Sorry. I have no indicator of the exact length of the recording in which he reveals the secret (and I'm not interested in re-playing it simply to time it), but it is just about 30 minutes long.
Title: Why Teach Children Evolution. It was broadcast on Kevin's radio program, Generations With Vision, on February 4th.
It begins with some good foundational insights. I--and Sonlight Curriculum, Ltd., as a company--absolutely agree with Swanson about the purpose and direction of education: to lead children to the fear and love of and obedience toward the God of the Bible--YHWH/Yahweh/Jehovah.
So the fear of God is, as Solomon teaches, the beginning of wisdom. And--as Swanson amplifies the point in the closing minutes of the program--the goal of education, besides the fear of God, is to establish humility before man. (1 Peter 3:15-17)
Absolutely.
We begin to part ways, however, when Swanson urges that, in order to achieve this end, the majority of the books in a curriculum must be written by Christians and from a Christian perspective. History, Literature, Science, etc., etc.: since one's worldview (either Christian or Hindu or atheistic or whatever) will permeate whatever a person writes, all of these books--or, certainly, the vast majority--should be written by Christians and from a Christian perspective, Swanson says.
You can't fill your mind with a mishmash of secular garbage and then overcome it with a Post-It™ Note of commentary, he says.
Since he doesn't mention Sonlight by name, you can't be sure he is referencing our company. But one gets the message, since the majority of Sonlight's books are not written by Christians, and, obviously, Swanson and company are dissatisfied with the nature of our Instructors Guide commentary, questions, and so forth.
That message takes up the majority of the first third of the program or so.
Then he switches over to talking about evolution.
And he makes some derogatory statements about the theory: that it was specifically designed "to serve as an off-ramp to deism and atheism."
Swanson's co-host, David, says, "If you want to have a theistic evolution . . . you have a problem. You have death before Adam."
They then proceed, briefly, with a short summary of a few of the standard young-earth creationist arguments against evolution . . . and return, once more, to the theme with which they began: CHEC's primary concern about Sonlight (not mentioned by name), about classical educators (no companies mentioned by name), and about others: we lack humility. We speak sarcastically.
Swanson's co-host, David, says,
Job has an ethical question, and God answers with a science lesson: "Where is the abode of light?" --We don't even know. . . . When you start talking to really well-educated physicists who understand they don't know very much and they say, "Well, we're not really sure about the geometry of space. And we're not sure how gravity affects the speed of light. We're not really sure that c is fixed. And if it's non-Euclidean space, it's one kind. If it's Reimannian space, where it takes something like 64 years for light to get here from an infinite distance. . . . I.e., we don't know beans about light. We don't know the abode of light. And so we're just like Job. God is saying, "Equip yourself like a man. I'll ask the questions, here. And I'll show you, what you really need here is humility."ETA (10:35 PM on 02/04/09):
I have just now written to the management team and other owners of Sonlight Curriculum, Ltd.:
Does Sonlight need to repent?
My question is serious.
I do not feel compelled by these guys' logic. But I have to be ready to submit to the truth. . . .
