Continuing first separate Thread

HomeSchooling, Germany and US · Other Thread Under Same Video (excursus : Continuing first separate Thread) · When bullies and bullied are both stuck in the same school ... · There are Other Debates Too

Some things are getting hard to follow, so, take this as snippets, rather than coherent dialogue.

As you recall, the OP was:

Prototypical I was homeschooled from elementary through high school in the US, and honestly I don't have the highest view of the way a lot of us in our homeschool circles were taught. Religious fundamentalism and suspicion of authority were major themes in the curriculum and instruction we received. I graduated 8 years ago, and I'm still discovering things I should have been taught. The parents of my homeschooled friends loved to point out the SAT/ACT numbers and the other performance metrics you brought up in the video, but I don't think any of them even realized there might be flaws in the studies reporting the numbers they loved so much. I wasn't really taught how to evaluate a source for reliability, quality, and bias in my homeschool career. Overall I'm not a fan, it was a fairly isolating experience.

Here are some more answers, either to that or to others in the thread.

The Real E.B.

A lot of the people criticizing the OP's evaluation of their own homeschool experience need to read Tara Westover's Educated. A lot of religious fundamentalists in the U.S. see homeschooling as a opportunity to avoid teaching their children about history, science, etc. which, FYI, are not covered by the SAT or, I assume, the ACT.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@The Real E.B. "A lot of religious fundamentalists in the U.S. see homeschooling as a opportunity to avoid teaching their children about history, science, etc"

In exactly what ways?

Do you count not teaching "evolution is true proven science" as not teaching science? What would you refer to in "history"?

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Jessica Ely

This is because your parents were shitty at their job (sorry but they were). I was homeschooled for 3 years and I ended up ahead of my peers. For 3 years in highschool I was able to sleep through class and still ace the test because I already learned everything. It wasn't isolating to me either because my mom made sure she set up things for me to do with kids who weren't homeschool. I played softball and when that was in the off season I was really involved in Girl Scouts. There is secular homeschooling (absolutely no religion) and it's becoming more and more popular. I'm guessing soon secular homeschooling will be more popular than the religious fanatic homeschool groups. Covid has changed a lot in the US when it comes to homeschooling. As I said there's more programs set up for secular homeschooling. Parents aren't putting their children into school because of all the school shootings. I'm one of these parents. I will not put my daughter into a traditional school until I know she will be safe like my brother was when he was in traditional school. My daughter will have everything a traditional school gives and more because I have 1 child to focus on rather than 30+.

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Carlos Lopez

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Humans are apes, big apes just like chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutangs. We are running apes, with short arms and long legs and furless, that's our strength, we can evacuate heat by sweating and we can run a long time without collapsing, we are the fastest of the great apes, and aditionally humans are highly social apes, and very smart and have developed a highly sophisticated language and eventually writing, making this way the knowledge immortal through generations.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Carlos Lopez The problem is, apes don't have a capacity for "developing" anything like human language.

How do apes communicate?

Partly in gestures, but when it's in sounds, the sounds are each symbolic, and need to be uttered in a specific tone and volume of loudness to be understood. When each sound is symbolic, and the symbolism can be varied by rhythm and tone and repetitions, there is no more than maximum 500 messages that can be made (not sure if any ape attains that, if they do, it's probably including signals by gesture). There is no notionality.

By contrast, man has messages called "sentences", "phrases", "sentence words" that give a complete message. Each such is subdivided into more than one morpheme. A morpheme has an incomplete message, like "car" or "is" or "red" and is sometimes notional, like "car" and "red" sometimes conveying the exact relation between notions, like "is" (confer "was", "is not", "could be", "would be if"), and even the level of morphemes is a highly open class, since you can always form new morphemes for new notions, due to the fact that the morpheme is not one soundsymbol, but sounded as a series of sounds that in an exact sequence code for the exact morpheme. "Car" is conveyed by the sounds "k" and "ah" or (in US), the sounds "k" and "ah" and "r" - each if which can equally be used in other morphemes if put into other sequences. Sometimes also the soundshape of a morpheme varies according to context, like "car" and "carry" are related (a car carries passangers and goods and its driver).

Even with a limited lexicon, the number of sentences that can be made is infinite, since there is infinite recursivity - something no beast communication has.

An example is "this is the cat that killed the mouse that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built" ... even that cat could not translate this into miawls.

This is as impossible to develop from how apes communicate, as it is to mend a trouser and continue using it as a trouser until one day it is also a house. Or to mend a house and continue living in it until you have made it a trouser.

Evolution is, simply, impossible (unless you mean things like Chihuahuas and Great Danes having a common ancestor couple - on the Ark).

Carlos Lopez

@Hans-Georg Lundahl There is an ape species that can communicate sophisticated topics using sound: Human Ape.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Carlos Lopez In order to argue it an "ape species" you are pretending it developed from apes without this sophistication.

I have pointed out and you have ignored, why this is impossible.

Carlos Lopez

In Natural History Museum in Paris there is a pavillion dedicated to great apes. When you enter there is a natural size gorilla model, very realistic, beside a natural size chimp, beside a natural size orangutang, and beside A MIRROR.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Carlos Lopez I am not denying that men have some functions on common with apes.

Men also have some functions not in common with ANY irrational animal.

And the functions there are in common do not warrant a common ancestor who lacked the function NOT in common.

To reason about which you once again missed the chance.

Carlos Lopez

@Hans-Georg Lundahl I don't argue humans as an ape species. There is no aguing possible, it is a fact. We humans are obviously apes, we are not ruminants nor viverrids, we are an animal species like any other mammal, and our clad is clearly apes.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Carlos Lopez "we are an animal species like any other mammal"

The exact thing I just disproved. By the way, in English it's clade.

Carlos Lopez

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Evolution, baby, that's how species come to be, that's how an species splits in two.

Environment changes. Where there were trees now there is a savannah. All those apes who lived in the trees are now walking through the savannah.

Thousands of generations after, all those apes with longer legs were having more children than the shorter legs ones and have changed the whole species, and the same for the loss of hair.

As the brain keeps growing, mothers start having problems with births, so only the babies with a slow development are succesfully born, and that changes the whole species angle of neck and head and also flattens our faces. That drives to a better vocalization, and that drives to a more and more sophisticated communication.

Thosands of generations after, we learned to build.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Carlos Lopez "that's how species come to be, that's how an species splits in two"

At least the latter. The first land-species were created on day 6.

"As the brain keeps growing, mothers start having problems with births, so only the babies with a slow development are succesfully born, and that changes the whole species angle of neck and head and also flattens our faces. That drives to a better vocalization, and that drives to a more and more sophisticated communication."

• 1) The most probable outcome would have been stillbirths, not adaptation, and end of line.
• 2) Better vocalisation does not in and of itself drive to more and more sophisticated communication.
• 3) Just in case you missed it, the two systems are so incompatible there is no chance of one more and more growing into the other.

@Carlos Lopez Just to check ... you are aware of anatomic differences that are not just gradual, right?

• 1) Men have, apes lack Broca's area (and Wernicke's too, but it's Broca's that leaves imprints on the inside of the skull).
• 2) Apes have, men lack air bags attached to hooks at the hyoid bone (the two types of hyoid bone can be checked)
• 3) Ear structures differ, those of apes are thicker, apes have a far lower range of audible tones, and they cannot hear sounds like T or P, because they are too shrill.
• 4) Oh, men have a different type of the FOXP2 gene too.

None of these can be reduced to "gradually bigger brains" or "gradually flatter faces" ...

Carlos Lopez

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Yes the most probable outcome would be a growing number of stilbirths, but not all, and those who made it passed that ability to the next generation, and that's how evolution works: mutation and death are its tools.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Carlos Lopez Now, the problem is, that works up to a point. Not up to changing an ape into a man.

PLUS you have again studiously avoided giving any kind of account on how on your view language originated.

It does not happen just bc there are human brains or as you not very brightly put it "more developed brains" - a human brain has up to age 2 (or sth) to learn (start learning) a first language, after that, with no language learned, the age for learning a first language is gone.

The Venzuelan sign language is no case against this, since each of the children had arguably already learned a FIRST sign language at home. The homes where it was developed simply furnishes the deaf children with a second language more common to all than their first language.

Carlos Lopez

@Hans-Georg Lundahl I repeat again: there is no changing, humans are apes as we have always been. We've changed in size, proportions and abilities through millions of years, but we are apes all the way.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Carlos Lopez Apes have hyoids with hooks for airbags, and apes have ears that are thicker in outer duct, thicker in malleus, thicker in incus, thicker in stapes.

Imagine your thickest guitar string, and then make it twice as long and now try to play a high pitched melody. Won't work. Apes can't hear what we hear, and this includes nearly all consonants and also probably the higher formants of the vowels.

Apes also lack Broca's area and Wernicke's area, and have a clearly different version of FOXP2.

Your repetition of a Darwinist delusion is not remotely interesting, and you are not in a position to call me "to order" ...

Carlos Lopez

@Hans-Georg Lundahl What apes are you exactly talking about?
Humans are apes. What do you think we are? Do you at least believe in the meaning of DNA?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Carlos Lopez I am talking about the ones supposed to be "our closest relatives" but also about other ones. As far as I know this is valid for all of those traditionally called apes.

And give up trying to "call me to order," I enumerated good reasons not to join your linguistic revolution.

I certainly believe DNA has meaning. Among other things, the FOXP2 gene looks one way for us, and another for apes.

Btw, recent studies have shown that "1 % difference" doesn't hold, it is actually more like more than 15 % difference.

Carlos Lopez

@Hans-Georg Lundahl 15% difference with what species exactly?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Carlos Lopez Chimp.

@Carlos Lopez Details in this video, yes, it's creationist, but refers to studies by non-such:

Chimp-Human DNA: Less similar than previously reported
CMI Video | 9 Nov. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlNLoEGu0po

Carlos Lopez

@Hans-Georg Lundahl I always laugh at creationists because of the lack of imagination of the imaginary creator...¿Why did he give all birds, reptiles, mammals so many common features ¿Why they all have just four extremities, a head on top of a neck made exactly with the same type of bones an with just two eyes, two holes for breathing, and a mouth and an excreting hole on the other side? the same scheme for all. Just boring for any creator..I rather know that we animals look like each other because we are close relatives.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Carlos Lopez We seem to share 50 % of the genome with bananas. That doesn't mean we are close relatives.

It means many vital processes have to be provided and they are similar in men, beasts and plants.

Now, your criticism of the Creator is totally off, since it requires His imagination to lack what yours has when you write music, if you do. Artistic unity.

If you missed it, the video referred to studies made by non-creationists. Two of them. So, your laughing at creationists isn't even a counter-argument.

Do you ever get tired of just shifting the point and going off a tangent?

@Carlos Lopez "the same scheme for all. Just boring for any creator"

Scarlatti wrote 555 Sonatas.

They were all what we call sonatinas now. They all had a first repetition beginning with a segment of music in the tonic scale, and ending with a segment of music in another scale, often the dominant. They all had a second repetition where the themes are identic but the scales are inversed. Creators aren't people who get bored.

If God got bored as easily as I do, you would have been zapped because you are boring in this discussion, you see, the Creator does not just bring species into existence, but also uphold individuals, and each individual in it, as long as it exists. So, don't laugh at God for not getting bored.

Carlos Lopez

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Do you realize that your god is just one of the thousands of gods and godesses humans have invented along millenia to ease their fear to the unknown? In which way is your god more real than Zeus or Kukulkan?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Carlos Lopez Known earthly facts of Zeus. He was born on Crete. He banished his father to Italy. He was buried. Presumably died first.

I'm not saying he's not real, I am saying he really was a man, perhaps even the real father of Minos, Rhadamantys and Sarpedon.

I am however saying, what's known from stories of what he did visibly on earth is highly inadequate to make him even "the thunderer" let alone "ruler of heaven and earth" (and with delegations to brothers "of sea and netherworld" or to his son Minos "judge of the dead").

What's known of Jesus is lot's more substantial for affirming His divinity, like this triplet:

• claimed to be God and to resurrect Himself
• then did resurrect on the Third Day
• then went up to Heaven after promising to stay with His Church, and His Church is still around.

You seem suddenly a lot less eager to defend Evolutionism, aren't you?

And, in a thread about homeschooling, your argument takes on a very odd flavour of your wanting state schools to be obligatory and normally involve teachers who think like you on these issues and who are not ashamed to tell it to their students.

You are aware that one reason Catholics hated Azaña was a school system with lots of Freemasons in it? That Freemasons were expelled from the school system after Franco won?

But even if you had a point. Even if I had no reasonable clue between God the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost or Zeus, which as said I do, either of them makes more sense than apes developing language (human sense, not just communication) because their brains grew bigger and their faces flatter.

Carlos Lopez

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Bigger brain, shorter arms, longer plantigrade legs, and no fur. All that accounts for the 1% of difference between you and a chimp.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Carlos Lopez As said, the Creationists were referring to NON-such for the percentage between us and chimps being more like 15 %.

2018, Richard Buggs, professor of evolutionary genomics (8:50 in the video, for the following I continued to 10:56)
Jeffrey Tmpkins, PhD in genetics Clemson University published a book in 2021, admitting his results (independent of those by Buggs) challenge evolution.

84.4 % similarity. Not 99, not 98.5, just 84.4.

Now, you are still excruciatingly shy about the differences that are relevant for language and that are involved in the communication systems themselves. Is that because you have no answer?

@Carlos Lopez Correction, the latter of the two is not a non-such, he is a creationist, but Buggs isn't, he's evolutionist.

Carlos Lopez

@Hans-Georg Lundahl I don't see the relevance of the language. It's all about sounds and interpretation, just like all apes do.
Our language is just more complicated, but the motivations keep the same: sex domination, prestige...
The more social the ape is the more sophisticated is the language. Whales have a language too, and dolphins and orcas, and suricatas, and otters have their language too, it is just that they have much less messages to communicate than we have.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Carlos Lopez "just like all apes do."

No. Apes interpret single sounds.

We interpret coded sound sequences. And sequences of such.

None of the species you mention has an actual language with three levels or with notionality.

And having the brain of a man doesn't give you a human language, see feral children.

Carlos Lopez

@Hans-Georg Lundahl ¿What do you mean with "feral children"?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Carlos Lopez A feral child is one that has not lived among people, but among beasts. It does not learn a human language, if this state of affairs is carried on. This is something he can never repair later on in life. He can never learn a language even if recovered by people.

Now, this means, a man cannot learn a language on his own, he needs to be brought up by parents having one.

And this also rules out men starting out without a language and inventing it, since without language, you simply aren't an intelligent inventor.

The atheist option is, man always existed from eternity, and so did the world. Disproven. The other option is, God always existed and always had language, and when creating man, endowed him with it.

Carlos Lopez

@Hans-Georg Lundahl I have never seen or heard of such a thing as a child raised by animals except in movies and novels, but anyway if such a thing was even possible (I don't think so..), obviously the kid would learn the language of his/her breeders, he would bark or roar or moo or whatever language he/she learnt.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Carlos Lopez But that would imply the child in a beast type of communication.

One sound = one message.

Human type communication is
Complete message = subdivided in incomplete meaning units.
Incomplete meaning unit = subdivided in meaningless sounds.

You learn one human language with some understanding by the age two, you can learn any other later on.

But if you learn a bestial one, you can't. They are too different.

Now, first example:

"Marina Chapman claimed to have lived with weeper capuchin monkeys in the Colombian jungle from the age of five to about nine, following a botched kidnapping in about 1954.[7] Unusual for feral children, she went on to marry, have children and live a largely normal life with no persisting problems."

Why did she not have any persisting problems? Because at age 2 she had not yet been feral, she was still with her family.

More typical:

"Dina Sanichar, discovered among wolves in a cave in Sikandra (near Agra) in Uttar Pradesh, India in 1872, at the age of 6. He went on to live among humans for over twenty years, including picking up smoking, but never learned to speak and remained seriously impaired for his entire life"

Also with monkeys:

"John Ssebunya, from Uganda, was a toddler when his father killed his mother and hanged himself. Instead of going into a care facility, he went to live with vervet monkeys. For two years he learned how to forage and travel. The monkeys protected him in the wild. When he was around seven years old, he was brought back to civilization. According to a local villager, the only forms of communication he was capable of were crying and demanding food, and he was a "wild boy" whom everyone feared."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

Carlos Lopez

The atheist- science option is: man as a species starts as about 2 million years ago, and gets its usual today configuration about half a million years ago. Animal life started about 700 million years ago with 200 million years of sponges, and then there was an complex animal explosion. Unicellular life started about 3,800 million years ago, and Earth solidified 4,500 million years ago.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Carlos Lopez What you call the atheist option, for one thing stamps atheism as a religion, and for another thing, for the reason explained, is a non-option.

Carlos Lopez

@Hans-Georg Lundahl I see, four "feral children" in all History; thats not enough to make any study, that's just a rare and random exception to the rule.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Carlos Lopez You didn't look up the link to wikipedia, did you?

The feral children are more numerous than four, and those who were absent from human company in the years up to two (unless for a short while) never learn to talk.

Learning to talk is strictly dependent on being exposed to talk. Check with a speech pediatrician, if you neither believe me nor wikipedia.

And let's be grateful for them being extremely rare, it is a great misfortune, it's very far from how it's depicted in Mowgli.

@Carlos Lopez I went over the wiki article and found 34 cases worth taking seriously, and I have not counted confined children (not strictly feral) or those marked as hoaxes.

Primates: 4, Wolves: 3, Dogs: 6, Bears: 1, Sheep: 2, Cattle: 1, Goats: 1, Other cases: 13, Non journalistic modern reports: 3.

...

Chuck Sucks

I see you had a gripe about 'suspicion of authority' that is created in homeschool environments. Are you saying that isn't taught in public schools and if so has it ever occurred to you that the reason 'suspicion of authority' isn't taught is because the government wants obedient adults who don't question them.

...

Frank F

@Hans-Georg Lundahl science is not a religion, it does not require belief but a willingness to adjust your worldview to new facts

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Frank F Sounds nice.

I suppose sciences, like electromagnetics or chemistry.

But I think the subject was more like Evolution and (relative) Heliocentrism. And those believing that are often obtuse to facts that are not necessarily new, but new to them.

Frank F

@Hans-Georg Lundahl World you care to list one or two such facts about heliocentrism?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Frank F Yes, gladly.

• 1) It has not been observed.
• 2) In order to deduce it from observations and facts of Newtonian mechanics, you don't just need to assume that Newtonian mechanics exist, but that it is the only thing existing on that scale - like if you admit even the possibility of a God or of angels, with the known attributes of Catholic theology, you cannot rule out the mechanism - if you will - of God turning the universe around us night and day, and of angels moving sun, moon, other planets in orbits, and stars in the narrower circles known by observations partly called "aberration" and partly "parallax" ...
• 3) so, you can also not (unless you presume atheism as the positively certain starting point) even use parallax to prove stellar distances, and therefore not to prove the "distant starlight problem" that some proposed against YEC.
  
  Oh, forgot:
• 4) as Robert Sungenis pointed out, the Michelson Morley experiment does not support earth moving through space.

Frank F

@Hans-Georg Lundahl well, i would say it has been observed sufficiently, e.g. by unmanned probes, by the bending of light in response to a stellar mass (visible during a solar eclipse). But apart from that #2 assumes god or gods are content with playing „the man behind the curtain“ and have nothing better to do than moving the sun and the planets to confuse some poor mortals. To me it seems much more sensible to assume that a hypothetical god simply got the universe started, by creating the laws of nature that we are observing.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Frank F "i would say it has been observed sufficiently,"

I obviously disagree.

"e.g. by unmanned probes,"

Exactly what observations by them? They refute Ptolemy and planets other than Sun and Moon having orbits directly centred on earth (or bifocal, with earth in one focus). But that's no refutation for Tychonian.

"by the bending of light in response to a stellar mass (visible during a solar eclipse)."

Now, that proves mass, but it does not prove mass and its concomitants inertia and gravity are the sole actors. Congratulations to observing part of Newtonian mechanics, but that is not observing heliocentrism.

"But apart from that #2 assumes god or gods are content with playing „the man behind the curtain“ and have nothing better to do than moving the sun and the planets"

Your objection presumes that this would exhaust their capacity.

God may have lots of better things to do and use other angels as servants in such cases (like witnessing the Resurrection), but angels are plenty to go, and God's own power and attention are unlimited.

"than moving the sun and the planets to confuse some poor mortals."

Why would it "confuse" when that is a prime way in which people have historically actually figured out that God exists and that angels exist?

Why presume that the "modern scientifically minded" men are God's privileged go to as to what is enlightening and what is confusing to man?

"To me it seems much more sensible to assume that a hypothetical god simply got the universe started, by creating the laws of nature that we are observing."

We do not observe laws of nature. We observe agencies that follow laws of nature and classify their normal way of acting as "laws of nature" - these agencies (for instance mass) do not exhaust the agencies available if God and angels exist and even if we exist as opposed to being byproducts of electro-chemical and biological processes, notably in the brain.

Frank F

@Hans-Georg Lundahl This is getting really silly. Of course you can make any assumptions you like and it is obviously impossible to prove the non-existence of gods. You can always claim that some unseen agency is the real reason behind any observation. I could with equal validity claim that our world is merely a prison created by an evil god who seeks to keep us chained to material reality by creating an elaborate charade.
But of both are equally impossible to prove or disprove, then why bother?
Donˋt bother answering, i think this exchange is a complete waste of time.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Frank F "it is obviously impossible to prove the non-existence of gods"

And exactly for that reason, it is impossible to prove Heliocentrism.

"I could with equal validity claim that our world is merely a prison created by an evil god who seeks to keep us chained to material reality by creating an elaborate charade."

Unfortunately such a theology exists. They were called Albigensians, and I am happy we burned some of them on the stake and converted lots of the others.

"But of both are equally impossible to prove or disprove,"

The actual character of God can be proven by His actions, that is by history. Take a re-read of the Gospels, please!

Frank F

@Hans-Georg Lundahl If I were to subscribe to such a ludicrous theology (which i most emphatically do not) the answer would be obviously: you are an agent of the adversary/demi-urge/whatever trying to lead us astray and such should be burned/quartered/killed in a variety of unpleasant ways and are just lucky that your lies form the basis of the beliefs of lots of people otherwise you would burn instead of the Albigensians.
Any theology should only be consumed in moderation to avoid unwanted and possibly dangerous sideeffects.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Frank F Well, if you do not subscribe to such a ludicrous theology, how about, God:

• 1) creating the world
• 2) running it currently
• 3) doing it in such a way as to make it obvious, like turning the heavens around little earth?

That's a pretty clarifying and honest way to run a universe. Works pretty well too, until Galileo gets nearly deified by Freemasonry.

"Any theology should only be consumed in moderation to avoid unwanted and possibly dangerous sideeffects."

That sounds like a call to apostasy. No thanks.

Get on to : When bullies and bullied are both stuck in the same school ...