The Choice

I am suggesting that just as there are two answers to the questions of where we came from and where we shall end up, there may only be the same two ways to settle the question of what we should be doing during our life: namely, either following the pro-God worldview or the anti-God worldview.  The alternative, indifference to God, is unworthy of men or women and is therefore practiced chiefly by non-human life forms such as cows and carrots.  In reality there are very few agnostics.

I suspect that most of our cultural institutions are now firmly in the hands of those who reject the Almighty.  Those who run our entertainment and news media are consistently shown by polls to attend worship services far less, and to be less likely to have a religious affiliation, than the nation's population as a whole.  Those who run our schools, universities, and courts are constantly implementing anti-God doctrines no matter how often they might invoke His name.  I am not even too certain of many of our churches and synagogues.  It is time for the rest of us to recognize that there is a war being waged and to fight back.


Rabbi Daniel Lapin, America's Real War, p.57

Movie Discernment

When you go to the theater, do you simply let the story wash over you?  Or do you have the skills to analyze what a film is saying?  A movie generally communicates its perspective through the lead character.  What the main character learns or discovers is what the filmmakers want the audience to learn. . . .

When watching a movie, we should be asking:  What worldview is the movie communicating?  Are there elements that are true?  Are there elements that are false and destructive?  If Christians do not learn to ask those questions, they may well absorb nonbiblical ideas without even being aware of it.  T.S. Eliot once noted that the serious books we read do not influence us nearly as much as the books we read for fun (or the movies we watch for entertainment).  Why?  Because when we are relaxing, our guard is down and we engage in the "suspension of disbelief" that allows us to enter imaginatively into the story.  As a result, the assumptions of the author or screenwriter may go unnoticed and seep all the more deeply into our consciousness. When we "suspend disbelief," we must take care not to suspend our critical faculties.


Nancy Pearcey, "Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning,"  p.253

Reducing Behavior to "Brain Disorders"

The tendency to reduce all behavioral problems to brain disorders that should be solved primarily through drugs is indicative of just how uncritically our society has embraced the philosophy of scientific materialism.  Scientific materialism adds plausibility to the idea that all behavioral problems, including criminal activity, can be fixed through biological and chemical interventions, even if research has yet to sustain such a claim.

The consequences of this overselling of science as the solution to crime and misbehavior have been tragic.  Instead of improving the human condition, it has led to dehumanization, with criminal defendants and delinquents treated as guinea pigs for experiments in the service of scientific ideology.


John G. West, "Darwin Day in America: How our politics and culture have been dehumanized in the name of science," p.101

Redefining the Language

In major cultural transitions, words often change their meanings as new norms evolve and old cultural constraints loosen.  . . . [T]hose involved in the politics of deviance often foster subtle changes in the language as part of a larger campaign to alter perceptions.  An effective media campaign — one, for instance, that pushes for standards of behavior based on individual desires rather than moral categories — begins the redefinition with a linguistic assault.  The man who preys on boys becomes someone seeking only “intergenerational intimacy,” and the promiscuous teenager is redefined as simply “sexually adventurous.” In an age of imagery and sound bites, the reality of a given behavior can be less important than the emotions with which the behavior is packaged.

From the rights-based, pro-choice rhetoric of those promoting assisted suicide, to the medical jargon of those promoting the disease model of addiction, advocates for redefinitions of deviance know that the side that wins the linguistic high ground generally wins the debate.  In the not-so-distant past, words like “crazy” and “deeply disturbed” were connected with suicide.  Today, they have been replaced with words like “dignity” and “autonomy,” while those who oppose assisted suicide legislation are themselves stigmatized as “zealots” who want to strip the vulnerable of their last rights in the pursuit of cold moral abstractions.

The process of redefining deviance is a subtle one, and the changes in language we have discussed are so incremental and innocuous that the new meanings appear almost invisibly.

Anne Hendershott, The Politics of Deviance, p.153-154

Brave New World?

There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarianisms should resemble the old.  Government by clubs and firing squads, mass imprisonment and mass deportation, is not merely inhumane (nobody cares much about that nowadays); it is demonstrably inefficient -- and in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost.  A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

Aldous Huxley, 1946 forward to Brave New World.

Multiculturalism Is a Failure

Multiculturalists argue that different cultural values are morally equivalent. That's nonsense. Western culture and values are superior. For those who'd accuse me of Eurocentrism, I'd ask: Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value? Slavery is practiced in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan; is it morally equivalent? In most of the Middle East, there are numerous limits placed on women, such as prohibitions on driving, employment and education. Under Islamic law, in some countries, female adulterers face death by stoning, and thieves face the punishment of having their hand severed. In some countries, homosexuality is a crime punishable by death. Are these cultural values morally equivalent, superior or inferior to Western values?

Walter E. Williams, “Multiculturalism Is a Failure,” 17 Sep 2014, townhall.com

Television Is About Control

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

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

Abortion Helps Those Who Use Women

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

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

Opium of the People?

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

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

Liberals Act Like Pavlov's Dog

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

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

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, P.501

No Moral or Philosophical Vacuum in Education

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

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

Sex Indoctrination In Public Schools

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

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

Sexual Anarchy Hurts

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

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

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

Atheists Fear God

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

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

The "Emotion" Card

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

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.496

Whose Children Are They?

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

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

God Made Sex For Marriage Only

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

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

Victimology

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

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

Evolution: Dogma, Not Science

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

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

No Human Value = No Utopia

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


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