Wednesday, December 31, 2014

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

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

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

Sunday, December 28, 2014

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

Saturday, December 27, 2014

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

Friday, December 26, 2014

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

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

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

Monday, December 22, 2014

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

Sunday, December 21, 2014

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

Saturday, December 20, 2014

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.

Friday, December 19, 2014

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.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

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

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

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

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

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

Monday, December 15, 2014

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

Sunday, December 14, 2014

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

Saturday, December 13, 2014

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.”

Friday, December 12, 2014

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.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

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

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

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

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

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

Monday, December 8, 2014

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.

Sunday, December 7, 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

Saturday, December 6, 2014

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

Friday, December 5, 2014

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

Thursday, December 4, 2014

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

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

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

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

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

Monday, December 1, 2014

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