Welcome to the part of the BioLogos Forum just for homeschoolers! This forum is primarily meant to be a place of encouragement and support for homeschooling families who align themselves with BioLogos’ perspective of evolutionary creation (EC). You can learn about good science resources, hear how others navigate sticky issues within their Christian homeschool communities, come alongside brothers and sisters in Christ who are facing challenges, and more. If you’re a homeschooling parent who adheres to a position other than EC, you’re welcome to be part of the discussion but we ask that you refrain from advocating for another position and from bringing any criticism to those who accept EC. Please remember that the BioLogos standards for gracious dialogue apply here as well and we expect all participants to comply with all Forum rules.
To create a new discussion in the Homeschool Forum, click “create a new topic” at the top of the page and make sure “Homeschool Forum” is selected as the category.
As a read-only lurker on Biologos, I nevertheless felt compelled to congratulate and rejoice with you on the addition of this Homeschool Forum.
I must say that I feel considerable envy towards those of you who are homeschooling in the Internet age of today. I look back on our pre-Internet experiences as homeschooling parents in ancient times and wonder how we managed to get by with so little. You are very fortunate indeed. May you and your children be blessed and encouraged by the wonderful abundance which God has provided. I’m thankful that your children and descendants will have alternatives which spare them many of the unnecessary origins conflicts of the past.
Thanks very much for the encouragement!! I’m praying for all the interaction that will take place here - that the body of Christ, his church, might be built up.
Thank you, Chris, for bringing this forum into being. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if there were specific threads where criticisms of EC understandings, data, theories, etc. are discussed, as these discussions could be useful. I am thinking more as a scientist here that alternative theories have merit, in that, they can help us look critically at what we accept and provide other frameworks for data interpretation. I would want those discussions clearly labeled, as some days I just want support and practical information and not a headache-inducing challenge. In some forums I have been on, there were special password protected sub-forums with titles like “Philosophy Club” or “Religion & Politics” for those who really wanted to go at it … and others could happily stay away. Or, I suppose, the moderators could switch those threads from the Homeschool Forum over to the Open Forum.
I see your point. The other BioLogos Forum - called The Open Forum, is designed for those kinds of discussions. I encourage you to check into some of the activity there. I predict there will be lots to spark the interest of your scientific-self and more. That said, I still want you to contribute to our discussion here too since you’re an experienced homeschooling mom
I am glad to see this forum. I home educated my children from grade 6-12, and taught them all of the AP sciences. I also taught anatomy and physiology to a larger group of students. My oldest will matriculate to medical school here at Yale this fall, so I guess their science education was “okay.” I was a medical resident at University of Michigan back when Dr. Collins was still at UofM, and I have followed the BioLogos idea since his book came out. I never believed that any particular position on a theory of origins was relevant to my personal faith, even though I am a very conservative Christian. I have always been comfortable with intellectual uncertainty, but I soon discovered that many of my peers did not share that comfort. I was particularly concerned with what I saw as a tendency to avoid difficult questions and I soon found that I was engaging in a lot of self-censorship. I felt as though it was not okay for me to “put options on the table” to talk about or debate when it came to evolution in particular. I also felt that college bound kids would soon be forced to choose between faith and science for reasons that were completely untenable. I saw that it was not science, but epistemology that was the “enemy,” and hence I felt that my peers were fighting the wrong fight. Instead of fighting science, they needed to fight “Scientism,” an narrow-minded epistemological framework that excludes all sources of knowing that cannot be gleaned from the sensory input of some very limited carbon-based life forms. The acolytes of the modern philosophy of science seem bent on removing all traces of teleology from the texts. They seem unaware that this crusade is nothing more than a new fundamentalism. Anyway, I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, even though I don’t particularly care what anyone chooses to believe. I just don’t want kids to be taught in a way that will pretty much guarantee that they will leave the faith. Sorry for rambling, ha ha.
3 Likes
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.
