prove it) that women have intrinsic value; therefore, it is wrong to rape women.

So, faith is not antithetical with science, and scientific inquiry is only one way to obtain certain kinds of knowledge.