You need to understand that she wasn't angry when she said this. This really did come from her heart. She truly believes that my dd will spend eternity in hell if she doesn't believe in God. To her, this was the only solution. Part of me fears for the life of my daughter. This reminds me a little of the mom who drowned her children in the bathtub to assure they would go to heaven. We read about that and are sickened by it, but if you truly, TRULY believed your children would go to hell - is there anything you wouldn't do to prevent that? Honestly, it makes me hate religion.

I have explained to her that this friend loves her and is concerned about her and is only saying/believing these things because that's what she's been taught. My daughter's greatest fear is that she'll be rejected by her friends if she doesn't believe what they believe. I think the sleepover was the beginning of her fear coming true. After her friend said that, my dd replied, "It doesn't matter what we believe- we'll always be friends, right?" This girl replied, "I can't make any promises. I don't think God wants me to be friends with people who don't believe in him." She later told me, "I love her no matter what she believes - why can't she love me no matter what I believe?"

No outburst at all. My daughter has not believed in God for awhile but has been terrified her friends will find out and not want to be her friend anymore. This girl knows that my husband and a couple of her siblings don't believe and has assumed my daughter doesn't either. I've told my daughter that if the subject comes up to say that she's not allowed to talk about it (hoping this would save my daughter from having to state what she does/doesn't believe). This friend has decided my dd must not believe bc she doesn't want to talk about it.

I'm sure this little girl had no idea how much her words hurt - until she saw my daughter could no longer hold back her tears and wanted to go home. She's been taught that those who don't believe in God go to hell, and she would much rather my daughter go to heaven than live a long life and spend eternity in hell.

My daughter(10) came home early from a sleepover - heartbroken and sobbing after her best friend said those cruel words to her. Why would this sweet little girl say this? Because we are no longer "believers". I'm assuming someone in her church or home told her that 20 was the magic number of accountability (which by the way, I've never read anything in the Bible that suggests that all children go to heaven before a certain age). That is just one more thing we add to our beliefs that makes us feel better about worshipping a god who sends people to eternal torment for believing the wrong story (or no story at all). To think that I used to believe this too makes me sick to my stomach now. My daughter has a heart of gold that will never be the same after being told by the little girl she loves the most that she wants her to die in the next 10 years. Had to vent somewhere .... :( Edited to add that this remark was not made in anger. This girl loves my daughter but believes she's going to hell. The hope that she dies is from her heart. To her, an early death is the only solution to this problem.

I've been using a custom made bite guard for years, but I accidentally threw it away. Unfortunately, my insurance will no longer cover it, and it costs $700.00 to replace. My dentist will make one for me a little cheaper at $400.00, but that is still so expensive! I've been researching online, and there are places that will send you the kit to make your own impression for a custom fit bite guard. It costs only $100.00, so it is definitely the best option cost wise, but I'm nervous to spend the money on something that might not work very well. Any advice?

I saw CTC math on hs buyers co-op. After looking into it, it sounds like an incredible math program!! I've read so many glowing reviews that I'm very tempted to switch to it next year. If you've used the program, can you tell me what the cons are? Many thanks in advance!

I hear and read that comment a lot - "If you were a true Christian, you would never lose faith." Maybe you didn't realize how hurtful it is to hear comments like that. Or maybe you think that it's your job to spread the truth of God regardless of how offensive it is. You know, it used to really baffle me that anyone would turn their back on God. Why would you walk away from eternal life and a savior who died for you and loves you? I assumed they just decided that living for God was too demanding or required too great of a sacrifice. Looking back, I'm sure I wondered if they ever had a true relationship with Christ. I think those thoughts helped me cope with the reality that Christians stop believing sometimes. I want you to understand that almost every Christian I've ever spoken to or read about who has left the faith didn't want to leave. Most left kicking and screaming. Dan Barker (former evangelical preacher) described it this way: "Faith and reason began a war within me. And it kept escalating. I would cry out to God for answers, and none would come. Like the lonely heart who keeps waiting for the phone to ring, I kept trusting that God would some day come through. He never did. The only proposed answer was faith, and I gradually grew to dislike the smell of that word. I finally realized that faith is a cop- out, a defeat- an admission that the truths of religion are unknowable through evidence and reason. It is only indemonstrable assertions that require the suspension of reason, and weak ideas that require faith. Biblical contradictions became more and more discrepant, and apologist arguments became more and more absurd. When I finally discarded faith, things became more and more clear. But don't imagine that this was an easy process. It was like tearing my whole frame of reality to pieces, ripping to shreds the fabric of meaning and hope, betraying the values of existence. It hurt badly. It was like spitting on my mother, or like throwing one of my children out the window. It was sacrilege. All of my bases for thinking and values had to be restructured. Adding to that inner conflict was the outer conflict of reputation. Did I really want to discard the respect I had so carefully built over so many years with so many important people? But even so, I couldn't be distracted from the questions that had come to the forefront. ...... I did not lose my faith – I gave it up purposely. The motivation that drove me into the ministry – to know and speak the truth – is the same that drove me out. I lost faith in faith. I was forced to admit that the Bible is not a reliable source of truth: it is unscientific, irrational, contradictory, absurd, unhistorical, uninspiring and morally unsatisfying.. ...Beliefs that used to be so precious were melting away, one by one. It was like peeling back the layers of an onion, eliminating the nonessential doctrines to see what was at the core, and I just kept peeling and peeling until there was nothing left. ....I threw out all the bathwater and discovered there was no baby there."

This post was on his own FB page and not in response to someone else's post. I was curious to see what responses you had about what he posted. I think most of you thought I wanted to know if you think he should have posted it in the first place. I agree with those of you who said it's his page and he can post what he wants- you can unfriend him or simply choose not to read his posts if you find them offensive. As far as why I posted, I'd like to know your views on the following: -Is it wrong to challenge someone else's cherished beliefs? (My dh would say you respect people - not opinions.) -How is his argument weak (as some of you have posted). If Jesus never performed miracles (magic), would you still believe he was God's son? -The tough question (I thought) was "How could such an elaborate con evolve to fool so many people? You already know of a few. Look at Islam. Look at Hinduism. Look at Mormonism. Why is it so difficult to imagine that your particular faith evolved similarly?" Dan Barker put it like this - "Where did we get the idea that words on a page speak truth? Shouldn't truth be the result of investigation and analysis? If I think it is so easy for millions of people to be misled into a false religion because of a tendency to believe error, what makes me exempt?" This is what I personally am grappling with right now - For 40 years, Jesus was my best friend. I saw God as all powerful, merciful and loving (my "father"). I knew he was holy and could not tolerate sin, sacrificed his son for us and so on. Recently, my husband asked me to stand outside the "bubble" of Christianity and see it for what it really is. It's taken more courage than I ever thought I had to put everything I believed aside and evaluate the claims of my religion. What I've discovered is that the God of the Bible, if he does exist, is a monster. It's easy to miss that if you cherry pick your way through, ignoring the mass murders he commits. How could a "loving" God kill all the first born children of the Egyptians in order to convince the pharaoh to do what he wanted? How could he command the Israelites to kill every man, woman, child, nursing baby, animal - but divide up the virgins for yourselves? Really?!! I know these ancient people thought of women as property, but why would God view them that way? How could God see young girls as "spoils of war"? Why would God tell them they could beat their slaves for days as long as they didn't kill them? Why wouldn't he even mention that owning another person was wrong? Could it be because the people who wrote the Books didn't think it was wrong? How could a loving God send 2 bears out of the woods to maul 42 children for making fun of a bald man (2 kings 2: 23-24). Did you know he commanded girls to marry their rapists?! And the punishment for the rapist was a small fine and a new wife to care for. This is insane!! (I've heard some people say that he did this bc no one would marry her after that, and she would be forced to find a way to care for herself. So, God can provide for his people wandering in the desert for decades, but he can't manage to take care of a girl who's been raped?). Moving on to the New Testament - Jesus is the "New God", which is a good thing bc he seems a whole lot more loving. The problem is that he starts talking about hell. So, why keep people alive forever to be tortured? Why not just obliterate them into nonexistence? Can you even imagine a man who kidnaps people and keeps them alive just so he can torture them day after day for the rest of their lives? This is what the Bible tells us we deserve for eternity for being the sinful people we are. ***Of course we can avoid all that if we can pass his test where he puts us in a world full of liars and makes us guess which priest is telling the truth!** You know what really doesn't make sense? God created galaxies, but he can't write the Bible? The very fact that men wrote the Bible is HIGHLY suspicious!! He makes the eternal salvation of our souls dependent on whether or not we "believe in" Jesus, but he doesn't bother to have Jesus write any of it down or leave even a shred of evidence. He doesn't even have any eyewitnesses write it down. He waits 40 years and has some anonymous people (who don't even claim to be eyewitnesses) write it down -for every generation to come. It just doesn't. make. sense. **Sorry if I rambled! It's late!

This is a man who was 100% sold on Christianity and spent a large amount of his time witnessing to people. He, at the time, believed it was truth and wanted other people to know the truth as well. I think he feels just as strongly that it's a lie now, but he wants to give Christians an opportunity to convince him otherwise. So far, the only responses he receives from Christians are comments like, "You just have to have faith" and, "God's ways are higher than our ways" etc. I think he's definitely ruffled some feathers and lost some friends - not that they were truly friends to begin with. I don't think his post is offensive, but it does ask some tough questions I'm sure many people don't want to think about.

Dh was a devoted Christian for decades but no longer "believes". Over 90% of his "friends" on FB are Christians, and he's been challenging their beliefs for awhile with different posts. He posted this one today, and I'd love to hear your opinions: Suppose I did some magic tricks in class and convinced some of my students that I was really magic. Would you feel that I treated those kids rightly if I gave candy to the ones who wondered in awe and believed while I gave detention to those who didn't? What if I REALLY WAS magic? Would it be ok then? Could I rightly scold a kid for being skeptical of unrealistically amazing claims and punish them for it? The child can hardly be blamed for being familiar with the concept of illusion and manipulation. The idea of punishing a child for not believing in magic is simply barbaric, and you wouldn't stand for it. Would it matter if they were my own children? No. Their lack of trust in me would not deserve punishment. It would mean that I needed to be more convincing by providing more evidence. It doesn't mean that I should threaten them. If I seriously and openly threatened my own children with burning, disfiguring torture in my basement if they didn't believe me, would you support the system when they took my kids away, (or me away)? I hope so. This is how it is with God. Except you don't get to see the magic tricks for yourself. You have to trust some anonymous person who wrote a story about the magic tricks 40 years afterwards. How do you know that you can trust them with claims of mythological proportions? (I'm telling you here that it is not God who I don't trust, it's ordinary men who claim that they talked to somebody magic who might have been God.) Instead of evidence, I get the kind of persuasion one would expect to receive from a fraud who was incapable of producing evidence. I get warnings of very bad consequence if I don't believe and promises of very pleasant things if I do. The clincher is that nobody can affirm the reality of these punishments and rewards, because, conveniently, they are only applied after you die. This has all the markings of an elaborate con. How could such an elaborate con evolve to fool so many people? You already know of a few. Look at Islam. Look at Hinduism. Look at Mormonism. Why is it so difficult to imagine that your particular faith evolved similarly?

Just wanted to add that you should tell your teens to never, ever, ever put their drink down at a party. Unfortunately, there are way too many "Cosby's" in the world.

I think you'll find this article interesting. Israel and the University of Tel Aviv archeology dept have been trying to prove the justification of Zionism. They had every incentive to interpret the evidence favorably for the Torah. After decades of digging this is what they announced. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/575168.stm BBC News | MIDDLE EAST | Israel digs into the past Digging for Biblical evidence to justify Jewish claims... NEWS.BBC.CO.UK

Well said, Albeto!!!!!!!

The amount of stories doesn't impress me. How many "stories" do we have of people being abducted by aliens? How many stories about the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot? Do you even for a second believe them? Why not? The answer is obvious - we need evidence to believe such claims. Why do we not demand the same evidence from our religion? Why are Christians skeptical of the milk -drinking statues of the Hindu god Ganesha but not the Saint stories? We are skeptical of EVERY religion EXCEPT our own. Why can't God perform a miracle that can be documented??? Just once heal an amputee!! You know what's crazy? We don't even BOTHER praying to God to grow back a limb. We KNOW he won't answer that prayer! So instead, we pray to ease their suffering or help them cope with their situation. "When inventing a god, the most important thing is to claim it is invisible, inaudible, and imperceptible in every way. Otherwise, people will become skeptical when it appears to no one, is silent and does nothing." - Anonymous

All great questions and not one single good answer in this thread. My faith has been evaporating for a couple of years now. The silence has always bothered me, and the typical Christian response that he speaks to our hearts just doesn't cut it for me anymore. My husband, who was a Christian for 40 years but is now an anti-theist, said, "The problem with the relationship (with God) is that there is no interaction with Him in a shared reality. All of our experiences with Him are indistinguishable from efforts of our own imagination. "According to Sam Harris, "Absence of evidence is all one ever needs to banish false knowledge." (Complete quote below) "The most common impediment to clear thinking that a non-believer must confront is the idea that the burden of proof can be fairly placed on his shoulders: "How do you know there is no God? Can you prove it? You atheists are just as dogmatic as the fundamentalists you criticise." This is nonsense: even the devout tacitly reject thousands of gods, along with the cherished doctrines of every religion but their own. Every Christian can confidently judge the God of Zoroaster to be a creature of fiction, without first scouring the universe for evidence of his absence. Absence of evidence is all one ever needs to banish false knowledge. And bad evidence, proffered in a swoon of wishful thinking, is just as damning."

Have you tried Reader's Theater? You might find some at your library, or Amazon has lots http://www.amazon.com/Fabulously-Funny-Fairy-Tale-Plays/dp/0439153891/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1411525686&sr=8-2&keywords=Readers+theater+grade+4 Even though they are written for a class setting, you can just give your kids more than one part. Another book I've used for my son is http://www.amazon.com/Increasing-Fluency-Frequency-Phrases-Grade/dp/1425802893/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1411525930&sr=8-5&keywords=fluency+5th+grade. It comes with a cd of someone reading each passage. Have your kids practice reading just one passage all week - or as long as it takes to read it well, and then move on to the next one.

He tries to be discreet about it - so I'll see him put his hand up to his mouth and pull it away slightly and make a kissing sound (soft sound). It's possible no one else would even notice if he did it in public. He seems to do it more when he's upset or when he's upset me about something. Sometimes I wonder if he does it bc he has a bad thought about me and feels guilt. It's been going on for several months. It took the place of "Thank you God, I love you God" which was something he would whisper throughout the day while looking up at the sky. I don't have any experience with OCD, so I wonder if I'm reacting the way I should. I know he can't help it, so I don't get angry with him. I do tell him I want him to blow kisses when he wants to, but not when he feels he needs to. It's not helping, though. Are there any books you would recommend I read to help us cope with this?

He's 11, and he has OCD. He was diagnosed a year ago and put on the lowest dose of Zoloft. We also saw a therapist for awhile, but he was no help at all (we quit going after a few months). This is relatively new, but he won't stop blowing kisses to me, the dogs, etc. I've asked him what would happen if he didn't do it, and he said his throat would hurt. Should we try another therapist or is this to be expected with OCD? I feel horrible telling him to stop blowing kisses, but I know this will cause problems in "the real world". Any advice?

I think one thing that works well to improve attitude is a "punch card" http://www.rainbowresource.com/product/Reward+Punch+Card+-+License+Plate/014084/16bbafb93daff4c4ec403475?subject=1&category=8985. My kids get a punch every time they make an A on a quiz or test, finish a book, have a good attitude, put their school books up neatly at the end of the day, etc. Once their card fills up, they can exchange it for a treasure chest surprise (dollar store toys, candy, coupons for privileges like skip a chore, free dessert, etc.).

I'm using LOE Essentials with my kids this year, and the spelling lists included are way too easy. When I looked up the advanced lists, I was disappointed to find that very few of the words go along with the lesson. For example, the very first lesson focuses on the qu rule, but only 2 out of the 25 spelling words in the advanced spelling list have a qu in them! Am I missing something?? :confused1: Luckily, I have the ABC's and All Their Tricks book, so I looked up qu and found all kinds of examples to use. It even has qu in foreign words that makes a "k" sound like antique, etiquette, clique, mosque, etc. I plan on pulling their spelling and decoding words from the ABC's book because it includes 3 levels of difficulty with the sounds/spellings. Some examples of the qu words in the most difficult section are: loquacious, querulous, marquise, statuesque. I was hoping LOE would be all I needed this year, but it looks like I'll definitely have to supplement. If you are using the advanced lists, are you happy with them? Do you supplement with something else?

Nancy Larson science CLE math

This is a great, easy to use resource that will help her with syllable patterns: http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Syllable-Patterns-Comprehension-Adolescent/dp/1934338397/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407297347&sr=8-1&keywords=Syllable+patterns

I have mixed feelings about invented spelling. I understand your concern! If children waited to write until they knew how to spell all the words, they would start writing around middle school! On the other hand, you don't want her to constantly see misspelled words and not know they're wrong. One thing you could try is to take a sentence to two out of her journal and make it copywork for the week (even disguise it as handwriting practice). Reassure her that you didn't expect her to know how to spell these words when she wrote them in her journal - you picked these sentences because you loved how creative they were! My personal opinion is that the ideas are way more important than the mechanics - at any age!

This is a great resource for current events for kids, but I do like to skim the transcript ahead of time just to make sure it's appropriate. There have been a few stories that were just too "heavy" that I didn't want my younger kids to even know about yet. I have my older kids keep a news notebook where they take notes on the headlines. I think it's great practice for note taking! They each have a world map and US map where they put a little check mark beside the places where news events from that day occur. The website even gives you a heads up as to the countries/cities talked about that day if you want them to find them ahead of time. There are many teacher resources available each day for their program!