Don't try to add more years to your life. Better add more life to your years." — Blaise Pascal
"The curtain has been lifted" is an idiom that aptly portrays when a hidden truth is revealed. On the public side of a curtain called "biological science," the perception of scientists for decades was that of rational, ideologically neutral researchers who were admirably dead to ambition and were driven to discover biological truths beneficial to all mankind. People trusted them.
Then came the COVID-19 pandemic and the curtain was lifted. Many scientists were revealed to be biased, political ideologues in white lab coats given over to group think. They hypocritically admonished others to "follow the science" while they selectively ignored scientific data contrary to their agenda. — Randy J. Guliuzza, P.E., M.D.
Steel screams when it is forged, it gasps when it's quenched. It creaks when it goes under load. I think even steel is scared, son. — Jethrah Zerchi, character in Walter M. Miller' Jr.'s novel 'A Canticle for Leibowitz'
The transformation of charity into legal entitlement has produced donors without love and recipients without gratitude. — Justice Antonin Scalia
Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges. I am sorry. But that is how I see it. — Thon Thaddeo Pfardentrott, character in Walter M. Miller' Jr.'s novel A Canticle for Leibowitz
What is right to be done cannot be done too soon. — Jane Austen
There are multitudes of men who always quarrel with any kind of ministry that God may send to them. This man's style is much too florid; he has a superabundance of the flowers of oratory. That other man is much too dull; there is nothing interesting about his discourses. This man is too coarse; he is so rough as even to be vulgar. That other man is too refined, and uses language which shoots over people's heads. It is easy to find fault when you want to do so. Any stick will do to beat a dog, and any kind of excuse will do to allow your conscience to escape from the message of an earnest ministry. — Charles Spurgeon
The accumulation of all powers – legislative, executive, and judiciary – in the same hands whether of one, a few, or many and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. — 'Publius,' in Federalist Paper no. 47
The literature of the Apocalypse, especially in English, is immense, but mostly impository rather than expository, and hence worthless or even mischievous, because confounding and misleading. — Philip Schaff
Smiles are the foundation of beauty. — E.R. Burroughs
Even a band of robbers can only exist if within its own organization it respects the rules. A liar always garbs himself or herself in the guise of truth. A sinner pursues evil under pretense of the good. Satan himself appears as an angel of light. In its operation and appearance, sin is always doomed to borrow, despite itself, from the treasury of virtue. It is subject to the unalterable fate – while striving for the destruction of all good – of working simultaneously on its own demise. It is a parasite of the good. — Herman Bavinck
There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. — Ronald Reagan
If God has not revealed objective standards of justice for crime and punishment, then magistrates cannot genuinely be avengers of God's wrath against evildoers. They could only avenge their human anger against those who displease them, without any assurance that genuine evildoers are receiving a just recompense. In that case the "sword" would truly be wielded "in vain" (Rom. 13:4) and good people would have a real reason to fear (v. 3). — Greg L. Bahnsen, in his book No Other Standard
No man is wise at all times, or is without his blind side. — Desiderius Erasmus, concluding his essay, In Praise of Folly
ChildREN are a heritage from the Lord (Psalm 27). ChildHOOD is a fleeting moment. ChildISHNESS is an adult foible. ChildLIKENESS describes the trusting confidence of one who has, through Jesus Christ, become part of the eternal family of God, a partaker of the Spirit of the Father and the Son.
There is no doctrine revealed in Scripture for a merely speculative knowledge, but all is to exert a powerful influence upon conduct. God's design in all that He has revealed to us is to the purifying of our affections and the transforming of our characters. — Arthur Pink
I can refute those who say there is no progress with one word. That word is dentistry. — P.J. O'Rourke
Innovation might make the world a better place or it might not. Innovation is not necessarily concerned with goodness but often with novelty, speed, and profit. — Jill Lepore
Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community – however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things – whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God... — Pope Pius XI
Ah Christians, since they have crowned your head [Christ] with thorns, there is no reason why you should expect to be crowned with rosebuds. 'In the world ye shall have tribulation' (John 16:33), 'we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God' (Acts 14:22).
As there was no way to paradise but by the flaming sword, nor no way to Canaan but through a wilderness; so there is no way to heaven but by the gates of hell, there is no way to a glorious exaltation but through a sea of tribulation. They do but dream and deceive their own souls who think to go to heaven upon beds of down, or in a soft and delicate way, or that think to be attended to glory with mirth and music, or with singing or dancing. The way to happiness is not strewed with roses, but full of thorns and briers, as those of whom this world was not worthy have experienced. — Thomas Brooks
[On the incomparability of several features of God's Word] ...the first is the purity of its precepts. It is the most perfect rule of righteousness that is imaginable. It commands all good and forbids all evil at all times. "Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good" (Romans 7:12).
It is holy because it is a copy of the divine will, it is just because it corresponds to the highest the reason, and it is good because it is most beneficial to us. It is holy as it relates to our duty to God, it is just as it respects our duty to our neighbor, and it is good as it concerns our duty to ourselves.
It is holy as consecrated to the service of God, it is just as a transcript of the law of nature, and it is good as it is measure of all goodness in us. It is holy in what it requires us to do, it is just in what it forbids us to do, and it is good in both.
What law in the world is in any degree comparable to God's law? — George Swinnock
Many of today's problems are a result of yesterday's solutions. — Thomas Sowell
There are but two ways of forming an opinion in science. One is the scientific method, the other, the scholastic. One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority. It is this point of view – academic minds clinging like oysters to disproved theories – that has blocked every advance of knowledge in history. — Robert A. Heinlein
...there are no genuine 'heretics' in the thinking of modern theologians – for the same reason there are no citations for indecent exposure in a nudist colony: viz., the preconditions for making those charges simply do not hold. — Greg L. Bahnsen
Reports are multiplying around the world: dead whales are washing up onto beaches in rapidly growing numbers.
Whales navigate by their God-given sonar systems. Other sonar signals, likely including those used by offshore wind developers to map the sea floor, mess with those systems, and whales flee from them, "sometimes to their deaths." So do loud noises to which whales aren't accustomed, like those from ocean-floor blasting and pile driving necessary to build offshore wind turbines. So also do confusing vibrations, like those from operating offshore wind turbines.
You'd think Green activists, for whom "save the whales" was one of the first rallying cries, would be up in arms. Think again. They brush off the problem, if they're forced to mention it at all. — Dr. E. Calvin Beisner
Why wish upon a star when you can pray to the One Who created them? — Anonymous blogger
REAL science (including historiology, the science of history) debunks deep time/evolution and its derivatives such as eugenics and climate alarmism.
Follow the REAL science, which always submits to the higher revelation, God's infallible word. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of both knowledge AND wisdom (how to apply knowledge). Job 28:28; Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 1:7, 2:1-5, 9:10, 15:33
False science proudly and foolishly says, 'NO! We must not allow God into our laboratories and think tanks!
The extreme progressive fringe gets it wrong when it depicts America as a land of irredeemable prejudice and division that must be denounced, instead of an imperfect but striving nation that's offered true progress and real happiness to billions of people. America's future isn't its past – thinking otherwise is an insult to the meaning of our creeds. — Isaac Willour
Once again, we see the 'fact checkers' are nothing more than pharma shills wearing cheap Halloween reporter costumes. — Jeff Childers
Conservative Christendom insists upon the plenary inspiration of Scripture; a logical (albeit overlooked) corollary to plenary inspiration is the 'plenary significance' of Scripture. That is, since all of the books of Scripture are inspired of God, all are profitable (2 Tim. 3:16-17). — Ken Gentry
The kind of submission or resignation that he showed was that of a man who was tired out. I sometimes derived an impression, from his manner or from a whispered word or two which escaped him, that he pondered over the question whether he might have been a better man under better circumstances. But he never justified himself by a hint tending that way, or tried to bend the past out of its eternal shape. — Dickens' character "Pip," in Great Expectations
He was a white-haired old man, somewhat stooped, somewhat slowed in his movements. He spoke with greater caution and was prone to reflect on his defeats rather than his triumphs. He had seen much of the world's folly, and although he had been forgiving, he did wish that he'd had more time to combat those aspects of life which were wrong. He was, to put it simply, closer to God than he had ever been before, and he believed that he was prepared because he had learned to do God's work in whatever position he finally found himself. — from James Michener's novel 'Alaska'
Marriage is like a deck of cards…at the beginning all you need are two hearts and a diamond, but after a few years, you'll wish you had a club and a spade. — as seen on a greeting card
The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man. — T.S. Eliot
Some people wouldn't know tyranny if it: covered their faces, locked them in their homes, enacted the biggest wealth transfer in history, censored them, made them show papers, and force medicated them. — billybobblog
When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives.
Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack not fission bombs, not anything – you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him. — Robert A. Heinlein
We see all this stuff, and we see they are not following the science. They are trying to follow a narrative. They are trying to follow an agenda. Here in Florida, we did not – and we will not – allow the dystopian visions of paranoid, hypochondriacs control our health policies, let alone our state. — Florida Governor Ron De Santis
If "religious" means a slavish devotion to man made rules, if it means mindlessly keeping traditions the significance of which the keeper himself is ignorant, if it means adherence to foolish superstititons, if it means oppressive austerity for austerity's sake, if it means having a stinking conceit about one's own imagined righteousness which leads him to despise others…dear Lord, deliver me!
But if "religious" means that one has been transformed by the power of the living God, if it refers to the pursuit of genuine holiness, if it means that one manifests a humble confidence in the justifying grace and sustaining mercy of God, if one's life demonstrates God's love shed abroad in his heart, thankfully worshiping Him and doing good to others…well then! Hallelujah and amen!"
To hate, mock, belittle, despise, resent, and harbor ill will toward others, or anything that God created, is to participate in Satan's kingdom. Satan loves when Christians hate liberals. Satan doesn't care who is in political power, as long as both sides are filled with fear, hate and contempt for each other. — Jered McKenna
Along the Paris streets, the death carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day's wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself are fused in the one realization, Guillotine.
And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression ever again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind. — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.
The defender of the faith who is faithful to the Biblical faith he defends, will not seek to abandon or diminish the crucial antithesis which exists between the philosophical reasoning of the regenerate mind and the self-destructive reasoning of the unregenerate mind. He will, as Paul says in II Corinthians 10:5, "cast down reasonings and every lofty thing exalted against the knowledge of God, taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ." The antithesis must be central and indispensable to the work of the apologist as an ambassador for Christ in the intellectual arena, who beseeches men to be reconciled to God (II Corinthians 5:20). — Greg L. Bahnsen
...a serious confusion as to the nature and message of Revelation is partly responsible for the cultural defeatism and retreatist pietism so influential in 20th Century Christianity...one reason for confusion as to the Church's future is due to a radical misunderstanding of the date of the writing of Revelation...
...If Revelation is inadvertently dated after the events it prophesies as future, the way is opened to a radical misconstruing of its message. Indeed, not only has the message been misread in such circumstances, but it has been wholly inverted, placing in our future what really lies in our past. Hence, the significance of date of [the writing of] Revelation. — Kenneth Gentry, 'Before Jerusalem Fell'
Oh very young, what will you leave us this time
You're only dancin' on this earth for a short while
And though your dreams may toss and turn you now
They will vanish away like your dad's best jeans
Denim blue, faded up to the sky
And though you want them to last forever
You know they never will
You know they never will
And the patches make the goodbye harder still. — Cat Stevens
We've been complacent and culpable for allowing (the leftist spirit to take over our institutions). Now everybody according to their station is gonna have to say, you know what, there are TWO pronouns. I don't care if you get angry. The date of this country is 1776. Got it? That's what it is. And there is a border and we're going to enforce it. And just say NO to all of these things and then welcome the opprobrium and the attacks that accrue accordingly, and welcome that as a badge of honor. Because what's the alternative? There is no alternative. — Victor David Hansen
I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process. — 23rd U.S. president, Benjamin Harrison
So true it is, and so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul rid of it. — from 'Bartleby the Scrivener' by Herman Melville
Fortunately, there is no need to look for some new-age concoction of medication and mindfulness. Christianity has it all. That is why I no longer consider myself a Muslim apostate, but a lapsed atheist. Of course, I still have a great deal to learn about Christianity. I discover a little more at church each Sunday. But I have recognised, in my own long journey through a wilderness of fear and self-doubt, that there is a better way to manage the challenges of existence than either Islam or unbelief had to offer. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ali is a writer and intellectual who came onto the public scene in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks and was widely condemned by fellow Muslims after she criticized Islam for being radicalized and violent. Shortly after that, she abandoned Islam and became an atheist, as she described in her recent essay titled, "Why I am now a Christian."
...the grief of the passing moment takes upon itself an individuality, and a character of climax, which it is destined to lose after a while, and to fade into the dark gray tissue common to the grave or glad events of many years ago. It is but for a moment, comparatively, that anything looks strange or startling – a truth that has the bitter and the sweet in it. — Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his novel "The House of Seven Gables"
...it became very evident to me; how mere natural notions will guide reasonable creatures to the knowledge of a Deity, and to the homage due to the Supreme Being of God; but, however, nothing but divine revelation can form the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and of a redemption purchased for us, of the mediator of the new covenant, and of an intercessor at the footstool of God's throne; and, therefore, the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; that is, the word and Spirit of God, promised for the guide and the sanctifier of his people, are the most necessary instructors of the souls of men, in the saving knowledge of the Almighty, and the means to attain eternal happiness. — Daniel Defoe, in his novel "The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," first published A.D. 1719
There's no denying that most people believe evolution is science but creation science and intelligent design (ID) are religion. Education, entertainment, news media, and even our government promote the persuasive claim that belief in evolution is objective, rational behavior in contrast to highly subjective, if not irrational, religious thinking.
The former is connected to being smart and the latter to lacking intelligence. I suspect that beginning in childhood, one of the biggest fears humans develop is that others will think of them as dumb. As a tool of ridicule, it can enforce widespread social conformity. What a hurdle to overcome. We need to acknowledge its use and respond wisely. — Dr. Randy Giuluzza
You have to understand. UFO space ships can, at times, be very delicate machines. While it is true they can fly faster than the speed of light, dodge micro-meteors and giant asteroids, withstand high levels of space radiation and the perils of vacuum, avoid radar, defy gravity and the laws of physics, navigate equally easily through the atmosphere and the oceans – you would be shocked how often they fall apart in inclement weather. — Jeff Childers
...but ancient superstitions, after being steeped in human hearts and embodied in human breath, and passing from lip to ear in manifold repetition, through a series of generations, become imbued with an effect of homely truth. The smoke of the domestic hearth has scented them through and through. By long transmission among household facts, they grow to look like them, and have such a familiar way of making themselves at home that their influence is usually greater then we suspect. — Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his novel "The House of Seven Gables"
Unattributed quotes are the words of the web site editor.