Why Would God Make Me a Lesbian?

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Could there be any more sensitive and provocative question in our culture today?  (Since we posted this video on YouTube two days ago it has averaged nearly 2,000 views per hour.)  A student posed the question at Towson State University.  Here is our four-minute discussion:

The video ends abruptly because the young lady went on to ask another question (you can see the entire presentation and all of the Q&A here).

The bottom line is that we all have an orientation to sinful behavior.  We all have attractions we ought not act on, and we all have to restrain ourselves on numerous fronts each day.  The only one who did that perfectly and completely was Jesus of Nazareth.  That’s why only he can be our sacrifice.  He didn’t die for his own sins, but for ours.

Of course, much more could be said on the issues of love, sex, natural law, homosexuality and same-sex marriage than one can say in a four-minute video.  I may touch on this a bit in the podcast later this week.  But if you want to go into even more depth, I have done so in this recently updated little book.

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Crazy College Courses Sex Religion

Crazy College Courses and the Religion of Sex

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Just when you thought the state of higher education couldn’t get any lower, the Young America’s Foundation surveyed fifty major colleges to see what courses they are offering as legitimate “higher education” in the 2017-18 academic year. As is evident from a reading of the complete survey, the new religion in America— “the religion of sex”— has taken over part of the academy and made it its temple. Here’s just a small sampling of the crazy courses now being offered:

Up at Northwestern University there’s a course that typifies many being offered at campuses all over the country. It’s called Beyond the Binary: Transgender and Race.Apparently, after thousands of years of human civilization and scientific advancement, college professors have abandoned biology and just discovered that gender and race have no scientific basis. They’re teaching all this can be changed on a whim. And this is from the crowd who just ten minutes ago were asserting that sexual feelings are fixed just as race is, because “we’re born this way.”

True to the current fad, Medieval Sexuality, also offered at Northwestern, investigates the “fluidity of sex and gender roles in an age before ‘sexual orientation’; impact of and resistance to Christian theology’s negative assessment of sexuality; the cult of chastity.” Well, who could disagree with that? I mean, if only people would be less chaste in our society, then things would really get better. Right?

Indiana University is offering Topics In Gender Studies (We’re All A Little Crazy: Gender, Madness, & Popular Culture). (I wish I could tell you what this college course is about. Well, no, I don’t. The description is too profane to print.)

Not to be outclassed by Indiana, the University of Michigan is finally offering Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music. Parents have been demanding it for years! They’re also offering Drag in America (which is now a laudable way to dress up a degree).

Amherst College has constructed The Cross-Cultural Construction of Gender. Apparently this comes without correction from the biology department.

Wellesley College offers the ever-necessary Rainbow Cowboys (and Girls): Gender, Race, Class, and Sexuality in Westerns. A course like that might even earn a blush from Wellesley alum Hillary Clinton as she rides out of town.

Over at Swarthmore College you can participate in Queering God: Feminist and Queer Theology. “Key themes include: gender; embodiment; masculinity; liberation; sexuality; feminist and queer theory.” If that’s not “queer” enough for you, don’t miss Queering the Bible. Its stated goal? “By reading the Bible with the methods of queer and trans* theoretical approaches, this class destabilizes long held assumptions about what the bible – and religion – says about gender and sexuality.”

The University of Maryland offers Homophobia in the U.S. Society in the New Millennium. The stated goal is not to educate, but to activate students to take up a political crusade. Its purpose is to “focus on students’ powers and responsibilities within struggles to end discrimination based on sexuality.”

Davidson College offers Oppression & Education (which ironically is not a commentary on higher education). They also list Marriage in the Age of Trump, which has nothing to do with the kind of marriage that has perpetuated and stabilized civilization since, well, it created civilization. Instead the course examines “meanings of marriage for same-sex couples, including marriage as material right, marriage as protest, and marriage as validation.”

At the University of Georgia you’ll be asked to swallow Gendered Politics of Food and adopt a completely new method of learning by taking Feminist Research Methods.

At Ole Miss, there’s this golden oldie: Sex, Gender and the Bible. Now, there’s an obvious staple of higher learning for you!(Grandma, don’t you remember taking that course while Grandpa was overseas saving civilization from the Nazis?)

Down in Sweet Home Alabama, the University of Alabama has a course called Contemporary In(queer)ies. It’s about as bad as their football team is good. The allegedly more conservative Texas A&M calls a similar course Alternative Genders (whoop, whoop).

At University of Kentucky you can take — and I’m not making this up — Vampires: Evolution of a Sexy Monster. “This course answers the following questions: What is a vampire? Where do they come from? Why do we have an obsession with the walking dead, especially with fanged monsters?” (What employer couldn’t use a graduate with the answers to those puzzling questions?)

DePaul University answers another question puzzling society with Are We Still Fabulous?: Queer Identity in Contemporary Drama. Meanwhile, over at Providence College students with less pigmentation in their skin will learn that they are guilty for any perceived social inequality, when they take The Power of Whiteness.

The Ivy League’s Brown University is apparently proud to offer Prostitutes, Mothers, + Midwives: Women in Pre-modern Europe and North America. Or a Brown student could take Feminist Theory for a Heated Planetwhich, according to the description, has something to do with “the eruption of Gaia.”

Columbia University advocates personal and political action with its course on Queer Practice, That’s only to be outdone by another course at Cornell University called Nightlife, which appears to study what might or should happen at gay nightclubs.

Dartmouth is teaching The United States of Queer as well as Radical Sexuality: Of Color, Wildness and Fabulosity. (In other news, leftist sociologists remain baffled by the current wave of sexual harassment charges. What could possibly give sexual deviants justification to radically and wildly ignore traditional sexual boundaries?)

The “Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department” at Yale University is peddling Globalizing Gender and Sexuality. And the once great Harvard University (founded by John Harvard to train pastors) now offers such biblically edifying courses as Gender, Religion and Scripture and Leaning In, Hooking Up. The course will “critique ideological formations of gender, particularly as bounded by race, class, and sexuality.” Indeed, it offers “new models for sexuality” that, apparently, were beyond the provincial mind of Jesus.

And that’s only a small sample of what’s being taught at just fifty schools; it’s actually worse and more widespread than that.

The Religion of Sex

Do you think these courses sound like elements of a quality education or more like the weekly worship services of the religion of sex? Sure, they have the ruse of education. But they are really promoting a dogmatic secularism with a kind of religious fervor intent on urging students to abandon reality and live in their own sexual fantasy world.

And the culture they help justify demands that the rest of us live in their sexual fantasy world too. Their worshippers will preach “inclusion, tolerance and diversity.” But if you fail to celebrate their fantasy they’ll immediately brand you a heretic and exclude you for being “intolerant” enough to believe that there actually is a reality outside of your mind.

While conservatives believe in changing their behavior to fit reality, today’s new liberals seem hell-bent on changing reality to fit their behavior. That will not end well for them personally or our country.

The professors who teach these courses may have the best of intentions. They may think that what they are doing is right and true (all the while declaring that truth and gender are relative). But you don’t have to support their dogmatic delusions. Parents and alumni: If you love your kids (and civilization) more than your football and basketball tickets, then stop giving these schools your children and your money.

 

 

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After Debate, Atheist and Christian Defend Free Speech Against Gay Activists

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On April 16, I, Frank Turek, debated atheist Michael Shermer at Stony Brook University on the question: “What Better Explains Morality:  God or Science?”  Following the debate, the Graduate Queer Alliance at Stony Brook wrote a letter to the editor of the school newspaper wanting an apology from the university for allowing me to speak because I expressed my opposition to homosexual behavior and same sex marriage.  They also want shut down all future debate on such topics claiming that opposition is “hate speech.”  Dr. Shermer and I decided to issue a joint response to their false assertions and totalitarian demands.  Here it is.  

By Dr. Michael Shermer & Dr. Frank Turek

It’s not often that an atheist and a Christian, who have just had a debate on campus, can be brought into agreement by a group in the audience. But the Graduate Queer Alliance (GQA) at Stony Brook University has managed to do that. Their letter to the editor on April 30 was so full of false assertions and totalitarian demands that we, Dr. Michael Shermer (an atheist) and Dr. Frank Turek (a Christian), felt compelled to write this letter together in response.

The central assertion of the GQA is that anyone who expresses a negative opinion of same sex marriage or homosexual behavior is guilty of “hate speech” and should be barred from speaking at Stony Brook University. The GQA says this while also claiming to believe “that a university should provide an open forum for controversial ideas to be discussed and debated.” We both wonder how the GQA can hold these two contradictory opinions at the same time. After all, they say they are for the debate of controversial issues, but apparently only if both debaters hold the same position and that position agrees with the GQA. Some debate!

How is disagreement over controversial moral and political issues “hate speech?” If it is then GQA’s position is “hate speech” because it disagrees with people who believe marriage should be defined in other ways. Calling people names or characterizing their arguments as “hate speech” is not good public discourse designed to discover the truth; it is bullying—the very thing GQA should be against.

To demonstrate the oversensitivity of the GQA, you should know that our debate was not even about same sex marriage or homosexuality. Our debate was about whether God or Science better explains morality. As you can see for yourself in the debate here, Dr. Turek never mentioned homosexuality or same sex marriage in his prepared opening statement. Dr. Shermer brought up those issues in his opening statement as examples of what he believes to be moral progress (hence the title of this book, The Moral Arc). Dr. Turek expressed disagreement with Dr. Shermer’s point only when Dr. Shermer pressed him to comment during the cross-examination period. (Imagine, a debate where the debaters disagree!)

The true motives of the GQA are revealed by what is not in the letter: the arguments made by Dr. Shermer in support of same sex marriage, arguments he made with great passion that elicited equal passion—on both sides of the issue—from the audience. If those in the GQA are so interested in advancing their position through sound reason and science—which was Dr. Shermer’s point—why would they not highlight the arguments offered in support of it? Instead, the GQA seems to think they have a right not to hear an opposing opinion lest they be challenged!

It’s a shame that those in GQA appear so uninterested in evidence. Unfortunately for them, as the late Christopher Hitchens put it (and Dr. Shermer elevated to a principle, “Hitchens’ Dictum”, in one of his Scientific American columns ), “What can be asserted without evidence, can also be dismissed without evidence.” Instead of citing evidence, GQA attempted to smear the character of one of the debaters and now tries to silence all future debate by simply declaring that the major issues of our day have all been decided in their favor. Don’t bother debating anything. We know what’s right and you have no right to express your wrong opinion!

What’s also problematic is that none of the derogatory assertions about Dr. Turek made by the GQA are true. For example, contrary to the GQA:

  • Turek has not written a book that “derides gays.” His book on same sex marriage (which they obviously haven’t read) does nothing of the sort as numerous reviewers have observed. By making a derogatory judgment without knowing the facts, those in GQA are guilty of the very bigotry with which they falsely charge Dr. Turek.
  • Turek never said that gays have a choice in their sexual orientation. He believes the consensus view that the causes of sexual orientation are not entirely understood. But for him, the issue isn’t attractions—it’s actions. And we all are responsible for the actions we choose.
  • Turek made no parallel between homosexuality and a Nazi propaganda video. The video was shown in Dr. Turek’s opening statement, long before Dr. Shermer brought up the issue of homosexuality. The only purpose of the video was to demonstrate that Hitler thought natural selection gave him justification to kill the weak.

Finally, on the issue of tolerance, it appears that GQA only wants to tolerate ideas they agree with. That’s not tolerance. That’s totalitarianism. You can only tolerate ideas you disagree with. Moreover, you will never learn and grow (the essence of a university) if you hear only one side of any issue. As Dr. Shermer points out in The Moral Arc by quoting same sex marriage advocate Jonathan Rauch: “Good ideas outcompete bad ideas in the marketplace of free exchange.” Now that’s a good idea rooted in the very foundation of a free society.

Unfortunately, GQA is expressing a totalitarian impulse to silence all opinions that dissent from their own. As a free people, we must not adopt such an unlearned, intolerant and unconstitutional position. This atheist and Christian agree with same sex marriage advocate Andrew Sullivan who wrote against this totalitarian impulse this way: “If this is the gay rights movement today—hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else—then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us.”

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Top 100 Universities Go with Liberal Graduation Speakers

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Most of our top universities continue their liberal learning right through the graduation ceremony.  Todd Starnes provides a complete listing of university graduation speakers from Harvard on down. This despite the fact that many of these universities were founded by Christians on Christianity.

For example, Harvard, whose namesake was clergyman John Harvard, was founded to train ministers of the Gospel.  This is from a website affiliated with Harvard:

Harvard University was founded in 1636 with the intention of establishing a school to train Christian ministers. In accordance with that vision, Harvard’s “Rules and Precepts,” adopted in 1646, stated (original spelling and Scriptural references retained):

“2. Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, Let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him (Prov. 2:3).

3. Every one shall so exercise himselfe in reading the Scriptures twice a day, that he shall be ready to give such an account of his proficiency therein, both in Theoreticall observations of Language and Logick, and in practical and spiritual truths, as his Tutor shall require, according to his ability; seeing the entrance of the word giveth light, it giveth understanding to the simple (Psalm 119:130).”

The motto of the University adopted in 1692 was “Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae” which translated from Latin means “Truth for Christ and the Church.” This phrase was embedded on a shield as shown to the right, and can be found on many buildings around campus including the Widener library, Memorial Church, and various dorms in Harvard Yard. Interestingly, the top two books on the shield are face up while the bottom book is face down. This symbolizes the limits of reason, and the need for God’s revelation.

Consistent with “Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae” and the purpose of Harvard’s founding, our fellowship is dedicated to discovering and experiencing Truth (Veritas) for the sake of Christ and his church.

Is it any wonder why the majority of students fail to attend church during college and many walk away from Christianity permanently?  Students are fed liberalism throughout their college experience.

But why have our universities and much of our country gone liberal?  It’s not because the truth supports liberalism or is contrary to Christianity.  It’s largely because Christians went anti-intellectual and failed to defend the truth.  When you turn out the light, darkness is right there.

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The Intolerance of those Fighting for “Tolerance”

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This is an article on my I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist presentation that a homosexual group protested last night at Ohio University. Notice one student said that I shouldn’t be speaking because anyone opposed to homosexual behavior and same-sex marriage is “hateful.”  The people who say they are fighting for “tolerance” are often the most intolerant! All Americans– regardless of our moral or religious views– need to speak out against such totalitarianism before we are not able to speak at all.

Overall, the evening went very well.  Most of the protesters (whom I thanked for coming) stayed for the entire two hour presentation and heard the evidence for Christianity and the Gospel.  Despite the content of the presentation, the protestors  only asked questions relating to morality and homosexuality– nothing about the evidence presented for truth of the Bible.

 

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The American University: Lockstep Liberalism

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Surveys show that American universities are more likely to demand lock-step conformity to liberalism and secular humanism rather than championing the free exchange of ideas. In a column posted at AmericanThinker.com, recently-retired professor Ron Lipsman offers his first-hand observations:

“The overwhelmingly liberal atmosphere on campus is well known. In the one place in society at which there should be diversity of thought, exploration of conflicting ideas and a propensity to challenge conventional wisdom, we have instead a mind-numbing conformity of opinion and a complete unwillingness to entertain any thought or idea that deviates from the accepted truth. That conformity encompasses:

  • The legitimacy of virtually any program that promotes the interests of minority and female faculty, staff and students, even if the program is blatantly racist or sexist — justified by a belief that America’s past unjust treatment of blacks, American Indians and Japanese-Americans, and its unfair treatment of women render such discrimination necessary and lawful.
  • A multicultural mentality, which preaches that America’s Eurocentric, white, Christian heritage is responsible for colonialism, imperialism, racism and sexism, and that its replacement by a culture that “celebrates diversity” will transform the US into a more just and humane society.
  • A distrust of free markets and democratic capitalism, and its severe limitation in favor of a centralized, government-controlled economy that will redistribute the wealth of America more fairly.
  • A denigration of religious belief and its replacement by the “worship” of secular humanism, with mindless environmentalism occupying a central place in the new religion.

. . . I believe the liberal brainwash has been so effective on campus — and in the national educational system in general — that many in the liberal majority can’t even fathom that there is anyone who doubts the legitimacy of their point of view.

My final observation is the following. The liberal hegemony exists in many quarters of the country beside academia — e.g., the mainstream media, major foundations, law schools and the trail lawyers they produce, public school teachers, the Democratic Party, even big corporations. But none of these can maintain the atmosphere as effortlessly as campus profs and administrators. Politicians encounter opposition from their constituents; the media from its readers, listeners and viewers; trail lawyers from their clients; and corporations from their stockholders and consumers. But the educational establishment-both higher and lower-encounters little resistance. The students are ignorant, the parents are cowed, and Boards of Regents are cowardly. The ivory tower is alive and well in America and the intellectual product it presents is completely one-sided. What a tragedy for our nation and especially for its youth.”

The need for CrossExamined college events has never been greater.

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Turek vs. Hitchens II, Debate Video

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Thanks to Christopher for a second opportunity to debate.   The question of this debate is “What Best Explains Reality:  Atheism or Theism?”   Recorded at the College of New Jersey!  (Also available to view on line here.  If you’d like to order a DVD of this debate, click here).

Frank Turek vs. Christopher Hitchens: What Best Explains Reality? from Andrew Ketchum on Vimeo.

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Salvo Magazine: Leftist Indoctrination on Campus

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As you know, our ministry addresses the fact that 75% of Christian youth leave the church after leaving the home.  One reason for this is the fact that Christians are not equipped with the arguments for Christianity before they arrive in the generally anti-Christian environment known as the college campus.  Salvo magazine is one tool you can use to equip Christian students. For the next week you can download a free copy of this edgy and informative magazine at the blog of our ministry partner Stand to Reason.  Look for the July 31, 2009 entry called “Salvo Free Offer.”

In it you’ll find articles such as:

10 INDOCTRINATION 101
A new orthodoxy has a stranglehold on American
colleges and universities
by Mark Linville
26 PICK YOUR POISON
Academic bias is ubiquitous, but choosing the
right college can minimize the damage
by Les Sillars and John Basie
46 STATE OF THE U
Just how bad is the indoctrination at American
universities? We ask David Horowitz
by Marcia Segelstein
63 QUAD PRO QUO
“Here’s your money,” say today’s college students,
“Now give us our degrees!”
by Marcia Segelstei

and other topics including Hate Crimes, Naturalism vs. Supernaturalism, and Intelligent Design.   While I’ve only had a chance to read a couple of the articles so far, this publication looks extremely intelligently designed!  And right now the price is right.

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Hitchens-Turek Debate VIDEO

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The debate is over two hours, so get comfortable. If it gets hung up on our site, you can also view it here: http://www.vimeo.com/1904911.  Please return here to post your comments.  It will be on You Tube soon as well (but there you can only view it 10 minute segments).  Thanks!

Turek vs. Hitchens Debate: Does God Exist? from Andrew on Vimeo.

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Hitchens-Turek Debate

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On Tuesday night, I debated atheist Christopher Hitchens, author of God is not Great:  How Religion Poisons Everything, at Virginia Commonwealth University. The topic was, “Does God Exist?”

Thanks be to God (and to you for your prayers) because I don’t think the debate could have gone much better.  There were several atheists who approached me afterwards to say that I had won.  One young lady actually apologized for being an atheist!  Her position was not well represented, and she said that the arguments for God were.

Hitchens was his usual charming and witty self (I really like him and said as much), but he did not answer any of the eight arguments that I presented for the existence of God.  And as many in the audience acknowledged, he dodged nearly all of my questions.

Here is the introduction of a long e-mail sent to me two hours after the debate by a VCU Philosophy professor who attended (this professor told me that he is completely “non-religious”):

Dear Dr. Turek,  I wanted to say once again that I greatly enjoyed your talk and that, in my judgment, you clearly and unequivocally prevailed against Hitchens. Your two mind-body arguments were, I thought, very good, as were your modernizations of the cosmological argument and the teleological argument. I was also moved by your argument that, given how vanishingly close to zero are the chances of there being any sort of life, let alone intelligent life, it is more reasonable to infer that there is a God than it is to infer that there isn’t — the first an inference, but not the latter, being an ‘inference to the best explanation’, as philosophers of science would say. 

This is from a Christian student who has doubts:

My name is Jeremy and I was at your debate tonight. I will tell you what, you opened up a new can of worms at the VCU campus.  You have opened the eyes of many of the “atheists” that go to VCU and well, you did an amazing job.  You have really opened my eyes up a little bit more to the fact that God exists.  As a Christian, I still have my doubts sometimes.  I am not going to lie.  But by faith I believe.  Something that Mr. God himself Chris does not comprehend. (That was a great closing statement that you made)  But thank you so much for coming to Richmond and actually answering questions and having a reliable debate unlike Chris who beat around the bush and really bashed you when he did not have an answer.  People on the group said you did a good job and you made up some minds. 

Here is an account of the debate from an atheist and a Hitchens fan who was very disappointed:  http://rudyhenkel.livejournal.com/2726.html.  (Note:  This gentlemen erroneously thinks I do this for money.  My honorarium for the debate goes to CrossExamined.org. He also dismisses my arguments without answering them and mischaracterizes a few things, but he tells the truth about Hitchens.)

We video recorded the entire debate, and interviewed many who attended.  As soon as we produce the final version, I’ll let you know where you can see it (we intend to post it on You Tube and put it on our TV show).

Thank you again for your prayers and support.  Our next college event is September 23 at UNC Charlotte. 

 

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