Explain Why You Do —

Make Others Wonder Why They Don’t

By Craig Smith

Men must know what they are about. Men must be able and willing – maybe even to the extent that they are seen as aggressive about it – to articulate why they do as they do. When it comes to home education, we men must be able to defend not only our family’s chosen lifestyle but also defend and protect our wives and children from the harassment they can sometimes receive from what we shall charitably call “well-intentioned” friends, neighbours and relatives.

We say “well-intentioned” only because they are acting according to what their conscious and unconscious beliefs tell them about your home education endeavours: that you are cutting your children off from proper socialisation, from a quality academic education, from the excellent resources and professional teaching experiences available at schools. That is to say, in their ignorance and lack of having thought the issues through, they try to get you to conform back to the present day cultural norm of sending your children off down the road at age five. They want you to join them in abdicating most of your parental responsibilities; in ensuring that your family is thoroughly fragmented; and most of all, in making sure that your children will be less under your influence and authority and more under that of the local peer group while on the playground and the professional social engineers while in the classrooms.

We must deal with a number of issues, recognise what is going on and come to a conclusion that we can then defend from the Scriptures.

Who is Responsible?

First, who is responsible for the education of our children? What say the Scriptures? Most of us are already very familiar with Deuteronomy 6:6-7: “And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children….” The very first two statements, verses 7 and 8, after the introduction to the entire book of Proverbs, say pay attention to God and to your parents: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge…Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and reject not your mother’s teaching.” Ephesians 6:4: “Fathers….bring [your children] up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” That is, while it may be Biblically permissible to delegate the educational task of our children to someone else, the secular state can have no responsibility in the education of our Christian children. To give our children into the care of these secular humanists is akin to committing lambs into the care of wolves. Let us no longer be timid about proclaiming this proposition: Bible-based education with a thoroughly Christian world view is the only alternative for the children of Christians.

So with this conviction firmly in your hearts and minds, men, your wives can confidently refer any neighbour or relative to you as soon as they start giving her a hard time about home education. It gets them off her back, the main objective of your role as protector. A real bonus here is that you can just about guarantee they won’t have the fortitude to bring it up at all with you, the hairier, more testosterone-charged member of the family!

What if it is fellow church members – even your pastors – who express concern about your home education and who actually do bring it up with you? Pour the acid on them! Don’t let them get away: make them justify (for one day they’ll have to do this before God) why it is ok to send children of Christian families into the government schools, those temples of secular humanism, to be trained to think like pagans.

Perhaps it is time we ourselves began to call for a co-ordinated commitment by the Christian leaders in this country, by church pastors and the larger Christian community, to support every ongoing effort and to initiate even more efforts to enable Christian parents to get their children out of the government school system and into home education or, if that really cannot be done, into decent Christian schools.

State Schools Are Anti-Christian

A second issue is how to demonstrate that state schools are teaching from anti-Christian philosophies. This is simple. In the first place Section 77 of the NZ Education Act demands that in primary schools “the teaching shall be entirely of a secular character”. According to every Minister of Education since David Lange in 1984, that means “with no religious instruction or observance”. To rule Christ out of the classroom is clearly anti-Christian.

Is history taught as “His story”, looking at the way God deals with mankind over time? Is history even taught in state schools? Has it not been replaced by the non-subject of “social studies” wherein one culture is as valid as another? Is maths taught as a discovery of the orderliness in God’s creation that we can use to have godly dominion and responsible stewardship over the earth? Or is it taught as an invention of the mind of man that can be used to manipulate people, the environment and the economy for the greater good of all?

Is evolution taught as fact or as theory in science? Check out English language skills: grammar was dispensed with some time ago; spelling is on its way out; the “whole-word” approach to reading has crippled many thousands of children, most of whom could easily pick up reading once instructed in phonics; and essay writing is virtually impossible to teach in 45-minute classes when it takes sustained concentration to formulate a thesis, break it down into a number of points, explain each one coherently and then tie them all together again in a convincing conclusion. Maybe that’s why professors in most of our universities complain that first year students can’t write essays. Illiteracy is a friend of the enemy, a hindrance to us people of the Book.

Secular Morality Is Immorality

A third issue is the moral one. The people teaching children in state schools come in all kinds of moral configurations including practising and unrepentant paedophiles, sodomites, lesbians, fornicators, de facto arrangements, adulterers, etc. Some of these are starting to come to the notice of the authorities, if media headlines of late are anything to go by. The children populating the classrooms also bring with them an apparently increasing amount of experience in fornication, lesbianism, incest, pornography (print, video, internet and live), homosexuality and abuse of all kinds. Sex and sexuality education programmes in the schools assume children are little more than feral animals with insatiable and uncontrollable urges that require instruction in condom fitting, contraception strategies, STDs and how to obtain abortions.

We cannot even assume that private or integrated schools calling themselves “Christian” are clear on the distinctives of a Christian world and life view. A Christian school this writer helped to get established invited the secular D.A.R.E. drug programme into their classrooms. They took over for three afternoons a week for five weeks! Their first unit was on self-perception, and they – remember this is a secular crowd in a Christian school – they first of all explored the question, “Who am I?” So how does a secularist answer such a question in a Christian school? That you are a creature made in the image of God? That you are fallen in Adam and possess a fatal sin nature? That your only salvation in this life and the next is in Jesus Christ? That you have a soul for which Christ died and for which the devil is going to make constant ploys to deceive into his camp? That God commands you to repent? That you have a sure home in heaven if you do, and that you will roast in hell forever if you don’t? That you are called by God to be an ambassador of Jesus Christ here on this earth, to bear the ministry and the message of reconciliation to a crooked and perverse generation all around you, a generation who really doesn’t want to hear? Or will they say you are a child of the universe, a citizen of mother earth, that you are very special to your family and have the ability of making others feel special too, that you are free to do as you like, as long as you don’t harm others or limit their freedom to do as they like?

Schools Are Malevolent

There is something about the whole concept of “school” which appears to be malevolent. It has been a favourite tactic of social engineering by statist control freaks for many centuries. Plato (427-347BC) wrote a book called Laws in which we read on page 804, “The children shall come (to the schools) not only if their parents please, but if they do not please; there shall be compulsory education, as the saying is, of all and sundry, as far as this is possible; and the pupils shall be regarded as belonging to the state rather than to their parents.”¹ Plato gives a further insight into statist education, both ancient and modern, when he writes, “If anyone at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the state should be the persons; and they, in their dealings either with their enemies or with their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the public good.”²

Prussian kings sought to instill social obedience into the citizens through indoctrination. Every individual had to become convinced, in the core of his being, that the King was just, his decisions always right and the need for obedience paramount. A series of schools edicts that for the first time made clear that education was a task of the state, finally culminated in 1763 when Frederick II made schooling compulsory for all children between five and thirteen. In 1794 all schools and universities were made institutions of the state.³

About 1832 a group of wealthy Unitarians in Boston adopted the Prussian system as their model for instituting publicly funded schools in America, because in that system the state had complete control, parents had no influence and children were entered at the earliest age. The group designed a three-part plan: (1) compulsory attendance, (2) a state teacher’s college degree prerequisite to certification as a teacher, and (3) state owned and operated schools. When the Massachusetts state legislature hesitated to enact such legislation, the Unitarians offered to help pay for it, 50/50. They did, and in 1837 the first state public school system in the United States was established. Soon other states followed suit.⁴

Karl Marx, 1818-1883, identified free, compulsory and secular state education as one of the tools through which the proponents of Communism would take over the world. A contemporary of Marx, Abraham Lincoln, saw something similar, but expressed it somewhat differently: “The philosophy of the classroom is the philosophy of the government in the next generation.”

Edward Roth, in his 1906 book Social Control, said, “plans are on the way to replace community, family, and church with propaganda, education, and mass media. People are only little plastic lumps of human dough.”

In the May 1949 issue of Progressive Educator magazine, Kenneth Benne declared: “… Teachers and school administrators should come to see themselves as social engineers. They must equip themselves as change agents.” He was merely spouting the same language as the “Father of Progressive Education” John Dewey.⁵

The Humanist magazine published a prize-winning essay in its Jan/Feb, 1983, issue entitled “A Religion for a New Age” by John J. Dunphy. He lays all the humanist cards on the table, including the fact that secular humanism is not just a philosophy but a religion.  Part of this essay reads as follows:

I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being.

These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the education level — preschool, day care or large state university.

The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new — the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of Humanism, resplendent in its promise of a world in which the never-realized Christian idea of “love thy neighbor” will finally be achieved.

New Zealand’s own Phillip Capper, past president of the PPTA, said, “What I would like to see in the political debate about education is a recognition that public education is an exercise in social engineering by definition.”⁶

All Education Has an Agenda

This is only scratching the surface of the evidence. Never let anyone get away with saying that education or schooling is neutral: all education has an agenda….it’s in the very nature of education itself (as you’ve just read in the statements quoted above): to change the way people think. Your own home education also has an agenda….and you need to be able to articulate it, or you may find yourself following an agenda set by someone else, an agenda you just picked up from what sounded like good ideas from here and from there. Sadly, many of us start home education with the ideas we imbibed during our own state secular schooling days. Such godless ideas do not work the righteousness of God: we need to dredge our minds, re-evaluating everything according to the Scriptures.

It must also be acknowledged that many Christian schools have been hijacked by teachers and administrators who are more influenced by the secular humanist, Marxist and socialist doctrines they picked up in their own public schooling than they are influenced by Biblical doctrine. And if a Christian school was ever turning out effective Christian disciples, it would immediately become a prime target for the enemies of the cross.

This is another reason why we men must be committed to home education and to running as Biblical a home environment as we can: to keep our children immersed in a tightly focused Christian family, the most foundational and least-able-to-be-hijacked institution around. The key to its Christian soundness, men, is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ working through a husband and father who, as head of his house, is as committed to the Scriptures and to becoming as knowledgeable and articulate as he can be.

These articles in Keystone are written with this purpose in mind.

Notes:

1. Robert R. Rusk, The Doctrines of the Great Educators, 1954, London: Macmillan & Co., p. 30.

2. Plato’s Republic, page 389, as quoted in Robert R. Rusk, The Doctrines of the Great Educators, 1954, London: Macmillan & Co., p. 15.

3. “Public Education versus Liberty: The Pedigree of an Idea” by Michiel Visser, http://www.acton.org/programs/students/essay/2001winners/index.html

4. “We Are Losing Our Children”, Remarks to the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee by T. C. Pinckney, Nashville, TN, September 18, 2001, http://sepschool.org/SIG/losing.html

5. Dennis Cuddy, 20 Years of Federal Change Agentry, pg.1.

6. Dominion Sunday Times, 14 October 1990.

From Keystone Magazine

March 2003 , Vol. IX No. 2
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order a subscription to Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

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Maths

by Craig Smith

Many of us, when starting out home educating for the first time, feel we haven’t got a clue how to tackle maths. We weren’t so good at it ourselves at school, and our youngest siblings started doing a type of maths at school we never saw before, and how will my children ever learn trigonometry and calculus from me?

OK, calm down. As in any other area, because you are the child’s parent, an adult, and have been around the block now a couple of times, you know from personal experience what kind of maths they need to learn. Unless it is clear they are going into engineering as a career, you can probably forget about the trigonometry, geometry and calculus. Just don’t worry about it for now. What maths do you use on a daily basis?

That is what your children will need. And if they master those things, — and I’m talking about really mastering these things well —  they will be streets ahead of their peers, not to mention set up for the rest of their lives.

Take things in a logical progression: there are the concepts and then there is the method of manipulating those concepts with pencil and paper. Until they are starting to read, the pencil and paper work is off the menu. But until then there are the concepts to learn!

Learn to count using anything and everything: pebbles in the drive, chairs around the table, cars parked in the street. Go over it and over it until they have it memorised backwards and forwards. Virtually everyone has already done this as it seems to come naturally. Both parent and child appear to love it. Use this same methodology for all concepts until age 10 or so. Parents and other adults (such as school teachers) get tired of the repetition years before the children do, so they look for shortcut methods, and the schools have demonstrated that these only short change the students’ grasp of the facts.

Do addition and subtraction with pebbles, beans, matches, whatever. When they can read numerals (“5” is a symbol, a numeral, which stands for a number of things, five to be exact. Get your terminology right for it will eliminate massive confusion later. “376” is a three-digit numeral which stands for quite a large number of things.) Anyway, when they are reading numerals, write all the maths facts (addition & subtraction first; multiplication later) on flash cards and drill them until they know them randomly without hesitation. We made it a game to see how many they could get right in 60 seconds — each child raced only the clock, not another child. (Once they are individually good at it, then they can challenge each other, but it is too discouraging while they’re still just learning them.) We drilled them against the clock maybe 3 or 4 times each day, not even 15 minutes each.  Before they had them mastered, they were reading, and so we moved to pencil and paper computation.

This is a lot trickier. Adding 12563 and 35412 is great fun as is subtracting 3124 from 5376 for there is no borrowing or carrying over. Ours all loved doing these over and over. When you get into carrying over as in 59 plus 78 or borrowing as in 120 minus 75, the concept of place values and the concept of “0” become absolutely critical and must be thoroughly mastered before they can progress. Take your time over this. An abacus can help. Schools often don’t tackle this until age 9 or 10, but children can learn this a lot earlier. Every child is different, remember, but if we can motivate them by doing it with them and making it pleasurable rather than a pain, they will progress rapidly.

From Keystone Magazine

January 2003, Vol. IX No. 1

P O Box 9064

Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order a subscription to Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

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post cheque or visa number to PO Box 9064, Palmerston North, New Zealand

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Defining a World View

Part 2 (Final)

by Craig Smith

Part I ended with rhetorical questions about the suitability of using Dr David Noebel’s set of ten defining disciplines of any world view as a basis for one’s home education curriculum. In his landmark book, Understanding the Times and also in later works such as The Battle for Truth and Mind Siege, Dr Noebel compares and contrasts the four major world views of the Western world (Biblical Christianity, Marxist/Leninism, Secular Humanism and Cosmic Humanism/New Ageism) in regards to a set of 10 areas of thought and study. It is Dr Noebel’s contention that any world view of consequence will address each of these areas: Theology, Philosophy, Biology, Psychology, Ethics, Sociology, Law, Politics, Economics and History.

How often do you reach for a book in any of these subject areas? For most of us, all of these subjects, with the possible exception of history, would rarely be given a second thought. Yet, when you do think about it, our children (not to mention ourselves!) need to be clued up in each of these areas, for we deal with them in essential ways virtually every day. Understanding these things will allow us and our children to be incredibly well-equipped to run our own families and households, to be leaders in the church and to be sought after in the community for our wisdom. Hey, do you see a pattern here? It’s what the Lord has promised ages ago: read Deuteronomy 28:1-14. Part of the promise – as well as the condition to its fulfillment – is in verse 13: “And the Lord will make you the head, and not the tail; and you shall tend upward only, and not downward; if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God…” Having a Biblical world view is knowing what the commandments are in every area of life, being able to think God’s thoughts after Him because our minds are molded and drenched in His word as opposed to being polluted by the stuff disgorged from TV, radio and the papers.

Let’s look at each of these 10 disciplines in turn.

Theology: A world view will have a position on the existence and nature of God. This is foundational to any world view. In the Christian world view Jesus is God. There are statements to this effect and situations described which indicate this all through the New Testament. Prophecies in the Old Testament indicated the same. Next time you read through the New Testament as a family, a fascinating, faith-building study is to simply note down all the passages which point to the divinity of Christ. Here are a couple of starters: John 1:14, John 10:30, Titus 3:4 & 6.

Humanists and Marxists posit Atheism for their theology. This is a logically self-defeating stance, which few even pick up on. They have to first posit the existence of God, theism, in order to then take their stand against it, a-theism. New Agers are pantheistic, believing that God is or is in everything.

The down-stream implications of any of these positions are quite dramatic: A Creator means a creation that reflects the Creator’s character in its workings, that is, in its biology, history, law, politics and all the rest and strongly implies a purpose to existence. No creator implies things just got here by themselves somehow and there probably is no purpose to anything, apart from whatever purpose you as an individual care to attach to things. No Creator, no God, means Man is the ultimate, if he so chooses, and can call all his own shots, a very popular philosophy among tyrants over nations and tyrants over their fellow kindergarten classmates. The Pantheist sees no distinction between the divine and the creation: they are one. So you are god, I am god, the whales and dolphins are gods, the earth is too.

Philosophy: A world view seeks to understand the nature of reality (ontology) and how one would determine what is real, what is knowledge, what is truth (epistemology). For Christians, all truth and knowledge are found in Jesus Christ, “The Logos of God.” John 1:1; John 14:6; Colossians 2:3. There is a material world and a spiritual world, both created good by God, but fallen into sin and corruption. So the world around us and everything in it, both material and spiritual, both natural and super-natural, is reflective of God’s glory, yet not as good as it was originally. There are things which are always true. Whatever we know to be true, we only know because God has revealed it to us.

Other views are naturalism, materialism and dialectical materialism which deny any spirituality or the super-natural. Because they’ve put on these blinders of denial, the first two are fairly fatalistic. Things are the way they are because natural or material forces, action and reaction, stimulus and response, pretty much determine everything. Dialectical Materialism is much more dynamic, and if you’re at the top, you can have a lot of fun manipulating others through the common acceptance of this process. When two ideas seem to be at loggerheads, just find the common ground and synthesize the two. This new idea will eventually come against an opposition, so, as before, look for the common ground and synthesize once again. There is no permanent truth in this process. Whatever works (for you) right now is true, is best. This is pragmatism with no parameters.

The Cosmic Humanist / New Ager is not exactly spiritual as Christians would understand it, but more like non-naturalism, that is, denying the reality or ultimacy of the material. The super-natural is all there is: “may force be with you” kind of thing.

Can you see the extremism of non-Christian world views? It is either all one or the other, totally materialistic or totally non-material, while the Christian is not so narrow minded as that and recognizes both! The others say all is run by the mind of man or determined by the blind forces of nature, while Christians see mankind given the opportunity to work with or against God, to be driven by or to harness the natural environment around him. If you want to do some reading on philosophy to find out a bit more, please be careful what you start with: a nonChristian work in this area can really get you totally confused and twisted up. And don’t start with “Christian Philosophy” where you get into arguments for the existence of God. For crying out loud, surely we’ll just take that as a given. It might be best to begin with some basic logic lessons: Christian Education Services, 55 Richards Ave, North Shore City, cesbooks@intouch.co.nz, ph. (09) 410-3933 and Geneva Books, 13 Tararua St., Upper Hutt, wibo.lisa@actrix.co.nz, ph. (04) 527-0565 have books in this area. And two home educated young men in the USA, Nathaniel & Han Bluedorn, have published material as well as a website dedicated to this pursuit; www.christianlogic.com .

Biology: The origin of life on earth is an essential ingredient of every world view. The stance one takes here is not only determined by the previous disciplines (Theology and Philosophy) but also determines so much of other disciplines down-stream. Jesus is “The Life,” John 1:4. If God did not make life, but it made itself, then life is not sacred, it is simply impersonal bits of matter cobbled together,  and there are no areas of research / experimentation one should rule as off limits. If you have already ruled God out of existence, evolution is your only biological option. There are lots of excellent resources in this area: Answers in Genesis, PO Box 39005, Howick, Auckland, ph. (09) 537-4818, www.answersingenesis.com or do a web search on Creation Science.

Psychology: A worldview will explain the nature of man. Jesus reveals the evil intentions of man’s heart as a result of the Fall and indwelling sin. This is not the way man was created – he was created good – and man can be redeemed from this fallen state: not by his own efforts, but by the unmerited grace of God in Jesus Christ. So the Christian understands that humans are not innocent at birth nor do they live at any time on earth in a state of “normalcy”, but are always carrying in their bodies the cancer of sin which manifests itself in a tendency to rebel against all authority and to hate others. Jeremiah 17:9; Jeremiah 10:23; John 3:19; Romans 3:23-25.

NonChristian psychologies see man in a state of innocence and normalcy. He may be able to order his own ways, individually or collectively, toward certain goals or he may be destined to no more than what his personal genetics and material environment allow. If collectively man could eliminate those things in his environment that cause him to do evil (poverty, illiteracy, ideas about competition to get ahead of others, superstitions about being sinners) then we would live in a paradise on earth. Christians know that only God can usher in a paradise, and that only after Judgement Day and the creation of new heavens and a new earth.

Study Romans chapters 1 through 8, chapters 1 and 7 especially. Get a hold of Martin Luther’s “Bondage of the Will” (it is online at: http://www.graciouscall.org/books/luther/bondage/toc.html) Or read up on the doctrine of sin or the doctrine of total depravity (a lengthy article and a book on these subjects are at: http://www.bible.org/docs/theology/hamart/sin.htm and http://www.pbministries.org/books/pink/Depravity/depravity.htm .

Ethics: The basis of ethics, from whence it derives its authority, whether it is unchanging or developing, are key issues in every world view. Jesus is “The true Light that gives light to every man” John 1:9. Love for God first and for others second is the command of God guiding Christian ethics. Matthew 22:37-40. It is totally “other” centred. And there are unchanging absolutes of right and wrong. Other views which have abandoned God of necessity embrace evolution, see selfishness as normal and therefore are stuck with an ethics of relativism, doing whatever you like as long as you don’t harm others or impinge upon their freedoms. For a practical exercise, just watch TV for a while and see how the concepts of right and wrong, good and bad, are handled or how the virtues of truthfulness, fidelity, chastity, honesty, faithfulness and any altruistic or “other” centred motivations are dealt with in entertainment programmes and in advertising. Read the newspapers and listen to our politicians in the same way. You’ll see we’ve come a long way….a long way from Christian truth.

Sociology: What is the foundational relationship in a society, the basic unit? Jesus endorses marriage of one man to one woman as the family, as the building block of society. Matthew 19:4-6. It is prior to and more basic than the state or the church, for the family can and has survived a collapse of the state or the church; but neither the state nor the church could survive the collapse of families. Yet the nuclear family is under attack. Scan the papers for a week and note the comments, the reports, the economic and legislative propositions that tend to put the traditional family in a bad light or at a disadvantage while promoting alternative arrangements as normal, legitimate or preferable.

Worldviews with man at the center instead of God will promote any ad hoc arrangement of individuals, ultimately including animals, as a “family”. In addition, such worldviews swing between the ultimacy of man as an individual and man as the collective. Sometimes the individual is more important than the group, and so a family composition can morph from day to day if desired or even remain unconsidered since it is a collective concept of lesser importance than the individuals within it. At other times the group is more important than the individual, and so individuals are expendable for the sake of and preservation of the group’s equilibrium: abortion, eugenics and euthanasia become major tools for preserving sociological health and well-being.

Only Christianity has the perfect balance between the one and the many, between the importance of the individual and the importance of the group and their interdependency and responsibility toward one another. This reflects the perfect balance of our Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Law: The ultimate source for law is a worldview issue of paramount importance. The questions are, “Who’s in charge here? And who says so?” Jesus acknowledges the central importance of law. “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:17-20.

False views of law started in the Garden when the serpent cast doubt on God’s authority to make the law by asking, “Did God say…?” and then by contradicting Him by saying, “You will not die.”. Eve fell for all this, and took us all with her, when she decided she could get into this law-making business for herself and make her own version of God’s law, suitably modified to suit her own personal tastes.

Some see the Old Testament as having three areas of law: the moral (the 10 Commandments), the civil (for controlling the society) and the ceremonial (that connected with the Temple worship). Some of these say that Christ’s sacrifice and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost have replaced the ceremonial law and that the civil law was only for OT Israel and that we only need follow the moral law. Some of these then include the 4^th Commandment (the Sabbath Day) and others leave it out. Others say we are still bound by both the moral and the civil laws. It is certainly true that all of Western Society has basically written the OT civil laws directly into their own civil law codes. (And they seem to be busy these days systematically going through the statute books to eliminate or pervert any Biblical statutes: abortion on demand, no-fault divorce, de factoes and homosexuals living “in the nature of marriage” getting property and inheritance rights being some examples.) Still others say that the Old Testament is old and thoroughly discarded today for Christ came to bring something entirely new. This is a form of dispensationalism that I personally reckon to be well off the track, very dangerous, indistinguishable from most types of secular humanism which also scrub out the past and make up their own rules as they go, loosely based on their interpretations of various parts of the New Testament only, and characteristic of cults I know well such as the Cooperites in the South Island. The bottom line is that we must all be clear about 1) the source of law and 2) the applicability of Biblical law today. Jesus said, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4), which obviously includes the entire Old Testament and the entire New Testament.

Politics: Civil government, as part of God’s creation order for man, is consistent with some kind of worldview. While the Lord Jesus Christ did not come as a political figure, He nevertheless is King of kings and Lord of lords, the One to Whom everyone will give account, the One before Whom every knee will bow and every tongue confess to be Lord (Philippians 2:10-11). John 19:10-11; Romans 13:1.

The civil government, or central government or Parliament, is only one government among many, and not the most important one. Sound strange? Then you have imbibed a nonChristian world view in the area of politics. The first government is the self government of the individual. Then there is the government of the family, with dad at the head carrying the lion’s share of the responsibility and catching all the flak and shielding mum and the children. Mum carries a fair measure of the family government and the children are all under Dad’s and Mum’s authority. There are the church governments and the government of your workplace. Each government has its own legitimate sphere of influence.

The problem with nonChristian politics is that most of them see no problem with the civil government extending (unilaterally without so much as an invitation or by the manipulation of another nonChristian concept of the democratic ballot box) its influence, nay, its controlling power, over the spheres of influence of other governments, in particular the government of the family and that of the individual. State-funded compulsory schooling is a major body-blow to the government of the family, weakening it considerably. Home education of any description is a very strong political statement, for here you have families taking the government back away from the state.

Economics: The stewardship of both the natural resources and created wealth is done in every society according to some sort of world view. Jesus recognizes the legitimacy of taxes and of private property as well as the importance of individual and familial economic responsibility. Matthew 22:21; Acts 5:4; II Thessalonians 3:10; I Timothy 5:8. Collectivist economies tend to deny the concept of private property and personal responsibility, which means the individual is not motivated to take risks in development for he does not keep the fruits of his labour. Historically such cultures remain poor and underdeveloped. Home educators can have some great experiments with economics: Toss the weekly budget money on the table and democratically divide it up among all family members. Let each one feed him or herself for that week. Later let each take turns being responsible for feeding the entire family in subsequent weeks. If the family wants to upgrade their stereo system, for example, have a family pow wow over the usual food, power, clothing, entertainment and petrol bills and work out ways to save money in each. Over several months let the money saved be put into a special fund. Notice how money can be saved and an expensive item purchased with simple lifestyle changes over time. Or simply budget so many dollars less each month, redirecting the balance straight to the stereo fund. Notice in this case how one’s lifestyle very quickly adjusts to the realities of the funds available. Ensure that the children get plenty of regular chores without pay and extra chores for pay with the opportunity to spend their earned cash on whatever they like. But also build into their earning and spending patterns the habit of tithing to the Lord His 10% plus laying aside another 10% for their own future, specifically money they will not touch until needed for buying a house.

History: History is His Story as He works out His purposes among men. History culminates in Christ. It is not a collection of interesting yet unconnected and purposeless occurrences over time. John 20:30-31; I Corinthians 15:3-4. Neither is history cyclical or aimless; it is linear, with both a beginning and an end. Christians know a lot about both the beginning and the end and can therefore order their ways accordingly.

A fascinating study on your own life history is to draw a personal timeline, giving yourself 80 years (be optimistic!) Note the length of time you were a child, a teen, independent and single, married. Note the times when the children came along and approximate when they may leave, showing a solid block of your parenting years. Note also your retirement years. Somehow show that after death your final state as alive in Christ and with Him extends forever in that one direction. See how it puts some things into perspective: that most of life is lived as married: that’s number one. Then as married with children or maybe married and retired is longer on your timeline. Either way, note how insignificantly long are those “youth” or “teen” years that our culture seems to portray as all-important. Note also that those years are or should be used to prepare for the next section: that of being married. Make timelines for your children too, and help them see where they are in relation to what is most likely up ahead. The perspective this kind of project can give is great for forward planning. If you are 28 and plan to be a fully credentialed auto electrician and mechanic plus own your own business with two staff and earning enough to allow you to put in only three days a week by the time you’re 45, you can map out the kind of progress you’ll need to make. How available will you be for your children’s education during the build-up years? How essential is it to “be there” at 45 if it means you really aren’t going to be available for your children during those all important formative years. How many more children are you likely to have between now and then? Will it mean your wife is going to need your assistance more than you would like to hit your goals by age 45?

Other world views ultimately see both history and the future as irrelevant to self, so the tendency is to live for self today: the old “eat, drink and be merry” syndrome.

Only a systematic Christian faith (as opposed to the usual smorgasbord variety) has a world view which is comprehensive, cohesive, consistent and complete. With such a world view Christian home educators can more than cope with the world; we can conquer it.

From Keystone Magazine

November 2002 , Vol. VIII No. 6
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order a subscription to Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

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We Must Rescue Our Children from State Schools

by Craig S. Smith

Over the years, being the convinced home educator that I am, I tend to hear – and remember – some pretty hard-line comments in regards to public schools. I have even been known to author some myself! When driving through town, if we see a bunch of children in a school playground, I invariably say to whoever is in the car, “Oh, look, they’ve let the prisoners out into the exercise yards!” Dr Raymond Moore is fond of saying, “The sooner you institutionalise your children, the sooner they will institutionalise you!” R.J. Rushdoony once said that a Christian father who sends his children into the secular state school system shows himself to be a fool. Another American, David Sant, is even more scathing: “The time has come for Christians to recognise that sending their children to these humanist institutions is sinful and idolatrous. Churches should discipline members who insist on continuing in this sin. Public schooling is spiritual adultery and is every bit as serious as breaking the marriage vow.” Harsh words indeed.

The New Zealand Council for Educational Research, an organisation apparently established by an act of Parliament to provide scholarly and rigorous academic research into educational issues – a task which supposedly had to be funded by statute, the implication being it couldn’t pay its own way – recently released an interim report on how the implementation of this new NCEA qualification has been progressing among the year-11 guinea pi…, I mean, students in 5^th Form. The NZCER themselves, with no help or suggestion from me, titled the report “From Cabbages to Kings”. So now we have distinguished research organisations themselves in effect calling high school students cabbage heads.  So now when I’m driving around town and see what I used to call a prison, I am just as inclined to call it a cabbage patch instead.

This is naughty, I know. Some would say it is worse than that. But please bear with me. I have been publishing Keystone journal since 1995: this is the 42^nd issue so far. TEACH Bulletin has been going since 1997: I’ve cranked out 65 issues to date. There are authoritative research articles reprinted and quoted in virtually every one of these issues, and there are often several in the TEACH Bulletins. These articles are either telling of the superior quality of home teaching / mentoring / tutoring or they are telling of the inefficiencies and dangers of state schools. I have a very fat file of newspaper clippings describing the bad effects of public schooling. I subscribe to the world’s only home schooling research journal. I read TheSchoolDaily.com, New Zealand’s schooling email newsletter, every day without fail. This source alone is enough to put you off state schooling forever as it keeps you abreast of the politics-power-money issues which seem to dominate schools, the vandalism, the horrendous acts of violence and bullying, etc. My phone number is in the Yellow Pages of many (not all) phone books under Home Schooling Advice Network. Through this I am privy to more tales of mistreatment of parents and their children by the many bullies at state schools (inmates, wardens, trustees) than you would want to hear. Any home education support group leader who has been going for a few years will also have a store house of such tales, enough to make your skin crawl. I get a weekly update from the (American) Home School Legal Defense Association. Now that one is just plain scary. And yet home schooling has been legal in all 50 of the United States since 1995. Conservative writers, not necessarily Christian, appear in the TownHall.com to criticise the state school system’s many failings. The most diverse coalition of them all, Alliance for the Separation of School and State, has a newsletter which just makes the system look like a haunt of incompetent idiots and control freaks. Groups that used to work for the good of the state system, are now calling on parents to pull their children, no, to rescue them out of these institutions. ExodusMandate.org is one, and the latest to go public with this message was none other than Dr James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Even kindly Dr Raymond Moore has referred to schools at times as places of institutionalised child abuse.

That is to say, after examining the issue through the resources listed above plus many more, I personally am totally convinced that no matter how you slice it, theologically, pragmatically, philosophically, economically, educationally, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, familially, psychologically or just looking at physical health and safety: compulsory, tax-payer funded, secular school systems are inherently bad news.

I object to compulsory secular schooling because:

1. It starts by legally forbidding the Christian faith into the classroom as if it is either irrelevant or untenable. No proof is offered, no dialogue is entertained, just raw political fiat. This is on the same level as the wisdom in sayings like, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian”.

2. The Bible repeatedly tells us that the fear of the Lord is the BEGINNING of wisdom. As a Christian my only logical perception of a school system that BEGINS by tossing this concept overboard is that it just crossed into Fantasy Land and burned the bridge behind it.

3. The system is solely concerned with this temporal world and rules the spiritual world and spiritual considerations out of bounds. This is a hopelessly narrow-minded view of the world we live in. It simply declares huge areas of wisdom and knowledge as irrelevant by a unilateral declaration, again with no attempt to establish the truth of the assertion. This is not an intellectually honest academic approach.

4.     The system is solely concerned with this temporal world of the student as it is now: history is largely irrelevant, an environmentalist view of the future is all that is allowed, and considerations of life after death are again ruled out of bounds. This kind of thinking is short-sighted in the extreme.

5.     While most people think the teachers are in loco parentis, “in the place of parents”, the teachers come to see themselves as “in place of the parents”. They inflict moral and intellectual damage on children by their own “teaching” (sex and sexuality education, values clarification, situation ethics, politically-correct revisionist history plus the entire non-subject of “social studies”) and allow children to inflict emotional and physical damage on each other (verbal and physical bullying, especially when out of sight or ear-shot), sometimes joining in themselves. This generalisation is of course unfair to the many excellent and even gifted teachers in the system who see themselves as missionaries or mavericks who refuse to toe the party line and who are valiantly fighting to preserve islands of true intellectual acumen and sanctuaries of real and useful learning. But their ranks are thinning.

6. The system separates children from their parents and from their siblings, doing great damage to family coherence, cohesiveness and unity. What is worse is that it removes children from their parents’ authority and responsibility and puts them under authorities which are often not just foreign in their standards, values and expectations, but actually hostile to the standards, values and expectations of the children’s parents and families. Parents can become so used to this state of affairs that they unconsciously abdicate much of their child-rearing, leaving it for the schools to do.

7. Children are treated as a group, not as individuals. They are processed by the system, more than actively taught by the system. Those whose learning styles and / or capabilities do not match the stream into which they have been placed are doomed to fail within the system and could well be tagged as failures for many years to come.

8. Schools are totally artificial environments, sheltered from the real world of the home, the community, the workplace and the marketplace.

9. Schools cause children to remain children for longer than they need to. They are sheltered from real-life responsibilities by adding homework, extra-curricular activities, sports, summer school and various field trips and camps to the normal classroom regimen, keeping their focus at school and school-related activities and away from family, community and work responsibilities.

10. Age-segregating peer groups, as in putting all 9-year-olds into one class, concentrates the immaturity of 9-year-olds into one place. Mob dynamics, wherein everyone in the group sinks to the lowest common denominator, is easy to take hold in such a peer-group. The group is also socialised by other immature 9-year-olds and the tendency is to become strongly peer-dependent.

11. State secular schooling pushes its own religious values without even trying to hide the fact. The Hon Trevor Mallard, Minister of Education, when launching the UNESCO and Living Values Trust “Values Education” seminars in July 2000, said the following: “Whether we like it or not schools and teachers have a strong influence on the developing values of young people and they have that influence whether they plan to or not.  We have to acknowledge that all people live by a set of values and that there is certainly no such thing as value neutrality in education.  It is not an easy thing to meet the obligation to include attitudes and values as an integral part of the New Zealand curriculum. The implicit values education that comes from the way a teacher behaves, the way they speak to children, the kind of control they operate in their own classroom, what is sometimes referred to as the hidden curriculum, cannot be overestimated.” (Em-phasis added.) The Hon Margaret Austin, at the 125th Jubilee of the Christchurch College of Education, reminded her fellow school teachers that they could not ignore values and stated, “…values were vital and central to everything we taught.”

12. State schools are used as experimental laboratories for educationalists and social engineers. The entire NCEA controversy of late has demonstrated this fairly clearly. “It is of serious concern to me that, despite the far-reaching effects of teaching on society, few educational practices have a sound research basis,” said Christchurch Teachers’ College principal Dr Colin Knight in the Manawatu Evening Standard of 4/12/90. He said changes in what went on in schools were mainly brought about by politically initiated reviews and reports on questionnaires and Gallup polls, by parliamentary debate and political expediency. Former head of the PPTA, Phillip Capper said, “What I would like to see in the political debate about education is a recognition that public education is an exercise in social engineering by definition.” (Dominion Sunday Times, 14/10/90.)

13. Children captive at state schools are subjected to propaganda by various special interest groups. Pro-homosexual groups are given access to classrooms to assure an understanding ear for children who may feel they have emerging homosexual tendencies. Ruling political parties push certain curricula material that presents their favoured world view. Long-time MP David Caygill has said that Governments should mold public opinion, not follow it. He said it was the politician’s responsibility to pursue policies that were in the public interest even when the public disagrees. Officer Frank Mault of the Palmerston North Police was asked why the Keeping Ourselves Safe programme in primary schools was aimed at potential victims of rape, incest, molestation and exhibitionism rather than at potential offenders. He replied with a shrug of the shoulders and the words, “I guess it’s because the children are a captive audience in the classroom each day.”

14. State secular schools are used as political tools by successive Governments. Karl Marx had as one of his 10-points-plan for world conquest by the Communists the establishment of free, compulsory and secular state schools to train up the next generations in the philosophy of the state. Abraham Lincoln, a contemporary of Marx, understood this. He said, “The philosophy of the classroom is the philosophy of the government in the next generation.”

Dear Christian fathers, my brothers. If you are not totally convinced that the best place for your children is at home where you and your wife can rear them with your eyes, ears and hands upon them under the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, then please let me encourage you to read the above again. The stakes are way too high for mucking around: we are talking about the lives of our own flesh and blood, our children, for whom we will be called to account on Judgment Day. Have a good read and pray over Psalms 127 & 128, and Psalm 111:10 through Psalm 112:2. Our divine assignment here is nothing less than the re-taking and reforming of the whole world. Now there is a task to which a God-fearing man can give himself unreservedly, really get excited about and sink his teeth into!

To God be the Glory! Amen!

From Keystone Magazine

November 2002 , Vol. VIII No. 6
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order a subscription to Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

send email to sales@hef.org.nz with visa number

post cheque or visa number to PO Box 9064, Palmerston North, New Zealand

fax: 06 357-4389

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Defining a World View

Part 1

by Craig Smith

As Christians we are under no illusions that we hold different ideas – vastly different – from our nonChristian friends and neighbours. We think differently too, and act differently. Come to think of it, we speak differently and hold different values, standards, goals and aspirations. That is to say, we have a different world view than the nonChristians around us. Maybe that’s why many of us find, as the years tick by, that most of our friends are fellow Christians. Sometimes we hardly know any nonChristians at all, apart from relations, that we could comfortably have over for a meal. Why is this difference so pronounced, and why does it get greater as time goes by?

Christians believe that the Lord God is the one source of pure, undiluted truth. We further believe that He has revealed some of this truth directly to us in the Bible. It was necessary that He do this, for we could not discover pure, undiluted truth for ourselves, since we couldn’t recognize it even if we did find it. Pure and undiluted truth must be revealed by the One who holds it.

So we Christians have at the base of everything we believe the Bible: it is acting as the foundation of our beings, the well-spring of our thoughts and thought-patterns, the motivator and director of our actions. Well, this is the ideal toward which each of us should be moving. The Bible does or is supposed to determine our Christian world view.

What, then, is determining the world views of our unbelieving friends? Most have a world view largely shaped by the West’s current commitment to rationalism, materialism and empiricism. That is, the Western cultures have fallen in love with the knowledge we humans can acquire for ourselves, things we can know for certain because they are material and can be empirically measured and tested. Since spiritual considerations cannot be empirically measured or tested, they are declared out of bounds and are therefore considered by many to be as irrelevant to life as if they were non-existent. (This is the tact taken in the public school classroom. New Zealand law states, “…and the teaching shall be entirely of a secular character.”) Science and scientists now bring us all the truth it is possible to know – or so we are told. By measuring and testing items in the world, our scientists can come to some conclusions about the nature of the world around us. Some things seem so completely beyond doubt that we call them “Laws of Nature” or self evident truths. But this then leads some to say that we humans discovered truth or formulated statements of truth as a result of our study of the world around us. Consequently, when we do not allow for the existence of non-material or spiritual realities because we cannot measure or test them, we humans end up seeing ourselves as the only source of truth.

Which means there are ultimately only two world views: the one that originates from the One who created the world, the mind of God, and He has graciously revealed it to us in the Bible; or the one that originates from the mind of man, including all its many variations, some of which acknowledge a spiritual realm.

For purposes of study and comparison, however, most folks like to see the many human world views laid out and classified in some systematic fashion. Remember, though, that while some of these human world views claim divine inspiration – Islam, Hindu, Mormon, etc. – they remain mere human inventions, imitations of the one true world view from the one true God.

This is why the Christian world view is so different from that of nonChristians. The differences become more pronounced over time because, glory be to God, His Holy Spirit is causing us to grow in Christlikeness. That is, we are becoming sanctified, our lives are reflecting a more consistently Biblical pattern of thought, word and deed. Worldly ways are left behind, one by one, just as it says in Ephesians 4:22-24, and we begin to bear the fruit of the Spirit.

Can you see how essential this is, this maturing and sanctifying process, for us as Christian home educators? We need to be clear about these things ourselves so that we can clearly and objectively teach them to our children. We need to know why we teach that shoplifting is wrong, even when we know that most businesses factor a certain percentage for “shrinkage of stock” into the price of the goods, meaning they expect some of us to shoplift. We need to be able to articulate why sexual intercourse should not be looked upon as a recreational activity no matter how much the TV, the FPA and the secular press are trying to say that it is. Our job is to know why such ideas as “It is more blessed to give than to receive”, “Honour your father and your mother” and “Love your enemy” are not just old-fashioned left-overs from yesteryear, and we must also be able to show how one applies such ideas in practical ways to every day life in the year A.D. 2002. This is in addition to our constant prayers for our children that our Lord God in heaven, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, would save, regenerate and fill them.

The world view(s) originating from the mind of man can be referred to as Humanist world views. One of the best authors on this subject, Dr David Noebel of Summit Ministries in Colorado, USA, (in books such as Understanding the Times, The Battle for Truth, Mind Siege) identifies the three major nonChristian world views of the Western world as: Secular Humanism, Marxism/Leninism and Cosmic Humanism (the New Age movement). We know that one day our Lord will return to clean up and make right the mess these false world views are making of people’s lives today. But at present the outcomes of the battles we currently face do not appear very favourable. For this reason we need to know the ways of our enemies, that we can more effectively counter them, attack them, overthrow them and eventually supplant them. “For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.” – II Corinthians 10:3-5 (RSV).

A world view impacts the whole of life, impacts the whole of society and determines its history and development. For example, Hinduism’s fundamental teaching is that the objective world is an illusion and that the social order is determined by one’s spiritual karma earned in previous lives. This has had far-reaching repercussions for India’s culture and politics. Western science, which assumes that the objective universe is both real and orderly, could not have arisen in India, nor could Western principles of democratic liberties or social reform. India did not lack the intelligence or the ability to carry out such changes, but its view of the world had no place for such concepts.¹

What then constitutes a world view? How can one be identified and defined? Some Christian authors divide a world view into three parts, i.e., creation, fall, redemption. Humanist world views are then seen thusly: 1) creation by supernatural means is denied in favour of a naturally occurring process of evolution. 2) The fall of human nature is denied. Instead humanity is viewed as living in a state of normalcy, being born either naturally good or naturally neutral. Evil in the world is explained by scapegoats such as poverty, lack of education or the re-inforcement of negative ideas such as “sin” by unenlightened religious groups (i.e., Christians). 3) Redemption will be accomplished by collective humanity as we progressively eliminate poverty, disease, ignorance and religious superstition (i.e., Christianity). This is a useful way to define nonChristian world views as it highlights their opposition to Christianity and the truth of the Bible.

Others prefer to classify world views by using various theological terms such as theism, pantheism, polytheism, atheism, panentheism, etc., the emphasis being on the fact that every world view is inherently and inescapably religious. That is, even the atheist defines himself in terms of God: that he does not believe in Him. The pantheist believes god is in every bird, rock, tree and blade of grass. The polytheist believes in the existence of many gods; and so forth.

Dr Noebel builds a case for understanding world views as “any ideology, philosophy, theology, movement or religion that provides an overarcing approach to understanding God, the world, and man’s relations to God and the world. Specifically, a world view should contain a particular perspective regarding each of the following ten disciplines: Theology, Philosophy, Ethics, Biology, Psychology, Sociology, Law, Politics, Economics and History.”²

How about this for a home educator’s curriculum? I would suggest that each of us deals with each of these ten areas in a fairly vital way virtually every day of our lives. Yet how many of us are consciously aware of what we believe in any one of these areas? Could we explain what the Bible teaches in any of these areas? Did you know that the Bible not only speaks to these areas but is in fact the defining document for what the Western world has historically believed to be true in each of these areas?  (To be continued in Part 2.)

Here is a sampling of some excellent websites dedicated to imparting a Biblical world view. Many have both printed and / or electronic newsletters which make excellent curriculum resources and study materials.

www.summit.org—Summit Ministries, David Noebel

www.chalcedon.edu—Excellent (my favourite — Ed.)

www.answersingenesis.org—Creation Science

www.icr.org—Institute for Creation Research

www.sixdaycreation.com

www.worldview.org—Worldview Academy

www.walkthruthebible.com—Walk Through The Bible Ministries

www.creationontheweb.com–Creation Ministries

www.genesisministries.com—Genesis Ministries

www.nehemiahinstitute.com—take the PEERS test online to see which world view you currently hold!

www.ChristianCulture.com/ — Institute for Cultural Leadership

www.visionforumministries.org–Doug Phillips

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/webpages54/ap/—Gregg Bahnsen, Applied Presuppositionalism

www.credenda.org/ — Credenda Agenda magazine, Doug Wilson

www.familyreformation.com/ — 700 links!

www.patriarchspath.org/ — Family Reformation

www.artsreformation.com/ — Reformation of Arts & Music

www.scccs.org/ — Gregg Bahnsen’s Seminary

www.vantil.info–Cornelius van Til

www.gty.org/~phil/creeds.htm — Historic Creeds

www.anselmstudyhouse.com

Here are some nonChristian world view websites.  As the saying goes, “Better to face the devil you know than the devil you don’t know!”  And believe me, the devil is out there; it’s amazing how people can take some of this stuff seriously:

www.secularhumanism.com

www.atheists.org

www.newageinfo.com

www.usmlo.org—Marxist-Leninism is alive and well, and still dangerous.

www.natcenscied.org/ — Evolutionism.

www.humanist.net

www.humanist.org.nz

www.infidels.org

Notes:

1. Four Worldviews and the Battle of Ideas, 1997, Gene Edward Veith, Jr., http://www.capitalresearch.org/publications/cc/1997/9710.htm

2. Understanding the Times, 1991, David A. Noebel, Summit Press: Manitou Springs, Colorado.

From Keystone Magazine
September 2002 , Vol. VIII No. 5
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order a subscription to Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

send email to sales@hef.org.nz with visa number

post cheque or visa number to PO Box 9064, Palmerston North, New Zealand

fax: 06 357-4389

phone: 06 357-4399

Trademe (fees added):  http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=2366144

Sella (No added fees):  http://www.sella.co.nz/store/4ym9qg/home-education-foundation/display-100