Religion - a respectful discussion, for those interested

"How does a boy become a man? A boy grows into a man as he learns to put his strengths, gifts, and passions at the service of others. This should happen naturally as a boy grows older. However, I have noticed a troubling trend...the modern day scourge of immature boys inhabiting the bodies of adult males who shirk manly responsibilities ... Two of the biggest obstacles preventing passage from boyhood to true manhood - not the false version epitomized by devotion to beer, babes, and big screen TVs - are masturbation and pornography. ... they become enslaved to the gratification of their own desires whenever they become aroused.

Sexuality is designed by God to be shared with a person of the opposite sex in the context of exclusive, life-giving love. ... Seeking gratification through masturbation, pornography, and sexual promiscuity is void of love and, because it cannot satisfy the desires of the heart, leaves one feeling empty and unfulfilled. Even worse, it initiates a vicious cycle, tricking one into thinking that those deepest desires really will be satisfied if only one engages in the same behaviors ever more frequently and intensely. The result is the double woe of dissatisfaction and enslavement to one's passions. For adolescent boys, sexual impurity becomes a trap preventing them from becoming men because they never learn how to live for the good of another. Their impurity is a stumbling block to true love, which they confuse with lust.

Sexual impurity is a deep, dark secret lurking in the heart of many a man too embarrassed to bring it out into the light. Allowed to fester in silence and grow in darkness, it can destroy relationships between the sexes - if those relationships are even allowed to form in the first place. Because of sexual impurity, many males never become the great men they are called to be, and many young women desiring to enter into unions of life-giving love are left waiting. Sadly, many women settle for imitations of manhood because they have given up hope that any real men actually exist. The resultant union of a boy and a woman - instead of a man and a woman - becomes a recipe for destruction and disaster in both of their lives, not to mention in the lives of any children they might have, especially boys who need their fathers to mentor them into manhood."

- "Freedom: Battle Strategies for Conquering Temptation," Everett Fritz (a brilliant new book just released, and so important today!)

 

He's on EWTN right now talking about his best selling book, and how the evidence for God is overwhelming. (I feel like this is obvious, but there are still some people out there who delude themselves into ignoring or blocking out all of that evidence). So if you're thinking "well, duh, tell me something I don't know, realize that this post is for the less than 10% of atheists still in the dark. He also mentions, like many other scientists have, how the more you learn about science, the more you are led to realize not only the necessity for God, but the evidence for God that science has uncovered. He even takes it further, saying that science points toward the "God of the Bible." I will have to read his book to find out how science has demonstrated the validity of biblical events, but I was aware of a couple studies that have looked at specific biblical events from a scientific perspective.