You don't have to get that far into the Bible. In 1 Genesis God goes about creating everything, including humans, and then, " God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day." But nevermind the Bible (Ha!), I think seekinghim45 is awkwardly channeling Augustine as, "Yep, we as a human race are just pure evil. That is just the way we were born." sounds like it's related to Original Sin. Problem is that Augustine actively argued against the view of humans as pure evil: The idea of humans as pure evil should be a non-starter unless someone wants to advance the view that God creates evil. In fact, that's historically been a heresy. The Manichaeins got in trouble for that (though they went further and claimed the whole material world was evil. Plato on a bender sort of thing). Augustine himself was a Manichaein and rejected it which is probably why he speaks so strongly against the view of man as evil. And now I wonder if it also, and paradoxically, influenced his idea of Original Sin? Don't mistake any of this for, "I know the right way to read the Bible and be a Christian," crap. This is simply the geek in me.

It might be a psychotic break due to stress. It's not just those suffering from schizophenia who can hear voices or have delusions.

Meh. My husband and I have joked about it and I'm not put out that he might think my belief in God is akin to a belief in Santa, I'm not sure I disagree with that myself. But neither of us is committed to a worldview of absolute scientific realism or uncorrupted rationalism so it's just not an issue. I should note that we also live in a place where atheism isn't a big deal so it's not the charged issue out often seems to be here and that probably helps make our relationship much easier on that front. His preference for bad sciofi and endless poker tournaments on TV cause a lot more conflict then religion ever has. :)

Not messed up at all. My Anglican minister's spiritual mentor is a Buddhist.

Take a deep breath. This is new to him. He's chucked off a huge weight and is more then a little drunk from the freedom. Passions are high. So take another deep breath and realize that it's very likely this too shall pass. The kids have a ways to go before they're grown, right? That's a lot of time for the new paradigm to settle, for you guys to talk and get to know each other again. Counseling is essential I think. I echo everyone on that. But as someone who's been married to an atheist for almost 17 years, your husband is waaaay off base. There's nothing about atheism that disolves decent behaviour or promises made when married. His issues are his own, not anything intrinsic to atheism or you belief. Sounds a LOT like what we used to call a midlife crisis in fact.

If you want to work on your faith I'd suggest you try out a UU church as others suggested or maybe the Episcopal church. I'm Anglican (in communion with the Episcopal church in the US) and we're not a confessional church, you don't have to sign a set of doctrines to join, rather it's about joining the life of worship of the community. I don't think your struggle is necessarily about the Bible or belief specifically but rather a model of belief and what the Bible should be that isn't at all universal to all Christians. But if you want explore life without belief I'm sure there are a lot of folks here who could help with that. Whatever your choice you really need to have a long chat with your husband. Let him know you need some space to deal with this without judgement and ridicule from him and your daughter. I'd also invite him to share what it was like for him if you guys haven't done that. Part of the distance between you guys right now may not be do to the atheism itself but that he felt alone and unable to talk to you when he was going through his troubles with faith. Let him talk your ear off and give him a big hug and let him know you are absolutely fine with his choice where ever you end up.

There's a board member asking for our help in this thread. Is it really appropriate (or very Christian) to hijack the thread like this?

Ah! I'm on for worship at the next EFM meeting and I am SO using that!:D

I think the big advantage over trailers would be insulation. In colder climates it would save a lit off money on heat to have an isolated tiny house rather then a trailer.

That's my vote as well.

My dental hygienist moved out from the city and she said she was a little taken aback by the number of cavities kids had out here. She rarely saw them in the city. It took a little while to realize that of course, there was fluoride in the city water and none out here.

I haven't heard great things about it. I second the Cozy Grammar recommendation.

A good percentage of the houses on my rural road are trailers. I don't know anyone who's trash. A neighbor and I were talking about it because she moved here from a place where there were very few trailers. Her son piped up that he thought it was great because it meant younger people like himself could get a for into the property market, something they couldn't do where they'd lived previously. We looked at a trailer in a park when we first got married. It was by far the nicest place we looked at and if it had been in a more rural location I think we would have bought it.

My daughter went to Lingua Latina but it's not a program for everyone. She took a break to memorize declensions a la the Dowling method. For my son I think it will be GSWL and then Cambridge Latin which I gather is immersive like LL but easier for us.

We start in grade 6 and use GSWL. My goal is having kids who pursue Latin with a passion and that seems to support that goal.

I think they're genuine, nice people. I think this is their ministry. I think they're in it for the money and attention. I think they're make great neighbors. I think they are part of a Christian movement that I find horrible and damaging. I think the whole thing is complicated and while I think they're nice people, I'm not convinced they're a good model for anyone to be patterning tier faith our family life on.

I think that because it involves a minor no assumptions should be made about their level of saviness, especially when the person is troubled. I also don't think it's as anonymous as we like to think. Besides the text there were a lot of personal details and those were presented by a poster who has a lot of posts here that likely have personal information about her. It probably wouldn't take a lit for someone who knows her to identify her and then the child in question. I don't think it's ever safe to assume that another party understand the consequences in order to justify our own actions.

I'm with you. We have two levels of Magic Lens here but never used it. I'll have to be careful if I ever do. Geez.

This has become the standard though. Even family pics on blogs and Facebook look staged these days. Everyone's house looks like a hotel room, every family picture looks like it came out of a catalogue.

I'd probably give a lot of weight to Joanne's opinion in this context. Considering her profession she's probably had a lot of training and experience in the ethics of sharing information. I think you've taken steps to protect the identity of those involved but posting the text still makes a very private communication public. There's likely enough information here in the thread and about you generally on the forum for someone who knows you to identify you and then identify the girl. I know people have mentioned being"made" here by IRL friends or acquaintances before. I hope this helps.:)

:grouphug:

I'm going to go back to the OP. Reading lots of books. Biographies, history books, religion, art books, science books, classics, tons and tons of reading and discussion. Good. A good math program. Good. A good foreign language program. Good. A few in-depth research papers on a subject that interests the student. Not so good. College writing is more then that from what I gather (I didn't go) and certainly the important writing we do out IRL (a letter to a political representative for instance) requires different skills. Listening to some classical music. Not bad but just listening to Classical music is sort of a neutral thing. You're planning on reading a wide range of books, why not the same with music? No handwriting past learning cursive. As far as a program? I'm with you on that. No grammar workbooks (Andrew Pudewa commented that the best way to learn grammar is to study Latin--eek!). Grammar is fun and although Latin will give you some big pieces that are applicable to English it's not, in my books, a substitute for English grammar. But I don't think you need years of it. Some KISS for basics and to give kids a flexible understanding. Rex Barks for fun and practice. Maybe Jensen's to wrap things up down the road. No science experiments beyond some fun kitchen science type things. No science program. The books you mentioned that you'd read will deal with content but science is also about skills and process. If you aren't going to use a program then you should be doing a LOT of reading yourself so that you can understand what your kids need and how to introduce and teach that. No spelling program. I think this depends on the kid. My daughter got spelling through reading and a vocabulary program she loves. My son worked through the Apples and Pears workbooks and then read. We never worked at spelling for years though. No geography program beyond access to a good atlas to look up things from the reading. It's more then just where things are though. It's also about how places shape people, how landforms arise, etc. We don't do geography either but we do make sure it's discussed a bit beyond just looking places up. Hope that helps.

So in another thread I wrote this, Corraleno responded with this, Great approach but not what I was thinking of. Or maybe it was. When I wrote the bit above I was still sorting it out, and I still am, but I think I'm a little clearer on where having the two different approaches fighting it out in me has led me. First I had to have a clear and simple vision of what the goal of each was. Classical (and I think I owe thanks to 8fillstheheart for this): My children have the skills and knowledge to take part in the Great Conversation. Unschooling: My children are capable and eager life-long, self-disciplined learners. So the melding of the two means I have kids who can not only take part in that Great Conversation but are eager and excited to take part. What it looks like is harder. We were radical unschoolers, then I flopped around with eclectic and then I found my footing with Classical. But even when we were radical unschoolers I read aloud a lot from classics and filled up the house with resources and even when we are Classical my kids still have a say in what and how we study to some degree. My almost-16 year old seems to have gone full circle and although she has 6 or 7 hours of work a day it's by choice and my role is reduced (?) to helping her find programs and materials she'll enjoy and to give critiques, occasionally help schedule stuff, and have discussions. She restructured her Latin to suit her goals and I passed her the solutions guide to her math long ago. I am right back to the facilitator role I played when I was a radical unschooling mom. So she's a Classical unschooler despite the load of "school" work? Anyhow, that's sort of disjointed but it's out and I was wondering if there's further discussion to be had.

I agree. Unfollow their Facebook page and be there for them IRL. Volunteer to take the kids sometimes to give the parents a break and give the kids a bit of normal. Love them.

Oh shucks, here's the site you need: http://the-orb.net/medieval_terms.html#o Can you tell I had fun with this?:D