Use Discernment With Evolutionism

A good reading guideline [regarding evolution], if you are compelled to read the likes of [Steve] Jones, [Richard] Lewontin, [Richard] Dawkins, [Stephen Jay] Gould, and [Charles] Darwin, is to keep your scalpel handy and perform mental liposuction as you go. Suction out the invalidated, irrelevant, uncorroborated, unauthenticated, unsubstantiated, unverified (and unverifiable), unproven (and unprovable), plus the unwarranted statements and unbridled assumptions. You will be shocked at how little is left of evolution literature.

Duane Arthur Schmidt, “And God Created Darwin: The Death of Darwinian Evolution,” pg. 64

How To Be Safe

There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men, and then by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief.

Edmund Burke. Cited by Thomas Sowell, Dismantling America, pg.106

Learn the Antidote

The antidote to indoctrination is to tell the truth, expose people to the lies that would deceive them, show them how to refute this lies, and prepare them with the thinking skills necessary to continue resisting falsehoods.

Understanding the Times: A Survey of Competing Worldviews, by Jeff Myers & David A. Noebel, pg. 9

Watch Out for Ear-Ticklers

We should consider what is said—not with what eloquence it is said. Nor should we look at how it tickles the ears. Instead, we should look at the benefits that it confers on its hearers.

Arnobius (ca.305), 6:340. Cited in A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs, edited by David W. Bercot, Pg 550

Be Careful With Friendships

 

I Don't Know Its Origin, But It is TRUE!

 

Beware the Lack of Reason

Presumption

Presumption is a fire-work made up of pride and foolhardiness. It is indeed like a heavy house built upon slender crutches. Like dust, which men throw against the wind, it flies back in their faces, and makes the blind.

Author unknown. Quoted in Was Christ God, by Spiros Zodhiates

Body Problem or Mind Problem?

Does a man who has a healthy arm surgically removed because he doesn't feel it is a rightful part of his body have a body problem or a mind problem? When a man who is fifty-two identifies as a six-year-old girl, does he have a body problem or a mind problem? Does a woman who has anorexia and starves herself to death have a body problem or a mind problem? Just so, when someone who argues that they are transgender and, therefore, contemplating irreversible gender reassignment surgery, we must help them understand that they do not have a body problem, but a mind problem. It goes without saying that there is also a spiritual problem!

Erwin W. Lutzer, The Church in Babylon: Heeding the Call to Be a Light in the Darkness, pg.161

Absurdity is No Longer an Argument

In a culture where reason and common sense no longer carry any weight, absurdity is not longer an argument against anything.

Erwin W. Lutzer, The Church in Babylon: Heeding the Call to Be a Light in the Darkness, pg.160

Be Careful to Discern Reality

Unreality is big business. It is manufactured and sold on a gigantic scale. It has intruded itself into every aspect of our lives. For example, by some estimates, public relations, i.e., the deliberate manufacturing of slanted information, accounts for up to 70 percent of what passes for news and information in our society. The end consequence is a society less and less able to face its true problems directly, honestly, and intelligently.

Ian I. Mitroff and Warren Bennis, The Unreality Industry, cited by G. Richard Fisher, “How Well I Remember,” The Quarterly Journal of Personal Freedom Outreach, Vol.38/No.3, pg.23.

Educate Yourself, Think for Yourself

Privacy is harder than ever when everyone is invited to be linked in, connected and transparent to others (including hackers and the government), but it matters.  Reading books is time consuming, but it matters. Reflection is easily drowned out when life is fired at us point-blank, but it matters. Independent thinking is hard when the social media reinforce groupthink, but it matters. Thinking for ourselves is difficult when it is so much easier to download an expert opinion, but it is essential to the freedom of our own agency, so it matters. Conversations with an iron-sharpens-iron quality are rarer when minds seek carbon-copy approval from others in their own bubble, but they matter. History is more crucial than ever when the relentless modern focus is on the present and the future, but it matters. The courage to hold unfashionable convictions is more difficult when social media mobs give their thumbs-up or thumbs-down like a Roman emperor, but it matters.

And so it goes.  Having the right information is vital, but achieving genuine knowledge is better, and mastering both and then attaining true wisdom is better still.

Os Guinness, Impossible People, pg.201-202

Three Questions to Always Ask

There are always essential questions too ask of anyone we hear or anything we read. What is being said? Is it true? And what of it? All three questions are discounted in our modern age of information, but as Christians we must never allow the truth question to be removed from its central place. To be sure, faithfulness is costly in the short term. It is upstream and against the flow, and the flow that was once politically correct can suddenly become a raging and life-threatening intolerance. But costly though that stand may be, it is never as costly as the long-term price of rejecting the authority of Jesus and abandoning the way of life in the gospel. Our Lord warned of that very danger: “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mt10:28). 

Os Guinness, Impossible People, pg.73-74

The Ease of Deceiving the Populace

The great masses of the people more easily fall victim to the big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big.  Such a falsehood will never enter their heads, and they will not be able to believe in the possibility of such monstrous effrontery and infamous misrepresentation in others.

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

No, Hitler was not a conservative, but this citation from him demonstrates the ideology of the LEFT, including the Democrat Party.  The LEFT uses big lies to promote their agenda, as they have learned from Hitler.

Prudence

Prudence consists in judging well what is to be said, and what is to be done, on every new occasion; when to lie still, and when to be active; when to keep silence, and when to speak; what to avoid, and what to pursue; how to act in every difficulty; what means to make use of to compass such an end; how to behave in every circumstance of life, and in all companies; how to gain the favor of mankind, in order to promote our own happiness, and to do the most service to God and the most good to men, according to that station we possess, and those opportunities which we enjoy.

Isaac Watts, The Improvement of the Mind: A Supplement to Logic, pg.330

Educate Yourself!

Furnish yourselves with a rich variety of ideas; acquaint yourselves with things ancient and modern; things natural, civil, and religious; things domestic and national; things of your native land, and of foreign countries; things present, past, and future; and above all, be well acquainted with God and yourselves; learn animal nature, and the workings of your own spirits.  Such general acquaintance with things will be of very great advantage.

The first benefit of it is this: it will assist the use of reason in all its following operations; it will teach you to judge of things aright; to argue justly, and methodise your thoughts with accuracy. When you shall find several things akin to each other, and several different from each other, agreeing in some part of their idea, and disagreeing in other parts, you will arrange your ideas in better order, you will be more easily led into a distich knowledge of things, and will obtain a rich store of proper thoughts and arguments upon all occasions.  …

Another benefit is this:  Such a large and general acquaintance with things will secure you from perpetual admirations and surprises, and guard you against that weakness of ignorant persons, who have never seen any thing beyond the confines of their own dwelling, and therefore they wonder at almost ever thing they see; every thing beyond the smoke of their own chimney, and reach of their own windows, is new and strange to them.

A third benefit of such a universal acquaintance with things is this: it will keep you from being too positive and dogmatical, from an excess of credulity and unbelief, that is, a readiness to believe, or to deny, every thing at first hearing; when you shall have often seen, that strange and uncommon things, which often seemed incredible, are found to be true: and things very commonly received have been found false.

Isaac Watts, Logic: The Right Use of Reason in the Inquiry After Truth, pg.69-71

Christians Should Be Close-Minded

There is a cultural and spiritual war going on around us. The Left realizes this and acts accordingly. Many Christians are still sitting politely at the table, though, hoping the other side will come and have a civilized chat over a cup of tea. And even if they never come, the genteel folks at the table figure that at least they'll have done the right thing and lead by example. But your example is terrible, and nobody is paying attention to it anyway. You're only massaging your ego while you sit alone whispering to yourself about what a good boy you've been. "Look at me! I'm so civil!" The Devil appreciates your cooperation, you coward.

The truth is eternal, not elastic. It is what it is. Once we come to know it, our minds should be absolutely and permanently closed around it. We should be intolerant of Satan's lies and unwilling to "hear him out" or consider his point of view. We should show respect to the people who have been duped by him, and we should love them, but we ought to have no respect or love for their ideas, which are wicked and delusional. We are already accused of being closed-minded. It's time we earn the label.

Matt Walsh, Christians In America Aren't Closed-Minded Or Intolerant — But They Should Be

Don't Surrender Reason!

Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck.

Thomas Jefferson (1822)

Study History to Avoid Genocide

Humans are very susceptible to groupthink, ignorance, propaganda, agitation, and psychological manipulation that weakens their resolve. People are also often all too eager to blame their own problems on convenient scapegoats. These human flaws clarify why “Never forget” is the cry associated with the Holocaust and all crimes against humanity.

This is why everybody must respect the study of history. After all, studying history is about remembering. It’s about learning from experience, which is why we must emphatically reject any attempt to water down the accurate teaching and study of history.

Stella Morabito, We Must Never Forget That Genocide Begins With Groupthink

Deception By Investment

The blinding of a person’s will happens when he or she has fully invested themselves into something which turns out to be a terrible mistake. Not willing to accept that they have fully invested themselves in an egregious error blinds them from the reality of it. They simply will the error to be true. We see this all the time in cult interaction. You can prove to a person that he has been deceived, that he is believing and living a lie, and you may even see the distress this information is causing him, yet he sets his face, his will, and simply refuses to “understand” what you are saying.

Don and Joy Veinot, “Invested”