Yes...and keep doing the good you are doing and setting the values example as you are the ones that will truly reach and guide your own generation. I believe also that they are just desiring good roles models and leaders to show them the way!
Interesting insights...very true
So true...remember the good old days of series like The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie..where values were written into the stories. There should be some kind of accountability for the movie makers. They are only thinking about money and feeding garbage to our today and future generations...just like junk food versus healthy food. Maybe the Christian world could start making some sitcoms with values.....probably not heavily Christian as that will turn the youth off.....but real life positive stories (with a bit of conflict added in to keep it interesting)...who knows these could become a hit. Also promoting volunteering and community service in schools and colleges from a young age can help to develop a culture of caring.....many kids/youth love to do this type of work. Perhaps we also need more good role models in us adults......willing to really lay down our lives to help others.
"Men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which is meet"" Romans 1:26 thru Romans 2. They are sodomites, the accurate word description from the city of Sodom in Genesis. ""Remember just Lot, Jesus said. I pray for them to be saved as in 1Corinthians 6:9-11. Interesting that it has the reference numbers in order 911. The script above shows there is hope for these lost souls. "I will have mercy and not sacrifice", Jesus also said. And for one city in Israel He said that it will be more tolerable in the judgment for Sodom than for that city.
"the love of many will grow cold " one of the signs of the last days ! He's coming soon ! Are we ready !
Lord, pls show us HOW to reach them!
Young people are becoming more educated than (no need for "the") previous generations? Really? Just read the comments section on Yahoo someday. You will find syntax errors in 95 percent of everything written. Oh, boy, that's education for you. Wow. You cite supposed fact after fact and give no proof, other than "I say so." Blindly believing, you say? Have you actually taken the time to study Scripture, bud? I could go on, but you are not worth the effort. Go back to sleep; perhaps reading another poll.
I see it all the time among Dawkinsians.
What a pile of drivel.Education is (rightly) killing superstition. Faith is idiocy willfully chosen over reason.
The non-religious class continues to grow because young people are becoming more educated than the previous generations. It is not true that religious people tend to be more educated in academia, rather it is the opposite. Look at any unbiased polling, and the more intellectual tend to be not only liberal, but also non-religious. You only need to look at our scientists. And selfishness is inherent in humanity, faith has nothing to do with this. Faith can actually be quite selfish in and of itself...blindly believing in anything that you best see fit for yourself. And please, these results are extremely inexact. Recycling came about in the 70's and 80's slowly at first, and then the practice grew exponentially in the new millenium as people became more aware of environmental issues. So people are caring about the world around them, just look at all of our political 'Green Parties'. Conservative and Capitalist ideology is quite selfish in nature as well. It is what the U.S. is based on...which is surprising because the U.S. is one of the most religious industrialized countries. As countries progress, they become secularized, except for here...naturally. And of course money is a concern here, it is necessary for healthy and adequate living, so that data is highly irrelevant for a capitalist economy...based on capital gain. Of course these results are surprising, they are incorrect to apease an ignorant audience. Isn't it ironic, that our conservatives tend to be the most spiritual? lol
I wouldn't agree; his use of words is, although personal, really suiting. One could say a lot of things to describe this generation's youth, but Craig, as always, tend to sum it up with a few words.
That's a very suiting comment, couldn't agree any more.
"...But know this, that in the last days grievous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power therefore. From these also turn away..." 2 Timothy 3:1-5 (ASB)
*"the fact that bad guys often dress in black"
They didn't specifically mention Darth Vader, but they said that the fact that black guys often dress in black in movies is racist. I think the article is called "Racism in the English Language" I believe, and you can look it up. It makes a few good points out of the simple fact that a broken clock is right twice a day, but it. is. INSANE.
Dennis,That was the one and only sociology class I took, as well.
" and that it was racist to make Darth Vader wear black (but apparently not to make him extremely pale)"
Please tell me you are joking? There have been several jokes about Star Wars being racist:
Dark Vader is Black. The Storm troopers are white. You can't have black person telling a white person what to do. Therefore, Darth Vader had to die.
Star Wars is clearly racist or someone took way too many shrooms in the 60s.
Interesting results. It's rather unfortunate that Dr. Craig chose to use some rather harsh words to describe the young generation.
in my opinion, people are, by nature, self centered. that is to say, people want to do what is in their best interests, and we are hard wired that way.
now in my opinion, that should be completely obvious, of course people are going to do what they believe is in their self interest.
so...if god created us, why would he make us self centered by nature? was it supposed to be a challenge for the human race to get over?
don't get me wrong, i completely believe and agree with those numbers: that people are becoming more self centered, that wouldn't surprise me one bit. but why does a person have to be religious to not be that way? what if.... i don't know...parents maybe just parented the right way, and brought their children up with the right values?
as an agnostic, i believe in free thinking, and that a person should do the things he or she wants to do- within reason of course(i guess this may make me self centered). but i don't agree that to not be this way, one has to turn to a religion.
I have one book to recommend: Who Really Cares by Arthur C. Brooks.
I don't hear Craig saying that the millennial generation is to blame for its own shortcomings. Rather, he's suggesting that the millennial generation's shortcomings--their self-centeredness in particular--are to blame for the rising secularism.
I think Craig would probably agree with you that much of the selfishness exemplified by younger generations today is a result of their upbringing, the influence of the culture they were brought up in, and so on.
May I recommend two books for people to read: Christians are Hate Filled Hypocrites...And Other Lies You've Been Told and Upside:Surprising Good News About the World both by Bradley R.E. Wright.
" instill critical thinking skills to ensure they are fully functioning members of a democracy"
You dont really believe that. You know you dont. Thats some made up nonsense a politician would say. Cant we be honest here and stop pretending there is some noble reason for liberalism? A liberal is what you are through your actions and that slogan is just your psychological justification.Liberalism is born out of the teenage mind--it is of rebellion.This utter rubbish suggesting conservatives are going for the money and Liberals are the noble teachers is something not even my cat would believe. Study after study has shown conservatives give to the poor more than 10 fold compared to liberals. They are talkers and accusers..not doers.
Ha! Sociology class. I took one sociology class and that was it. I remember our teacher made us read an article which claimed the term "yellow bellied" and "black hearted" and "dark" (as in "the film as a dark tone" or "the forces of darkness") were racist, and that it was racist to make Darth Vader wear black (but apparently not to make him extremely pale). That is honestly something that comedian Jerry Minor said...AS A JOKE CHARACTER ON CROSSBALLS. That same article said that textbooks refer to victories by white men over American Indians as "victories" but the opposite as "massacres", which is an outright lie: if you ask ANY modern student to name a massacre involving whites and Indians, they'll only be able to name "The Wounded Knee massacre", which was caucaisans killing the indigenuous.
Steve, reporters who self describe as liberals outnumber those who self-describe as conservative 3 to 1. To say that big corporations have a conservative agenda is false. Liberals, on average, make 11 percent MORE than conservatives. The idea of conservatives being the rich is a falsehood perpetrated by the left (when they are not calling us toothless trailer park rednecks, that is). Also, the news industry wants to make a profit, and news that "sticks-it-to-the-man" is going to be more attractive to people even before they know what that news is, that's simply human nature. Modern liberalism is usually the philosphy that "sticks-it-to-the-man", since it attacks corporations, religious establishments, traditions, etc.
Besides, just look at how they operate. When Bush signed the patriot act, the media acted like it was the end of the world. When Obama reauthorized it, there was hardly a peep even though Obama campaigned on repealing it. Wars stopped being covered when Obama entered office because they didn't want death and destruction associated with him. Dan Rather was caught perpetuating an anti-Bush with false documents. MSNBC has been caught TWICE distorting racial issues (once with Trayvond Martin and once with the black man who brought his gun to the Tea Party rally) to distort the role white supremacy plays in America. Can you name similar scandals with a conservative agenda which came from anywhere but Fox?
"Time Time Warner, Walt Disney, Viacom, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., CBS Corporation and NBC Universal. "
This shows that the media is monumentally liberal. There is only one conservative view point and it is out numbered 5 to 1.
Steve,As James pointed out, who owns the media is irrelevant, the topic is what view point is being presented. The owners of the media obviously don't care about the ratings. Fox destroys MsNBC in the ratings department. If this was strictly about money MsNBC would totally change their format.
Look at the failed liberal radio network Air America. It was hemorrhaging money for a long time but they didn't pull the plug on it.
I could fill a book with examples of media bais and there are people who have. The 08 election most of the media has gone from being biased to being 100% in the bag for the left.
"we would not hear the 'Birther' discussion, or the 'controversy' of climate change. They are made-up stories to appeal to a specific group of people, and have no basis in fact."
The notion that the media keeps fanning the birther issue to appeal to a group of people is demonstrably false. The reason they keep bring up the story is to portray any one who disagrees with President Obama as crazy.This allows them to ignore the legitimate criticism of the President's policies. Any who disagree with him is a right wing lunatic.
Do you were the birther theory came from? The Clinton campaign. Why do you think that isn't widely known? Why was it not crazy to question whether John McCain was an American citizen but it is crazy to question Obama's citizenship?
Your comments on climate change backs my position up. Many of the main global warming proponent have been forced to admit that their doomsday predictions were totally wrong. The science is dubious at best and there are legitimate scientist who disagree with the theory.
"Having returned to school at the local university, I can say that all but one of my teachers have gone out of their way to tell us that they will not be discussing politics or religion in their classes."
You cited a poll as supporting evidence for your opinion that fundamentalism is rising. Look at the polls on the political beliefs of college professors. They are monumentally to the left. You do concede that point but you believe that they are not interjecting their political opinion.
This would be true in hard sciences. However, in any other class the left does interject it's opinion and use the curriculum as a Trojan horse. I took a sociology class that presented Karl Marx as only a sociologist and failed to mention one word about communism.
At the end of the class everyone besides me believed that capitalism is bad. There was no discussion about capitalism vs communism in any of the curriculum.Communism was not mentioned at all. I literally watched the entire class become indoctrinated.
You are presenting the 60s generation as if they just want the best education for their kids. Look at what they actually believed. They were not just to the left, they were all and still are radicals.
Do you think William Ayers is going to teach both sides of an issue? He said every night he goes to bed with the hope of ending capitalism the next day.
Ward Churchill was telling college students that people who simply got up and went to work and were killed on 911 were " little Eichmanns." That is how the 60's radicals think and they all went into the educational system.
"I understand the power differential in the classroom, and I'm sorry you had the experiences you did given the situation and that speaking out was probably not an option"
Actually, I spoke up and disagreed with the majority of them.There were some that didn't mind being challenged and others that did. I noticed a patern with teachers that didn't like to be challenged. It seemed like they were worried about being accused of grading based on their political ideology.
The last test of the year they would grade based on their political ideology. If they were questioned about it they could say that the rest of the grades were high if anyone questioned them.
"On matters of faith; according to Pew over 82% of Americans believe in God, and over 40% admit to not adhering to a single religion"
When you break that number down to age demographic it plummets with the younger generations.
" If you look at the state legislators across the country and see what bills are being proposed, passed, and signed, you can not really make the argument that fundamentalism is not on the rise. The restrictions of personal choice and liberty is reaching a fever pitch."What personal choices and liberties are being restricted and how to you are you concluding that Christian fundamentalism is to blame?
Who owns media outlets is irrelevant; look at the messages conveyed. Many large corporations are very left wing - apple, google, starbucks, time-warner, yahoo, etc, etc. so the fact that news outlets are owned by corporations doesn't really tell you much about how they will report news. And the fact that you think there is no controversy on climate change shows that you aren't very objective. There are many world class scientists who dispute climate change alarmism. Stories challenging people like Al Gore are not made up. You just don't seem to respect those with views different than your own. And your implying that conservative people only care about money is ridiculous too.
I have gone to three law schools. I found two to be very hostile and uninviting to people with a conservative point of view and one seemed slightly less so. It is even difficult to find professors to sponsor conservative student groups. I went to a professor to discuss writing a paper on a conservative topic and got a very cold, bizarre response. Academia, excluding business and the hard sciences is totally controlled by the left and not because they want to teach critical thinking skills but because they want to indoctrinate. And the media 95% left-wing and popular culture is almost 100% left-wing. With all due respect Steve, you really aren't seeing reality.
Popular culture is overtaking, or has overtaken, scholarly-level influence.
I will check it out; thanks!
You make some valid points Steve - however, with so much comparative news, blogs, commentary and facts to consider, there's little dispute on the arguable degree of bias.
Rather than continue this potentially endless back-and-forth repartee, I'd also recommend you consider a recent book written by UCLA Prof Tim Groseclose "Left Turn - How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind". His findings - in media and universities - is quite compelling, and ironically with strong attempts to suppress.
I am currently a member of the millennial generation, and I am constantly hearing reports and seeing books decrying my generation as selfish, stupid, and uncaring. However, is it really fair to indict an entire generation of people for these vices? Don't forget the generation that raised us (baby boomers). Also, don't forget that many people throughout history have had doubts about their succeeding generations. I'm not denying that Prof. Twenge's study is flawed. I just want to suggest that perhaps more questions should be asked and these doom and gloom senarios should be reconsidered.
Having returned to school at the local university, I can say that all but one of my teachers have gone out of their way to tell us that they will not be discussing politics or religion in their classes. The one teacher who did want to enter such discussions told the class the first day about it, and expected us to contribute and disagree. He did not tell anyone they were wrong, but left discussions open-ended so that students could draw their own conclusions. I also have a number of friends who teach in colleges and universities, and they say the same thing; no discussion of personal beliefs. I think the 60's generation believed it was imperative that kids be taught to think 'right', but people my age who teach don't like to get into those debates, given the pressure from outside the classroom.
As for critical thinking; the damage done there is done long before students reach college. Kids are taught how to pass standardized tests, and not think about context or meaning, or how discriminate between fact/inference and so on.
On the point of media ownership, I attached a link below that discusses who owns what. These corporations, as it says in the article, exist to make money. As a part of chasing the dollar, they report on sensationalist stories that have no real impact on public life, present stories with few facts and little or no context. They also report nonstories to try to play to people's paranoia and public sentiment. In a world of truly objective journalism, we would not hear the 'Birther' discussion, or the 'controversy' of climate change. They are made-up stories to appeal to a specific group of people, and have no basis in fact.
I do see more people with conservative viewpoints teaching in schools these days, but as one of my friends told me recently; 'I can make six figures working in a private lab, why would I want to make $50K to teach? It doesn't make economic sense.'
On matters of faith; according to Pew over 82% of Americans believe in God, and over 40% admit to not adhering to a single religion, but rather pick and choose as they go. If you look at the state legislators across the country and see what bills are being proposed, passed, and signed, you can not really make the argument that fundamentalism is not on the rise. The restrictions of personal choice and liberty is reaching a fever pitch.
I understand the power differential in the classroom, and I'm sorry you had the experiences you did given the situation and that speaking out was probably not an option. We need to come together to find answers on how to best teach our children to be prepared for the future. Specifically; there is a dividing line between what should be taught at home, and what should be taught at school. I think we've lost that line, and need to get it back.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog...
Steve,With all due respect, I think you are 100% wrong about liberalism controlling education and the media. Aside from Fox news and the WSJ, the media is monumentally liberal. They have gone from being biased to the left to the defacto propaganda arm of the DNC. The NYT has picked what stories will be covered and set the narrative for how the stories will be covered for the rest of the media. The NYT is a extremely liberal news outlet. ABC,NBC,CBS,CNN,MSNBC are all liberal.
There have been many polls of college professor's and they are also monumentally liberal. It isn't uncommon to see 90%-95% of them as having a liberal view point. Colleges are often times filled not just liberals but rather left wing radicals. I didn't have one teacher in college that would be even close to conservative and there was no Christian presence there at all.
I had one teacher who proclaimed that Bill Clinton sent her kids to college. There was another teacher who was so far off the reservation, she literally argued that women should never be sent to prison even if they murdered someone. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was treated with more respect than a conservative commentator would be on a college campus.
Colleges are not teaching critical thinking. They are indoctrinating the kids. They are not teaching both sides of the issues. They are only teaching one perceptive. Often times when a conservative perspective is presented at a college, the conservative is shouted down or they call them names.
Where do you think the OWS people who are sleeping in tents are coming from? Colleges! ...and they are being encouraged to attend OWS by their 60s radical professors.
"I think that the growth of secularism is driven in large part by the growth in fundamentalism.....I think there is a rise in the number of people who describe themselves as persons of faith, but are unattached to any formal organization"
The age demographic between the ages of 18 and 29 has dropped by about 40 percent. There isn't a rise in fundamentalism. As secularism goes up church attendance goes down. America is headed in the direction of Europe.
The idea that liberals go into to education to indoctrinate is not accurate. One of the basic beliefs of American Liberalism is that we owe a debt to our children, that we need to instill critical thinking skills to ensure they are fully functioning members of a democracy (the reasons that this does not happen would be a topic for another discussion). Most conservatives do not go into education because it doesn't pay enough, and they can make more in the private sector.
The idea that the left controls the media is also incorrect. The major media outlets are controlled by just a few companies, all with very conservative agendas.
The idea of the 'trophy generation' is spot on. This is being addressed, as more people are learning about Resilience theory.
I think that the growth of secularism is driven in large part by the growth in fundamentalism. People hear their religious leaders speaking hate from the pulpit, and no longer see themselves reflected in the narrative of the religion. I think there is a rise in the number of people who describe themselves as persons of faith, but are unattached to any formal organization (I do not have access to the studies on this at the moment). I think that as time passes, and rhetoric evens out, that many of these people (or their children) will return to religious groups.
College does play a large role in the direction of the culture. This is why most of the 1960's radicals chose to be educators as their career. They understood that the educational system was a highly effective way to indoctrinate the youth. This was isolated to colleges and then spread to high schools and grade schools. In the early 1900s Woodrow Wilson said, "Our aim is to turn out young men as unlike their fathers as possible."
Both the entertainment industry and journalism are also mostly comprised of secular progressives. The left basically controls the news media, the entertainment industry, and the educational system.
I am sure that Christian philosophy has greatly increased in academia. It was probably almost nonexistent and has become much more prominent. I believe that this is isolated to the philosophy departments in academia.
Even if Christianity has a presence in the philosophical department, the rest of the college is largely left wing and secular. It should be no surprise that the culture is becoming more and more secular.
In order to really have an impact on the culture, Christianity and / or conservatism would have to become much more prominent on college campuses. In most universities the number would be about 5-10%. If you are a conservative or christian professor you are a pariah.
On top of that, Christianity has about a .00001% presence in the entertainment industry. The entertainment industry is very influential with youth.
The other factor that plays a large role on the results of the study is trophy parenting. This comes from academia too. Psychologists started the self esteem fad but flipped self esteem on it's head.
Instead of doing something that is hard for an individual to do and getting self esteem from the experience, psychologists and educrats believed that if you tell children how great, smart and special they are before hand this will lead to high levels of self esteem. They believed that high levels of self esteem would lead to high levels of academic achievement and a healthy world view. Unfortunately, they were wrong.
Instead of leading to high levels of academic achievement and a healthy world view, it lead to a generation of kids with an overinflated belief about their abilities, a prominence of self-centerednes, and a belief that they are entitled to the world.
A good article on the trophy kid generation:
http://online.wsj.com/article/...
This is insightful and the observation regarding the increased emphasis placed on self-interest and wealth seems accurate. I would also agree that the university is one of the biggest influencers of culture and shapes the way people think and baseline assumptions. I just wonder about the increasing role played by popular culture. It seems to me that sitcoms and movies is the place where a lot of people pick up their values. The assumptions that are underlying the worldviews apparent in shows like Friends, House, Will and Grace, Frasier and so forth have become mainstream views in our western culture. In my view one of the biggest reasons for secularization is the secular undercurrents within popular culture and entertainment, which is then unquestioningly presented in these formats as being natural, normal and desirable. People think they are only watching a sitcom, but they are in fact being challenged with a set of philosophical assumptions. These assumptions are then often uncritically accepted for various reasons. I would like to suggest that apart from the university and life of academia, that the entertainment and popular culture arena is one of the biggest that we need to focus on in our efforts to convey truth.
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