rant about something... non-work related is the only rule

The Homeschool Kid Rant

"Ok, what about dinosaurs? Did they exist?"

The leader of this discussion turns to face me from across the circle and says, "Hmm. Well. Holly, let's hear your answer. You were homeschooled."

I throw up my hands in a confessing gesture and lower my head. "Yes, yes I was."

And I proceed to lay out my belief on dinosaurs and where they fit in the Creation Story, adding in just what I believe about the timeline of the creation story, and what happened to make dinosaurs go extinct, making
sure to point out that my belief is based on facts from Creation-based scientific research.

A few days later, I'm just about ready to take a stack of books to the Philosophy section when I overhear my boss talking with a (really awesomely dressed) lady at the front counter. I walk over and say "You homeschool?
I was homeschooled."

And this starts a long conversation between me and the lady, about learning history from a Christian perspective and the upsides and downsides to Distance Education, and which curriculum is good, and how
the school system tries to make homeschooling people afraid by saying their kids won't graduate properly and will never get into a good college or university (not true).

I was thinking about these two different situations today. And thinking about how funny it is that a few weeks ago, I took this "homeschooled" quiz on Facebook, and the result was that I was the atypical homeschool kid
and the make of the quiz was suprised that I was online at all.

I am the strange one and have always been that - the grade schooler who had never been to gym class, the middle-schooler finished school by lunch, the high schooler who listened to Francis Schaeffer lectures, and now,
the twenty-year-old who is recognized as "the oldest from that big family who homeschools".

I am not the only one, it's true - one of my good friends is married to a homeschool kid.

But I am still strange, apparently. I have opinions that differ from those of my peers. I know what I believe and I can tell you why. I can argue my points and cite historical facts to back myself up.

My greatest ally in my school years were my parents, who taught me everything they knew, and helped me keep learning beyond that. I thank God every day that my mom found the curriculum for the Worldview
course I took in eleventh grade - as I said to the lady at the bookstore the other day, it helped to shape me into the person I am today.

So if you point me out as "the one who was homeschooled", please understand that I am not offended. I don't mind being recognized as different - I like it.

I'm the homeschool girl. I know my history, I know my music, and I know every fifth person who walks through the doors of the bookstore where I work.

I'm just a socially-sheltered homeschool kid

The supermarket.

I go to get a trolley and there is rubbish in it, whatever makes you think it is alright to leave your rubbish in the trolley when you abandon it.

Venturing inside and it gets little better, do you relaise that you have stopped for a chat and blocked an entire aisle with your various trolleys, there are people waiting either side of you, you must be able to see them.

Don't even get me started on 'Ten items or less.'

Then the paying, oh the horror, I am a grumpy person, I know that, I know I look grumpy, so you must know I look grumpy, why do you try to engage me in coversation. I do not want a conversation about my purchases, nor do you really want to know how I am feeling so why ask me. Can you not put a 'No Smalltalk' aisle, where can we queue up, when it gets to our turn to face each other, a polite 'Hello there,' the purchases ring through, you tell me the price, I pay, we both say, 'Thank You,' and we both say, 'Bye.'

Speaking of rants:

quote:

Originally posted by GreenRobot:
"Ok, what about dinosaurs? Did they exist?"

WHO STILL HAS DISCUSSIONS ABOUT WHETHER DINOSAURS EXIST OR NOT??

quote:

Originally posted by His Noodle Girl:
Speaking of rants:

quote:

Originally posted by GreenRobot:
"Ok, what about dinosaurs? Did they exist?"

WHO STILL HAS DISCUSSIONS ABOUT WHETHER DINOSAURS EXIST OR NOT??

i know! i said, "I don't think we can say that dinosaurs didn't exist, there is far too much proof, actual skeletons and things like that."

but...what did he think they were? Dragon bones? Artefacts put there by God to trick us and say "neener neener"? Urban legends?

quote:

Originally posted by NicholasRidiculous:
Can you not put a 'No Smalltalk' aisle, where can we queue up, when it gets to our turn to face each other, a polite 'Hello there,' the purchases ring through, you tell me the price, I pay, we both say, 'Thank You,' and we both say, 'Bye.'

The automated check out! Man it's a brilliant concept! And if you put your iPod on loud enough, you don't even have to hear the machine talk!

Of course, Tesco had to fuck it up somehow so you're not completely happy -if you put your oen bag on the 'fillup your bag' area it will shout out "Strange item in bagging area! Remove item before continuing!", if your shopping is large and you need two bags they just don't fit, and if you remove the first full bag it will shout "Item has been removed from bagging area! Restore item before continuing!" (wtf is the purpose of this btw? what do you care?), and sometimes it just jams itself up. And then the person in charge comes by with a sad and tired face, hating your guts, and you hating theirs, and you go through the little dance of you explaining you didn't do anything wrong, and them saying they know, but deep down you both blame each other for idiocy and resent them deeply.

But other than that it's great.

quote:

Don't even get me started on 'Ten items or less.'

Oha god, a grammar Nazi


I like living in Britain. No small talk here, and if there is it's a nice surprise!

I think he was referring to the fact that there's always someone who tries to walk through the 10 or less aisle with a cartload full of stuff.

aah

although I've never seen that... people are usually pretty good. And a lot of places have "hand baskets only" instead now, so it's simpler.

Is a buy-one-get-one-free one thing or two? I DON'T KNOW!

quote:

Originally posted by His Noodle Girl:
but...what did he think they were? Dragon bones? Artefacts put there by God to trick us and say "neener neener"? Urban legends?

Warning: This link may result in potential fatal *headdesking*

In other words, even people with some belief in special creation think they're lunatic.

Really, though, until about sixty, seventy years ago it was entirely plausible. Major paleontological hoaxes occured so frequently you could practically set your watch by them and since the practice of reconstructing the skeletons was in its infancy, even rigorous scientists tended to change their perspective on a given set of bones rather more often then those already inclined to be trusting could easily tolerate.

And, honestly, I've seen great, beautiful dioramas of full-sized dinosaurs/homininds with a single tooth as the apparent point of conjecture. I know, from a practical perspective, that the single tooth simply represents that particularly museum's access to the fossil record of the critter in question, but the exhibits often don't make that clear, which makes them look a little loony.

I'd take your timeline back a bit, the term Dinosaur was coined in 1842, and even Archaeopteryx was discovered by 1861.

So in the scientific world at least they have been reconstructed and analysed for over 150 years. I've obviously been fortunate to have never seen a diagram based on a single tooth in a museum. Though most museum "bones" on display are just casts of the originals.

But yeah I give no quarter to the idiots, how can you have the skills to use a website and not understand science?

Sorry, hal, wasn't clear there - I was only referring to the end of the era where the practice of paleontology could be seen as a fradulent and hoax-filled enterprise, which I date from the date when the Piltdown Man was conclusively determined to be a fraud. I'm sure you'd be much better equipped to give us the timeline for paleontology as a practice.

I used to be very keen on cryptozoology in my youth and as a consequence have a lot of books about major hoaxes performed for the public (my favourite being the assembling of some six or seven Zeuglodon skeletons to form a 118-foot "sea serpent") but I do know that legitimate science and research into how to reassemble skeletons and interpret fossil records vastly outweighs the illegitimate work, it's just that the illegitimate stuff sticks in the public mind.

I know dinosaurs exist. I've seen them on the TV.

(not helping, am I?)

re: dinosaurs.
the guy who brought it up is teaching Earth Science at the local high-school, and i think he was just asking for arguments sake. after discussing it, i think we all agreed that there definately were dinosaurs, as per all the scientific evidence supporting said creatures.
it did seem a rather odd question though. i'd never actually considered that there were people who didn't believe there were dinosaurs!
my thoughts (rant?) on dinosaurs are as follows - (please keep in mind that i'm coming from a Christian, Creationist perspective)

1. dinosaurs were created on the sixth day of creation, with all the other animals and creatures.
2. when the flood covered the earth, the earth's atmosphere was changed significantly. so when the dinosaurs exited the ark, they came into a world that was hostile. so they began to die out.
3. St George's dragon? and other "monster" tales from medieval times? i'm pretty sure they could have been the last remnants of dinosaurs.

so there you have GR's dinosaur rant

Methinks St. George was pulling ye olde legge to get in goode with the Royalty

and the wenches

quote:

Warning: This link may result in potential fatal *headdesking*

I like the idea of making a dinosaur out of chicken bones, though.

quote:

Originally posted by GreenRobot:
my thoughts (rant?) on dinosaurs are as follows - (please keep in mind that i'm coming from a Christian, Creationist perspective)

1. dinosaurs were created on the sixth day of creation, with all the other animals and creatures.
2. when the flood covered the earth, the earth's atmosphere was changed significantly. so when the dinosaurs exited the ark, they came into a world that was hostile. so they began to die out.
3. St George's dragon? and other "monster" tales from medieval times? i'm pretty sure they could have been the last remnants of dinosaurs.

so there you have GR's dinosaur rant

Do you seriously believe this to be literally true? This isn't a rhetorical or hostile question, honest - it's just I know some people who can simultaneously hold true different deep cultural beliefs (eg Western Shoshone creation myths and Catholic doctrine), and accept scientific explanations - including Darwin - on top of that.

quote:

Originally posted by Hive:

quote:

Originally posted by GreenRobot:
my thoughts (rant?) on dinosaurs are as follows - (please keep in mind that i'm coming from a Christian, Creationist perspective)

Do you seriously believe this to be literally true?

yes, i seriously literally believe this and i understand the question, no worries.

i believe that evolution exists in nature - different types of finches with different types of beaks in different areas but they all were originally one way, etc.
but i do not believe that man evolved from apes, i do not believe that Darwin's theory of evolution explains creation - where did life come from? it has expl on how life developed, but not where life came from.
the basis of my belief is a complete faith in that the Bible is the Word of God and so is truth. you can't pick and choose in the Bible - you have to take it as truth.

Just for the sake of adding clarity and to avoid GR and I from being lumped into one big ball o' Christianity, I believe in special creation, and believe in the truth of Scripture as well, but believe that it isn't necessary to believe that the earth was literally created in seven days in order to believe in the truth of Scripture.

For starts, the one chapter that states that the world was created in seven days is clearly a poem. I would not take a poem as literal. The seven days of creation are mentioned later on in the Bible, but so are the four corners of the earth, and statements indicating that the sun orbits the earth. I can't sensibly argue that the earth is a square, or cube, and I can't sensibly argue for anything other than a heliocentric solar system, so if I can't sensibly argue against evolution, I shouldn't.

Is is possible to believe in special creation and evolution at the same time without contradiction. In fact, I've found it to be the most sensible path, but that's a much longer story.

Dweller, that's what I was getting at, I think, with my question! (You made me laugh with the cuboid earth.)

GR - thank you for taking my question in the spirit in which I asked it. I'm rather thrown by the answer, I admit, because I don't think I've previously personally known anyone else who has your take on it - the few fundamentalist Christians I know offline aren't quite so comprehensive about Biblical inerrancy. (I personally find the bible enchanting as a narrative but impossible as a history and repellent and confusing as a book of instruction, if one must read every page literally, so I don't.)