Why Doesn't God Stop Evil?

While nearly everyone asks why God doesn’t stop evil, few people ask why God doesn’t stop pleasure.  Stopping pleasure would be an effective way of stopping evil while maintaining human freedom.  That’s because no one does evil for evil’s sake.  We do evil to get good things, such as money, sex, and power.  Take away pleasure and the incentive to do evil would vanish.  But if God were to stop evil by ending pleasure, would the human race continue?  If it did, would anyone like the pleasureless world that remains? 

Frank Turek, Stealing From God, p.142

Why Can Atheists Play God?

The source of all life is justified in taking life whenever He decides.  We are not.  Yet Richard Dawkins recently affirmed his pro-abortion stance by declaring, “A fetus is less human than an adult pig.”  That echoes the thoughts of fellow atheist Peter Singer of Princeton University who believes that parents should have the right to kill their children even after they are born!  Let’s see.  According to the new atheists, when God plays God and kills children, He is immoral.  But when atheists play God and kill children, they are exercising their moral rights.  Can anyone justify that for me? 

Frank Turek, Stealing From God, p.128

Moral Law Means a Moral Lawgiver

Atheism cannot even justify the existence of good and evil without smuggling in the moral argument for God.  To put it simply, when you assert that there is such a thing as evil, you must assume there is such a thing as good.  When you say there is such a thing as good, you must assume there is a moral law by which to distinguish between good and evil.  There must be an ontic referent by which to determine what is good and what is evil.  When you assume a moral law, you must posit a moral lawgiver because the questioner assumes the intrinsic worth of humanity in raising the question of evil, an assumption that is not warranted by naturalism.  But this moral lawgiver is precisely who atheists are trying to disprove.  Without that moral lawgiver, humanity is an existent entity without an essential worth other than some self-referencing sleight of hand.

Frank Turek, Stealing From God, p.x

Satan's Favorite Subject is Sex

The devil is endlessly ingenious, and sex is his favorite subject.  He is as good every bit at catching you through generous romantic or tender motives, as through baser or more animal ones.

J.R.R. Tolkein, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, cited by R. Albert Mohler, Jr, in Desire and Deceit: The real Cost of the New Sexual Tolerance, p.3

Eugenics Replaced By Newgenics

Today we are faced with a potential return to eugenic discrimination, not under national flags or political credos, but as a function of human genomic science and corporate globalization.  Shrill declarations of racial dominance are being replaced by polished PR campaigns and patent protections.  What eugenics was unable to accomplish in a century, newgenics may engineer in a generation. The almighty dollar may soon decide who stands on which side of a new genetic divide already being demarcated by the wealthy and powerful.  As we speed toward a new biological horizon, confronting our eugenic past will help us confront the bewildering newgenic future that awaits.

Edwin Black, "War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race," p.xviii

If You Want Her, Marry Her!

Unless a  man is prepared to ask a woman to be his wife, what right has he to claim her exclusive attention?  Unless she has been asked to marry him, why would a sensible woman promise any man her exclusive attention?  If, when the time has come for a commitment, he is not man enough to ask her to marry him, she should give him no reason to presume that she belongs to him.

Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity, p.154

Psychiatric Fads

Fashions in the psychiatric diagnosis have recently become almost as fickle as the popularity of rock stars, trendy restaurants, and travel destinations.  Because there are no biological tests or clear definitions that distinguish normal from mental disorder, everything in psychiatric diagnosis depends on very easily influenced subjective judgments.  Whenever rates of a mental disorder jump explosively, the safe bet is always on fad.  Assume that many, if not most, of the newly identified "patients" are really "normal enough."  They have been mislabeled and will likely be over treated.

Psychiatric fads start when a powerful authority gives them force and legitimacy.  The DSM system, and the "experts" who fashioned it, have been the main fashion setters -- the driving force in identifying new mental disorders and defining milder forms of those that had been previously described.  Unfortunately most experts suffer from an intellectual conflict that biases them toward diagnostic inflation.  Focused on their specialized research, they miss the big picture -- always worrying so much about not having a diagnosis for a patient who needs one that they ignore the risk of mislabeling someone who doesn't.  There is also an emotional element.  Experts become true believers who really come to love their pet diagnoses and want to see them grow.  While each one presses for only a small expansion, their aggregate pressure blows up the inflationary balloon.  In my thirty-five years of herding experts, not once has anyone every suggested raising the bar to narrow the scope of his pet area.

Allen Frances, M.D, "Saving Normal," pp.28-29

Psychiatrists Are Witchdoctors

The techniques used by Western psychiatrists are, with few exceptions, on exactly the same scientific plane as the techniques used by witchdoctors.  If one is magic, then so it the other.  If one is prescientific, then so is the other.

E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists: The Common Roots of Psychotherapy and Its Future, p.11

Government Sexuality Ideology

SIECUS [Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States] argues that hurt feelings provide a further reason not to teach about sex within marriage as the preferred social standard.  It claims that the idea that sex is only appropriate in marriage "may prove particularly harmful to young people who are or have been sexually abused," because "it requires telling these students that the behaviors in which they have involuntarily participated go against society's 'expected standard.'  Such statements are likely to produce additional feelings of guilt and shame."  That's right: according to SIECUS, schools should not teach about reserving sex for marriage because it might make the victims of incest and molestation think that the sexual acts they were coerced into were somehow illegitimate.  What does SIECUS believe schools should do instead?  Assure victims of sexual abuse that they shouldn't feel bad because the acts perpetrated against them were simply the expression of a different set of values?  SIECUS's complaint is eerily reminiscent of claims by an earlier generation of SIECUS officials that the most traumatic part of molestation was that society disapproved of it.

John G. West, "Darwin Day in America: How our politics and culture have been dehumanized in the name of science," p.320

Self-Esteem Teaching Run Amok

At the theoretical level, however, [Dr. Benjamin] Spock can be accused of being permissive insofar as he has promoted the theory of Sigmund Freud.  Parents were told to be exceedingly careful not to damage puerile psyches by disciplining them, for undoing such damage might entail years of psychoanalysis if it could be accomplished at all.  In Spock's view children are fragile reeds who are extremely sensitive to minor parental inconsistencies and emotional innuendo.  Indeed, if one takes psychoanalytic theory seriously it is possible to imagine that bad days for a mother at a crucial stage of childhood development can irrevocably arrest the child's development at one stage or another.  The inevitable outcome of Spock's -- and Freud's -- theory of emotional development has been many parents who are inappropriately overwhelmed by guilt, paralyzed by inaction, and too often unable to say "no."

Spock has acknowledged that attempts to follow his child-rearing prescriptions frequently lead to permissive parents at the same time as he had vehemently denied that he is personally permissive.


E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., "Freudian Fraud: the Malignant Effect of Freud's Theory on American Thought and Culture," p.140-141  (1992)


(This ideology resulted from the whole practice of raising children to remain children rather than to be adults.  Is it any wonder why those who run our colleges, universities, and politics are the way they are -- spoiled brats who always want their way?)

Socialism Destroys Liberty

It may be said of Socialism, therefore, very briefly, that its friends recommended it as increasing equality, while its foes resisted it as decreasing liberty.  On the one hand it was said that the State could provide homes and meals for all; on the other it was answered that this could only be done by State officials who would inspect houses and regulate meals.  The compromise eventually made was one of the most interesting and even curious cases in history.  It was decided to do everything that had ever been denounced in Socialism, and nothing that had ever been desired in it.  Since it was supposed to gain equality at the sacrifice of liberty, we proceeded to prove that it was possible to sacrifice liberty without gaining equality.  Indeed, there was not the faintest attempt to gain equality, least of all economic equality.  But there was a very spirited and vigorous effort to eliminate liberty, by means of an entirely new crop of crude regulations and interferences.


G. K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils, p.100-101 (1922)

The World Is Insane

The modern world is insane, not so much because it admits the abnormal as because it cannot recover the normal.

G. K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils, p.15

Resist Tyranny Before It Exists

The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt.  It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt.  People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late.  It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists.  It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the scheme is only in the air.  A blow from a hatchet can only be parried while it is in the air.

G. K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils, p.1

Moral Absolutes Are Disintegrating

Christian absolutes -- those truths and standards of Scripture which cannot be altered -- are becoming less and less tolerated in society.  Eventually this must result in the outlawing of Christianity.  When Christian absolutes were the basis of society, immoral activities such as homosexual or lesbian lifestyle and pornography were outlawed.  There has been a fundamental shift.  Our society is now based on a relative morality: that is, a person can do what he likes and is answerable to no one but himself as long as the majority of people can be persuaded that their interests are not being threatened.  This results in society's being told that no one can say anything against those who choose to be sexual deviants, go naked publicly or do whatever they want (within the limits of the law, which is also changing to become more "tolerant" of people's actions).

God's absolutes dictate that there are rules by which we must abide.  Christianity cannot co-exist in a world community with relative morality as its basis.  One or the other will yield.

Ken Ham, "The Lie," p.5 (1987)

Vision of the Anointed

It is widely taken as axiomatic that ordinary people's lives lack meaning, which must be brought to them by the anointed via various political crusades or social activism. . . . 
In other words, the purpose of a tax-payer-supported institution is to express the ideologies of those who run it and to brainwash the visiting public with the vision of the anointed.

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

Sorry, But No Life Exists Except Here

The reason for this determination to see life in outer space where no evidence yet exists is simple to see.  It is a rule of mathematics and statistics that no random event happens only once. . . .  If indeed life on earth were a random event; if just by chance bacteria became Bach, then it absolutely and positively must have happened somewhere else in the universe too.  Unless, of course, God made it happen here, which is an unthinkable position because if God did make us, then He also gave us instructions on how to live.  This would spell doom to secular humanism.

To Americans of faith, whether God did or did not create little green men with waving antennae is largely irrelevant.  To the secularist, since God did not create us in the first place, the same random forces that put us here must have also put our first cousins somewhere else.  If we acknowledge that humans are unique and that we have no reason to suspect life exists elsewhere, then anti-Godists face a crisis of faith.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," p.65-66

The Need For a Higher Law

If God has given man a means of discovering and implementing divine law, then the true and just legal system must be based on this revealed law.  [Carl F.H.] Henry says, "One reason law has lost its power in modern life is the failure to recognize divine law as the fundamental law."  Without divine law, the individual has not standard for judging any legal system imposed upon him.  "If a man cannot know, according to a higher law, what is just or right in a given situation," says [John W.] Whitehead, "he cannot protest and criticize legitimately any particular course of action as unjust."

David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times, p.551

No Liberty With Corrupt Manners

Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.

Samuel Adams, signer of the Declaration of Independence

"Victimism"

An exaggerated or selective enforcement of tolerance, or "sensitivity," can easily become a pretext for new forms of oppression.  The prime oppressive ideology in current America is termed "political correctness," the foundation of which is the view that the greatest sins are intolerance and insensitivity.  Philosophically, political correctness has links to Marxism, but I prefer to give it the more generic label of "victimism."  The basic premise of victimism is that society is divided into two categories of persons, victims and oppressors.  The oppressors are always wrong, and the victims are always right.  The goal of political activity (and everything is deemed to be political) is to disempower the oppressors and to empower the victims, often so that they can do some oppressing of their own.  Anyone who has spent much time in one of our great universities will know what I mean. Rules that were formerly thought to be absolute, such as freedom of thought and expression, are discarded whenever the victims' interests so demand.  An oppressor who says something that offends a designated victim is sentenced to sensitivity training, but the victims may abuse the oppressors all they like.

Victimism is supposedly based on a passion for tolerance, but the passion lasts only until the victims have enough power to turn on the oppressors.  Under the rules of victimism, tolerating the oppressors is absurd.  Of course, this philosophy is self-contradictory.  If the victims truly were victims, they would not be given the extraordinary advantages that victim status confers.  The designated "victims" really are victimized in another sense, however; because often the effect of the philosophy is to keep the victims in a state of dependency so they can be manipulated by demagogues.  People who are festering with resentment for real and imagined grievances can be persuaded that their welfare depends on following bullies and extortionists who promise to wrest concessions from the oppressors.


Phillip E. Johnson, The Right Questions: Truth, Meaning & Public Debate, p.122

Sex Education Illusion

The truth is, Planned Parenthood's sex education programs have backfired, actually increasing teen pregnancies.  According to its own survey, conducted by the Louis Harris pollsters, teens who have taken "comprehensive" sex education courses have a fifty percent higher rate of sexual activity than their "unenlightened" peers.  And yet the courses had no significant effect on their contraceptive usage.  The conclusion, one that even Planned Parenthood researchers have been unable to escape, is that sex education courses only exacerbate the teen pregnancy problem. . . . 

In 1970 fewer that half of the nation's school districts offered sex education curricula and none had school-based birth control clinics.  Today more than seventy-five percent of the districts teach sex education and there are more than one hundred clinics in operation.  Yet the percentage of illegitimate births has only increased during that time, from a mere fifteen percent to an astonishing fifty-one percent.

In California, the public schools have required sex education for more than thirty years, and yet the state has maintained one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the nation.

According to the Harris poll, the only things that effectively impact the teen pregnancy problem are frequent church attendance and parental oversight, the very things that Planned Parenthood has been railing against for three-quarters of a century -- the very things that sex education courses are designed to circumvent.


George Grant, "Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood," p.32-33


This citation is dated from 1992; imagine how much worse it has gotten.

Criminals Not Necessarily Responsible?

By rejecting human free will, many psychiatrists argued that responsibility as it had be traditionally conceived was misguided.  However, they generally argued that society had a right to protect itself against morally "aberrant" individuals, so they were not necessarily advocating reduced penalties for criminals.  However, they thought penalties should be determined on the basis of the threat of the individual to society, not based on the particular crime.  The medicalization of criminal justice could sometimes result in longer sentencing, but for "medical" reasons, not retributive justice.

Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler, p.41

Multiculturalism

[M]ulticulturalism is a new form of racism because it reduces a matter of the intellect to a matter of racial or ethnic membership.

Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, “Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air,” p.95

Lethality of Homosexual Practices

We can only wonder how many twenty-year-olds (who were five when AIDS first appeared in America) might have been spared had activists made it their number-one priority to protect individual lives rather than the gay lifestyle. For as the recent survey The Social Organization of Sexuality makes clear, the vast majority of youngsters who at some point adopt homosexual practices later give them up.

These young people, however, are the very ones told by educators to treat homosexuality as equally good — and safe — as heterosexuality.  In one typical incident in the Northeast, a generally liberal, nonreligious mother of a nine-year-old boy reported her son’s return home in tears from public elementary school.  He hung his head in embarrassment and shame and finally told his outraged mother how the teacher had explained to the class how to perform anal intercourse “safely.”

These courses are careful to avoid presenting anal intercourse as the predominantly homosexual practice that it is. . . .  Students are taught to accept homosexual behavior fully without being instructed as to its typical features and typical consequences.  But this subtle distortion of reality is minor compared to the major one that becomes common and lethal — that anal intercourse is safe so long as a condom is used.

The word lethal is deliberate.  Even before we have examined the evidence, I cannot stress too strongly that anal intercourse is not safe for anyone, under any circumstances.  As the evidence makes abundantly clear, anal intercourse is a terribly dangerous practice whose dangers mount with the frequency and multiplicity of partners, conditions that predominate among male homosexuals.  Gay activism is critical in the arena of education.  Teachers of youth should surely consider carefully before advising a course of action that in thousands of cases has led to preventable death.

Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p.22-23

The Modern "Victim"

“Victim,” as used by psychologists, frequently refers to someone who is momentarily upset or generally less satisfied, less happy, less successful or less fulfilled than they believe they should be and who attributes that feeling to something supposedly done to them, or merely witnessed or worried about.  Virtually any event can now qualify a person as a victim.

Dr. Tana Dineen, Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People, p.31-32

The New "Tolerance"

A new cultural definition of “tolerance” has emerged.  Tolerance used to be the attitude that we took toward one another when we disagreed about an important issue; we would agree to treat each other with respect, even though we refused to embrace each other’s view on a particular topic.  Tolerance is now the act of recognizing and embracing all views as equally valuable and true, even though they often make opposite truth claims.  According to this redefinition of tolerance, anything other than acceptance and approval is narrow and bigoted.

J. Warner Wallace, “Cold-Case Christianity,” p.142

Freedom to Love is Freedom to Hate

Which is more loving, a God who creates a world in which love is possible or a God who creates a world in which love is impossible?  It seems reasonable that a loving God would create a world where love is possible and can be experienced by creatures who are designed “in His image.”  But a world in which love is possible can be a dangerous place.  Love requires freedom.  True love requires that humans have the ability to freely choose; love cannot be forced if it is to be heartfelt and real.  The problem, of course, is that people who have the freedom to love often choose to hate.  That’s why freedom of this nature is so costly.  A world in which people have the freedom to love and perform great acts of kindness is also a world in which people have the freedom to hate and commit great acts of evil.  You cannot have one without the other.

J. Warner Wallace, “Cold-Case Christianity,” p.136

Who Wins?

He who creates the laws, wins.

Erwin W. Lutzer, When A Nation Forgets God, p.60

Learn Self Control For Marriage

The young man who has not learned self-control before marriage will not have it during marriage. . . .  In a sense, you deprive your future wife of something, even if you do not yet know her, and you endanger your happiness together.

Walter Trobish, I Loved A Girl, p.8, cited by Robertson McQuilkin, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, p.232

Unhatched Egg Is Like Unborn Baby

It is a serious crime, and strictly enforced, to break an eagle egg.  Apparently, because there are plenty of unborn (parallel to unhatched) human babies, it is not a serious crime to kill them.  Everyone knows that to break an eagle egg before it hatches is to kill an eagle.  What is it to perform an abortion on a person?

Randy Alcorn, "ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments," p.79

Psychobabble

To be able to say with society's approval that a person who doesn't conform to a completely subjective and relativistic norm is ill and possesses a diseased psych, is an extraordinary power.

Richard Ganz, "PsychoBabble: The Failure of Modern Psychology -- and the Biblical Alternative, p.47

Same-Sex "Marriage" Is NOT About Civil Rights

Same-sex marriage is not about civil rights.  It is about validation and social respect.  It is a radical attempt at civil engineering using government muscle to strong-arm the people into accommodating a lifestyle many find deeply offensive, contrary to nature, socially destructive, and morally repugnant.

Greg Koukl, "Same-Sex Marriage -- Challenges and Responses"

It Won't Stop With Abortion

At Nuremberg, Hitler and his henchmen were condemned by the American judges because they encouraged the killing of the unborn. . . .  Hitler was wrong, even though most of the men on our Supreme Court today defend what the Nazis did.  If we do not stop killing infants on the premise that they are nothing unless they weigh five or six pounds, we will do what Hitler did: we will kill the handicapped, particularly when those handicapped are aged.  Then we will kill the truly handicapped who are retarded: the only "angels" among us, for they have never sinned. . . .  Unless we stop abortion we will go further than Hitler, being "better" educated that the Austrian paperhanger.  We will kill infants after they are born.  We will do it scientifically, of course.


Dan Lyons, Christian Crusade Weekly (1979), cited by John Powell, S.J. in Abortion: the Silent Holocaust, p.37

True Bigotry

The people who are most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.

G. K. Chesterton, cited by F. LaGared Smith in Sodom's Second Coming, p.7

A Problem With Psychology

Unfortunately, what is done all too often is this:  A disease that may not exist is treated with a drug whose action in humans no one really understands while the person undergoes months or years of psychotherapy with no defined therapeutic, measurable endpoints.  Fifty years of research has yielded only symptoms, no biologic basis, no cause, and certainly no cure.  Is mental illness a disease or are issues of the heart and people relationships the core issues?  Could sin be to blame?

David Tyler & Kurt Grady, Deceptive Diagnosis: When Sin is Called Sickness, p.71

Same-Sex Unions Have NEVER Been "Normal"

No human society -- not one -- has ever embraced homosexual marriage.  It is not a part of the tradition of any human culture.  Only until the last few "nanoseconds" of history and experience have societies allowed it.  Homosexual unions, married or otherwise, have never been regarded as a normal, morally equal part of any society.  Nonmarital same-sex unions have been tolerated in some places at some times to be sure but have never been taken to be morally equivalent to natural marriage.

Glenn T. Stanton and Dr. Bill Maier, Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting, p.22

How Effective Is Birth Control?

According to its own reckoning, [Planned Parenthood’s] program of birth control fails miserably to do the one thing it is supposed to do: inhibit unwanted pregnancies.  The annual in-use failure rate of the Pill is as high as 11 percent.  For the diaphragm, the normal failure rate is nearly 32 percent.  For the intrauterine device (IUD), it is almost 11 percent.  For “save sex” condoms, it is more than 18 percent.  And for the various foam, cream and jelly spermicides, it can range as high as 34 percent.  That means that a sexually active fourteen-year-old girl who faithfully uses the Pill has a 44 percent chance of getting pregnant at least once before she finishes high school.  She has a 69 percent chance of getting pregnant at least once before she finishes college.  And she has a 30 percent chance of getting pregnant two or more times.  If she relies on “safe sex” condoms, the likelihood of an unwanted pregnancy while she is in school rises to nearly 87 percent.  In other words, the Planned Parenthood system virtually guarantees that women will get pregnant and that they will then be “forced” to fall back on the birth control linchpin: abortion.

George Grant, Immaculate Deception: The Shifting Agenda of Planned Parenthood, p.20

The MAIN Social Problem

Of all the social problems facing American civilization, the decline of marriage and the breakup of the family is unquestionably our most pressing problem. It is the common denominator driving other social ills. But it is also the one social problem that touches our lives most directly.

Glenn Stanton, "Why Marriage Matters," CitizenLink Update, email 2/11/15

Fifty Shades of Garbage

It is shocking to me that an article such as this needs to be written to professing Christian women.  Even the world recognizes the damage such garbage can inflict on people.  For instance, read the following excerpt from a recent Charisma Magazine article:

We Americans get really angry when oil companies spill toxic fuel in our oceans; yet we applaud when Hollywood dumps a tanker of poisonous garbage like Fifty Shades of Grey on our country—with no offer to clean up the damage. We should be outraged.

Last year a researcher from the University of Michigan did a study on the effects of Fifty Shades of Grey on women readers. It showed that women who read the books (it is actually a trilogy) were 25 percent more likely to have an abusive partner; 34 percent were more likely to have a partner who stalked them; and 65 percent were more likely to engage in binge drinking. Just as there is a link between violent video games and violent behavior in teen boys, this study showed that women who read graphic porn novels tend to gravitate toward the types of abusive relationships depicted in books like Fifty Shades. The study also showed that these women were more likely to have eating disorders. (Interestingly, the dominant male character in Fifty Shades carefully controls his girlfriend’s eating habits.)

In one scene in the book, Christian buys Ana a platinum and diamond bracelet so she can cover the bruises on her wrists—which she got after being tied to her boyfriend’s bed. The message from Ana’s lover: I will hurt you, but I will buy you nice gifts so you will stay with me. That’s twisted. And couples are going to see this movie on Valentine’s Day?

One of the most bizarre moments in the book occurs after Ana leaves Christian and then goes back to him. She says: “The physical pain you inflicted was not as bad as the pain of losing you.” Any psychologist will tell you that is the mentality of an abuse victim, who is brainwashed to believe that the attention she gets from her abuser is better than no attention at all.

Does this sound, in any way whatsoever, like a book or movie a Christian woman should have anything to do with?

Landon Chapman, "Fifty Shades of Grey" and the Annihilation of Christian Women’s Innocence

Do You Love A Person?

“If you want to love someone, tell them the Truth.  If you want to hate someone, know the Truth and say nothing.“


Justin Peters, Clouds Without Water, cited by Landon Chapman in, "Fifty Shades of Grey" and the Annihilation of Christian Women’s Innocence.

Lust Does Not Want A Woman

The thing [sex] is a sensory pleasure; that is, an event occurring within one’s own body. We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he “wants a woman.” Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition (one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes).

C.S. Lewis, cited by Landon Chapman in “Fifty Shades of Grey" and the Annihilation of Christian Women’s Innocence.

Wisdom

Wisdom in one of its aspects is the capacity and the power to make use of knowledge.  A man may be very learned, but if he lacks wisdom he is of little value in society.


D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ: An Exposition of Ephesians 3, p.81

Wrong Views of Sexuality

The media not only distorts sexual realities but it also cultivates feelings of inadequacy among teen viewers. … First, the media communicates that the value of a person is primarily his or her physical attractiveness.  We are bombarded with a constant parade of beautiful women, which gives teenage firs a very unrealistic standard by which to judge their own attractiveness.  I hope that most of us realize that the media’s beauty standard is not a normal one.  What’s more, it’s constantly changing.  For a time, large breasts were the standard.  Sometimes the emphasis has been on a woman’s legs.  A few years ago Farrah-Fawcett-styled hair was the desirable.  Then tight fashion jeans were the “in thing” with emphasis on the buttocks.  It’s ridiculous.

Think what that does to the average young person.  Many a young woman has a totally distorted sense of self-worth.  If by comparison to the latest standards of physical beauty she is not attractive, she sees herself asa without worth or value, which results in tremendous feelings of inadequacy.

The young male is also affected.  He develops totally unrealistic ideas about a woman’s true beauty.  Why do most men place physical attractiveness above all other considerations when they seek relationships with the opposite sex?  Because of the media, of course.  All the male heroes on TV have “beautiful women.” . . . 

Sad to say, most young people, even from church families, have not learned about their sexuality in church.  Even a greater tragedy, most did not learn about their sexuality at home.  They have learned it from television, movies, and music.  Those are three great influences on teens.

Josh McDowell and Dick Day, "Why Wait?" p.44, 45

The Homosexual and Pedophile Connection

Psychologist Eugene Abel found that homosexuals "sexually molest young boys with an incidence that is occurring from five times greater than the molestation of girls."  A 1992 study by researchers K. Freud and R. I. Watson discovered that homosexual males are three times more likely than heterosexual males to engage in pedophilia and that the average pedophile has sex with 20 to 150 boys before he is caught.  A 1988 study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that 86 percent of pedophiles identified themselves as either homosexual or bisexual.

And there is a definite link as well between child molestation and later homosexual behavior.  In a 2001 study, it was found that 46 percent of homosexuals and 22 percent of lesbians reported that they had been molested by a homosexual during childhood, compared to 7 percent of heterosexual men and 1 percent of heterosexual women.


Alan Sears & Craig Osten, The Homosexual Agenda, p.83 (2003)

No Such Thing as ADD or ADHD

For almost two decades I have witnessed a dark -- I'll be so bold as to term it evil -- trend in psychology and psychiatry.   I have watched, often incredulous, as members of these two respected professions mass-marketed two non-existent diseases, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), to the American public.  The success of this propaganda effort has resulted in the victimization of millions of parents and children.

Psychologist John K. Rosemond, Forward to "Unraveling the ADD/ADHD Fiasco," by David B. Stein.  Cited by David M. Tyler, Ph.D and Kurt P. Grady, Pharm.D in ADHD: Deceptive Diagnosis, p. 10

Marriage Philosophy 101

If God Is Dead

If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place.  It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Hefner.

Malcolm Muggeridge,  A Third Testament.  Cited by Ravi Zacharias in "The Real Face of Atheism," p.32

Eroticized Children

Eroticized media in our homes, in schools and on the Internet produce eroticized children in our homes and our schools.  Eroticized children are, by definition, damaged children.   They are vulnerable prey for any and all predators.  They are also often tomorrow's predatory adults.

Judith A. Reisman, Ph.D, "Kinsey: Crimes & Consequences," p.175

Fix Emotional Pain by Fixing the Heart

Rather than seeking to deaden, ignore, or elevate the importance of our emotions, we should allow them to speak to us about our hearts.  Because God gave us the ability to experience emotions, we want to be very cautious about ignoring what they may be telling us.  We want to carefully consider whether dampening the awareness of our feelings through the use of medication (or alcohol) is the best road for us to take to better health.

Medicines or alcohol may make us feel better for a time, even if our "heart problem" is not addressed.  For example, we know that morphine dulls the pain of a broken arm.  It does not heal or reset the bone, and it does not fix the root cause of the pain.  The same is true about medicines and emotional pain.  In order to resolve such pain, we need to deal not with the symptoms, but the root cause of the pain.


Elyse Fitzpatrick & Laura Hendrickson, M.D., "Will Medicine Stop the Pain?", p.32

The Complementarity of Sex

Heterosexual intercourse is much more than a union of bodies; it is a blending of complementary personalities through which, in the midst of prevailing alienation, the rich created oneness of human being is experienced again.  And the complementarity of male and female sexual organs is only a symbol at the physical level of a much deeper spiritual complementarity.  

John Stott, Same-Sex Partnerships?: A Christian Perspective, p.35

Marriage vs Cohabitation

Even if couples consider themselves essentially "married" while still cohabiting, they know that without a marriage license and wedding rings, they are freer to exit the relationship at any time.  And this lack of security is there in the minds of each partner.  It affects how they deal with each other.

Glenn T. Stanton, The Ring Makes All the Difference, p.41

Diversity Stats Are Nonsense

Some people see discrimination when schools punish black students more often than white students. But schools punish white students more often than Asian students. Lenders turn down black applicants for loans more often than white applicants -- but they turn down whites more often than Asians. Most statistics on such things omit Asians, rather than spoil a politically correct story.

Thomas Sowell, Random Thoughts, Townhall 1/27/15

Public Education Is Propaganda

Somewhere Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the purpose of an education should be to produce a mind that cannot be humbugged. But today our educational system, from kindergarten to the universities, is engaged in the mass production of fashionable humbug -- propaganda rather than education.

Thomas Sowell, Random Thoughts, Townhall 1/27/15

Public Schools Are For Union Members

So long as public schools are treated as places that exist to provide guaranteed jobs to members of the teachers' unions, do not be surprised to see American students continuing to score lower on international tests than students in countries that spend a lot less per pupil than we do.

Thomas Sowell, Random Things, Townhall 1/27/15

Praise Must Be Earned

A child who learns to read, who can do mathematics, who can play the piano or baseball will have a true sense of accomplishment and an appropriate sense of self-esteem.  Schools that fail tot teach reading, writing, and arithmetic corrupt the proper understanding of self-esteem.  Educators who say “Don’t grade them, don’t label them.  You have to make them feel good about themselves” cause the problems.  It makes no sense for students to be full of self-esteem if they are empty of knowledge.  Reality will soon puncture their illusions, and they will have to face two disturbing facts: (1) that they are ignorant, and (2) that the adults responsible for teaching them have both failed them and lied to them.  In the real world, praise has to be the reward for something worthwhile; praise must be connected to reality.

Paul C. Vitz, "Psychology As Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship," p.18

It Will Be Done In Politics - Even if Insane

In politics, never assume that because something is insane, it will not be done. The Holocaust was as insane as it was a moral horror. But it was done. Even after the tide of war turned against Germany and it faced invasion and devastation, Hitler continued to pour scarce resources into the mass killing of people who were no threat.

Thomas Sowell, Random Thoughts, Townhall 1/27/15

Abortion Is Never Safe

For pregnant women, abortion is four times deadlier that childbirth, and often results in infertility and breast cancer -- commonly referred to as the "ABC link."  Eleven of 12 studies of American women reported an increased risk of breast cancer after having an induced abortion.

Gregg Jackson, Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies, p.4

Evolution is a Bad Philosophy

If the unimpeded progress of evolution were our chief concern, why should we care for the senile, the imbecile, the hardened criminal, the psychopath, the chronically sick, or the starving?  Would it not be more prudent to put them to sleep like a well-loved dog, lest they hinder the evolutionary process?  Compulsory euthanasia, not compassionate service, would be the logical deduction from the humanists' premise.  The fact that they draw back from this abyss indicates that their heart is better than their head, and their philanthropy than their philosophy.

John Stott, Decisive Issues Facing Christians Today, p.18

Why Mock Virtue?

When did we decide to be the kind of society that mocks virtue? When did we turn into the pudgy, freckle faced bully in all of the 90′s teen sitcoms who points and laughs at the studious kid just because he’s well behaved and does his homework? Maybe it’s always been this way. I don’t know. What I do know is that, these days, we are lost. It’s not that we do terrible things (although we do), it’s that we either don’t know or pretend we don’t know what we should be doing.

We run around like decapitated poultry, colliding with each other and bumping into walls. And when someone with their head on straight, or with their head on at all, suggests a clear direction, a course of action, or a change of behavior, we descend upon them like crazed hyenas. When someone simply says, “hey, that there is not good, but this here is good, so we should probably do this rather than that,” we pounce on them and rip their guts out, then hang their entrails from a bridge as a warning to anyone else who might get a little bold one day and think about developing a moral compass.

Matt Walsh, “Hey, Look! That Woman Is Trying to Be Modest! Let’s All Laugh at Her and Call Her Names!”

What Is Psychotherapy?

Modern psychotherapy is simply the attempt to do face-to-face pastoral work in service to different gods (e.g., self, feelings, desires of the body or mind, pleasure), different ideals (e.g., the "good life," wealth, entitlement), different diagnosis (e.g., addiction, dependency, poor self-esteem), and a different gospel (e.g., man is the center of all things, "I deserve it").

David Powlison, "Faith's Psychology & The Psychological Faiths," Christian Research Journal, Vol. 28/No.3, 2005

The Benefits of Faithful Marriage

In concurrence with the Bible, a growing number of secular theorists are also celebrating the wisdom of monogamous commitment.  Studies show that it enhances the life span of men and women who practice it and that the quality of life improves in proportion to the practice of fidelity.  Drug and alcohol abuse dropped significantly among married test subjects in a University of Chicago study, and monogamous individuals made more money, had twice as much sex as their non-monogamous counterparts, and experienced half the domestic violence of those studied who either lived together unmarried or lived alone.

Joe Dallas, "Darkening Our Minds," Christian Research Journal, Vol.27/No.3, 2004

Sex is Not an Idol

Human existence is not, first and foremost, about sexual pleasure and the display of sexuality.  There is much more to human life, fulfillment, and joy.  Sex simply cannot deliver the promises made by our hypersexualized society.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost of Sexual Tolerance, p.xii

Be Careful of Thoughts

Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.


Source unknown; cited by Donald E. Wildmon in "The Case Against Pornography," p.141

The Truth About IQ Tests

Specious intelligence tests, colloquially known as IQ tests, were invented to justify incarceration of group labeled "feebleminded."  Often the so-called feebleminded were just shy, too good-natured to be taken seriously, or simply spoke the wrong language or were the wrong color.

Edwin Black, "War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race," p.xv

Be Careful When You Say "I Love You"

My father counseled his four sons never to say "I love you" to a woman until they were ready to follow immediately with "Will you marry me?"  Nor should they think of saying "Will you marry me?" unless they had first said "I love you."  How much pain and confusion would be averted if men followed that rule.

Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity, p.93

Individuals Make A Nation

There is surely nothing which is quite so illuminating and contradictory as the way in which people think along one line when they are thinking of nations and along a quite different line when they are thinking of individuals.  There is little point in talking eloquently about the sanctity of international contracts while you are dealing with people who break their own marriage contracts and other personal contracts, for nations consist of individuals.  The nation is not something abstract, and we are not entitled to expect conduct from a nation which we do not find in the individual.  All these things have to be taken together.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, God’s Way of Reconciliation: An Exposition of Ephesians 2, p.61

Disease Mongering

The business model of the pharmaceutical industry depends on extending the realm of illness -- using creative marketing to expand the pool of customers by convincing the probably well that they are at least mildly sick.  Disease mongering is the fine art of selling psychiatric ills as the most efficient way of peddling very profitable psychiatric pills.  Manipulating the market is particularly easy in the United States because we are the only country in the entire world that allows drug companies the freedom to advertise directly to consumers.

Disease mongering cannot occur in a vacuum -- it requires that the drug companies engage the active collaboration of the doctors who write the prescriptions, the patients who ask for them, the researchers who invent the new mental disorders, the consumer groups that advocate for more treatment, and the media and Internet that spread the word.  A persistent, pervasive, and well-financed "disease awareness" campaign can create disease where none existed before.  And psychiatry is especially vulnerable to manipulation of the normal/disease boundary because it lacks biological tests and relies heavily on subjective judgments that can be easily influenced by clever marketing.


Allen Frances, M.D, "Saving Normal," pp.28-29

Homosexual Hypocrisy

“Marriage equality” is their hypocritical rallying cry. But the cat has been out of the bag for a long time, and everyone is fast beginning to realize that this is the most ridiculous thing they’ve ever heard. It’s nothing more than a godless demand for unrestricted debauchery. What they really want is not equality, but absolute cultural dominance. Their unmasked agenda involves the implementation of an oppressive double standard in which their “gay” Special Rights invariably squash our all-important Civil Rights. It’s the “gay” way or the highway.

The institution of marriage is the inimitable edifice and social load bearing wall upon which any free nation and stable civil government must certainly be established. However, in their anti-Christ crusade to destroy, devalue and desecrate the foundational structure of the family, the homosexual juggernaut is rapidly augmenting their Leftist arsenal through a menacing cache of lawless judicial rulings and the ostensibly named anti-discrimination ordinances. Through these and other Statist strong-arm tactics, their wrecking ball strategy has succeeded by compelling silence, intimidating dissent and purging the country of every voice of reason. The very rights they claim to be fighting for are ironically the exact same legal protections that they ruthlessly strive to strip away from the people of faith and decency – or anyone else who might dare to disagree with the endorsement of their lascivious lifestyle. The Baal of homosexuality is a viscerally hateful and jealous god.

The militant homosexual efforts have alarmingly functioned as the caustic social acid that eats away and erodes every constitutionally-protected freedom we have ever held near and dear to our hearts. The pro-deviancy advocates claim to merely carry the mantle of freedom, but in their wake, they leave the republic ravaged and in ruins. If they have their way, the landscape of liberty will be left desolate. Satan’s compliant foot soldiers for the cause of counterfeit marriage will never stop sadistically trampling the principles of self-governance, the First Amendment and the will of the people under their feet.

Jeff Allen, The Hostile World of Homosexual Hypocrisy

"Homosexual" Couples Cannot Properly Parent

Psychologist Dean Bryd, vice president for the National Association for the Research and Treatment of Homosexuality, shares this concern:  "Studies demonstrate there is, in fact, a difference between non-heterosexual and heterosexual parenting.  Children raised by non-heterosexuals are more apt to experience gender and sexual confusion, they are more apt to become promiscuous, they are at greater risk of substance abuse or suicide."

Researcher Barbara Eisold conducted such a study and came to similar conclusions in her report "Recreating Mother," in which she asserts the need for a mother. ...

Researcher Harry Biller draws similar conclusions while studying infants raised by a lesbian couple without fathers:  "Differences between mother and father can be very stimulating to the infant -- the infant who receives verbal as well as physical stimulation from both mother and father profits from the experience.  Infants with involved fathers were usually at a developmental advantage.  Well fathered infants are more secure and trusting in branching out in their explorations."

... Children raised in a stable heterosexual home fare better than those raised by a homosexual couple, no matter how stable.  The difference between the two homes lies not so much in the nature or personality of the parents but in the contrast of gender, which is built into heterosexuality and which homosexuality, by its nature, must lack.  The male-female complement, a critical part of Created Intent, is praised in the Bible and confirmed in secular observations.  No matter how healthy, likable, or sincere a homosexual couple may be, they cannot offer a child a part of what is in that child's best interest: a father and a mother.


Joe Dallas, "What About Rosie?", Christian Research Journal, Vol.25 / No.1, 2002, "Practical Apologetics"

There Is No Such Thing as a "Homosexual"

If we use the false definition [of "homosexual'], where does one draw the line?  Are you a homosexual because you have a homosexual thought for one moment in time?  If not for one moment, then how long?  A season?  A lifetime?  Is a man or woman a homosexual who engages in one act of homosexual behavior or a series of encounters or relationships?  Are those who engage in exclusive homosexual practice for a lifetime the only "true" homosexuals?  Often we have stumbled in our efforts to share the truth of freedom in Christ because we were wrestling with opponents over what makes a person a homosexual.  Since there is really no such thing as a "homosexual," then we are chasing a mirage, a cloud, something we will never be able to grasp.

Already in the first moments of our battle with proponents of "homosexuality equals identity," we give ground by using their terminology; and we lose more ground as we seek to put forward a solution based on the terminology of their lie.  The truth is there are no homosexuals. ...

The Devil, working behind the scenes, has succeeded in redefining the meaning of key words, and therefore we only reinforce and strengthen a false identity by calling individuals by a name that does not apply.  Homosexuality involves feelings, attractions, and sexual behavior; it can be a mindset, and it can include cultural associations.  From these factors, one can embrace it as a personal identity.  People investing their lives into this kind of identity can expend so much of themselves that to think of leaving that identity can be quite threatening and very difficult even to discuss. ...

Truth One:  There is no such creation as a "gay" or "homosexual" person.  There is only homosexual attraction and behavior; accordingly, there can be no "change" from a sexual identity that never existed in the first place.


Rev. John J. Smid, "You Can't Change a Homosexual," Christian Research Journal, Vol.24 /No.2, 2002, "Viewpoint."

Psychotherapy and Prostitution

Psychotherapy, the world's second oldest profession, is remarkably similar to the first.  Both involve a contract (implicit or explicit) between a specialist and a client for a service, and for this service a fee is paid.  The expectations of the client and the personality characteristics of the specialist are important in determining the success of the transaction.  Both professions claim that their specific techniques are crucial, though evidence suggests that underlying nonspecific factors may really be the important determinants of a successful outcome.  One makes the mind feel better, the other makes the body feel better.  Both, furthermore, are difficult to study, for they are essentially human transactions.  When they are taken apart on the dissecting table, a part of the interaction ceases to exist.


E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists: The Common Roots of Psychotherapy and Its Future, p.1

Education is the Great Equalizer

The great equalizer in America remains education. A good education or the acquisition of technical skills provides tremendous options for everyone, regardless of their birth circumstances. We live in a country where people are free to move without penalty to any state where jobs are available. We need to emphasize the fact that almost any kind of employment confers knowledge and skills that become valuable when trying to move up the economic ladder.

Dr. Ben Carson, Dispelling the Myth of Haves and Have-Nots in America

Class Resentment?

Obviously, the billionaire can afford to pay for certain things like luxurious homes and cars and the best seats on airplanes and at the theater. There is nothing wrong with that. It should not cause resentment in a society in which anyone is free to work hard and use their God-given talents to excel and increase their own value in the marketplace.  Some will not admit it, but our society would be pretty dreary if everyone shared the same level of poverty with no chance of advancing themselves economically through their own efforts.

Dr. Ben Carson, Dispelling the Myth of Haves and Have-Nots in America

America Really Is Great

The U.S Constitution was designed to preserve the freedom and rights of all citizens. Our Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal and that we have certain God-given rights. With documents like these, how have we arrived at the state of such discord between purported haves and have-nots in our society?

Some will try, of course, to discount any discussion of this topic by talking about the treatment of slaves, indentured servants, Native Americans and others who historically were not treated well. I am willing to acknowledge that the same human frailties that characterized societies throughout the world found their way into America, but it is unfair to demonize a nation and its many constituents based on the shortcomings of some of its members. Those who condemn America for its past seldom talk about the tremendous good and generosity that have been demonstrated by the country that cannot be denied the title of most benign pinnacle nation in the history of the world.


Dr. Ben Carson, Dispelling the Myth of Haves and Have-Nots in America

Dangerous Sex

Aside from any religious or theological considerations, homosexual acts are unnatural from a medical standpoint.  Physicians can attest to some horror stories of what physically happens, especially to men, from such activities.  The human anatomy is such that it is apparent what role and function each part of the body plays.  Men engaged in homosexual acts suffer various serious physical side effects and debilitating diseases and injuries.  If those acts were natural, it follows that such harmful effects and diseases would not take place.  The bodily canal designed to evacuate some of the body's worst filth and toxins is hardly inviting to normal people.  Penetrating an orifice fashioned to evacuate the waste and toxins of another person rises to the level of abnormality for nonreligious as well as for religious people.  Even nonsectarian scientists form similar opinions about certain acts, depending on the harm the body suffers.

Helen Louise Herndon, "If Gays March on Rome, Why Not Mecca Too?"  "Viewpoint," Christian Research Journal, Vol.23/No.3, 2001

Darwinists Suppress Dissent

Defenders of evolution used to style themselves the champions of free speech and academic freedom against unthinking dogmatism.  But they have become the new dogmatists, demanding judicially imposed censorship and discrimination against the teachers, scientists, and students who dissent from Darwin.  These are tactics of intellectual suppression, not free inquiry, and they betray the Darwinists' insecurity about the defensibility of their own theory.


John G. West, "Darwin Day in America: How our politics and culture have been dehumanized in the name of science," p.267

Lifting and Leaning

There are two kinds of people on earth today, 
Just two kinds of people, no more, I say.

Not the good and the bad, for ’tis well understood
The good are half bad and the bad are half good.

Not the happy and sad, for the swift-flying years
Bring each man his laughter and each man his tears.

Not the rich and the poor, for to count a man’s wealth
You must first know the state of his conscience and health.

Not the humble and proud, for in life’s busy span
Who puts on vain airs is not counted a man.

Wherever you go you will find the world’s masses
And ever divided in just these two classes.

And, strangely enough, you will find, too, I ween,
There is only one lifter to twenty who lean.

In which class are you?  Are you easing the load
Of overtaxed lifters who toil down the road?

Or are you a leaner who lets others bear
Your portion of worry and labor and care?

Ella Wheeler Wilcox
From "The Best Loved Poems of the American People."

Are We Human Cattle?

Leftists and the Black Community

When the political left wants to help the black community, they usually want to help the worst elements in that community -- thugs they portray as martyrs, for example -- without the slightest regard for the negative effect this can have on the lives of the majority of decent black people.

Thomas Sowell, Random Thoughts, 12/30/14

Parasites as Victims

There are few modest talents so richly rewarded -- especially in politics and the media -- as the ability to portray parasites as victims, and portray demands for preferential treatment as struggles for equal rights.

Thomas Sowell, Random  Thoughts, 12/30/14

Achievement or Privilege?

Our schools and colleges are laying a guilt trip on those young people whose parents are productive, and who are raising them to become productive. What is amazing is how easily this has been done, largely just by replacing the word "achievement" with the word “privilege."

Thomas Sowell, Random Thoughts, 12/30/14

Achievement Differences?

Explaining differences in achievements between groups often pits those who attribute these differences to ability against those who attribute differences to barriers. Neither seems to pay much attention to differences in what people want to do. Few guys from my old neighborhood were likely to end up as violinists or ballet dancers, simply because that was not what they were interested in.

Thomas Sowell, Random Thoughts, 12/30/14

Freudian Child Care Crime

Most of the damage we have seen in child rearing is the fault of the Freudian and neo-Freudians who have dominated the field.  They have frightened parents and kept the truth from them.  In child care I would say that Freudianism has been the psychological crime of the century.


Dr. Louise B. Ames, Co-Director of the Gesell Institute of Child Development.  Cited by E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., in "Freudian Fraud: the Malignant Effect of Freud's Theory on American Thought and Culture," p.128