Tag Archives: Relativism

News

Women becoming less committed to Christian orthodoxy

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From the Christian Post, survey findings from George Barna.

Excerpt:

Pollster and researcher George Barna released a report on religious changes in America this week revealing some surprising results. Barna concludes that women have experienced a significant spiritual change in the past two decades.

Women today are attending church and Sunday school less, reading the Bible less, and consider their faith less important in their lives, according to the new survey.

The Barna report also shows that over the last two decades women have become less likely to hold traditional views of God as the all-knowing creator and ruler of the universe. Women today are less likely to see the devil as a real person, considering him more a “symbol of evil.”

“Women used to put men to shame in terms of their orthodoxy of belief and the breadth and consistency of their religious behavior. No more; the religious gender gap has substantially closed,” said George Barna in his report.

“We can posit that while tens of millions of Americans seem to be wrestling with their faith – what to believe and how to experience and express it – women have been more radically redefining their faith than men in the past two decades.”

Does anyone have a hypothesis to explain this? Is it because Christianity is no longer viewed by the majority of people as “nice”? Are women dropping out because of the social pressure to not make truth claims or moral judgments?

Commentary

Does loving your neighbor require that you agree with them?

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From apologist Jonathan Morrow.

Excerpt:

We live in an interesting, ever-changing, and challenging day. As Christians, learning to navigate such a reality can be very confusing and intimidating. In one of Jesus’ central teachings, he commands us to love our neighbor (cf. Mark 12:31). And while we can and should often do this by meeting physical needs, there is another vital, but often overlooked, application of this passage. We need to stand up for the possibility of truth. We need to protect the endangered species of honest disagreement concerning the nature of reality. Today a not so subtle battle is raging from newspapers columns to college classrooms concerning the nature of tolerance. There are 2 competing definitions:

  • False Tolerance: We can make no judgments at all about the truth of others’ beliefs.
  • True Tolerance: We allow others the freedom to hold beliefs which we judge to be false.

If we cannot tell our neighbors or ourselves the truth about reality, then we cannot really love them. Because love involves seeking another’s highest good, and goodness is anchored in reality (after all, the truth sets us free). We must fight the false tolerance that seeks to intellectually bully our culture into agreeing that every viewpoint (especially when it comes to religion and morality) is equally valid. We must speak up in love for the possibility of truth. Loving our neighbor requires this.

Loving someone doesn’t mean telling them lies to make them feel good so that they will like you and you will feel good. That’s not love, that’s selfishness.

News

New study finds that gays can change their sexual orientation

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From Life Site News.

Excerpt:

Researchers at Fordham University in New York have publisheda study in the March edition of the Journal of Men’s Studies, showing that positive results can be gained by homosexual men seeking to change their “orientation” by developing healthy non-sexual relationships with other men.

According to the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homoseuxality (NARTH), the study rovides “valuable empirical evidence” from the mainstream of psychological research supporting environmental factors as the cause of homosexuality.

The study, by Dr. Elan Y. Karten and Dr. Jay C. Wade, examined the “social and psychological characteristics” of men who experience unwanted homosexual attractions and who seek “sexual orientation change efforts” (SOCE).

Investigating these characteristics in cases of “self-reported change,” Karten and Wade found that clients reported that they experienced “a decrease in homosexual feelings and behavior, an increase in heterosexual feelings and behavior, and a positive change in psychological functioning” with SOCE.

The researchers discovered that the most significant factors correlating to successful orientation change were “reduced conflict in expressing nonsexual affection with other men, being married, and feeling disconnected with men prior to treatment.”

NARTH commented that the factors like “reduced conflict in expressing nonsexual affection with men,” provide “valuable empirical evidence” that homosexual thoughts and feelings are greatly influenced by social and psychological factors,” instead of being biologically pre-determined.

NARTH also noted that the study demonstrated that there is a growing body of mainstream literature that is “beginning to give voice” to the value of SOCE.

You won’t hear this reported in the mainstream media… or in the speeches of Democrat politicians.

Previously I wrote a post entitled “What causes homosexuality? Is there a gay gene?” which is also useful.