Television Is About Control

Television is all about control.  When we watch it, we allow it to control us.  There is an unspoken agreement between the television watcher and the programmer in which the watcher trusts the programmer and simply soaks up what is being transmitted.  This has been preconditioned into us by decades of tele-watching.

Alan  Morrison, "God TV," SCP Journal, Vol.29:4-30:1, 2006, p.23

Abortion Helps Those Who Use Women

Abortion makes women more susceptible to predatory males who want to use women for sex but aren’t really interested in making long-term commitments to them.

Dr. Norman Geisler & Frank Turek, "Legislating Morality," p.161

Opium of the People?

Religion, opium for the people! To those suffering pain, humiliation, illness, and serfdom, it promised a reward in afterlife.  And now we are witnessing a transformation.  A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.  The Marxist creed has now been inverted.  The true opium of modernity is the belief that there is no God, so that humans are free to do precisely as they please.

Czeslaw Milosz, cited by Alister McGrath in the book, “Beyond Opinion,” Ravi Zacharias, author and general editor, p,32

Liberals Act Like Pavlov's Dog

The benefits of “diversity” need only be asserted, reiterated and insisted upon - but never demonstrated or even illustrated empirically, much less proved. …

Merely saying words like “diversity,” “glass ceiling” or “disparate impact” banishes any need for evidence to supplement the peer consensus which produces automatic responses not unlike those of Pavlov’s dog.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, P.501

No Moral or Philosophical Vacuum in Education

Education never takes place in a moral and philosophical vacuum.  If the larger questions about human beings and their destiny are not being asked and answered within a predominantly Judeo-Christian framework, they will be addressed with another philosophical or religious framework -- but hardly one that is "neutral." The arrogance and philosophical implausibility of secular humanism are demonstrated by the insistence of many humanists that their position possesses such neutrality, lack of dogma, and essential rationality.  It is an arrogance that also quickly becomes coercive and imperialistic, as is clearly seen in the widespread opposition among such educators toward genuine choice in education, for instance, the kind of choice that would be possible through a system of education tuition vouchers.

Richard A. Baer, "They Are Teaching Religion in Public Schools," Christianity Today, February 17, 1984, p.15

Sex Indoctrination In Public Schools

Sex education in the schools  appears to operate more as an incitement to sexual activity than as a heeded caution.  Chelmsford (Massachusetts) High School employed Suzanne Lanndolphi of Hot, Sexy and Safer Productions to give two performances for students in the ninth through twelfth grades in which she gave sexually explicit monologues and discussed penis and breast size and advocated oral sex, masturbation, and homosexual activity among minors.  Parents were not told in advance and students were not permitted to opt out.   Some parents and students sued, so far without success.  Stories like this abound, but even when the advocacy is less open, the message that the students are expected to engage in sex is always there.  Opportunities for teenagers to engage in sex are also more frequent than previously: much of it takes place in homes that are now empty because the mothers are working.  The modern liberal devotion to sex education is an ideological commitment rather than a policy of prudence.

Robert H. Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah, p.159

Sexual Anarchy Hurts

Let’s stop for a minute and ask: Just how obvious do clues need to be before we figure out this message [that extramarital sex is wrong]?  Horrible plagues and millions of unwanted babies seem like pretty good indicators that we were not intended to use our bodies the way many of us do.  Yet in our cleverness we find ways to circumvent these divine roadblocks by way of artificial birth control, abortion, alternative sex acts, and so on.  But we’re still just making an absurd end run around God’s obvious decree that sex, very simply, is sacred.

Another way we know extramarital sex is wrong is simply that it’s pure selfishness and self-gratification.  In marriage, there is lifelong commitment, as well as the deep respect for one’s spouse that can germinate and grow only in the soil of lifelong commitment.  In nonmarried sex there is nothing but exploitation — using the other person in an attempt to fulfill ourselves.  Without commitment, its impossible for there to be love — since love is commitment.  Sorry, the truth hurts.

David Kupelian, How Evil Works, p.44-45

Atheists Fear God

It is reasonable to ask whether all human beings do indeed long for the existence of God.  For example, consider a serial murderer who took delight in the pain and trauma of his victims.  Would there not be excellent reasons for supposing that he might hope that God does not exist, given what might await him on the Day of Judgment?  And might not his atheism itself be a wish fulfillment?  The history of Western thought makes it clear that one fundamental motivation for atheism is the fear of accountability and retribution in the sight of God.

Alister McGrath, “Challenges from Atheism,” in the book “Beyond Opinion,” Ravi Zacharias, author and general editor, p.31

The "Emotion" Card

One of the most common violations of intellectual standards by intellectuals has been the practice of attributing an emotion (racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc.) to those whose views differ from theirs, rather than answering their arguments.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.496

Whose Children Are They?

If someone came into your yard and ripped up your geraniums, replacing them with daffodils, you wouldn’t debate the relative merits of geraniums and daffodils.  You would tell them to get out of your yard.  Once you start debating the relative merits of geraniums and daffodils, you have already given up the central issue: Whose yard is this?  Similarly, the issue is not whether schools should teach sexual abstinence or hand out condoms.  The issue is: Whose children are these?

Thomas Sowell, cited by Dana Mack in, The Assault on Parenthood: How Our Culture Undermines the Family, p.306

God Made Sex For Marriage Only

God says, “One woman, one man,” and everyone says, “Oh, that's old hat, that's that old Bible stuff.”  I’m thinking, let's see now; a clean guy -- a disease-free guy and a disease-free woman -- they marry and they keep their sex between the two of them.  They're not going to get chlamydia, and gonorrhea, and syphilis, and AIDS.  It's safe.  Now to me, either it's the wildest coincidence ever that horrible diseases follow immoral conduct, or, it's God saying, “There's a penalty for that kind of conduct.”  I'm leaning towards there's a penalty toward it.

Phil Robertson, of “Duck Dynasty,”  interview with Tony Perkins on Washington Watch radio, 9/9/14

Victimology

Under the tutelage of the social sciences, especially psychology, the concept of what is wrong with humans has evolved from sin to illness to error to hurt so that far from feeling guilty, the predominant feeling is that someone with problems is a victim of someone else’s malice, avarice, or stupidity.

Robertson McQuilkin, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, p.73

Evolution: Dogma, Not Science

College students have told me that if they question evolutionary doctrine in a class, they are told that no dissent is allowed.  What better proof that this is dogma, not science?  The elementary or high school science teacher is passing on to the next generation what he has been told.  He is often personally religious but separates his beliefs from what he has been taught are irrefutable facts.  In contrast, the high priests of the evolution movement comprehend very well what the battle really is.  To them evolution must be correct because there must be the probability of a world without God.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, America's Real War, p.53

No Human Value = No Utopia

A worldview that says human life has no inherent value or dignity will never lead to utopia, no matter how advanced the tools and gadgets.


Nancy Pearcey, "Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning,"  p.60

Medicating Behavior Problems Creates More Problems

By the [year 2000], an estimated 4 million American children were on [Ritalin] and doctors were issuing 11 million prescriptions for it each year.  In some schools, the proportion of students on Ritalin and similar stimulants has reached 30 or 40 percent.  America consumes nearly 90 percent of the world’s production of Ritalin, and the drug is now routinely prescribed for children below the age of three, despite the fact that it is only approved for use on children age six or older.  Pharmacologically related to cocaine, Ritalin is a potentially dangerous drug that can have serious side effects, including psychotic reactions.

Medical doctors as well as educators are apparently finding it hard to resist the lure of the materialistic quick fix offered by Ritalin and other psychiatric drugs.  Treating a behavior problem as solely a physical disorder of the brain is much simpler than trying to investigate a child’s dysfunctional relationships.  It also avoids the messy situation of having to get people to accept responsibility for their actions.  In the biological model, the child need not accept responsibility for his misbehavior because he is ultimately controlled by his disordered brain chemistry.  Similarly, educators need not take responsibility for creating a stimulating learning environment, because student boredom must be cause by organic brain disease rather than, say, the curriculum.  Above all, parents need never feel guilty about failing in their obligations as mothers and fathers, because in the biological model parents’ actions are unrelated to their children distress.

“When we diagnose and drug our children, we disempower ourselves as adults,” Peter Breggin testified at congressional hearings in 2000. “While we may gain momentary relief from guilt by imagining that the fault lies in the brains of our children, ultimately we undermine our ability to make the necessary adult interventions that our children need.”

John G. West, "Darwin Day in America: How our politics and culture have been dehumanized in the name of science," p.99

The World Hates Us

The world is unrelenting in its hostility to us, and determined to wipe out every divine principle for which we stand.  It seeks to supplant creationism with evolution.  It denies the sacredness of human life by abortion.  It achieves the breakdown of the family unit by divorce for any reason.  The purity of the marriage relationship is denied by premarital sex.  Homosexuality and lesbianism are looked on as acceptable alternative lifestyles.  God’s chain of command in the home and in the church is ridiculed by militant feminism.  Church and state are so separated as to band the mention of God and Christ from public life entirely.  Obscenity, pornography, nakedness, filth, and violence are treated with amiable tolerance.  And so, drugged and insensate, the world defies every law of God and hurtles on to its fiery doom.

William MacDonald, Worlds Apart, cited in The Berean Call, March 1994, “Quotable”

“Gays” and Child Sexual Abuse

The 98 percent of the population which is heterosexual accounts for somewhat more child abuse than the 2 percent which is homosexual.  However, that 2 percent tiny minority consistently accounts for one-third to one-half of all sexual child abuse, which it considers to be normal behavior.  A primary goal of the National Gay Task Force (NGTF) is the removal of all age-of-consent laws.  The most extensive study done to dated of male sexual child abusers reveals that the average homosexual victimized 7.5 times as many boys as the average heterosexual did girls.

The Berean Call, May 1993, “Q&A”

Rights Require Responsibility

Inherent in individual freedom and rights is the concept of individual responsibility.  In recent years the latter has been virtually ignored, especially in the United States, where the concept of rights is so heavily accented that little or no emphasis is given to individual responsibility.  Rarely does one hear people — for instance, teachers in schools — talk about the necessity of individual responsibility.  Yet people’s rights and freedom cannot be divorced from their responsibilities without eventually destroying both.

Alvin J. Schmidt, Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization, p. 260

Minimum Wage Laws Kill Jobs

The last year in which black unemployment was lower than white unemployment - 1930 - was also the last year in which there was no federal minimum wage law.  The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 was openly advocated by some members of Congress on grounds that it would stop black construction workers from taking jobs from white construction workers by working for less than the union wages of white workers.  Nor was the use of minimum wage laws to deliberately price competing workers out of labor market unique to the Davis-Bacon Act or to the United States.  Similar arguments were made in Canada in the 1920s, where the object was to price Japanese immigrants out of the labor market, and in South Africa in the era of apartheid, to price non-whites out of the labor market.

Any group whose labor is less in demand, whether for lack of skills or for other reasons, is disproportionately priced out of labor markets when there are minimum wage laws, which are usually established in disregard of differences in skills or experience.  It has not been uncommon in Western Europe, for example, for young people to have unemployment rates above 20 percent.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, pp.450-451

Is War Ever a "Good" Thing?

The question one might pose to the postmodern skeptic who wonders whether war can ever be a good thing is “Would it be a demonstration of goodness to show no opposition to evil?”  Can we approve of a government that offers no resistance to the criminal, whether burglar, rapist, murderer, or child abuser?  This is an important question because both the Old and New Testaments present a portrait of a moral God who judges evil.  One of the means of God’s judgment in the pages of the Old Testament is war.  It is extremely important to note at this point that God’s chosen people, the Israelites, are not always the ones who bring about God’s will on the battlefield.  In fact, they are often on the receiving end of his judgment, finding themselves massacred and enslaved just as at other times they are militarily victorious over other powers. . . .

If God allows and orders war in the Old Testament, then the nature of God as just determines that there must be such a thing as a just war, since God cannot order what is immoral.

Amy Orr-Ewing, “Postmodern Challenges to the Bible,”  in Beyond Opinion, by Ravi Zacharias, author and general editor, p.14, 20

Pedophilia is Not Disordered?!?

In 1994, with little or nor public outcry, the American Psychiatric Association revised its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) so that neither pedophilia nor child molestation would, in itself, necessarily be indicative of psychological disorder.  To qualify as disordered, molesters must feel “anxious” about the acts or be “impaired” in their work or social relationships.  With little media reporting, and even less critical response from the psychological or psychiatric community, the American Psychiatric Association thus took the first step in changing perceptions of what have traditionally been regarded as among the most serious offenses in our society.

Anne Hendershott, The Politics of Deviance, p.91