Integrity

Integrity may be the most precious possession I have, its violation my greatest loss.  Can I be trusted?  If not, all other virtues become uncertain.  Lack of integrity is a fault line in the character that jeopardizes all other values and undermines all relationships.

Robertson McQuilkin, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, pg.381

Modesty is Dignity

HT to the Pattison Blog

AMA Statement on Abortion

There we shall discover an enemy in the camp; there we shall witness as hideous a view of moral deformity as the evil spirit could present….  Men who seek not to save, but to destroy; men known not only to the profession, but to the public, as abortionists….

“Thou shalt not kill.”  This commandment is given to all, and applies to all without exception….  Notwithstanding all this, we see in our midst a class of men, regardless of all principle, regardless of all honor; who daily destroy that fair fabric of God’s creation; who daily pull down what he has built up; who act in antagonism to that profession of which they claim to be members….

It matters not at what state of development his victim may have arrived—it matters not how small or how apparently insignificant it may be—it is a murder; a foul, unprovoked murder; and its blood, like the blood of Abel, will cry from earth to Heaven for vengeance….

Every practicing physician in the land (as well as every good man) has a certain amount of interest at stake in this matter….  The members of the profession should form themselves into a special police to watch, and to detect, and bring to justice these characters.  They should shrink with horror from all intercourse with them, professionally or otherwise.  These men should be marked as Cain was marked; they should be made the outcasts of society.

American Medical Association 1871 statement on abortion, as cited by Randy Alcorn in "ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments," pg.217

Homosexuals and Pedophilia

While male homosexuals comprise only 2-3 percent of the male population, they commit about one-third of all child molestation cases.  That is, about one-third of all pedophile cases are homosexual in nature—man to boy.

Now when someone connects homosexuality to pedophilia, homosexual activists are quick to deny the connection.  However, the denial is for publicity reasons.  In gay and academic publications and at gay “pride” parades, both which are largely unfamiliar to the general public, the gay rights movement and the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) are working together.  Homosexual publications make favorable references to pedophilia, and homosexual activists and NAMBLA both want the age of consent to be lowered.  They have friends in high places too.  As an ACLU attorney, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once advocated lowering the age of consent to twelve! . . . Nancy Peolosi marched with a leading advocate of man-boy “love” in the 2001 San Francisco gay “pride” parade.  (Of course, there was not a peep about this from the mainstream media.)

Frank Turek, Correct, NOT Politically Correct, pg. 34

"Gay" Couples "Traditional"?!?

If gay and lesbian couples are really that "traditional," then why do they have to spend thousands of dollars on billboard advertising to convince us!  If something is "traditional," isn't it by definition something that everyone recognizes as part of a long-standing heritage?  What kind of long-standing heritage are we talking about with gay and lesbian "families"?  Five years?  Ten years? Three decades?  (That's barely one generation.)

F. LaGard Smith, Sodom's Second Coming, pg.192

Race vs Gender in Marriage

Race is not a fundamental quality or aspect of marriage.  But gender is.  Therefore, allowing interracial marriage did not call for a redefinition but rather an affirmation of marriage.  It says males should be able to marry females, regardless of race.  Same-sex marriage is something very different--a redefinition of marriage.

Glenn T. Stanton and Dr. Bill Maier, Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting, pg.36

Parents—Be Role Models

Kids need role models at home to teach them right and wrong.  If they’re instructed in the ways of right and wrong but do not see the parents living this way, they will reject their parent’s words as hypocrisy.  They need the anchor of God’s truth to make sense out of the mayhem confronting them.  They need a basis, a standard by which to make decisions.  They need a world view they can put into words.

Josh McDowell and Dick Day, "Why Wait?" pg.157

Treating ADHD Is Experimental

The distinction between research and practice is important in the discussion of treating children or adults who have been diagnosed with ADHD.  As medical science does not understand the so-called disease process in ADHD, its treatment may be considered experimental.  Moreover, as medical science does not understand the action of the medications used in treating ADHD, the drug treatment should likewise be considered experimental.  Combined, we have a set of behaviors labeled as a disease where no one has been able to identify any brain abnormality, being treated with a drug whose action no one really understands in humans.  While millions of people have been "treated" with perhaps billions of doses of medication, it does not change the fact that we are still dealing with the unknown.  An unknown "disease" being treated with drugs full of unknowns sounds like experimentation and should be treated as such.

David M. Tyler, Ph.D and Kurt P. Grady, Pharm.D in ADHD: Deceptive Diagnosis, pg. 142

A Hopeless Generation

Our generation has nothing to look forward to but oblivion.  The entailments of this are terrifying: cloning, drugs, AIDS, suicide and euthanasia, alcoholism, broken homes, crime, child pornography, terrorism, and a host of other problems that are heartbreaking.  It is a short step from the “exploded” doctrines of the past to the disintegration of hope for the future.  Indeed, one author has observed:

In the 1950s, kids lost their innocence.  They were liberated from their parents by well-paying jobs, cars, and lyrics in music that gave rise to a new term—the generation gap.

In the 1960s, kids lost their authority.  It was a decade of protest—church, state, and parents were all called into question and found wanting.  Their authority was rejected, yet nothing ever replaced it.

In the 1970s, kids lost their love.  It was the decade of me-ism, dominated by hyphenated words beginning with self: self-image, self-esteem, self-assertion.  It made for a lonely world.  Kids learned everything there was to know about sex but forgot everything there was to know about love, and no one had the nerve to tell them there was a difference.

In the 1980s, kids lost their hope.  Stripped of innocence, authority, and love, and plagued by the horror of a nuclear nightmare, large and growing numbers of this generation stopped believing in the future.

I would add that in the 1990s, we lost our ability to reason.  The power of critical thinking has gone from induction to deduction and very few are able to think clearly anymore.  I have often said the challenge of the truth speaker today is this:  How do you reach a generation that listens with its eyes sand thinks with its feelings?

Ravi Zacharias in "The Real Face of Atheism," pg.99-100

Cohabiting Can Be Dangerous for Women

Canadian and US studies both found that women in cohabiting relationships are about nine times more likely to be killed by their live-in partner than are women who are married to their partners.

One scholar concludes in the Journal of Family Violence, "Regardless of methodology . . .  cohabitors engage in more violence than spouses."

Men with rings on their fingers appear to be very different kinds of men.  Safer men.


Glenn T. Stanton, The Ring Makes All the Difference, pg.47

Government and Selfism

Selfism is now the standard position of much of the government bureaucracy that deals with social problems.  It is certainly the controlling system in the so-called "helping professions" -- clinical psychology, counseling, and social work. ...

Fifty years ago the "helping professions" were of little consequence; today they are huge and still growing as the government expands its social services.  The accompaniment of this growth by the self-theory ethic constitutes a powerful challenge to the Christian faith.  There is little reason to believe that this secular religion will change over the years, since it is not some arbitrary choice based on a fad in the 1960s but a necessary part of the extension of government programs into every aspect of our personal and family life.  This expansion of the state will continue until it either meets resistance or simply collapses of its own weight.  In any event, a secular ideology is a necessity for a secular state -- and as a result, it becomes harder and harder to be both a good Christian and a good American.

Paul C. Vitz, "Psychology As Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship," pg.144, 145

Government Indoctrination of Children

The more time children spend away from home at government schools, the more they can be indoctrinated with the leftist ideology of "diversity," "multiculturalism," "gay rights," "moral relativism" and "social justice." 

Gregg Jackson, Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies, p.156

Sex Has Been Corrupted

We corrupt what God has perfectly designed for the good of His creatures, and we have turned sex into a carnival of orgiastic pleasures.  Not only have we severed sex from marriage, but as a society, we now look at marriage as an imposition, chastity as an embarrassment, and sexual restraint as a psychological hang-up.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost of Sexual Tolerance, pg.30

Unrecognized Bias

It is a common error to assume that a rejection of religion guarantees objectivity.  Many take it as a given that those who believe in the Bible are hopelessly subjective and incapable of seeing life as it is, while those who reject the Bible are--this is supposedly an infallible and eternal truth--clear-sighted, rational, objective, unbiased.  But this is itself only another kind of subjectivity and bias, more powerful because it is unrecognized.

Joseph Keysor, Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible, pg.11

The Influence of the Bible

The influence of the Bible and its teaching in the Western world is clear for all who study history.  And the influential role of the West in the course of world events is equally clear.  Civilization has been influenced more by the Judeo-Christian Scriptures than by any other book or series of books in the world.  Indeed, no great moral or religious work in the world exceeds the depth of morality in the principle of Christian love, and none has a more lofty spiritual concept than the biblical view of God.  The Bible presents the highest ideals known to men, ideals that have molded civilization.

Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible, pg.197

Psychotropic Drugs Are Over-Prescribed

Overprescription of psychotropic medication by PCPs [Primary Care Physicians] has become a serious threat to public health, but has pushed Pharm revenue through the roof.  There is almost never a justification for the use of antipsychotic and anti-anxiety medication in primary care, but it is done all the time.

Allen Frances, M.D, "Saving Normal," pg.103

Childhood Experience Does Not Shape Adult Personality

Despite several decades of anthropological work in cultures around the world, much of it done by anthropologists who had themselves been psychoanalyzed and were sympathetic to Freudian theory, there is virtually no cross-cultural evidence that supports the theory regarding the importance of childhood experience in shaping adult personality.

E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., "Freudian Fraud: the Malignant Effect of Freud's Theory on American Thought and Culture," p.222

Creation vs Evolution -- Two Religions

When we discuss creation/evolution, in both instances we are talking about beliefs, that is, religion.  The controversy is not religion versus science, as the evolutionists try to make it out.   It is religion versus religion, the science of one religion versus the science of the other.

Evolution is a religious position that makes human opinion supreme.  ... its fruits (because of rejection of the Creator and Lawgiver) are lawlessness, immorality, impurity, abortion, racism and a mocking of God.  Creation is a religious position based on the Word of God, and its fruits (through God's Spirit) are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  The creation/evolution issue (is God Creator?) is the crux of the problems in our society today.  It is the fundamental issue with which Christians must come to grips.  The creation/evolution issue is where the battle really rages.

Ken Ham, The Lie, pg.12

Day-Care Danger

A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that preschool children were from 4 to more than 12 times as likely to contract meningitis if they attended a day-care center than if they were cared for at home.  The incidence of other diseases also rose with the growth of day care.  Studies have indicated that psychological problems are also more prevalent among children in day-care centers.

Thomas Sowell, "The Vision of the Anointed," pg.175

The Second Vision Is Winning

Thinking of what is happening to all of America, not just now but also tomorrow and next year, is important for another reason too.  It helps us see that there really are two utterly incompatible visions competing with one another for the soul of the land.  One view embraces God's role and welcomes His guidance on how to run our lives both private and public.  It insists that, as our founding fathers believed, a secular government and constitution can work only as long as the population conducts itself along religiously informed lines.  The second view vigorously rejects any notion of a godly authority external to our own wishes and inclinations.  It maintains that the secularism of government must be injected into every corner of American life, displacing the native piety that used to be such a conspicuous element in our national character.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.80

True Equality

Man is unequal in time allocated for him; talent entrusted to him; and treasure required of him.  Man is only equal to man before the bar of justice.

Author unknown, cited by David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times, pg.702

Non-Christians Abuse the Environment

Christianity has even been blamed for pollution and the destruction of the environment.  God's commandment in Genesis to "subdue" the earth and "have dominion" over the creatures is said to be a license for ecological plundering and pillaging.  Never mind that the destruction of the environment only emerged as a serious problem in the modern era, nearly two thousand years after Christ died and rose again.  Never mind that those who make the most noise about the destruction of the environment continue to enjoy their wasteful and environmentally destructive modern lifestyles while they attack the Bible.

Joseph Keysor, Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible, pg.1

Arguing With A Madman

If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgement.  He is not hampered by a sense of humor, or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience.

G.K. Chesterton, cited by George Grant, "Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood," pg.206

Human Nature vs Desires

The argument against same-sex marriage is based on the nature of human persons as beings with a gender who have a purpose derived from that nature.  That is to say, male human persons are meant for coupling with female human persons, even if their coupling does not result in procreation.  This argument is not based on a human person's function, ability, or desire, which could each be inconsistent with how human beings ought to be by nature.

For example, a person who is comatose, insane, sightless, or sexually desirous of his neighbor's young child lacks something either physically, psychologically, or morally.  But he remains a human person who by nature ought to be conscious, sane, seeing, and desiring well.  In the same way a sterile, aged, or willingly childless person is still a gendered human person whose purpose for marital union (unless called to celibacy) can only be consummated by one-flesh communion with a spouse of the opposite gender even if he or she has contrary desires.

Desires, after all, can be immoral and sometimes harmful to a human person's good, such as desires to overeat, commit adultery, molest children, and engage in gay bashing.


Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, “Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air,” pg.123

Promoting an Agenda

Social agendas are promoted through public education and the media.  A typical example starts with movies and television portraying a yet to be accepted social behavior in a humorous way, then progressively show that behavior in a positive light, then ultimately ridiculing those who oppose that behavior.

When a large enough percentage of the public considers that behavior normal, politicians get elected and change laws to discriminate and eventually criminalize those who do not embrace those views.  The homosexual agenda has successfully employed this method.

The Islamic agenda is just beginning to use this method.  In Canada a new television series, "Little Mosque on the Prairie," portrays the experiences of a Muslim family in a typical American city.

William J. Federer, What Every American Needs to Know About the Qur'an, pg.232

Avoid Foreign Intrigue

A passionate attachment of one Nation for another produces a variety of evils . . . infusing into one the enmities of the other. . . .  It gives to ambitious, corrupted or deluded citizens . . . facility to betray, or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity: gilding with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption or infatuation.

As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent Patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public Councils! . . .

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence . . . the jealously of a free people to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government.  Real Patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests . . . 

Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, on a respectably defensive posture. . . .  ’Tis folly in one Nation to look for disinterested favors from another . . . it must pay with a portion of its Independence for whatever it may accept . . .

In offering to you, my Countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression, I could wish . . . to warn against the mischiefs of foreign Intrigue.

George Washington, Farewell Address, 19 September 1796

Civil Rights vs 'Gay' Rights

Civil rights are rooted in moral authority; gay rights are rooted in a lcm of moral restraint.  Civil rights are rooted in constitutional authority.  Gay rights are rooted in carnal antinomianism. ... To compare gay rights to civil rights is to compare their sin to my skin.

Pastor Dwight McKissic, cited in Decision magazine, September 2015, p.15

The Character of Homosexuals

As a group [homosexuals] are characterized not only by strikingly disproportionate incidence of promiscuity, but also by a much greater incidence than among heterosexuals of alcohol or drug problems as well as of paraphilias.  According to the National Gay-Lesbian Health Foundation, drug and alcohol problems are three times greater among homosexuals that among heterosexuals.

Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, pg. 194

Psychology is Culturally Influenced

It has been argued that the diagnoses of the Psychology Industry, which are revised frequently, are actually culturally influenced moral judgments which convert the person's behavior into pathology and make the psychologist an enforcer (or reinforcer) of changing societal values.  For instance, the Psychology Industry may pejoratively describe the construction worker who whistles at a passing woman as harassing and assaultive, while being more forgiving of such behaviors as consuming alcohol, using heroin or overeating, calling these "addictive diseases."

Dr. Tana Dineen, Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People, pg.85

Stand Firm In Your Faith

If Christians are silent at our universities for fear of being disgraced; if believers are intimidated at work because of new laws that might keep religion out of the workplace; if a Christian nurse is silent about abortion because to speak out would put her job in jeopardy; in short, if we keep Christ to ourselves out of fear of reprisals, are we not taking our stand with those pastors in Germany who chose to close ranks with Hitler?  Is not our sin even greater since the consequences of our obedience to Christ are so minimal in comparison with what they faced?  Are we qualified to sit in judgment of the church in Germany if we ourselves have never lost a job or failed a course because we are Christians?

Erwin W. Lutzer, When A Nation Forgets God, pg.120

If A Law is Made, It Must Be Enforced

Any behavior that a society believes directly or potentially injurious to others may be legitimately outlawed.  Of course, a society is responsible to enact only laws that it intends to enforce and can enforce.  Any behavior, private or public, victimless or not, which a society declares criminal and then does not enforce undermines the rule of law, promoting a lawless society.

So the crucial element in lawmaking is not whether an act is private or whether there is a direct victim who complains, but whether that society judges the behavior to be potentially or actually injurious to others and whether society has the will to enforce the legislation.

Robertson McQuilkin, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, pg.354

Man's Inhumanity

Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn!

Robert Burns (Scottish Poet), Man Was Made to Mourn

Abortion Helps Men Exploit Women

Abortion allows and even encourages men to sexually exploit women without fear of having to take responsibility for any children that are conceived.  If the woman does get pregnant, the man can hand over three hundred dollars and buy a dead child.  When the man is long gone, with no child to have to support, the woman is left with the burden of having killed her child.  "Abortion rights" bring out not the best, but the worst in men.

Randy Alcorn, "ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments," pg.119

Promiscuity Rates Of Homosexuals

Even if monogamy could reduce health problems, monogamy is the exception rather than the rule among homosexuals.  The average number of sexual partners in a lifetime for a heterosexual is four, but for a homosexual it is fifty.  The vast Sex in America survey published by the University of Chicago found monogamy among heterosexuals to be 83 percent but less than 2 percent for homosexuals.  Another survey had more moderate results, but still found infidelity in about 62 percent of gay couples.  That led researchers in the Journal of Family Psychology to write, "The practice of sexual non-monogamy among some gay couples is one variable that differentiates gay and heterosexual couples."

Why is monogamy much more common between men and women?  Could it be because men and women are designed for one another and are therefore complementary?  Think about it.  One of the least-mentioned aspects of this debate is how men and women compliment one another.  Each sex balances and moderates the other by providing what's lacking in the other.

However, in same-sex relationships, the pairing of identicals propels them to extremes not balance.  Lesbians tend to push one another to emotional extremes as evidenced by the intense demands they put on one another, but male homosexuals experience the most damaging effects of imbalance.  Instead of the sex drive of the man being balanced by the emotional needs of the woman, male homosexuals reinforce and amplify the sex drive of one another.  That's why their behavior often becomes compulsive to the point of explosive promiscuity--anywhere from 21-43 percent of homosexual men have several hundred sexual partners!

Frank Turek, Correct, NOT Politically Correct, pg. 33

Giving a 'Right' Also Removes One

 More serious yet, however, is the fact that giving gay rights invariably means taking away religious rights.  Make no mistake about it:  "Gay rights" means the elevation of the right to have immoral homosexual relations over the right to act pursuant to one's religious conscience.  Inevitably, it prioritizes immorality over morality.

F. LaGard Smith, Sodom's Second Coming, pg.182

Mental Illness is Cured When the Patient Can't Pay

It is estimated that the burden of illness, in dollars, from all mental health disorders exceeds that of all cancers.  Who is handling all these patients?  As the DSM grows, so do the number of people who are sick.  Eventually, the system must respond by fielding more mental health care providers.  It certainly has.  Between 1970 and 1995, the number of mental health professionals quadrupled.  People enter the mental health system and are on a perpetual carnival ride.  They get sicker and sicker but they cannot get off the nightmare.  Billions of dollars of research, millions of hours of counseling, increasing numbers of diagnoses, a nearly bottomless pipeline of drugs -- and not a single illness has been cured.  Cancers can be cured, broken bones can be set, infections can be eliminated, once-fatal inborn abnormalities can be corrected, and not one single mental illness can be cured.  Once diagnosed, people are always sick.  We never hear the term recovering ulcer sufferer, but one cannot listen to the evening news without hearing about a recovering addict of some sort or another.  Psychiatry is not in the business of curing.  It is in a perpetual business of generating appointments, sessions, prescriptions and the next theory to explain man's behavior.  The only cure offered by the mental health profession occurs after the person's insurance benefits are exhausted.  Miraculously, they are cured when they can no longer pay.

David Tyler & Kurt Grady, Deceptive Diagnosis: When SIN is called SICKNESS, pg.95

What Marriage IS

First, marriage is not about equality.  Marriage is about setting norms for society for how we structure sexual relationships, for creating cooperative and respectful domestic relationships between the sexes, and for forming families for raising children.  Anthropologist Suzanne Frayser, after studying the role marriage plays across diverse civilizations, offers this universal definition:  "Marriage is a relationship within which a group socially approves and encourages sexual intercourse and the birth of children."  Edward Westermarck, who has written an immense three-volume history of human marriage, agrees.  He says marriage is always about bringing forth the next generation.

Glenn T. Stanton and Dr. Bill Maier, Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting, pg.34-35

Are You 'Cool'?

Being cool, being in, being faddish, is simply going along with others.  A person who tags along just because something is cool says, "I don't know who I am; I don't have my own values, so I'll just do what everyone else does."

Josh McDowell and Dick Day, "Why Wait?" p.128

Inventing a 'Disease' vs Curing a Real Disease

Is it not interesting how so many new diseases are being discovered just prior to the launch of a new drug which can be used to treat it?  While the drug companies are creating so-called diseases to treat with their newest drugs, the world is still dealing with AIDS, cancer, heart disease, killer bacteria and viruses, and a host of other real diseases.  Then again, it is a lot harder to cure a documented disease than it is to create one to fit a drug already in the company's pipeline.

David M. Tyler, Ph.D and Kurt P. Grady, Pharm.D,  ADHD: Deceptive Diagnosis, pg.128

The Demand for 'Participation' Trophies

When you hear the rhetoric of wealth redistribution and “paying a fair share,” it is rooted in the belief that someone must pay for others to receive the “participation” trophy. Instead of economic policies that inspire more people to engage in the free enterprise system and the opportunity economy, progressive socialists advance policies to punish the players on the field. When you can stand up and profess in America “if you own a business, you didn’t build that,” it reflects a sense that the sweat from the brow of the individual to produce – to score touchdowns, goals, runs – is no longer regarded. The efforts of those on the field only serves to produce the required resources for some to make “participation” trophies for others.

We are slowly moving away from what the American dream truly represents – creating victors, champions. We have those who through the giving away of the little plastic trophy are making victims.

The liberal progressive governing philosophy is based upon an expansion of dependency; the welfare nanny-state. By doing so, they raise taxes on the producers, the earners, the folks scoring touchdowns for our country. They must do so in order to produce the “participation” trophy that some will place upon their mantle – and it results in a sense of entitlement, and false esteem. But the givers of the little plastic trophy feel good about themselves, at the expense of those from whom they take, by way of redistribution. The result is a reticence by those who are on the field, in the market, because they recognize the diminishing return on their commitment to excellence.

The progressive socialists embrace this principle of egalitarianism and call it “social justice” and fairness. We see it when schools begin to eliminate the recognition of valedictorians and salutatorians to protect the esteem of others because they did not achieve similar excellence. When we punish those who embody Jefferson’s assertion that we have an unalienable right to pursue happiness then we erode the fundamental aspect of the equality of opportunity.
It is then replaced by a government guarantee of happiness, which must be resourced as the goal becomes equality of outcomes.

In the end, the “participation” trophy becomes that which some long for and worship as they lose their sense of individuality, and the ability to seek out their own personal accomplishments.

Allen West, “The Fallacy of the Participation Trophy”

Denial of God Equals Death of Meaning

Great thinkers have repeatedly warned over the centuries that a departure from God denudes humans and results in the death of meaning.  The denial of God and the death of meaning cannot be severed from each other, though interspersed with all the learning, education, and hyperactivity of postmodern human beings.  The farther we move from God, the more we devalue man.

Ravi Zacharias in "The Real Face of Atheism," pg.79

Cohabiting Leads to Difficulty in Marriage

Cohabitors experienced significantly more difficulty in their [relationships] with adultery, alcohol, drugs, and independence than couples who had not cohabited.  Apparently this makes marriage preceded by cohabitation more prone to problems often associated with other deviant lifestyles -- for example, use of drugs and alcohol, more permissive sexual relationships, and an abhorrence of dependence -- than marriages not preceded by cohabitation.

Michael D.  Newcomb and P. M. Bentler, "Assessment of Personality and Demographic Aspects of Cohabitation and Marital Success," Journal of Personality Assessment, 44 (1980): 11-24.  Cited by  Glenn T. Stanton, The Ring Makes All the Difference, pg.44

Values Clarification Is A Fraud

The growth of self-expression in our classrooms in the last two decades has not served to bring a glorious increase in student happiness and mental health.  If anything, the great rise in student violence and the continued decline in student test scores are evidence that the opposite has occurred.  In short, the assumption about the complete natural goodness of the self, which stands at the heart of the values clarification theory, is false.  This weakness alone is enough to remove it as a sensible candidate for a theory of moral education.

Paul C. Vitz, "Psychology As Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship," pg.70

Intolerance

Death Penalty Unconstitutional?

The death penalty was also on the statute books of every single state when the Constitution was adopted.  The Founding Fathers who adopted the Bill of Rights banning "cruel and unusual punishment" did not have a problem implementing the death penalty.

Gregg Jackson, Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies, p.151

Purpose of Sexual Desire

Sexual desire--and the promise of sexual pleasure--is meant to draw us into marriage, toward children, and into fidelity and responsibility.  Lust is sinful precisely to the extent that sexual desire and passion are stripped from this moral context.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost of Sexual Tolerance, pg.17

The Schemes of the Drug Companies

Modern drug companies have made big bucks capitalizing on the power and ubiquity of the placebo response.  The best way to get great results with a pill is to treat people who don't really need it -- the highest placebo response rates occur in those who would get better naturally on their own.  The really brilliant marketing trick was to persuade doctors to treat patients who weren't really sick, while at the same time convincing normal people that they were really sick.  Expanding market share to include the worried well not only greatly enhanced the customer pool, but it also ensured the most satisfied of customers.  Placebo responders often become long-term loyalists to medication use even when the medication is perfectly useless, both because they have no way of knowing it played no role in their getting better and because they are often untroubled by side effects -- a cunning combination that creates the dream customer base for drug companies and their shareholders.

Allen Frances, M.D, "Saving Normal," pg.99-100

Nonsensical Freudian Assumptions

The common denominator of virtually all counseling and psychotherapy is the Freudian assumption that intrapersonal and interpersonal problems originate in childhood experiences, especially in one's relations with mother and father.  Shyness, difficulty in making a commitment, depression, anxiety, obsessiveness, slovenliness, substance abuse, eating disorders, trouble-making friends, inability to find meaning in life--virtually all problems are said to have the same origin.

E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., in "Freudian Fraud: the Malignant Effect of Freud's Theory on American Thought and Culture," p.208

Get Away from the Government Trough

Bias

Atheists, agnostics and revelationists (and theists) hold to religious positions; and what they do with the evidence will again be determined by the assumptions (beliefs) of their religious positions.  It is not a matter of whether one is biased or not.  It is really a question of which bias is the best bias with which to be biased.


Ken Ham, The Lie, pg.9

Socialists and the Family

The family is inherently an obstacle to schemes for central control of social processes.  Therefore, the anointed necessarily find themselves repeatedly on a collision course with the family.  It is not a matter of any subjective animus on their part against families.  The anointed may in fact be willing to shower government largess upon families, as they do on other social entities.  But the preservation of the family as an autonomous decision-making unit is incompatible with the third-party decision making that is at the heart of the vision of the anointed.

Thomas Sowell, "The Vision of the Anointed," p.172

Children's Rights in the Womb

Only One Way Works

The moral message my father wanted me to learn from my attempts to fix all those broken clocks is that only one way works.  America’s founders understood this message as well.  They acknowledged that although there may be many different ways to structure human society, only one way works.

But, some may counter, don’t we see many societies structured entirely differently that seem to work?  The answer is that for brief snatches of time, almost anything can work.  Even adultery seems to work during the short moments of stolen bliss.  Running your care without regularly changing the oil might seem to be a new and more economic breakthrough in car ownership, but only for a while.  Eventually the mistake becomes painfully evident.  As mature citizens we have to learn to hear the sinister footsteps of approaching consequences to the well-intentioned policy decisions of today.

We tossed out the moral message of the clocks only a few decades ago.  Until the early 1960s most Americans accepted, often without even thinking about it, the basic ethics of Judeo-Christian thought.  Until the early ‘60s few among our populace doubted that the best citizens are produced in a family in which both a man and a woman raise the children.  Until the early ‘60s nearly everyone believed that it was important for all to work for a living and that living on the dole was sad and even a little shameful.  Until the early ‘60s we even understood that shame was a legitimate component in shaping our society.  “What will the neighbors say?” was a noble expression of concern for community standards.  Today it would be more likely mocked by children raise in the spirit of permissiveness and contempt for any kind of authority.

For less than fifty years we have been living with the result of saying that all ways of organizing families and societies are equally valid.  It is still too early to see impending doom.  Remember, though, that communism (a disastrous rejection of a biblical blueprint if ever there was one) survived just seventy years.  And for those peering ahead into America’s future, the signs are become dismayingly clear.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.73

God or Tyrants

If we are not governed by God, then we will be ruled by tyrants.

William Penn, cited David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times, pg.633

Abortion is Unregulated

Amazingly, this dangerous and brutal procedure [abortion] is the only surgery which is legally protected from any sort of government regulation.  There are laws that dictate how tonsils may and may not be removed.  There are laws that dictate how broken bones may and may not be set.  But there are no laws that dictate how abortions may or may not be performed.  Even tort liability restraints upon the abortion industry are being dismantled by the child-killing zealots in government--from the White House to the courthouse.

George Grant, "Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood," pg.88-89

Darwinian Morality is Bankrupt

Since its advent in the mid-nineteenth century Darwinism has stirred up debate about many questions touching the very heart of human existence.  Not least among these is: How should we live?  While many philosophers and theologians ruled this question outside the purview of science, most prominent advocates of Darwinian theory—including biologists, physicians, social theorists, and popularizers—believed Darwinism had far-reaching ramifications for ethics and morality.  Many argued that by providing a naturalistic account of the origin of ethics and morality, Darwinism delivered a death-blow to the prevailing Judeo-Christian ethics, as well as Kantian ethics and any other fixed moral code.  If morality was built on social instincts that changed over evolutionary time, then morality must be relative to the conditions of life at any given time.  Darwinism—together with other forms of historicism ascendant in the nineteenth century—thus contributed to the rise of moral relativism.

But, interestingly, many Darwinists were not willing to live with complete moral relativism.  They still retained one fixed point of reference—the process of evolution itself.  Since morality arose through evolution, they argued that the purpose of morality is to advance the evolutionary process.   They thereby imported the nineteenth-century cult of progress into evolutionary theory.  The problem with this is that it presupposed that some forms of morality are “better” than others.  But, of course, Darwinism provided no basis to consider some form of morality “better” than any other, or for that matter, it gave no reason to think that morality was “better” in any real sense than immorality.  Yet most used morally charged language quite freely, apparently oblivious to the contradiction this entailed.

Those Darwinists who made the evolutionary process the new criteria for morality radically altered the way that people thought about morality.  Since they generally affirmed that good health and intelligence were key factors in the upward march of evolution, improving physical vitality and mental prowess—especially of future generations—became the highest moral virtue.  The greatest sin was to contribute in some way to the decline of physical life or intellectual ability.  This kind of evolutionary ethics flew in the face of Christian morality, in which one’s health, vitality, and mental faculty play no role in determining moral or immoral behavior.  While Christian morality demands a relationship of love toward God and one’s neighbors, which involves self-sacrifice, evolutionary ethics focussed on breeding better humans, even it if meant sacrificing other people in the process.


Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler, pg.229-230

Marriage As a Social Construction

When traditional marriage is merely a social construction, no principled reason keeps the state from permitting virtually any marital union.  For example, marital arrangements that include two brothers, two sisters, a mother and a son, a father and a son, a mother and a daughter, or a grandfather and a grandson, would be consistent with the philosophical assumptions undergirding the same-sex marriage defense.

And this is not all.  Nor is a polygamous marriage of one man and numerous spouses--which also may include his mother, his grandmother, his grandfather, as well as his adult daughter and son--inconsistent with the same-sex marriage worldview.  Given sexual politics today, one can easily imagine polygamy being reintroduced by an appeal to the sad plight of the bisexual, a person who is incapable of fulfilling his or her marital aspirations with merely one spouse of one gender.  The rhetorical question could be raised: Why should he or she be forbidden from marrying the ones he or she loves?

Of course, we cannot ignore the marital rights of the person who has a deep and abiding affection for the family pet, for then the animal-rights crowd may pipe up and accuse us of speciesism, the prejudice favoring human beings over nonhuman animals.

To be blunt, the state and its institutions (including public schools) could not say that a heterosexual monogamous couple raising three young children in a traditional Christian, Jewish, or Muslim home is a better arrangement for the moral ecology of the community than the marital union of a father and four of his adult children who make their living producing pornographic films of their sexual encounters.  After all, they are all adult consenters, nobody is being coerced, and the state should not prefer one sexual lifestyle over another.

We believe these counterintuitive results occur because most proponents of same-sex marriage presuppose that marriage and family are merely matters of convention and positive law.  That is, because family and marital arrangements aren't particularly sacrosanct or normative, individual members of society may tinker with them as long as they don't interfere with other people's choices.  The state must be "neutral" and assume no overarching good or purpose to human life, relationships, and communities.  Thus those who uphold the philosophy of same-sex marriage must be willing to embrace marital and familial anarchy.


Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, “Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air,” pg.121-122

Sin Becomes Master

At first, sin is like an occasional visitor, then like a guest who stays for a while, and finally like the master of the house.

Rabbi Yetzhak, Genesis Rabbah 22:6.  Cited by Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, pg. 146

Tyranny for 'Good' of Victims

Of all the tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.  To be cured against one's will and of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on the level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles and domestic animals.

C.S. Lewis, cited by Dr. Tana Dineen, Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People, pg.67

Compulsory Education

Laws making education in public schools compulsory have historically been found in the most totalitarian of governments where state-sponsored indoctrination was a major goal of the educational system.

Erwin W. Lutzer, When A Nation Forgets God, p.98

Conception Makes You A Mother

The pregnant woman has made a prior choice to have intercourse, a choice that brought another party into her life, a separate little individual whose rights now limit her own freedom of choice.  Choices often lead to conditions that are physically or morally irreversible.  Her choice as to what happens to and in her body should have been made earlier.  It is too late to choose for or against motherhood.  The pregnant woman is already a mother.

Robertson McQuilkin, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, pg.320-321

The Choice Is Whether to Have Sex

The mother's first two matters of control--sex and birth control--were personal and private.  The issue of abortion is not personal and private.  It directly involves the life of another person and therefore becomes the concern of a decent society.  As a society would protect the life of the mother if someone tried to kill her, so it must protect the life of the child if someone tries to kill him.

Randy Alcorn, "ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments," p.115

It's Not About Civil Rights

Greg Koukl puts this very well:  "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."  Same-sex marriage advocate Andrew Sullivan understands this.  he writes, "Including homosexuals within marriage would be a means of conferring the highest form of social approval imaginable."

Frank Turek, Correct, NOT Politically Correct, pg.12

The Logical Results of Abortion

Once you permit the killing of the unborn child, there will be no stopping.  There will be no age limit.  You are setting off a chain reaction that will eventually make you the victim.

Your children will kill you because you permitted the killing of their brothers and sisters.  Your children will kill you because they will not want to support you in your old age.  Your children will kill you for your homes and estates.

If a doctor will take money for killing the innocent in the womb, he will kill you with a needle when paid by your children.  This is the terrible nightmare you are creating for the future.


Dr. R.A. Gallop, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada.  Cited by John Powell, S.J.,  Abortion: the Silent Holocaust, pg.134

It Isn't 'Orientation' They Want Legalized

Make no mistake about it:  It's not homosexual orientation for which gays seek legal protection, but homosexual conduct.  It's not orientation alone which gays want to promote in America's classrooms as being socially acceptable, but homosexual behavior.  Nor is orientation the issue at stake in the movement to gain legal recognition of homosexual marriages and adoptions.  And if you take a close look at the criminal statutes that gays find so offensive, not one prohibits "homosexuality" or "orientation," just sodomy as the expression of this orientation.

F. LaGard Smith, Sodom's Second Coming, p.59

Sin vs 'Mental Illness'?

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 biological 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

It Isn't About Marriage 'Equality'

Traditionally, when any of us seeks a marriage license, we

* can't already be married

* must be an adult and must marry an adult

* can't marry a close family member

* must marry someone of the opposite sex

Now if two people meeting all these criteria go to city hall to get a marriage license, and the clerk asks whether either are homosexual and denies them a marriage license based on an affirmative answer, that would be discriminatory.  Current law does not keep homosexual individuals from marrying.  It just keeps them -- as well as heterosexuals -- from redefining marriage by marrying a person of the same sex.  Our current marriage laws treat everyone equally.

This debate isn't about equality or access to marriage; it's about redefining marriage, making it something it has never been before.


Glenn T. Stanton and Dr. Bill Maier, Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting, pg.33

March Of Dimes Is Evil

Founded in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the March of Dimes is one of the world's premier private-sector health and medical associations.  Dedicated to the prevention of birth defects, it raises millions of dollars each year for education, research, and service.  It works to improve maternal and newborn health.  It makes basic clinical grants to hospitals and universities for perinatal and genetic study programs.  It sponsors medical conferences, coordinates symposia, and publishes literature.  Since it successfully led the fight to cure polio during the early fifties, the March of Dimes has become a symbol of hope for millions of parents all around the globe.  But it has also placed itself at the forefront of the Planned Parenthood movement.

Since the early sixties, it has increasingly turned its attentions away from curing genetic disorders and birth defects to detecting and eliminating them.  As a result, amniocentesis and abortion have become its chief concerns, consuming a vast majority of its funding.  Instead of trying to solve the problem of birth defects, the March of Dimes now disposes of those problems by funding "search and destroy" missions.

Eighty-eight percent of all March of Dimes geneticists favor abortion-on-demand.  Seventy-one percent argue that if amniocentesis diagnostic tests prove a child to be defective, he should be terminated regardless of the stage of pregnancy.  A large number even revealed that hey were involved in live fetal experimentation and fetal harvesting.  This despite the persistent claims of the organization that it is "abortion neutral."

The connection between the March of Dimes and Planned Parenthood is not just philosophical.  Many faithful donors would be shocked to discover that the money they have given over the years to "help fight birth defects" has actually wound up in Planned Parenthood coffers.  In 1980, for instance, the March of Dimes gave more than $0.5 million to a Planned Parenthood abortionist for a major research project.  The results of the study, published in Obstetrics and Gynecology, have been widely heralded in pro-abortion circles and selectively circulated by Planned Parenthood affiliates all around the country.

In response to prolife criticism of its close relationship with Planned Parenthood, the national office of the March of Dimes called its critics "ideological zealots eager to invent new enemies."  Today, the kinship between the two groups is friendlier than ever.  They display and distribute each other's literature.  They refer clients back and forth to each other's programs.  They cooperate in sponsoring genetic research and perinatal medical conferences.  And they support each other in their political lobbying efforts.


George Grant, Immaculate Deception: The Shifting Agenda of Planned Parenthood, p.139-140 (1996)  [And things haven't changed a bit.]