Without God There is No Basis for Society

As belief in God has been abandoned, people have questioned the basis of the society in which they live.  For instance, if there is no God, then why should they obey the Ten Commandments?  Why should anyone say that homosexuality is wrong?  Why should not women be allowed to have abortions whenever they desire?  Once people eliminated God from their consciences, they set about to change any laws based on Christian absolutes that held God as Creator (and thus Owner) of everything.

Christian absolutes have been diluted or removed as the basis of society and replaced with a world view that says, "We do not have to accept that the Christian way of doing things (basing our world and live view on Biblical principles) is the only way; we must tolerate all religious beliefs and ways of life."  However, this "tolerance" really means an intolerance of the absolutes of Christianity.  This false idea of tolerance has subtly undermined Christianity, and most Christians have not recognized what was really happening.  Many Christians have been deceived into believing they have not right to impose their views on society.  We are told, for instance, that anti-abortionists have no business impressing their particular bias on society.  Have you ever heard anyone say this about the pro-abortion groups?  The result is one bias being imposed on society by the pro-abortionists -- legalized abortion on demand!  No matter what you do, you cannot avoid the fact that a view is being imposed on someone by someone.  There is no such thing as neutrality, although many Christians become ensnared in the trap of believing there is.


Ken Ham, "The Lie," p.3

Government Should Not Support the People

I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan, as proposed by this bill, to indulge a benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds for that purpose.  I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.  A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people support the Government the Government should not support the people.

The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune.  This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated.  Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.


President Grover Cleveland, 1887, in response to a bill appropriating money to Texas farmers suffering a catastrophic drought.  Cited by Glenn Beck in "Arguing With Idiots," p.6-7

This Says It All

Diversity?

In academic circles, the equally vast generality is "diversity," which often stands for a quite narrow social agenda, as if those who reiterate the word "diversity" endlessly had no idea that diversity is itself diverse and has many dimensions besides the one with which they are preoccupied.  Advocates of diversity in a race or gender sense are often quite hostile to ideological diversity, when it includes traditional or "conservative" values and beliefs."

Thomas Sowell, "The Vision of the Anointed," p.20

With the LEFT, There is No Personal Responsibility

What is the position of the Left?  Absolutely predictable.  Evil is found in this world, but never because any people elected to commit evil.  Evil is always the result of outside forces making people do things.  Would you accept this from your children?  Would you excuse little Tommy when he kicks his sister in the stomach and tells us that a bad dream made him do it? . . . Yet secular liberalism offers us an unbelievable proliferation of mental and social disorders to explain how factors other than free moral choice make people act the way they do.  There is even a frantic attempt to find a genetic component for infidelity.  All right, even if men are genetically programmed to be unfaithful, we still have the choice to follow that instinct or to refrain.  Instincts are determining factors in animals, not in people.  If God said, "Personal accountability," the Left has to say, "No personal accountability."  Enormous social dislocation inevitably results from such a seemingly small decision.


Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," p.64-65

Evolutionism Kills Law and Order

Why have law and order deteriorated so rapidly in the United States?  Simply because for many years it has been commonly taught that life is a random, accidental phenomenon with no meaning except the purely materialistic one.  Laws are merely a matter of human expediency.  Since humans are allegedly accidents, so are their laws.


A.E. Wilder-Smith, The Creation of Life, p.ix. cited by David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times, p.545

"Adolescence" Is Made-up Ideology

HT to J.L. Pattison

A Right Question

One of the right questions to ask is why the scientific and educational authorities are so fearful of what may happen if the public is encouraged to learn to distinguish between the data or testable hypotheses of science on the one hand, and religious or philosophical ideas for which scientific authority is claimed on the other.


Phillip E. Johnson, The Right Questions: Truth, Meaning & Public Debate, p.70

Pro-Choice?

The truth is that from its very inception, Planned Parenthood has sought mandatory population control measures -- measures carefully designed to deny the freedom to choose.  Over the years it has proposed that our government implement such things as "compulsory abortion for out-of-wedlock pregnancies," federal entitlement "payments to encourage abortion," "compulsory sterilization for those who have already had two children," and "tax penalties" for existing large families.


George Grant, "Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood," p.25

The Road to Eugenics

What was it about Darwinian theory that produced a change in thinking about the value of human life?  First, Darwinism implied that humans arose from animals, and many interpreted this to mean that humans did not have the special position accord them in Judeo-Christian thought.  Instead of being made in the image of God and falling from a pristine state of perfection, humans ascended from some kind of simian.  In explaining the evolution of human mental and moral traits from animals, Darwin and most Darwinists denied the existence of an immaterial and immortal soul, a central tenet of the Judeo-Christian worldview that undergirded the sanctity of human life.  Second, Darwinism emphasized variation within species, which implied biological inequality.  Applying this to humans, many biologists, anthropologists, and social thinkers used Darwinism to justify social and racial inequality.  Third, natural selection and the struggle for existence in Darwin’s theory — based on Malthus’s population principle — also implied that death without reproductive success is the norm in the organic world, and that the death of multitudes of “less fit” organisms is beneficial and fosters progress.  Death had previously been viewed by most Europeans as an evil to overcome, not a beneficial force.  But Darwin perceived some good in this evil.  In concluding The Origin of Species he wrote, “Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.”  Darwin’s theory was thus not just about biological change; it was a matter of life and death.

Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler, p.16-17

A Nation of Soulless People Will Not Survive

Remember: the most perfect machinery of government will not keep us as a nation from destruction if there is not within us a soul. No abounding material prosperity shall avail us if our spiritual senses atrophy. Walk humbly; you will do so if you study the life and teachings of the Savior, walking in His steps.

Theodore Roosevelt, inscription on the cover of New Testaments given to soldiers preparing to set sail during World War I.

Law As An Instrument of Plunder

You say: "There are persons who have no money," and you turn to the law.  But the law is not a breast that fills itself with milk.  Nor are the lacteal veins of the law supplied with milk from a source outside the society.  Nothing can enter the public treasury for the benefit of one citizen or one class unless other citizens and other classes have been forced to send it in.  If every person draws from the treasury the amount that he has put in it, it is true that the law then plunders nobody.  But this procedure does nothing for the persons who have no money.  It does not promote equality of income. The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons.  When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder.

Frederic Bastiat, The Law, (1859).  Cited by Brannon Howse in Grave Influence: 21 Radicals and Their Worldviews that Rule American From the Grave, p.279.

The Playpens of Scientists

Scientists are not content with running their own playpens in accordance with what they regard as the rules of the scientific method, they want to universalize those rules, they want them to become part of society at large, and they use every means at their disposal -- argument, propaganda, pressure tactics, intimidation, lobbying -- to achieve their aims.


Paul Feyerabend, as cited by Phillip E. Johnson, "Objections Sustained," p.66

Morality by Culture?

To improve a society's moral code means that the society changes its laws and values to more closely approximate an external moral ideal.  If no such standard exists, if cultural values are the highest possible law, then there is no way for those standards to be better than what they are at any given moment.  They can only be different.

Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, “Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air,” p.53

Unconstrained Sexuality

At the cultural level one of the most revealing indexes of a civilization is the way it orders human sexuality.

When left to itself, human sexuality appears unconstrained and to the innocent mind shockingly polymorphous.  But the hallmark of a society in which all sexual constraints have been set aside is that finally it sanctions homosexuality as well.  This point is hotly disputed today, but is reflected in the wisdom of the ages.  Plutarch, the first-century Greek moralist, saw libertinism to be the third and next-to-last stage in the life-cycle of a free republic before its final descent into tyranny.  Edward Gibbon in eighteenth-century England understood this principle with respect to ancient Rome, but from a historian’s perspective.  Sigmund Freud emphasized the same principle with respect to many cultures in the West — although from a radically secular psychoanalytic perspective.  For him, universal sexual repression was the price of civilization.  Without constraints, civilization would lose its discipline and vitality.  And, of course, the Bible repeatedly shows the effects of unconstrained sexuality, such as its stories of the rise and fall of Sodom, Gomorrah, and indeed Israel itself. …

In sum, it is a simple and sobering fact that no society that has sanctioned unconstrained sexuality has long survived.


Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p.17-18

Sex Indoctrination

Sex Education does not seem to be helping.  In the journal Pediatrics, Dr. James Stout and Dr. Frederick Rivera of the University of Washington and Children’s Hospital and Medical Center, Seattle, reviewed studies of the effects of sex education on teenage sexual behavior. . ..   They concluded that “sex education programs in junior and senior high schools have little or no effect either positively or negatively on altering the age of onset or frequency of adolescent sexual activity, on increasing contraceptive use, or on preventing unplanned teenage pregnancy.”  They noted that “a classroom course alone cannot be expected to change sexual behavior in a direction that is in opposition to the adolescent’s sexual world as molded by the television, motion picture, music and advertising industries, as well as peer group and adult role models.”  Besides…some classroom courses seem designed to increase teenage sexual activity.

Dr. Judith A. Reisman & Edward W. Eichel, Kinsey, Sex and Fraud: The Indoctrination of a People, p.89

Psychology is Wrecking Society

Psychology presents itself as a concerned and caring profession working for the good of its clients.  But behind the benevolent facade is a voracious, self-serving industry that proffers “facts” which are often unfounded, provides “therapy” which can be damaging, and exerts influence, which is having devastating effects on the social fabric.  The foundation of psychology, its critical thinking, if not an illusion from its inception, had by the end of the 20th century been abandoned in favor of power and profit, leaving only the guise of integrity, a show of arrogance and a well-tuned attention to the bottom line.

Dr. Tana Dineen, Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People, p.15

Take Responsibility

Then there are the people making minimum wage who want more money, but don’t want to earn it. Rather than building their skills so they can be promoted or moving on to a better job, their solution is to ask the government to force their employers to pay them more than they’re worth. Why should someone who can be replaced by a 16 year old with two weeks of training get $15 an hour for his work? If you’re dirt poor and you don’t want to do what it takes to earn more money, then you deserve to stay poor – and no matter what the government does, you will probably get exactly what you deserve.

John Hawkins, “Your Screwed Up Life Is Your Own Responsibility.”

An Irresponsible Nation

We seem to be moving steadily in the direction of a society where no one is responsible for what he himself did,but we are all responsible for what somebody else did, either in the present or in the past.

Thomas Sowell, cited by John Hawkins, “Your Screwed Up Life Is Your Own Responsibility.”

God is Truth

Since God is truth, a contempt for truth is equally a contempt for God.

Gordon H. Clark, A Christian Philosophy of Education, p.158

No God = Man Is Beast

It is said that after God died in the nineteenth century, man died in the twentieth.  For when God is dead, man becomes an untamed beast.

Erwin W. Lutzer, When A Nation Forgets God, p.10

Teach A True View of Human Sexuality

Is it possible to teach an acceptable view of human sexuality in a value-free, nonjudgmental context?  A true view of human sexuality, unlike a true view of mathematics, physics, or English grammar, cannot be achieved apart from a biblical view of human sexuality.  Sex without love, without permanent commitment in a monogamous marriage, is not the same as sex without these crucial elements.  In fact, to teach sex without the elements of the primary purpose of oneness is not merely an inadequate treatment of the whole subject, it is inherently subversive of the real thing.

Robertson McQuilkin, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, p.227

Origin of Anti-Capitalism?

President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the "War on Poverty" in his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964.  Although well intended -- after all, we would like to eliminate poverty -- this would have a detrimental impact in several areas over time.  Churches and charitable organizations would play less of a role in assisting the poor not only in supplying food, clothes, and other needs, but also in guiding them to take personal responsibility and training them to provide for themselves.  As a result, the spiritual guidance, which previously came from those organizations, was eliminated in the life of the community.  As the Federal Government programs grew and rewarded bad behavior and irresponsibility, poorer communities began realizing they received more benefits by having more children out of wedlock.  Therefore, there was greater dependence on an increasingly Socialist government that worked at eroding Judeo/Christian morals and ethics and replacing them with new ethics -- the new ethics of self.  Hard work, taking risks, entrepreneurship, and business success came to be viewed as evil, and Capitalism was made the "boogey man" and cause of all the world's ills.

 L.L. (Don) Veinot, Jr, "The End of Comfortable Christianity?" Midwest Christian Outreach Journal, Summer-Fall 2014.

Sex Education Agenda

In the words of an article in the Journal of School Health, sex education presents "an exciting opportunity to develop new norms."  Only in light of this agenda does it make sense that so-called "sex education" should be advocated to take place throughout the school years -- from kindergarten to college -- when it could not possibly take that much time to teach basic biological or medical information about sex.  What takes that long is a constant indoctrination in new attitudes.

Thomas Sowell, "The Vision of the Anointed," p.20

Rejecting God Rejects the Family

The same people who proudly converted the world’s finest education system into a degenerate joke also mock the traditional family.  This fits my hypothesis rather well since hierarchy is also one of the organizing principles of the family.  If you reject God, you must reject the principle of hierarchy, which means you must reject classical family life.  How backward, sexist, and repugnant for the husband to act as spiritual leader of the home!  And how old-fashioned for parents to discipline their children, whose aberrant behavior may have been considered wrong in the 1950s but today is regarded simply as a healthy expression of selfhood.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," p.62-63

Threats to Ruling Paradigms

When one scientific theory is enshrined as the reigning paradigm, dissenting views are often silenced for reasons other than lack of evidence.  Dissenting views represent a threat to the ruling paradigm, and so those who have earned power and prestige from advancing it are loath to let their authority be eroded.  For this and other reasons, scientists who have spent their lives working within one paradigm may have a difficult time acknowledging problems within that paradigm no matter how much contrary evidence accumulates.

John G. West, "Darwin Day in America: How our politics and culture have been dehumanized in the name of science," p.241

A Society Which Won't Confront Evil

A society that continues to redefine deviance as disease, or refuses to acknowledge and negatively sanction the deviant acts our common sense tells us are destructive, is a society that has lost the capacity to confront evil that has a capacity to dehumanize us all.


Anne Hendershott, The Politics of Deviance, p.158

Sex Standards and Family

A society that denies the reality of total man (body, soul, and spirit) cannot help but undermine the Christian family structure.  Today, our society encourages sexual permissiveness.  Magazines, books, and television programs often stress sex outside of marriage and other deviances from Biblical morality masquerading as “sexual orientation.”  The Christian sociologist, recognizing the threat such deviance poses for the traditional family, calls for a return to sexual sanity in the form of monogamous heterosexual marriage.

Any other sexual relations are damaging to both men and women, and in the long run to the institutions of marriage and the family.  Thus, [1811-1845 SCOTUS Justice] Joseph Story writes, “If marriage be an institution derived from the law of nature, then, whatever has a natural tendency to discourage it, or to destroy its value, is by the same law prohibited.  Hence we may deduce the criminality of fornication, incest, adultery, seduction, and other lewdness. . . . “  For the Christian, any deviance from the model of faithful sexuality in marriage is strictly prohibited.

This includes homosexuality.  [George] Gilder writes, “Because psychologists cannot explain homosexuality, they discuss it in terms of sickness or mystery.  But homosexuality is merely the most vivid and dramatic manifestation of the breakdown of monogamy — and extreme expression of the sexuality of single man.”  Homosexuality is a physically and spiritually unhealthy manifestation of sexuality that corrupts the total man and wears away at monogamous marriage.  The Christian sociologist views homosexuality and all other deviations from faithful monogamous marriage as dangerous to the institutions of family and marriage and, therefore, to society as a whole.

This appears to be a very narrow view of sexuality.  But it is really the only view that respects the individual.

David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times, p.488

No Such Thing As Free Love

For years now we have allowed the media to misrepresent casual sex and free love. Young people have been shown that the cure for everything is to jump into bed.  It doesn't matter if it's morning, afternoon or evening; or on television, in popular music, in movies and videos; sex is proclaimed as a cure-all.  It's a cure for emptiness and loneliness.  It's a cure for lack of significance.  All lies.  Sex is not a cure-all.  There's no such thing as casual sex.  There's no such thing as free love.

Josh McDowell and Dick Day, "Why Wait?" p.43

The Handicap of Victimhood

Intellectuals give people who have the handicap of poverty the further handicap of a sense of victimhood.  They have encouraged the poor to believe that their poverty is caused by the rich — a message which may be a passing annoyance to the rich but a lasting handicap to the poor, who may see less need to make fundamental changes in their own lives that could lift themselves up, instead of focusing their efforts on dragging others down.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.544

True Islam

Islam has its founding prophet, Muhammad, who began his career with numerous murders, attacked peaceful villages and caravans, and beheaded hundreds who surrendered in exchange for his sworn promise of peace and safety.  Islam has its scriptures (the Qur’an and Hadith) and 1,350 years of the bloodiest and most violent history of any religion ever known, including the merciless slaughter of millions (more millions in the take-over of India than Hitler killed in all of Eastern and Western Europe). …

It is indisputable that today’s Islamic terrorism may not honestly be blamed upon “extremists.”  This is true Islam as it always has been from the beginning!  Terrorists are sincere Muslims following both the teaching and example of Muhammad, the obedient example set by is loyal followers, and Islam’s scriptures, which command the take-over of the entire world and death to all who will not convert.  True, not every Muslim is a terrorist, but nearly every terrorist is a Muslim!

Dave Hunt, “According to the Scriptures,” The Berean Call, December 2007

What Happens to Society Without God

Erase all thought and fear of God from a community, and selfishness and sensuality would absorb the whole man.  Appetite, knowing no restraint, and suffering, having no solace or hope, would trample in scorn on the restraints of human laws.  Virtue, duty, principle, would be mocked as unmeaning sounds.  A sordid self-interest would supplant every feeling; and man would become, in fact, what the theory of atheism declares him to be — a companion for brutes.


McGuffy Fifth Reader (designed for 10-year-olds in early public schools). Cited in “Quotable,” The Berean Call, May 2003

The REAL "Cancer"

The real cancer in American society is not the illegal pornography but the legal variety that is spreading unchecked throughout all segments of the population, changing our thinking, values, and behavior in regard to sexuality, women, and the home.

Robertson McQuilkin, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, p.223

Multicultural Nonsense

Intellectuals have romanticized cultures that have left people mired in poverty, ignorance, violence, disease and chaos, while trashing cultures that have led the world in prosperity, education, medical advances and law and order.  In doing so, the intelligentsia have often degraded, or even filtered out, the fact that masses of people were fleeing the societies intellectuals romanticized to go to the societies they condemned.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.543

"Imposing" Morality

All participants in politics want to "impose" on others as much of their morality as possible, and no group is more insistent on that than liberals.

Robert H. Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah, p.337

Is It Love Without Marriage?

The man who persuades a woman to live with him without marriage tells her, “I love you.”  But what he may mean (perhaps unknown even to him) could be, “I love myself, and I want you.”  Only too late they may discover that this is what both of them mean by “love.”

Dave Hunt, “Why Everything Is the Way It Is,” The Berean Call, April 2007

Lord Deliver Us From This Culture!

From the Liberality that says that everybody is right;
From the Charity that forbids us to say that anybody is wrong;
From the Peace that is bought as the expense of Truth —
May the good Lord deliver us.

J.C. Ryle, cited in “Quotable,” The Berean Call, June 2003.

The Students of Today

The new breed of students tend to be more passive and hedonistic than their predecessors as they live for the moment.  They have few goals, a diminished concept of history, little discipline, and almost no sense of what is noble or good.  Instead they specialize in taboo-breaking decadence and grin cynically at moral correctives.  They have learned self-esteem by being affirmed through cheap and empty slogans.  They have empty heads and hard hearts while the “self” that they have spent so much time affirming keeps changing like Proteus, forever being redefined by the “experts.” 

Tal Brooke, “Education: Capturing Hearts and Minds For A New World,” SCP Journal, Vol 16:4, p.23

A Danger of Psychiatric Drugs

The notion that psychiatric drugs might impair our conscience should not come as a shock.  We're all too aware that people do bad things under the influence of alcohol, crack cocaine, and methamphetamine that they wouldn't do otherwise.  Is it so hard, then, to comprehend that some legal drugs can also obscure or eliminate our awareness of conscience?  After all, what does "feeling better" often involve but the elimination of conflict?  And what is conflict but the evidence inside us that we've done something wrong -- something contrary to our conscience?  Getting rid of conflict, then, often involves blotting out our conscience!

The problem with that, of course, is that conscience is literally the presence of God in us, the friction between the way we are and the way we should be.


David Kupelian, How Evil Works, p.109-110

The Education System Is For Indoctrination

In the schools and colleges, the intelligentsia have changed the role of education from equipping students with the knowledge and intellectual skills to weigh issues and make up their own minds into a process of indoctrination with the conclusions already reached by the anointed.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.543

Normally I don't comment on these posts, but I thought the following (brought to my attention in the comment below) was worth posting with this particular quote.

Our Nation Is Headed for Dictatorship

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury.  From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with a result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship.  The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Fraser Tytler, “The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic,” c.1810. Cited in “Quotable,” The Berean Call, December 1999.

Public Education Danger to Family

The new education’s danger to the family comes in two stages.  The first stage weakens the family by “atomizing” its members — an effect that is reinforced by popular culture.  As the family flounders, the second stage capitalizes on its failures.  Because the family has been undermined, individual families become disabled — there are some functions they can no longer perform at all, and others they can’t perform fully or well.  At the personal level, families struggle, and often fail, against the forces that weaken and divide them.  Problems increase in number and severity.  At some point, state bureaucracies, typically led by education and social welfare, step in — first to oversee, then to take over, the functions that families are unable to exercise, or are willing to abandon.

When this process runs its course, the influence of the family will be mostly displaced by the influence of the collective, in the form of the bureaucracy, the schools, and the media.  The natural, biological family in general, and parents in particular, will become appendages of the “omnicompetent state,” watchfully regulated by state agencies.  The family will be redefined to prevent it from becoming a focus for loyalties apart from the collective.  If a form of the “family” survives at all, it will be as a convenient device for bureaucratic book-keeping, and will be redefined in mostly economic terms.

Brooks Alexander, “Abolished Man: From Instruction to Indoctrination in the New Education,”  SCP Journal, Vol 16:4, p.7

Consequences of Illicit Sex?

NO ONE ON TELEVISION PAYS THE PRICE OF ILLICIT SEX.  YOU ONLY DO THAT IN REAL LIFE.


Josh McDowell and Dick Day, "Why Wait?" p.41 (caps in the original)

If God Hates It, the LEFT Loves It

What about the peculiar ferocity that devotees of the Left reserve for the cigarette smoker -- in the face of its placid acceptance of the AIDS carrier?  The Left forges a national movement to prohibit smoking in any public building but urges that the individual with AIDS be left alone.  In some states, a person with a sexually communicable disease is legally obliged to tell his or her partner about it.  There is only one exception.  A person who is HIV-positive does not have to disclose that fact.  In other words, you must tell someone they run the risk of pain, sterility, or open sores if they have sex with you, but not that they risk death.  It should also be noted that the Left's special compassion showered upon AIDS victims is not duplicated with lung-cancer patients.  Why the discrepancy in the treatment of a disease resulting primarily from homosexual behavior and a disease resulting from smoking?  The only possible explanation I can find is that cigarette smoking is not singled out as biblically proscribed.  Since homosexuality is directly biblically forbidden, any sanctions applied in that direction might look suspiciously like an endorsement of God and must be scrupulously avoided.


Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," p.61-62

Media Is a Friend of Evolutionism

Although journalists routinely write about the presumed religious motives of anyone critical of evolution, they almost never explore the metaphysical baggage carried by many of evolution's staunchest defenders.  Yet the ideology of some of evolution's proponents has always been a key reason why teaching evolution has been controversial in the United States.


John G. West, "Darwin Day in America: How our politics and culture have been dehumanized in the name of science," p.212

No Moral Compass

Strong cultural values and clear concepts of good and evil integrate members into the group and provide meaning.  When traditional cultural attachments are disrupted, or when behavior is no longer regulated by these common norms and values, individuals are left without a moral compass.

Anne Hendershott, The Politics of Deviance, p.158

The Liberal Intelligentsia Have No Use for Merit

The intelligentsia have changed the high achievements and rewards of some members of society from an inspiration to others into a source of resentment and grievance for others.  The intelligentsia encourage people who are contributing nothing to the world to complain, and even organize protests, because others are not doing enough for them.  They have rationalized the breaking of laws by those who choose to picture themselves as underdogs fighting an oppressive “system,” even when these are college students from affluent homes, being subsidized by their parents and/or the taxpayers.  Intellectuals have, both in America and in France, verbally turned military heroes who put their lives on the line for their country into victims of war, people whom one might pity but never want to emulate.

They have put the people whose work creates the goods and services that sustain a rising standard of living on the same plane as people who refuse to work, but who are depicted as nevertheless entitled to their “fair share” of what others have created — this entitlement being regardless of whether the recipients observe even common decency, much less the laws.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.541-542

True Freedom, Science, and Industry

There will be no true freedom without virtue, no true science without religion, no true industry without the fear of God and love to your fellow-citizens.

Charles Kingsley, cited by David A. Noebel in Understanding the Times, p.433

No Creator = No Purpose in Life

If there is no Creator, there is no purpose in life.  There is thus no one watching over us to whom we must someday have to account for our actions.  So, we come to the root of society's problems.  When God the Creator is removed from the picture, there are no absolutes; there is loss of respect for law and absolute principles, and man is set adrift in a purposeless universe, guided only by his fickle passions and the situation of the moment.

Luther D. Sunderland, "Forward" to "The Lie: Evolution," by Ken Ham, p.xii

The Fraud of Transsexualism

…transsexualism was invented by psychiatrists. . . .You fundamentally can’t change sex … the surgery doesn’t alter you genetically. It’s genital mutilation. My ‘vagina’ was just the bag of my scrotum. It’s like a pouch, like a kangaroo. What’s scary is you still feel like you have a penis when you’re sexually aroused. It’s like phantom limb syndrome. It’s all been a terrible misadventure. I’ve never been a woman, just Alan . . . the analogy I use about giving surgery to someone desperate to change sex is it’s a bit like offering liposuction to an anorexic.

Alan Finch, cited by Stella Morabito, Trouble in Transtopia:  Murmurs Of Sex Change Regret

Moral Pollution

Moral pollution is very much like atmospheric pollution -- one may not be conscious of the buildup in levels of pollution until he is damaged by it.

Robertson McQuilkin, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, p.218

Supreme Court Reigns?

"The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court . . .  the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."


Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, as cited by Robert H. Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah, p.318

It's Not Your Fault

Everything bad, from temper tantrums, drunkenness, and road rage to “pathological lying, cheating, stealing, physical aggression and drug abuse,” is now a disease.  Everything is physiological or genetic and treated with drugs.  Nothing is your fault. You’re an innocent victim.

Furthermore, many of us like it that way.  We like the idea that whatever is wrong with us amounts to an organic disorder, that there’s no sin, no weakness, no deficit of character on our part.  Our egos love that; it comforts us.

David Kupelian, How Evil Works, p.81

Liberalism's Control of Life

Liberalism rejects the notion that God gives life and resents the notion that God controls death.  So liberals would seize that power and make matters of both life and death into questions of human choice.  We now understand why abortion and euthanasia have to be such major themes on the Left’s political landscape, in spite of the fact that polls repeatedly show that America is far from sanguine over the expanded practice of abortion.  In other words, the Left does not endorse abortion to win elections; it endorses abortion because that is its very purpose.  It is part of its religious principle, if you like.

We can also find the exception that proves the rule.  The Bible does give society one measure of control over life:  It authorizes capital punishment for certain crimes.  If human control over life and death, generically understood, were the underlying principle in the Left’s position on abortion and euthanasia, then wouldn’t liberalism fight for capital punishment as a logical extension of their principle?  Either society should have control over life and death or it should not.  But instead the liberal position opposes the death penalty at every turn, even, if the criminal himself desires to be executed.  This moral repugnance for imposing capital punishment is best explained by our hypothesis.  The biblical model says that we should welcome new life and revere elderly life, but the lives of murderers should be taken.  Liberalism turns this policy on its head: New life and elderly life, if unwanted, inconvenient, or medically challenged, should be taken while murderers should be spared.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," p.61

Psychology Is the Culprit

Ironically, the one culprit which has been the major cause of the rapid and deep slide into immorality in the last forty years is generally promoted rather than opposed by those leading the crusade against immorality.  That culprit is psychology.

Psychology’s redefining of sin as sickness has excused immorality and thus encouraged it.  Instead of being held accountable and called upon to repent, the sinner is diagnosed as in need of “therapy.”  Everything from disobedience to murder is excused these days as some kind of syndrome or addiction.  Adulterers are now “sex addicts” whose insurance covers lengthy “treatment” at Christian psychiatric hospitals.  Christ’s command to “Go and sin no more (Jn 8:11) is “too simplistic” these days.

The explosion of crime, rebellion and immorality has coincided with the exponential growth of psychology since the early 1950s, a grown which is still accelerating.  There was a 43 percent increase in the number of Americans in the 10-19 age bracket committed to psychiatric hospitals from 1980 to 1987, while the number of private psychiatric beds per 100,000 persons more than doubled in the five years from 1983 to 1988.  What a growth industry!  Psychology has been rightly called the only profession that “creates the diseases which it claims to cure.”

Dave Hunt, “The Christian Mission,” The Berean Call, August 1996

Social Justice?

Calling unrealistic standards “social justice” enables intellectuals to engage in endless complaints about the particular ways in which a particular society fails to meet their criteria, along with a parade of groups entitled to a sense of grievance, exemplified in the “race, class, and gender” formula today, though the same kind of thinking behind that particular formula has also been used to depict children as victims of their parents and illegal immigrants as victims of a calloused or xenophobic society in the country they enter, in violation of its laws.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.540

Advertisements Appeal To Basest Levels

Defenders of modern advertising are apt to point out that advertising is wedded to scientific materialism for the most practical of all reasons:  It works.  While this statement is undoubtedly true, it does not make modern advertising any less dehumanizing.  By treating consumers as animals to be conditioned rather than as rational beings to be persuaded, the scientific ad men essentially reduce human beings to the level of lab rats.  Instead of appealing to the better angles of human nature, they target people’s lowest material appetites.

John G. West, "Darwin Day in America: How our politics and culture have been dehumanized in the name of science," p.185

The Harm of Psychologizing Deviance

The continued attempts to psychologize and “understand” deviance — even in the face of evil such as that which appeared in America on September 11 — show the distance some will go to avoid applying moral categories of judgment.  Sociologists Peter Conrad and Joseph Schneider cautioned us more than three decades ago that the medicalization of deviance would eventually “shroud conditions, events and people and prevent them from being confronted as evil.”  Said’s suggestion that the terrorists who tried to blow up America were deranged but not evil demonstrates how prophetic they were.  Although medicalizing deviance does not automatically render evil consequences good, the assumption that behavior is the product of a “sick” mind or body gives it a status similar to that of “accidents.”  Removing intent or motive hinders us from comprehending the human element in the decisions we make, the actions we take and the social structure we create.

The reluctance of sociologists to acknowledge that there are moral judgments  to be made when discussing a subject like deviance shows how far this discipline has strayed from its origins. …

Today the most influential definers of deviance are not moral figures but political advocates whose efforts often involve defending those previously regarded as deviant and attacking those previously regarded as normal.

Anne Hendershott, The Politics of Deviance, p.155-157

Be Harsh With Truth

I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice.  On this subject [slavery] I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation.  Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher…?  No! No!

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), cited in “Quotable,” The Berean Call, February 1996

Atheism NEEDS Evolutionism

Without the theory of evolution, the Humanist would have to rely on God as the explanation for life, which would necessarily destroy his atheism and hence his Humanism.  Therefore, every Secular Humanist embraces the theory of evolution.

David A. Noebel in Understanding the Times, p.267

Sexual Fidelity Increases Pleasure

Fidelity in marriage maximizes sex itself.  The discipline of focusing one's mental fantasies on the marriage partner alone has the great benefit of intensifying sexual fulfillment.  Furthermore, the pure in heart are safeguarded from the deception of an unreal world created by skillful photographers and makeup artists.  The illusion created constantly in our society is that the world is filled with young, beautiful, available, eager, perfect bodies awaiting the conquest of the smart playboy or playgirl. One is easily seduced into thinking he is missing out on something, and by feeding his imagination on this fare he sets himself up for failure in a marriage that cannot compete with the mirage.  If he had never indulged his mind in such a dream world, he might have discovered more quickly and more fully that sexual fulfillment itself is most intense, most enduring, and constantly growing only in the commitment of two who have become one flesh exclusively and permanently. 

Robertson McQuilkin, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, p.191

Creating the Herd

Entertainment, advertising, and television surround us with disorganized clamor of yearning and alienation, while education systematically turns students into autonomous units of will and ego, of “empowerment” and “self-esteem.”

That combined influence of education, popular culture, and television, has already produced results in our society.  One result is a large pool of people who respond readily to manipulation because they have been cut off from the knowledge (of God, of culture, of right and wrong) that would enable them to sift their experience and evaluate it.  Another result is a breed of young people who have learned to feel good about themselves while behaving in ways that are ruthlessly anti-social.  The same influences create both the herd, and the psychopath who cuts from the herd.



Brooks Alexander, “Abolished Man: From Instruction to Indoctrination in the New Education,” SCP [Spiritual Counterfeits Project] Journal, Vol. 16:4, P.5-6

All Cultures Are NOT Equal

Most women’s studies, racial and ethnic studies, and gay and lesbian studies are intellectual hoaxes, programs of propaganda an mutual support. It is hardly surprising that denials of the possibility of rationality should come from groups whose excuse for existence is threatened by rational inquiry.  The knowledge that science produces, moreover, often results in a picture of the world that is anathema to the more rabid egalitarians, for that knowledge may demonstrate there there is a hard, concrete reality blocking the egalitarians’ path forward.  Radical feminism is put in peril by scientific proof that some sex-role differences are inherent and cannot be dismissed as mere social constructs.  To multiculturalists, empirical investigation is dangerous because it will demonstrate that not all cultures are equal in their capacity to equip their members for success in the modern world.  Contrary to the claims of the multiculturalists, there are not different ways of knowing.

Robert H. Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah, p.267

Student Indoctrination

As early as elementary school, students have been encouraged or recruited to take stands on complex policy issues ranging up to and including policies concerning nuclear weapons, on which whole classes have been assigned to write members of Congress or to the President of the United States.  College admissions committees can give weight to various forms of environmentalism or other activism in considering which applicants to admit, and it is common for colleges to require “community service” as a prerequisite for applicants to be considered at all — with the admissions committee arbitrarily defining what is to be considered a “community service,” as if, for example, it is unambiguously clear that aiding and abetting vagrancy (“the homeless”) is a service rather than a disservice to a community.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.516

Hedonism Blinds

It is not pain that has driven the West into emptiness; it has been the drowning of meaning in the oceans of our pleasures.  Pleasure gone wrong is a greater curse than physical blindness.  And blindness to the sacred is the cause of all evil.

Ravi Zacharias, “Existential Challenges of Evil and Suffering,” in the book, “Beyond Opinion,” Ravi Zacharias, author and general editor, p.206-207

Our Culture of Narcissism

We have phony rich people (with interest-only mortgages and piles of debt), phony beauty (with plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures), phony athletes (with performance-enhancing drugs), phony celebrities (via reality TV and YouTube), phony genius students (with grade inflation), a phony national economy (with $11 trillion of government debt), phony feelings of being special among children (with parenting and education focused on self-esteem), and phony friends (with the social networking explosion).  All this fantasy might feel good, but, unfortunately, reality always wins.  The mortgage meltdown and the resulting financial crisis are just one demonstration of how inflated desires eventually crash to earth.

Jean M. Twenge, Ph.D. and W. Keith Campbell, Ph.D., “The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement,” introduction (2009), as cited by David Kupelian, How Evil Works, p.81

We Are Committing National Suicide

Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.

Abraham Lincoln, Lyceum Address

Anti-Godism

There are many, many ways to worship God but only one way to reject Him.  Thus, many different views can share one basic urge: the rejection of God.  This, I think, best accounts for both the divided nature of the conservative movement and the congruence of the far Left.  It helps explain the unlikely uniformity of the anti-God alliance.  Why do gun-control advocates make common cause with militant abortion advocates?  What interests do either of these groups share with the homosexual lobby?  Why can these groups nearly always be found standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the multiculturalism militia and the condom counselors?  Clearly, they must all share a great unifying principle, which, whether intended or not, is anti-Godism.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," p.60

Islam Is More Than a Religion

Islam cannot be defined as a religion in the Western sense of the word; neither can it be termed as a faith.  Muslim scholars state that Islam is an all-encompassing system — a sociopolitical, socioreligious system, as well as a socioeconomic, socio-educational, legislative, judiciary, and military system governing every aspect of the lives of its adherents, their relationships among themselves, and with those who are non-Muslims. . . . 

In Islam, the very idea of a “choice” is not only an anathema but is also regarded as an anti-Islamic concept.  Freedom of choice does not exist in Islam; neither is religion a private or personal matter.  All decisions have already been made by Allah and his prophet Muhammad, so Muslims have no choice but to follow these divine regulations, as we see prescribed in Sura 33:36: “It is not for a believer, man or woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decreed a matter that they should have any option in their decision.  And whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger, he has indeed strayed in plain error.”

Sam Soloman, “Challenges from Islam,” in the book, “Beyond Opinion,” Ravi Zacharias, author and general editor, p.62, 70

Sex "Education"?

[W]hen the long downward trend in teenage pregnancy and venereal disease suddenly reversed after the attitude-changing exercises known as “sex education” were introduced into American schools in the 1960s, it was the parents who were left to pick up the pieces when a teenage daughter became pregnant or an adolescent son caught some venereal disease.  No teacher had to pay anything toward the financial costs or to lose a moment’s sleep over what had happened in these young people’s personal lives, and verbal virtuosity enabled the changed values which “sex education” promoted to not only escape censure but even to continue to foster the impression that what was called “sex education” was the solution, even when it turned out empirically  to be an aggravation of the problem.

Like so much else, “sex education” fit the vision, which exempted it from the requirement of fitting the facts.  Moreover, because these indoctrination exercises in promoting different values were called “education,” their legitimacy in the schools escaped serious scrutiny, as did their role in the results that followed.


Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.516

It All Began With Woodrow Wilson

During the presidential election campaign of 1912, Wilson explicitly invoked Darwin to justify an evolutionary understanding of the U.S. Constitution that would allow the federal government to dramatically expand its powers over the economy.

According to Wilson, the Constitution betrayed the Founders’ “Newtonian” view that government was built on unchanging laws like “the law of gravitation.”  In truth, however, government “falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life.  It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life.”  Hence, “living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice.  Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of Life … [I]t must develop.”  Wilson averred that “all that progressives ask or desire is permission — in an era when ‘development,’ ‘evolution,’ is the scientific word — to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle.”

The doctrine of the evolving Constitution articulated by Wilson and other Progressives opened the door to much greater regulation of business and the economy, eventually paving the way for the New Deal.  But once the door was opened to regulate the rich, there was no reason increased government powers should not also be used to regulate the poor.  The stage was thus set for a different kind of Social Darwinism, one based not on laissez faire but on the idea that government should scientifically plan and regulate even the most intimate questions of family life.

John G. West, "Darwin Day in America: How our politics and culture have been dehumanized in the name of science," p.122

Beware of "Experts"

In an age of technology and expertise, we have been convinced that we should listen to the “experts” rather than common sense in determining the norms, values and attitudes of our families, our churches and other trusted institutions.  Cultural relativists urge us to adapt to the changes of our times, which they define as “progress” rather than mere change whose inevitability is not assured.

Anne Hendershott, The Politics of Deviance, p.154

The Right Worldview

If our country gets the wrong answer to the worldview question, then it will get the wrong answer to moral questions, as well.  And that’s exactly why our culture is where it is today.   We’ve allowed the atheistic worldview to take over without challenging its validity.  Homosexuality, abortion, and euthanasia are symptoms of a wrong worldview.  The correct worldview recognizes that life isn’t all about me! me! me! — it recognizes that we have a duty to others, as well.  We’re not here to simply please ourselves — to take the easy way out of difficult and inconvenient situations — but to bravely serve God and others as the Moral Law instructs.  The Moral Law mandates that we protect life, not destroy it.  Until we accept this truth and act on it, our nation will teeter on the brink of self-destruction.

Dr. Norman Geisler & Frank Turek, "Legislating Morality," p.203

There Must Be Moral Absolutes

If there is no absolute beyond man's ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict.  We are merely left with conflicting opinions.

Francis A. Shaeffer, How Should We Then Live?, p.145

Living Together vs Marriage

You can't say to someone, "I love you.  Let's live together to see what happens."  On those terms, either of you can split at a moment's notice.  As a result you never really can be yourself or feel free to disagree without fear of losing the other person.  You can never have the liberty to share your deepest feelings.  You have to hold back.  The relationship doesn't get a chance to grow because it is based on a conditional acceptance which is the cover for the self-gratification of two people indulging themselves in what they politely term a meaningful relationship.  Real commitment, on the other hand, says, "I am willing to spend my life with you to see you grow." . . . 

Others say, "For as long as we both shall love . . . ."  Love may have some cold spots, and it alone will never be enough to hold two people together.  It's commitment that carries them over difficult times.  Commitment is what God intended between a man and a woman.  That is why he set up marriage - to express a lifelong commitment.


Michael Zadig, HIS, March 1977, p.7, as cited by Robertson McQuilkin, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, p.191

Indoctrination in Education

Among those with a sense of mission are those who teach the young, whether teachers in the schools or professors in colleges and universities.  Those among the academics or school teachers who lack either the inclination or the talent to become public intellectuals can instead vent their opinions in the classroom to a captive audience of students, operating in a smaller arena but in a setting with little chance of serious challenge.  In such settings, their aggregate influence on the mindset of a generation may be out of all proportion to their competence — not simply in what they directly impart, but more fundamentally in habituating their students to reaching sweeping conclusions after hearing only one side of an issue and then either venting their emotions or springing into action, whether by writing letters to public officials as part of classroom assignments or taking part in other, more direct activism.  In these cases as well, there are few, if any, constraints beforehand and no accountability for the consequences afterwards.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.515

"Affirmative Action" is Unfair

Sometimes preferential policies are justified as a form of reparations for a past history of discrimination.  That would make sense, however, only if we ignore individuals and think of races as undifferentiated blocs whose members live forever.  The individual beneficiaries and victims of past discrimination are now almost entirely unknowable.  It is hardly sensible to prefer a person who has not suffered discrimination because a member of the same race or sex suffered it thirty years ago.  Whatever happened in the past, in the present the policy does harm to guiltless individuals and benefits those who have suffered no harm.  At some point, history must be accepted for what it is, history.

Robert H. Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah, p.238

Humanism is Inconsistent

Although they claim to be humane, they promote the killing of innocent life (abortion, euthanasia).  Although they claim to be scientific, they violate basic laws of science.  Although they claim to be rational, they violate fundamental principles of reason.  Although they claim that all ethics is relative, they do so with an absolute statement.  In the final analysis, then, secular humanism is not a consistent position.

Norman Geisler, “Is Man the Measure?” p.161, cited by Dr. Harold J. Berry in, What They Believe, p.240

Secular Humanists Are Unsure of Their Ideology

When a group is afraid to let others address an issue, it indicates the adherents are unsure of the validity of their position.  Those who believe in a standard for truth don’t believe truth will hurt by letting others express their views, no matter how erroneous those views are.  But notice how insecure the humanists are: “We deplore the efforts by fundamentalists . . . to invade the science classrooms, requiring that creationist theory be taught to students and requiring that it be included in biology textbooks.  This is a serious threat to both academic freedom and to the integrity of the educational process.”

Dr. Harold J. Berry, What They Believe, p.237

Live As A Human!

We absolutely must realize that if we just keep going along with whatever compulsions and drives we see rising up in us, and wallow in them, and justify them, and condemn anybody who dares to ask the tough questions, we’re living as animals, not humans.

And believe me, that’s no truly living.  Unless, of course, you’re a goat.

David Kupelian, How Evil Works, p.46

Pluralism

To accept pluralism is not to embrace openness but to reject one’s own tradition for another, the pluralist’s.  Pluralism renders vacuous the notion of being in a given religious tradition.  How is this preserving the uniqueness of individual religions?

Alison Thomas, “Challenges From Youth,” in the book, “Beyond Opinion,” Ravi Zacharias, author and general editor, p.42

Non-Judgmental Society

What a non-judgmental society amounts to is that common decency is optional -- which means that decency is likely to become less common.

If you took all the mumbo-jumbo out of our educational institutions, how much would be left? Students could finish their education years earlier and end up knowing a lot more than they know now.

I must have heard the word "diversity" proclaimed in ringing tones as a great benefit to society at least a thousand times -- and probably closer to a million -- without even once hearing a speck of evidence provided, or even suggested as a way to test whether that is true or false.

Thomas Sowell, "Random Thoughts," 30 September 2014