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THE FALSE FOUNDATIONS IN THE KINSEY REPORT
Almost 50 years ago, Alfred Kinsey, a quiet Midwestern Zoology professor, published the 1st of 2 volumes that would shake American culture to its foundations. His 1948 book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male - like its 1953 sequel, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female - claimed to report the findings of a massive survey of American sexual behavior.
And what findings they were! In dry, scientific language, Kinsey declared that many traditionally forbidden sexual activities were commonplace: About 1/2 of all married men and one in 4 married women had had extramarital sex; 69% of men had been with prostitutes; 10 % of men had been homosexual for at 3 years; 40 to 50% of boys raised on farms had had sexual contact with animals.
What’s more, Kinsey claimed many of these practices could be beneficial. Premarital sex helped women "adjust" to marriage. Boys may develop "affectional relations" with their animal sexual partners.
The public - then sexually conservative by today’s standards - might not have accepted such information from just anyone. But Kinsey was a scientist and, impressed by the wonders of modern technology, Americans had grown to respect science deeply. And because Kinsey’s was a scientific study, says historian John D’Emilio of the University of N. Carolina at Greensboro, "The press had permission to write about the subject in a way it wouldn’t have before."
American culture shifted under the impact. The old sexual rules, supposedly hypocritical, began weakening. "If you discover that the desires you’ve been repressing are being acted out by millions," says historian Paul Robinson of Stanford University, "you are less inclined to repress them." Newsweek characterized that effect as "If it’s OK with Kinsey, it’s OK with me."
Today, in good measure because of Alfred Kinsey, we live in a different world. But were the things he said true?
In December 1995, nearly 50 years after Kinsey’s 1st report, the Indiana institute that Kinsey founded to carry on his work acknowledged that certain data had been misrepresented. Kinsey had written that 9 observers - some technically trained" - had found that children as young as 5 months were capable of multiple orgasm and, when "uninhibited," were "aggressive in seeking" sex. The truth, the Kinsey Institute now said, was that those data were supplied by a single observer - a pedophile who claimed to have sex with 317 boys....
In fact, many of Kinsey’ findings were based on flawed methods. And some are outright false. Nevertheless, prominent scholars who know this continue to promote Kinsey’s work....
When Kinsey took a sexual history, he was far more likely to "find" sexual activity than were his own colleagues - reporting 2 to 3 times as much premarital intercourse and 4 times as much homosexuality as they did. Says historian James Reed of Rutgers University, "Kinsey was a man who very much wanted to find sexual activity."
Even more troubling was Kinsey’s collection of child pornography. According to a 1981 letter from Kinsey colleague Paul Gebhard to researcher Judith Reisman, Kinsey obtained photos and film of children engaged in sexual acts from adults who had had sex with them. Kinsey never notified law enforcement of the existence of any of these pedophiles.
Kinsey claimed to be a neutral scientist who had no agenda. He wrote in his 1st volume that he aimed for "scientific fact completely divorced from questions of moral value and social custom." His claim was false. "Kinsey had views, and they’re in his books," says sociologist John Gagnon, a former president of the International Academy of Sex Research, who joined the institute after its founder’s death in 1956. Kinsey believed that sex was a simple, biological reaction to stimuli with no moral, spiritual or psychological dimension. Only "inhibitions" imposed by society, he claimed prevented everyone from enjoying equally a variety of "outlets."
"It is not so difficult," Kinsey wrote in his 2nd report, "to explain why a human animal does a particular thing sexually. It is more difficult to explain why each and every individual is not involved in every type of sexual activity." In his declared opinion, there was no moral difference between one sexual outlet and any other.
It is not surprising, then, that the Kinsey Reports contain graphic description of young children under prolonged sexual stimulation by a pedophile including the children’s screams and struggles to get away. Yet Kinsey concluded that the children "derive definite pleasure from the situation."
The survey respondents on whom Kinsey based his conclusions were grossly unrepresentative of the general population. About 75% of his male respondents volunteered to take part, for instance. Using Kinsey’s data, psychologist Lewis M. Terman of Stanford University reported that such volunteers are anywhere from 2 to 4 times more active sexually than nonvolunteers.
Kinsey’s sample also included prison inmates. Pomeroy wrote that by 1946, the team had taken sexual histories from 1400 convicted sex offenders. Kinsey never revealed how many he included in his total sample of 5300 males; he did acknowledge that his 1st volume included "several thousand" male prostitutes.
THE FALSE FOUNDATIONS IN THE KINSEY REPORT by Rachel Wildavsky in R.Digest 4/97 p. 59 ff.
CHRISTIAN LOVE IMPACTS A HEARTLESS WORLD
We live in a heartless world. The last United States census missed at least 5.7 million people who were anonymous even to the census takers. Every year thousands of unidentified and even unidentifiable bodies are found across North America. And only one out of twenty such bodies ever has a name attached to it! Our society has become a breeding ground for lonely people. Life in today’s world is very much like the unwritten rule in elevators: "No talking, smiling, or eye contact allowed without the written consent of management."
A survey was taken in a suburban area of Houston to find out what had motivated people to choose the particular church where they were members. Some surprising answers were given: 12 percent chose their church because of prior denominational affiliation, 8 percent on the basis of the architectural beauty of the structure, 3 percent because of the person in the pulpit, 18 percent because of convenience of location, 21 percent because of people in the congregation whom they respected. But a whopping 37 percent were influenced by the fact that friends and neighbors took an interest in them and invited them.
Take Paul’s heart to heart. It can make all the difference in the world and for eternity.
(From a sermon by Freddy Fritz, Paul’s Missionary Heart -- Part 2, 10/15/2009)
CHRISTIANS ARE KNOWN FOR...
If you were to Google the phrase "Christians are known for" what do you think the results would be? What are people who call themselves followers of Christ known for... whether good or bad?
The following are some of the results you would find:
... being trustworthy and honest and having high levels of integrity
... building governments based on fairness
... respect for others and tolerance
... their intolerance of non-Christians and other religions
... their high level of integrity, their moral character
... their homophobic views toward anything remotely gay
... their gratitude and thankfulness
... their hatred, not the good and love they claim to practice
... what they are against, not what they are for
... denying birth control to families in the so called 'third world', resulting in hungry, unwanted babies
... replacing science with superstitions in the schools
... looking for trouble in the hopes of controlling others
... their love of others and towards God
If you think about that list you will see some things that are quite contradictory. You will see items that are fortunately true, unfortunately true, and items that are false. What I hope you see is that the simple question of: "what are Christians known for" is not an easy question to answer.
--www.orcmagazine.com
Ultimately let me share what I believe is at stake. In 1947, sociologist and historian Dr. Carle Zimmerman studied the deterioration and ultimate disintegration of various cultures. He found that in each society the disintegration of the culture was preceded by the disintegration of the family. He discovered 11 common elements that were always present. Let me mention five of those eleven common elements:
1) An increase in rapid easy cause less "faultless" divorce.
2) Fewer children, and less respect for parents and parenthood.
3) A break down of most inhibitions against adultery.
4) T...
SPIRITUAL CONSUMERISM
In February 27 2009 article from the website “Slate” titled, “Why American churchgoers like to shop around” also caught my attention. That article cited statistics from a Barna Group survey that revealed that one in seven adults changes churches each year, and another one in six attends a handful of churches on a rotating basis. Another survey by the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life a few years ago indicated that 44 percent of American adults have left their first religious affiliation for another. But what was most disturbing to me is that the article actually viewed this as a good thing, this is a direct quote from the article: "Even if the American mania for shopping extends to our spiritual lives, church shopping still doesn’t get much respect. But while it may be frequently derided as an example of rampant spiritual consumerism, shopping around can be one of the good things about the way religion is practiced in America." This article attempts to equate the fundamental idea of worshipping our God to the pursuit of finding the right pair of shoes or finding the store with the right price on a certain style of dress.
What I am trying to tell you is that worship to God has become, in our society, no longer a matter of serving God on his terms but it has become a matter of God serving us on our terms. This spiritual consumerism, as referred to in the article quote, has caused many to look for a bargain basement Christianity with a half priced service to satisfy an extravagant top self kind of God.
(From a sermon by Ulysses Mckneely II, Wisdom in Worship, 5/28/2011)
PORN STATS
The Internet is a good tool but it can also be used to fuel heat of sexual lust. Statistics are truly staggering. This is from 2006 and worldwide statistics: According to compiled numbers from respected news and research organizations, every second $3,075.64 is being spent on pornography. Every second 28,258 Internet users are viewing pornography. In that same second 372 Internet users are typing adult search terms into search engines. Every 39 minutes a new pornographic video is being created in the U.S. It’s big business. The pornography industry has larger revenues than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple and Netflix combined. 2006 Worldwide Pornography Revenues ballooned to $97.06 billion.
MONOGAMY SYNDROME
Where at one time, having sexual relations outside marriage was considered liberating, current studies show that it damages one's ability to trust, affecting future relationship, one's respect for self, affecting every decision and diminishing the value of right decisions, and one's respect for health.
Liberating? At what cost.
Drs. Freda Bush and Joe McIlhaney released a study at Harvard University that shows that exposure to immorality and participation in sexual acts during childhood years actually changes the brain, interrupting the normal production and usage of dopamine, vasopressin and oxytocin in the brain for the remainder of the life.
These chemicals, when released properly, create the "monogamy syndrome", in that moment bonding the person to another. If this occurs outside of marriage, that moment of bonding never fully takes place, even after marriage.1
According to the study, listen, "But that bonding, which acts like adhesive tape or Velcro, is weakened when people tear away at its power by breaking off with a sexual partner and moving on from one to another to another. So when it does finally come time to bond permanently with a spouse, the ability to bond is damaged.
The brain actually gets molded to not accept that deep emotional level that's so important for marriage. When they do marry, they're more likely to have a divorce than people who were virgins when they got married."
Others studies, reported by American Journal of Preventive Medicine, physical and emotional changes in unmarried people who have sex, as well as in married people who have sex outside marriage.
This is not to discount the spiritual changes in these people.
The Bible is relevant concerning the building blocks of a strong, supportive, fulfilling family life, although some have misrepresented what it is teaching through the years. One of those building blocks is entering into the most important human relationship of choice with the ability to commit fully, and much further than you have ever committed to another in your life. Purity before marriage is now seen as a crucial part of that. This is something many will miss out on because the deemed the Bible irrelevant to themselves.
A Better Life? In 1956 the typical American had to work 16 weeks for each 100 square feet of home purchased; now it takes 14 weeks, and the houses are much nicer. Most families of that period had 1 car and strived to own 2; today 1/3 of U.S. families own 3 or more cars. The workforce has never been so highly educated. Americans are living longer, healthier lives. Crime is down. The environment is cleaner. In spite of this, why aren’t a higher percentage of Americans happier? Gregg Esterbrook, author of The Progress Paradox, says, “wealth can’t overcome a sense that life la...
Religious Resurgence: The Wall Street Journal book reviewer George Johnston comments, “… in the year 2000 we see not only a resurgence of religious evangelism but an appetite for books and movies about God. In many respects, America is a more religious country today than it was in the 18th century.” (WSJ 3/8/00)
E-mail Marketing Tips: Local E-Mail Marketing indicates 42% of small businesses will use e-mail for some form of marketing by ‘05, with promotional coupons being the most popular method. Because the economics of e-mail -- no paper, printing, postage, or design costs -- make it one of the few affordable marketing mediums for many small outfits. Annual spending by U.S. small businesses on e-mail marketing is expected to exceed $2.2 billion by 2005, according to The Kelsey Group, here’s what the marketing experts advise:
· Send e-mail only to customers who have invited you to do so. The best way to get or keep a customer is to build a 1-on-1 relationship, says John Rizzi, president and CEO of E-Dialog Inc., a direct-marketing company.
· Once you’ve been given permission to e-mail a customer, only send e-mails relevant to the recipient’s interests.
· Respect the customer’s privacy. Don’t share the list of e-mail addresses you have compiled to other mailers.
· Invite your customers to forward your offer to acquaintances.
· You can’t build a 1-on-1 relationship if you don’t respond to each customer in a timely, relevant way.
· In the e-mail, make it clear in the subject line what the offer is and whom it’s from.
· Avoid attachments in your e-mail offer. Many people won’t open them because of fears that they might contain a virus. (BW Online 5/29/01 & BW Small Biz 5/29/01)
