Bryce Eickholt > Bryce's Quotes

“If politicians stopped meddling with things they don't understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocates.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Those of us who invite God's Spirit to live in the core of our being and to express Christ through us - body, soul and spirit - become linked forever with God.”
― Hugh Ross, Beyond the Cosmos: What Recent Discoveries in Astrophysics Reveal About the Glory and Love of God

“Only God possesses the love and wisdom necessary to deal with human pride in a consistently constructive manner.”
― Hugh Ross, Hidden Treasures in the Book of Job (Reasons to Believe): How the Oldest Book in the Bible Answers Today's Scientific Questions

“Winning the Origins Lottery Nontheistic models adhere to a central premise that humans arose by strictly natural unguided steps from a bacterial life-form that sprang into being 3.8 billion years ago. Famed evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala, an advocate for the hypothesis that natural selection and mutations can efficiently generate distinctly different species, nevertheless calculated the probability that humans (or a similarly intelligent species) arose from single-celled organisms as a possibility so small (10-1,000,000) that it might as well be zero (roughly equivalent to the likelihood of winning the California lottery 150,000 consecutive times with the purchase of just one ticket each time).2 He and other evolutionary biologists agree that natural selection and mutations could have yielded any of a virtually infinite number of other outcomes. Astrophysicists Brandon Carter, John Barrow, and Frank Tipler produced an even smaller probability.”
― Hugh Ross, More Than a Theory: Revealing a Testable Model for Creation

“When we humans attempt to humble others, we tend to do harm in the process. We humiliate in ways that either tear down and destroy a person or propel a person in self-defense toward greater expressions of pride or self-exaltation. Only God has the capacity to cause the precise internal and external circumstances that will bring a person to appropriate humility. Only”
― Hugh Ross, Hidden Treasures in the Book of Job (Reasons to Believe): How the Oldest Book in the Bible Answers Today's Scientific Questions

“A different study revealed another aspect of humanity’s unique spiritual nature—the capacity for malevolence. It appears that only humans among Earth’s creatures harm each other for harm’s sake.[64] The research team housed chimpanzees in cages that allowed them to withhold food from other chimpanzees by pulling on a rope. The researchers found that the chimpanzees would withhold food (in a statistically significant manner) only from chimpanzees that stole their food—not from others. In others words, they showed no tendency toward behavior that in humans would be defined as “spite” or displaced retaliatory anger. The research team concluded that spiteful behavior appears unique to humans. Only humans engage in malicious behavior toward fellow humans for no reason other than the impulse to hurt or harm someone. The team also commented on humanity’s flip side, “pure altruism.” Only humans, not primates, engage in self-sacrificial acts performed to assist or benefit other humans or even animals with whom no social context has ever been or likely will be established. In other words, the study confirmed what the Bible says about humanity’s spiritual nature and condition: humans are uniquely sinful and uniquely righteous among all living creatures.”
― Hugh Ross, Hidden Treasures in the Book of Job (Reasons to Believe): How the Oldest Book in the Bible Answers Today's Scientific Questions

“Rather than seeing ourselves as insignificant specks in the immensity of the cosmos, we can consider that immensity an indicator of our worth. It seems the Creator invested a great deal—a universe of 50 billion trillion stars, plus a hundred times more matter, all fine-tuned to mind-boggling precision—for us.”
― Hugh Ross, Why the Universe Is the Way It Is

“EXTREME DESIGN Theologically, the space energy density demonstrates that for physical life to be possible at any time or place in the history of the universe the value of the mass density of the universe must be fine-tuned to within one part in 1060, and the value of the cosmological constant must be fine-tuned to within one part in 10120.{74} To put this in perspective, the best example of human engineering design that I am aware of is a gravity wave telescope capable of making measurements to within one part in 1023. This implies that the Creator at a minimum is ten trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times more intelligent, knowledgeable, creative, and powerful than we humans. To word it another way, before this discovery the most profound design evidence scientists had uncovered in the cosmos was a characteristic that had to be fine-tuned to within one part in 1040. Thanks to this twenty-first century discovery, the evidence that God created and designed the universe for the benefit of life and human beings in particular has become 1080 times stronger (a hundred million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times stronger).”
― Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos: How the Latest Scientific Discoveries Reveal God

“The justification I hear more often than any other for leaving the Bible behind is that “everyone knows” it is antiquated and full of scientific nonsense, if not blatant errors and contradictions. Amazingly, when I ask people to cite examples, many cannot bring to mind even one. Apparently, they base their opinion on hearsay and repeat a widespread misconception. Among those who do answer my question, one Bible portion draws more vigorous attack than all others combined: the first few chapters of Genesis. This attack opens a wonderful door of opportunity for me—and for every believer who knows something about the scientific discoveries of the past few decades. Instead of offering an excuse for disbelief and rejection, these chapters present some of the most persuasive evidences ever assembled for the supernatural authorship, accuracy, and authority of the Bible.”
― Hugh Ross, Navigating Genesis: A Scientist's Journey through Genesis 1–11

“Innumerable conditions must be exquisitely optimized for the support of humanity and of civilization. Many of them are highly time variable. Evidence showing that a wide variety of independent conditions all reached optimality during the identical narrow epoch when human beings appeared on the cosmic and terrestrial scene testifies of supernatural design and purpose rather than mere coincidence.”
― Hugh Ross, Why the Universe Is the Way It Is

“The optimization of cosmic darkness and of Earth's location within the dark universe that sacrifices neither the material needs of human beings nor their capacity to gain knowledge about the universe reflects masterful engineering at a level far beyond human capability- and even imagination. It testifies of a supernatural, superintelligent, superpowerful, fully deliberate Creator.”
― Hugh Ross, Why the Universe Is the Way It Is

“When you argue against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner. ...I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life -- namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons--marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is alright. This is common sense really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not well you are sleeping.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“In the abstract, it might be tempting to imagine that irreducible complexity simply requires multiple simultaneous mutations - that evolution might be far chancier than we thought, but still possible. Such an appeal to brute luck can never be refuted... Luck is metaphysical speculation; scientific explanations invoke causes.”
― Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution

“There are no logical contradictions in the Christian faith. If there were even one logical contradiction at the center of the Christian faith, the Christian faith would be necessarily false.”
― Ronald H. Nash

“While contemporary non-Evangelicals have virtually reduced faith to 'courageous ignorance,' Evangelicals have hardly been faithful in defending God's objective communication of truth.”
― Ronald H. Nash, The Word of God and the Mind of Man

“Just as the moon derives the light it reflects from the sun, so the rational human mind derives a created ability to know from its origin, God.”
― Ronald H. Nash, The Word of God and the Mind of Man

“The Bible indicates that human beings can attain genuine knowledge of God, the self, and the world.30 God created both the world and humankind and his objective existence is the fixed reference point that makes authentic knowledge possible.”
― Kenneth R. Samples, A World of Difference: Putting Christian TruthClaims to the Worldview Test (Reasons to Believe): Putting Christian Truth-Claims to the Worldview Test

“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
― Thomas Sowell, Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”
― Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional? And Other Essays

“Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”
― Thomas Sowell

“The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export.... Nevertheless, for many of those who deal primarily in ideas, socialism remains an attractive idea -- in fact, seductive. Its every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders. ”
― Thomas Sowell

“It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.”
― Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions

“Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?”
― Thomas Sowell

“Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount—and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed.”
― Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy

“Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.”
― Thomas Sowell, Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays