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January 21, 2010

Teens & Media Consumption

Posted by Jason Dulle under Social, Statistics
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The Kaiser Family Foundation released its latest report on media consumption in America.  Here are some interesting highlights as reported by Al Mohler:

  • Kid’s spend 7 ½ hours per day consuming media.  But because they multi-task their media, their consumption is actually closer to 11 hours per day.
  • 66% of kids have a cell phone, but only use it for talking 30 minutes per day.  Usually it is used for texting or accessing the internet for media
  • 76% of kids have an mp3 player
  • The average American home now contains 3.8 TVs, 2.8 DVD/VCR players, at least one DVR, 2 computers, 2.3 video game consoles
  • 71% of kids aged 8-18 have a TV in their room.  Half have a video game console and/or access to cable.  1 out of 3 have their own computer.
 

January 8, 2010

Apparently It Is OK to Kill Your Neo-Nazi Husband

Posted by Jason Dulle under Odds & Ends, Sin, Social
[9] Comments 

This is a travesty of justice.  A woman killed her neo-Nazi husband while he was sleeping, and will not serve any jail time for doing so.  And it’s not because she was found to be mentally insane.  It’s because her husband was seen to be such a bad guy.  Indeed, he was.  He was a white supremacist, a child pornographer, an abuser, and had the materials to make a bomb.  Nevertheless, he was a human being.  He needed to experience justice for his crimes, but being killed was not the appropriate form of justice, and his wife was not the appropriate person to determine his punishment.  There is no question that she needed to remove herself and her daughter from this man’s influence, but divorce and/or relocation could have accomplished this.  Killing him was not necessary.  Given the woman’s circumstances I could understand if the court might have lessened her prison sentence, but to let her go scot-free is wrong.  This sends a message to society that murder is justifiable so long as the person you are murdering is a bad person.  How many other women might be emboldened to kill their abusive or crazy husbands as a result of this case?  This is what happens when sentimentalism is elevated in a society.  It can even trump the rule of law.

 

October 28, 2009

America’s Religious Identity: Statistics

Posted by Jason Dulle under Religions, Social, Statistics
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I’m late to the game on this one, but I just discovered some great statistical information regarding changes in the religious identity of Americans between 1990 and 2008, as well as a great interactive online chart visually displaying the information.  Here is some of the most pertinent information:

  • Those who claim to have no religious affiliation (called “Nones”) have grown in every state since 1990. 
  • The west and northeast coasts dominate the no religion category.  VT comes in 1st with 34%.  CA ranks 15th with 18%.  MI ranks last with 5%. 
  • Non-Christian religions have grown in all but 6 states since 1990. 
  • Protestants have diminished in all but 4 states. 
  • Catholics have diminished in all but 20 states. 
  • Catholics have increased in CA from 27% in 1990 to 38% in 2008. 
  • The northeast has the highest percentage of Catholics (RI has 46%).  CA ranks 5th with 38%.  AL ranks last with 6%. 
  • The south is mostly Protestant (AL has 80%).  CA ranks 45th with 35%.  MA ranks last with 26%. 
  • CT has the most non-Christian religious adherents (8%).  CA ranks 6th with 5%.  Wyoming ranks last with 1%. 
  • For those who simply don’t know what to say their religious identity is, OR comes in 1st place with 7% (compared to 2% in 1990), and DE last with 2% (in 1990 they were ranked 1st with 6%).  CA has 5%.

The beliefs of Nones was broken down further:

  • 51% believe in a deity of some sort
  • ~24% believe in a non-personal God
  • ~27% believe in a personal God
  • ~36% are agnostic (~19% hard agnostics, ~17% soft agnostics)
  • ~7% are atheist
  • 22% of 18-29 year old are Nones
 

August 3, 2009

Making a Case for Marrying Younger

Posted by Jason Dulle under Odds & Ends, Social
[31] Comments 

jule_gelfand_wedding_01As some of you may know, I am an advocate against the cultural tendency to willfully and purposely delay marriage late into our 20s or 30s.  It is my conviction that this is a recipe for sexual immorality in the church, and that it is a contributing factor to Peter Pan Syndrome (20-, 30-, and 40-something men who are still acting and thinking like teenagers), since marriage—and the responsibilities that come with it—are a key part of the maturation process.  So I was delighted to read Mark Regnerus’s article in Christianity Today, “The Case for Early Marriage.”

Some of my favorite excerpts include:

  • In a nationally representative study of young adults, just under 80 percent of unmarried, church- going, conservative Protestants who are currently dating someone are having sex of some sort. … [W]hen people wait until their mid-to-late 20s to marry, it is unreasonable to expect them to refrain from sex. It’s battling our Creator’s reproductive designs. … Very few wait long for sex. Meanwhile, women’s fertility is more or less fixed, yet Americans are increasingly ignoring it during their 20s, only to beg and pray to reclaim it in their 30s and 40s.
  • (more…)
 

March 20, 2009

40% of births are out of wedock

Posted by Jason Dulle under Social, Statistics
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According to a recent report, teen pregnancy is on the rise again for the second year in a row, and 40% of all children born in this country are now born out of wedlock.  Not good signs of social strength.

 

February 23, 2009

British Parents Advised Not to Try to Convince their Kids of their own Sexual Values

Posted by Jason Dulle under Political Incorrectness, Relativism, Social
[13] Comments 

That’s right.  The British government is advising parents that they should only discuss their sexual values with their children, but not try to convince them of what’s right and wrong because it “may discourage them from being open.”  I’m irked by the fact that the government thinks it can tell parents how they should teach their kids values.  I’m amazed that England thinks this will help their society.  What good comes out of teens doing whatever they want sexually?  Nothing.

 

February 10, 2009

Conflicting Messages: Sex and Condoms

Posted by Jason Dulle under Odds & Ends, Sin, Social
[7] Comments 

This past weekend I flew to Virginia.  On the lavatory door there reads a sign: “No smoking in lavatory.”  Anyone who knows the English language would interpret this as a clear message prohibiting smoking.  But what if there was another sign on an adjacent wall that read, “If you smoke, please dispose of your cigarette butt in this receptacle, not the trash can”?  Surely I would think the airline did not take its no-smoking rule too seriously.  I would see the sign as a sort of wink-wink that it is really ok to smoke in the lavatory, even if the airline would prefer that I don’t.  In other words, the second sign demotes the meaning of the first sign from a command, to a mere suggestion.  

I see a parallel to the sex education we offer children and students in many parts of this nation.  We tell them they should abstain from sexual relations prior to marriage, but then give them condoms and birth control.  Wink-wink.  Handing them the condom/pill negates the authority of the first message. 

Some will argue that we’re only passing out condoms and birth control to protect teens who have no intentions of obeying the “no sex rule.”  It’s the “they’re going to do it anyway so we might as well help them do it safely” objection.  But why think they are going to do it anyway?  Maybe if they thought their parents and educators were serious when they say “don’t have sex,” they wouldn’t “do it anyway.”  The didn’t “do it anyway” 50 years ago, because they knew the culture was serious about its no-sex rule.  But how can they take that command seriously today, when we utter the same rule, but give them a condom right afterward?  

I know this is a controversial topic, even among Christians.  I myself have been conflicted about it.  On the one hand, I don’t want to send mixed messages, taking back with one hand what I gave with the other.  On the other hand, I know some kids are going to have sex no matter how strongly we preach a no-sex-until-marriage message, and I would rather that they don’t get STDs or pregnant in the process.  So I see some wisdom in both approaches, but I see more wisdom in setting the proper expectations of our children.  No one smokes on airplanes anymore because the airlines couldn’t be more clear about their prohibition on smoking.  Even the chain-smoker-though he may be dying for a cigarette-won’t light up on that four hour flight because he knows there will be consequences for his actions.  Isn’t the same thing possible for our sex-crazed teens if they know society means what they say when they tell them not to have sex?  I’m not so idealistic as to think we’ll eliminate the behavior, but I’m not so stupid to think we’ll get teens to curb their sexual desires by giving them the tools they need to engage in them a little more safely.  At least, that’s the way I see it.

 

February 25, 2008

Os Guinness on Why Teacher-Led Prayers in Public Schools is a Bad Idea

Posted by Jason Dulle under Social
[9] Comments 

In his new book, The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends on It (pp. 66-7), Os Guinness has some perceptive insights on the issue of school prayer:

[S]upporters of school prayer have found themselves on the horns of a dilemma of their own choosing. Insisting on official Christian prayer in such pluralistic settings, they either ignore the diversity and pray as if everyone shared their faith—thus scandalizing those who do not; or they respect the diversity and pray in an inoffensive way that tries to appeal to as many faiths as possible—thus secularizing their own faith while still offending those who reject public prayer of any kind. …

The founders’ first principles of religious liberty can of course be applied to school prayer in several ways. For example, the golden rule of equal liberty for all could be applied to school prayer as “One in, all in” and respected by praying a different prayer every day of the school month–Christian one day, Jewish the next, Muslim after that, then Buddhist, Hindu, Mormon, Scientologist, Wiccan, and so on, until all the faiths in the school are covered. Such a policy would surely lead to chaos and indifference rather than tolerance. …

The alternative application of the golden rule would be to say, “One out, all out,” and to conclude—I think rightly, for religious even more than constitutional reasons—that public schools are not the place to have official teacher-led prayer, Christian or otherwise. A moment of silence, perhaps; and free to pray alone at any time; and freedom to pray in student-initiated groups after school hours, certainly; but not official prayer in public schools when contemporary levels of the social fact of pluralism mean that the principle of religious liberty for all is contravened.

I couldn’t agree more. I am opposed to bringing teacher-led prayer (TLP) back into the public schools. One thing advocates of TLP often overlook is that the prayers being offered by that teacher will reflect that teacher’s religious views, which may or may not be Christian. If they are not Christian, then what advantage is there of the prayer? I think it is in our best interests to adopt the “one out, all out” approach.

HT: Justin Taylor

 

August 31, 2007

Gallup Poll: Americans’ Moral Views on 16 Moral Issues

Posted by Jason Dulle under Hamartiology, Social, Statistics
[2] Comments 

The Gallup Poll released its 2007 polling data back in June regarding Americans’ views on 16 different moral issues: homosexual relations, the death penalty, premarital sex, unwed motherhood, abortion, divorce, doctor-assistance suicide, suicide, embryonic stem cell research, cloning humans, cloning animals, gambling, polygamy, extra-marital affairs, wearing fur, and medical testing using animals.


The poll is interesting on several counts. What do Americans see as morally wrong? In order of most wrong to least wrong:


  1. Extra-marital affairs (91% disapprove)
  2. Polygamy (90%)
  3. Cloning humans (86%)
  4. Suicide (78%)
  5. Cloning animals (59%)
  6. Abortion (51%)
  7. Homosexual relations (49%)
  8. Doctor assisted suicide (44%)
  9. Unwed motherhood (42%)
  10. Premarital sex (38%)
  11. Wearing fur (38%)
  12. Medical testing using animals (37%)
  13. Gambling (32%)
  14. Embryonic stem cell research (30%)
  15. Death penalty (27%)
  16. Divorce (26%)


What is morally acceptable? In order of most accepted to least accepted:


  1. Death penalty (66% accept)
  2. Divorce (65%)
  3. Embryonic stem cell research (64%)
  4. Gambling (63%)
  5. Medical testing using animals (59%)
  6. Premarital sex (59%)
  7. Wearing fur (58%)
  8. Unwed motherhood (54%)
  9. Doctor assisted suicide (49%)
  10. Homosexual relations (47%)
  11. Abortion (40%)
  12. Cloning animals (36%)
  13. Suicide (16%)
  14. Cloning humans (11%)
  15. Polygamy (8%)
  16. Extra-marital affairs (6%)


What surprised me

I was surprised to discover that while 78% of people oppose suicide, only 44% oppose doctor-assisted suicide. The only difference between the two is that in the former instance the person kills themselves without the aid of another person, whereas in the latter instance they seek a doctor’s help. But in both instances you have a person who chooses to end their life. So why the big gap in moral condemnation?


I was surprised that 6 in 10 people oppose cloning animals. I’m not sure what they find objectionable about that. I wasn’t at all surprised to see that 86% oppose human cloning, but the fact that there was only a gap of 27% between animal and human cloning tells me that American’s have an inflated view of animal value. This is especially the case given the fact that more Americans oppose animal cloning than they do abortion, homosexuality, and doctor assisted suicide!


Significant changes in opinion


The most significant change in opinion has been Americans’ increasing acceptance of homosexual relations and embryonic stem cell research. The former increased from 40% acceptance in 2001 to 47% acceptance today. The latter increased from 52% in 2002 to 67% today. We’ve got our work cut out for us in persuading the American public on these two issues. The tide of public opinion is working against us.


Where are we divided?


The data reveals that Americans are most polarized on homosexual relations, abortion, doctor assisted suicide, and unwed motherhood. The relatively even split of opinion means if we can make a persuasive case in the public square, we stand a chance of our views quickly gaining a majority status, thus effecting the realm of both morality and politics.


Abortion and embryonic stem cell research moral disconnect


The fact that there is a 21% difference between those who see abortion as morally wrong and embryonic stem cell research as morally wrong tells me that the public does not understand the logic of the pro-life position. If they did, they would see that the issue of abortion and the issue of embryonic stem cell research are morally tied at the hip. The fact that 1 in 5 do not see this tells me that we have to do a better job of explaining the pro-life logic, and specifically applying it to other areas of bioethics such as embryonic stem cell research.

 

July 30, 2007

What it means to be a secular society

Posted by Jason Dulle under Politics, Social
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Tullian Tchividjian penned a great description of what it means to be a “secular” society:

The word “secularization” is a fancy term used by social scientists to identify the process through which God and the supernatural are relegated to the fringe of what’s important in society. A secularized society is a society that has determined to make God and the supernatural socially irrelevant even if they remain personally engaging. It restricts the relevance of God to the private sphere only. This has created, according to Richard John Neuhaus, “a naked public square.” That is, God may be important individually but he is rather unimportant socially and culturally. He may be alive and well privately but publicly he is dead.[1]

[1]Tullian Tchividjian, “The Irrelevance of God”; available from http://theologica.blogspot.com/2007/07/irrelevance-of-god.html; Internet; accessed 30 July 2007.

 

May 22, 2007

Calvinists are Responsible for Liberal Democracy

Posted by Jason Dulle under Politics, Social, Worldview
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See part 1 and part 2 of an article written by John Snyder, in which he explains why liberal democracy did not come to life until the 16th and 17th centuries. Not only is Christianity in general responsible for this success, but a decidedly Protestant, Calvinistic worldview in particular.

 


The entire article is only four pages, so it’s a quick read.

 

April 24, 2007

Public Prayers in Pluralistic Settings

Posted by Jason Dulle under Odds & Ends, Pluralism, Social
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Melinda Penner had a terrific post today on the topic of offering prayers in a public, multi-faith setting. Modern notions of pluralism and tolerance, coupled with political correctness have resulted in an assault of criticism against Christians who invoke the name of Jesus in public-lead prayers. Doing so is said to be insensitive, intolerant, and guilty of excluding those who do not share our faith. Penner argues that this perspective is mistaken for the following reasons:


 

  1. Prayer always involves a recipient. To offer a prayer necessarily entails addressing it to someone, whether that someone is named or not (not “to whom it may concern”). In the case of the Christian, the object of our prayers is Jesus. Speaking the name “Jesus” at the end of a prayer only enunciates to everyone what they already know: that the Christian is praying to the Christian God—“not a committee of generic deities of all faiths present.” No one expects the prayer leader to abandon his beliefs while offering the prayer, so no one should be surprised or offended when we name the person we are praying to.
  2. Offering any prayer at all—even a generic prayer—will exclude atheists. Should we, then, not only be prohibited from addressing our prayer to a specific God, but also prohibited from offering public prayers altogether?
  3. The only alternative is to require prayer leaders to pretend that their beliefs are not true, or only allow religious pluralists to lead public prayers. Both options discriminate against Christians.
  4. It requires that Christians hide their religious convictions in public.
  5. Those who bear the burden of tolerance are the listeners, not the speaker. “Tolerance doesn’t censor, it encourages expression even’t when the belief isn’t shared.”

I would encourage you to read her post.

 

October 26, 2006

Good things in the culture

Posted by Jason Dulle under Odds & Ends, Social
[5] Comments 

I often engage what’s going wrong with culture, so when something good happens it would be good to talk about that as well. I’m sure most of you have already heard of Madonna’s recent adoption of a small child from Malawi, Africa. Apart from what you may think of Madonna, I think this is an admirable deed. While many people adopt children, they usually do so only because they cannot have children of their own. Madonna has two children. She did not need a child, and yet she chose to adopt an orphan.

 

While I’m praising Madonna I should take the time to praise Angelina Jolie as well. She was so moved by what she saw in poverty-stricken countries abroad that she has adopted two foreign children: one from Cambodia and one from Ethiopia. She even gives 1/3 of her income to charity.

 

I think both women are immoral in many ways, but they have acted honorably in these acts. My question for the Christian community: How many of us are willing to do what these women have done? We rightly refuse to emulate their evil, but will we also refuse to emulate their good?

 

October 24, 2006

TIME magazine: America by the Numbers

Posted by Jason Dulle under Odds & Ends, Religions, Social, Statistics
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Check out TIME magazine’s interactive webpage breaking America down by population, religion, etc. They have some amazing illustrative graphs and charts. Very good info.

 

October 24, 2006

Do You Have a Good Marriage?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Social, Theology
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NT scholar Andreas Kostenberger argues that this is the wrong question to ask:

Would you say that you have a good marriage? Some of you might answer this question in the affirmative (hopefully your spouse would, too); others might acknowledge that there remains a lot of work to do before you would claim to have a good marriage.

But why aspire to having a good marriage in any case? Just to be able to feel good about having a good marriage? And what does it mean to have a “good marriage”? When is a marriage a good marriage? If it is better than most other marriages of the people we know?

I submit to you that “Do you have a good marriage?” is the wrong question to ask. A better question to ask would be, “Does your marriage glorify God?” Is yours a God-glorifying, God-honoring marriage?

Rather than viewing having a good marriage as an end in itself, or using a human, relative standard of comparing our marriages with those of others or with some ideal set up by some popular current book on the subject, the goal of a God-glorifying marriage grounds the relationship with our spouse where it ought to be grounded: in the eternal, sovereign plan of God.

What, then, is a God-glorifying marriage, according to Scripture? Among other things, it means this:

(1) Both spouses are growing in Christ (“in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is, Christ,” Eph. 4:15)—not just the husband (husbands have a God-given responsibility to nurture their wives spiritually, Eph. 5:25–28) or just the wife (a sad reality in many marriages where the husband is spiritually passive).

(2) Both spouses exhibit fruit, both physically (children) and spiritually (they are engaged in Christian service, individually and jointly). For a couple to be fruitful and multiply is at the very heart of God’s purpose in creation (Gen. 1:26–28), and we should not sinfully put self above having and bringing up children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (or consider adoption if a couple cannot have children).

(3) The marriage is between Spirit-filled disciples of Christ (Eph. 5:18) who are committed to his Lordship and authority over all things. He is the center of God’s plan, not them, or even their marriage (Eph. 1:10). A truly God-honoring marriage does not (ultimately) focus on the family; it focuses on God in Christ.

In a marriage like this, the husband and wife are too busy growing in Christ and serving him in tandem, and with their family, than to ask, “Do we have a good marriage?” A good marriage they have, but not because having a good marriage is ultimately their aspiration, but because anything we do in life that seeks to bring honor and glory to God (including how we conduct our marriage) will result in blessing. May God be increasingly glorified in our marriages, for his greater glory and for our good.

Well said!

 

September 21, 2006

Is religious belief responsible for war and killing?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Problem of Evil, Religions, Sin, Social
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It has been awhile! I should have made a post informing you that I would not be blogging for a period of time, but I had no idea I would be taking a break as long as I did. I moved from Long Beach to San Jose at the end of August due to a new job. With the move, long work hours, a long commute, making week-end trips back to L.A., email problems, and a broken computer, blogging has not been possible. But I am back. I hope to be blogging on a daily basis again (or every other day).

 

So much to talk about! Where do I begin?!?! I’ll start off easy, and then hit you with some heavier thinking. I would like to make a few comments regarding the charge that religion is responsible for most of the world’s wars and bloodshed.

 

Those antagonistic toward religion generally blame religion and religious belief for all the wars and violence throughout history. They argue that if people did not embrace religious beliefs there would not be so much cruelty in the world. J. Budzizewski responds to this charge by pointing out that “cruelty isn’t caused by believing things; it’s caused by believing cruel things.”<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[1]<!–[endif]–>[1] Aptly said. The problem is not that people have religious beliefs, but rather what it is they believe to be true. If one’s religious beliefs contain cruel content, they will act cruelly. But there is nothing inherent in religious belief itself that causes people to act cruelly.

Not only is this charge logically flawed, but it is historically mistaken as well. The fact of the matter is that atheistic ideologies have been responsible for more deaths than all the religious wars throughout history combined. In the 20th century alone approximately 115-120 million people were killed by Communist regimes and totalitarian governments: Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Hitler, Mao Zedong, and the Khmer Rouge. So contrary to popular belief, the charge of cruelty and destruction lies at the feet of atheism, not religious belief.

<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>

<!–[endif]–>

<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[1]<!–[endif]–>J. Budziszewski, “The Truth Part”; available from http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001345.cfm; Internet; accessed 07 September 2006.

 

August 13, 2006

Pew Research Center Polls on Moral Matters

Posted by Jason Dulle under Sin, Social, Statistics
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The Pew Research Center has released its newest polling data concerning the American public’s view on a variety of moral issues such as abortion, stem cell research, same-sex marriage, and Plan B. Check it out here. Pew is always a reliable source for gauging Americans’ views on hot-topic moral issues.
 

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