If there’s one area where I feel comfortable leading a woman, it’s education, career and finances. I wasn’t born in the USA, so it was quite a struggle to know how to navigate education, career and finances. But I did it, and I learned how to do it. And I like to share what I learned with Christian women, so that they don’t end up with a useless degree and a bunch of student loan debt.

Here’s a story about a woman I didn’t advise, reported by the far-left Business Insider:

Maria had a goal to teach at a university full-time. Today, she “absolutely” regrets pursuing that goal.

While Maria’s undergraduate education, which she completed in 2001, was funded through scholarships and Pell grants, she knew more advanced degrees would give her a leg up in university teaching — especially as a woman in the industry. So she pursued a master’s degree and a PhD, the latter of which took seven years to complete.

[…]Now, at 48 years old, Maria’s student-loan balance is $430,000…

[…]As a full-time human resources representative and part-time adjunct professor in Michigan, Maria now makes a five-figure salary while supporting her 15-year-old daughter on her own, with very minimal child support from the father.

[…]Of her total student-debt load, more than $70,000 is interest that accumulated while her student-loan payments were on hold, during which she cashed out her 401k and lived on unemployment benefits.

[…]Maria even filed for bankruptcy in 2018

I don’t recommend doing a degree in non-STEM fields, they don’t pay. I don’t recommend spending 7 years with no income for a PhD. But notice how society gives her free money to subsdize these poor decisions. She got free scholarships, Pell grants, child support, unemployment benefits. The article doesn’t mention if she got alimony, too. And she filed for bankruptcy… screwing her creditors out of what she owed them. Who knows what other social programs and tax benefits she got? While other women do STEM degrees, work in the private sector, marry and stay married, she’s been doing life on easy mode, passing off the costs of her poor decisions to the people around her. I don’t want women to make decisions that impose costs on their neighbors.

And now, she wants to get a bailout from taxpayers:

The Education Department recently announced reforms to PSLF, which included going back over denied applications and payments to the program. So there’s a chance that Maria may earn a quicker route to loan forgiveness. But with her current financial outlook, she’s not confident she can complete the program and wants President Joe Biden to do more to help millions of borrowers with debt burdens.

The article notes that teachers and other public sector “workers” can default on their loans and pass the costs along to taxpayers:

Maria does not work enough hours to qualify for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which forgives student debt for public servants, like teachers, after ten years of qualifying payments.

Just understand that if society pays women to make poor decisions with their education, careers and finances, then more women will do it. That raises the costs on the men that pay taxes for this, reducing their ability to get married and conceive children. If men are paying for this woman’s mistakes, they can’t pay for their own marriage and parenting plans.

Consider this other article from the far-left Business Insider:

There are over 4 times as many scholarships restricted to females as there are restricted to males.

This is despite the fact that about 60% of college students are women. Why are we focusing on subsidizing the group that’s already doing well?

By the way, the author of the first Business Insider article, is a recent journalism graduate (expensive university) living in expensive Washington, D.C.. She advocates for bailouts through her journalism. She probably has massive student loan debt, too. It seems like choosing easy non-STEM majors, going into debt, then hoping for a bailout from socialism is quite common.

According to far-left Yahoo News, women hold two thirds of the $1.4 trillion outstanding student loan debt:

Women hold nearly two-thirds of the outstanding student debt in the U.S., according to the American Association of University Women. And, they have a harder time paying off their debt compared to men. Prior to the student loan forbearance period, 70% of men made at least their required minimum monthly loan payments, while only half (54%) of women said the same, a recent survey by D.A. Davidson found.

Young women today don’t like to have to “settle” for a lower cost college in a city with a lower cost of living. Like the Business Insider reporter, they want the Sex in the City lifestyle. So they go live in an expensive city, and run up debt doing useless degrees at an expensive university. And sometimes overseas! As you can see from the chart below, women avoid hard STEM degrees. But those programs are hard for a reason – they pay more money.

My thoughts

What I wanted to do here is report to you what happens when I try to coach young women about their decisions in education, career and finances. And keep in mind, I’m doing this from a position of starting out in a foreign country, earning a BS and MS in computer science, graduating debt-free and working 22 years full-time. I had a $1.3 million net worth by age 45 (including the new construction home I bought for cash). So I have achievements here.

I run into the student loan debt problem while dating Christian women for marriage. Christian women seem to be even less likely to do hard degrees than women on average. You see a lot of art, music, English, journalism, etc. degrees there. I show them that student loans are a risk factor for divorce, and they also set back the plan to stop paying rent and start having children. I also show them which majors pay the most.

Here’s what I usually get in response:

• Women think that they will be an exception to all studies and reports showing that the likely consequences of their actions.
• One woman dismissed the need to clean up her finances  because God decided what degrees I would have, and how much I would earn, so I had no authority to advise her from my experience.
• Other women say that I am only doing what makes me happy, and they must do that too. (Note: I cried in second year calculus after failing the first test).
• I advised a 29-year-old woman with $25K of student loan debt and was working as a waitress to take a job I found her as an IT project manager. She said “No! Being a waitress is the easiest job I’ve ever had!”
• A 30-year-old woman with $23K in student loan debt wanted to do a Masters degree in Europe. I told her to pay off her loans first. She got two useless Masters degrees in Europe, and never worked again.
• I’m told that there is no rush to get out of debt to afford children, because women can have children in their 40s.
• I’m told that it will be fine for the children if she has to work to pay off her debts, because daycare and public schools work better for children than stay-at-home moms and homeschooling.
• I’m told that the $30 trillion national debt and bailouts for student loans, etc. are no big deal because the government can just print more money.
• I’m told that I can fix her financial problems by working harder and longer. One of my friends actually married a woman with $200K in student loan debt in order to get his green card, so some men take this deal.
• I’m told that too much planning feels bad, and I need to be more spontaneous and adventurous. One woman literally said “I don’t want to make decisions based on fear”.
• A famous Christian apologist woman (not WIA) told me that I can’t judge a woman who has student loans because if God forgives a woman, then a man can’t exclude her from marriage.

I’m not going to run a marriage that way. I have goals.

Men can’t afford BOTH bailouts AND marriage

So, my point is that we have a real problem with figuring out how to get women to make better decisions about education, career and finance. I want to help them. I really do. Because we are $30 trillion in debt now, and we simply don’t have enough money to keep bailing out people for student loans. And the problem will only get worse, as the younger generation of losers keeps making poor decisions and demanding that someone else pay for their mistakes.

Men don’t marry women who are bad with money. Money is one of the biggest causes of divorce, and divorce is a financial disaster for men because of anti-male divorce courts.

The number of men who can afford marriage and children is declining because they have to bail out all these reckless, irresponsible young women through their taxes. We need to fix this problem.

Last week, I missed a big story about Joe Biden and his “voting rights” speech. During the speech, he told the audience that anyone who opposes his policies is a racist. He asked his opponents if they wanted to be on the side of Bull Connors, a racist Democrat, or on the side of Abraham Lincoln, an anti-slavery Republican. Afterwards, the fact-checkers stepped in to save him.

Here’s the story, as reported by Legal Insurrection:

Because Democrats are so used to getting a pass from the mainstream media every time they trot out the race card against their political opposition, the last week and a half of the Biden administration continuing to get peppered with questions about the racially-charged smears Biden made during his Georgia speech earlier this month have to be giving the White House nightmares.

For those who missed it, during the speech Biden gave during a so-called “voting rights” rally in Georgia on January 11th, here’s what Biden said about people who disagree with him on changing the Senate’s rule on the filibuster and/or who disagree with him on his “voting rights” bills:

“I ask every elected official in America: How do you want to be remembered? Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis? This is the moment to decide. To defend our elections. To defend our democracy.”

When questioned about his own words, Biden replied to reporters by hollering at them like an Antifa psychopath:

Remember – this guy is the champion of the Democrat party. He’s their leader. He shows the level of intelligence and character that they think  is their best and brightest. He’s the great “return to civility” they promised. We told voters that they were getting the father of Hunter Biden. We told voters that they were getting a credibly accused sexual assaulter. We told voters that they were getting incompetence and corruption.

Poltifact rides to the rescue

Politifact, one of the fact checkers used by Facebook, decided that they needed to try to save Biden from his own stupidity.

Today, if you try to post the video of Joe Biden’s exact words in his speech on Facebook, you will likely get hit with a ban on your account for spreading “false information”. Because showing Hunter Biden’s father speaking in his own words harms the Democrats, and Facebook doesn’t want that to happen. It’s an election year, after all. They have to be careful with free speech during election years.

This isn’t the first time that Politifact has protected the Democrat party with their “fact checks”.

The Daily Caller explains:

PolitiFact incorrectly labeled it “mostly false” that Democratic Senate candidate Kyrsten Sinema “protested troops in a pink tutu” during its live fact-check of the Arizona Senate debate Monday night.

It’s an established fact that Sinema, a former Green Party activist who co-founded an anti-war group, wore a pink tutu at one of the multiple anti-war protests she attended in 2003.

Here’s their Politifact’s rating on the claim:

And here’s the photo of Kyrsten Sinema, protesting the troops, in a pink tutu:

The Daily Caller explains the context of the photo:

A 2003 Arizona State University news article at the time described Sinema wearing “something resembling a pink tutu” at one of the protests.

[…]Sinema openly associated with fringe elements of the far-left during her anti-war activism.

She promoted an appearance by Lynne Stewart, a lawyer who was convicted of aiding an Islamic terrorist organization, in 2003.

Sinema also reportedly partnered with anarchists and witches in her anti-war activism and said she did “not care” if Americans wanted to join the Taliban.

That’s what Politifact does.

But that’s not all.

Remember Obama’s famous claim about your health care plan? Obama said that if you liked your current health care plan, you can keep it. Was that true?

Politifact said Obama was telling the truth before the election. And this “fact-check” was used by Facebook to censor and ban anyone who disagreed with Obama’s claim – even if they had peer-reviewed studies showing that Obama was lying.

Here’s the screen capture from 2008:

Before the 2012 election, Obama’s claim is true. If you disagree and show scientific evidence, then Facebook will ban you.

But after Obama wins in 2012, then Politifact’s story changes:

Most of the people who work for fact checkers are just reckless, irresponsible, promiscuous perverts who ran up a bunch of student loan debt while getting useless degrees. These are losers at life. They don’t know how anything works in the real world. They don’t want a world where they can be judged for their failure by successful, moral people. They would rather get a bailout from you than have to grow up and see reality as it is.  Don’t trust them.

A new survey reported in Christian Post. Let’s see the numbers, then I’ll recommend a solution.

Excerpt:

The American Worldview Inventory 2021, a survey of the philosophy of life on American adults from Arizona Christian University, assessed the worldviews of four generations: millennials (born 1984-2002), Gen X (1965-1983), baby boomers (1946-1964) and builders (1927-1945).

Researchers found that among other recent generations, millennials have gone farther in cutting ties with traditional Christian views and normative biblical teaching.

[…]43% of millennials stated they either don’t know, don’t care or don’t believe God exists compared to 28% of boomers, and 44% of millennials believe Satan is a real and influential, compared to 64% of boomers.

The study also found that overall, younger Americans are significantly more likely than the two previous generations to embrace horoscopes as a guide and Karma as a life principle, to see “getting even” with others as defensible, to accept evolution over creation, and to view owning property as fostering economic injustice.

On spiritual matters, Americans younger than 55 are far more likely to distrust the Bible and to believe God is uninvolved in people’s lives.

So first point about this… just as with the recent election, the first thing that occurred to me is “what are Christian parents and Christian pastors doing to counter this?” It seems like we’ve been living with this problem for some time, but we just keep trying the same old approaches. Missions trips. Hearing the voice of God. Prosperity gospel. Chasing Democrat priorities like BLM and CRT and global warming and socialism and amnesty for illegal immigrants (see Russell Moore). Youth groups filled with entertainment and pizza. Pious Reformed theology that emphasizes fideism (presuppositionalist apologetics). Young-Earth creationism of the Ken Ham variety. Fact/Value splits with no rational grounding for any of the values in fact. There’s no point trying to convince anyone of the truth, because we are in the “last days” and everyone just wants to be evil.

I attend PCA and SBC churches, and there is zero emphasis on training church people to have conversations about basic questions like “does God exist?”, “is the Bible historically reliable?”, and “did Jesus rise from the dead?”. In these churches, we have very conservative leaders and parents. Parents and pastors are “competent” if they are married, have lots of children, kids in private Christian schools, hearing the voice of God. No one is able to have conversations with atheists that are persuasive. That would be “arguing” and “arguing” is bad.

I’ve spent YEARS trying to get debates and lectures from Christian academics who debate non-Christians into the church. Not just material from apologetics organizations, but mainstream training from groups like Focus on the Family. Nobody wants to watch debates with people like William Lane Craig. And nobody wants to read any books about science or history. That would be “testing God” with our “fallen reason”. And so, the exodus of young people from Christianity continues. I have to work with the people who were born into Christian homes and who went to youth group and Christian schools – I know how they lost their faith. I ask them.

Solving the Problem

Anyway, with that said, I listened to a nice podcast from Apologetics 315 yesterday where they interviewed Dr. Stephen C. Meyer. In my opinion, no one does a better job of approaching the most core issues of the Christian faith with evidence that is convincing to open-minded non-Christians.

Here’s the podcast.

And they have an outline:

Episode 021 – Return of the God Hypothesis with Stephen C. Meyer

In this episode, Brian Auten and Chad Gross interview Dr. Stephen C. Meyer on his latest book Return of the God Hypothesis.

0:43 – Intro to Dr. Stephen Meyer, author of Return of the God Hypothesis, Signature in the Cell, and Darwin’s Doubt.
3:00 – Dr. Meyer’s background, education, and how he got interested in the question of intelligent design.
9:58 – Meyer’s view of science and philosophy of science, the importance for understanding philosophy when doing science.
16:28 – reviewing five centuries of the history of science, the false idea that science and religion have always been at war.
23:49 – The reason for telling the story of the rise of science, the rejection of the God hypothesis, and its subsequent return based on the most recent scientific discoveries.
28:15 – Explaining the methodology of inference to the best explanation. How this fits within theistic apologetics.
36:30 – Is our goal truth, or a pre-commitment to naturalism? What challenges has Meyer faced when arguing for intelligent design?
39:45 – Are there problems with postulating a mind as an intelligent cause? Are certain explanations “out of bounds” when doing science?
43:00 – Shannon information
43:55 – The origin of the universe, the fine-tuning of the universe, and the information in the cell. Resistance to change from a materialistic worldview.
47:40 – Huge theistic implications and the corresponding push-back to them.
49:15 – Helpful illustrations to explain the fine-tuning of the universe for life.
53:38 – Douglas Adams’ “puddle objection” to the fine-tuning argument; the response, and a counter-analogy. The weak-anthropic principle.
58:50 – How might these arguments fit into an apologetic for Christianity? The role of natural theology and the need for special revelation. The false dichotomy between evidentialism and presuppositional apologetics.

In the podcast, Dr. Meyer talks about evidence that bears on the question of God’s existence from science. Specifically, the origin of the universe, the cosmic fine-tuning, the origin of life, and the sudden origin of body plans in the fossil record. This is mainstream evidence from mainstream science that points to a Creator and Designer.

This podcast is not for beginners, it’s more for intermediate-level Christians. If you’re looking for something for beginners, I recommend the True U DVDs, which feature Dr. Meyer talking to college students.