Exploring the World of Biology by John H. Tiner--opinions pls.

[Lara in Colo]

I am looking for a readable text for my 6th grader this year. Not too much science-y talk. Amazon reviews are either AMAZING or scathing. I am not a young earth believer and prefer God out of my science text, but can tolerate it if the rest is good.

For instance I like Apologia because it is more talkative, and less texty and the brief moments of Christian viewpoints are tolerable.

The review from Amazon talks mostly of evolution/creationist issues ... is this just one chapter I can skip, or will it keep coming up?

 

 

Perhaps there is a better text that is more conversation-like and not at all from a Christian view?

 

 

Lara

[SilverMoon]

.

Edited January 17 by SilverMoon

[RootAnn]

I have the Biology book. Oldest dd used it this year in conjunction with ES's Logic Stage Bio. (IMO, I think you'd need more than just the Tiner book to cover biology effectively for logic stage. It is light. It doesn't cover many things that other more modern texts cover.)

 

There is a chapter at the end called, "Frauds, Hoaxes, and Wishful Thinking." The controversial stuff seems to be mostly in that chapter. The Christian stuff is all throughout -- sometimes easy to skip, sometimes not. I'm including a quote of one of my posts from another thread where I detail some of the Christian content. I'm not sure on the evolution/creation stuff -- I really didn't look at it from that perspective. If I have the chance, I'll look & come back to edit my post to include info on that.

 

I can only speak of the Biology book as dd#1 is using it this year as a supplement. There are several God-references.

 

Examples:

Chapter 1:

In his side-bar (actually a whole page) on Pasteurization, Tiner states, "One way he [Pasteur] prepared his mind was with Bible study and prayer. Louis often spoke to his family about the importance of Christian faith. In letters to his sisters, he told how he read the New Testament to let its simple truths guide his life. He encouraged them to pray for one another."

 

I didn't see anything in Chapter 2, but Chapter 3 starts out, "Biologists who study plants and animals give them names. The Bible says that after forming the beasts of the field and fowls of the air, God brought them to the man (Adam) to see what he would name them." Then, he quotes Genesis 2:19. The chapter ends with "A good classification system traces out the order put in creation by God. The Bible describe the world in the beginning as "formless and empty" (Genesis 1:2). [...] But Got changed chaos into an orderly arrangement. ..."

 

Chapter 5 starts out with another bible reference: "The importance of plants is illustrated by the fact that the Bible describes plant a garden as one of the first things God did after he created Adam and Eve."

 

In the Plant Inventors chapter (#7), there is a page called, "Love, Faith, and the Apple Tree" about Johnny Appleseed. It contains a few references to the bible & quotes a song including "The Lord is good to me." Later in the chapter, Tiner talks about George Washington Carver. He states, "He [Carver] gave God the credit for his discoveries. Carver referred to God as "Mr. Creator." He [Carver] said, "Most of the things I do are just cooking. these are not my products. God put them here, and I found them."

----

That should give you an idea of the type of reference in the Biology book. There isn't a LOT, but there definitely is some deeply embedded. For some people, it would be too much. For others, the references could be skipped while reading aloud.

 

Good luck!