A new report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) finds that teenage virgins are healthier than other students who are sexually active. At first, you might think that is merely an obvious conclusion since virgins are not likely to contract a sexually transmitted disease (STD).

But the conclusions are based on many other factors as well. Students who are virgins actually rate significantly and consistently better in nearly all health-related behaviors and measures than their sexually active peers. Let’s look at a few examples.

Sexually active teens are 3,300 percent more likely to smoke daily than their virginal peers. And same-sex and bisexual sexually active teens are 9,500 percent more likely than virginal teens.

The same dichotomy exists with dating violence. Sexually active teens are 260 percent more likely to experience some form of physical violence in dating relationships. Same-sex and bisexual sexually active teens are 683 percent more likely than their virginal peers.

As you might expect there is a real difference in terms of alcohol and drug use. Sexually active teens are 337 percent more likely to binge drink than teen virgins. They are also 336 percent more likely to use marijuana and 500 percent more likely to have injected a drug than teen virgins.

All statistics reinforce the idea that sexual chastity and involved parenting make a difference in the lives of teenagers. Some of these activities may not be directly related to being a virgin or being sexually active, but they do so a strong correlation between two different mindsets. Teens that control their sexual urges are usually making other wise decisions about other aspects of their lives.

Biology books that teach evolution tell certain stories to illustrate the evolutionary process. Back in 2000, Dr. Jonathan Wells wrote the book, Icons of Evolution. He explained that these ten icons of evolution were false. Many of them were fraudulent and known to be so. Nevertheless, they appeared in these textbooks.

In his latest book, Zombie Science, he asks a simple question. If these icons of evolution published 17 years ago were just innocent textbook errors, why do so many of them still persist? In his book, he also adds a number of other icons that are also wrong. The book’s title Zombie Science gets its name because these false icons of evolution don’t die but live on to mislead the next generation of students.

When he was on my radio program, he talked about Darwin’s tree of life and provided a catalog of what he calls the survival of the fakest. This includes scientists’ prebiotic simulations, Haeckel’s embryos, the Peppered Moths, and Darwin’s Finches. These erroneous icons were present in textbooks decades ago, and continue to show up in textbooks today.

One of the newest icons of evolution is the “walking whales.” This story shows up in many textbooks today because paleontologists found a wolf-like creature they claim would be the ancestor of the blue whale. Jonathan Wells spends a chapter critiquing that spectacular claim.

In a previous book, he also dealt with the claim that we have so much junk DNA and addresses that again in this book. If evolution is true, we might expect to have lots of leftover and unused DNA. He shows that is not the case.

This book not only will be helpful to science students with questions, it can also be a manual for activists. After all, our tax dollars each year go to purchase textbooks that have erroneous icons of evolution.

In a speech at Hillsdale College, Andrew McCarthy told the story of leading the prosecution in 1993 of the terrorist cell that bombed the World Trade Center. At the time, other government officials told him that he “should read nothing into the fact that all the men in this terrorist cell were Muslims.” These officials explained that the terrorist actions weren’t representative of Islam, because it is religion that encourages peace.

The government also portrayed the leader of the terrorist cell (Omar Abdel Rahman) as a wanton killer and an unbalanced lunatic. Andrew McCarthy discovered he was anything but. He was a globally renowned scholar with a doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence from a major university in Egypt.

That presented a problem. Andrew McCarthy needed to know enough about Islamic interpretation to press the case. He hoped to find inconsistencies between what the Qur’an teaches and what the leader of the terrorist cell taught. What he found was alarming. Every time Omar Abdel Rahman quoted the Qur’an or other Islamic sources, he quoted them accurately.

“When he said the scriptures command Muslims to strike terror into the hearts of Islam’s enemies, the scriptures backed him up. When he said Allah enjoined all Muslims to wage war until Islamic law was established throughout the world, the scriptures backed him up.”

Andrew McCarthy discovered the flaw in the oft-repeated argument that Muslim terrorists are perverting the religion of Islam. They are accurately quotes verses from the Qur’an. That doesn’t mean that all Muslims will be terrorists. Many do not know of these passages or have been able to contextualize them. But it does illustrate why we cannot continually argue that radical Muslims who are calling for jihad are teaching something that is contrary to Islam.

We need to help the next generation learn to navigate the culture. That is why I am so excited that John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle have written, A Practical Guide to Culture. The rowboat on the cover reminds us that this emerging generation will have to navigate through choppy waters.

John was on my radio program to talk about the book and share his experiences from Summit Ministries and the Chuck Colson Center. Both of the authors have ministered to thousands of students and their parents. They are facing a range of challenges from digital media to pornography to drugs to transgender issues.

They not only focus on the hot-button issues we hear about and read about every day, they also focus on the undercurrents in the culture we often miss. Those would be: consumerism, materialism, addiction, the sexual revolution, racial tension, extended adolescence, and key principles of wisdom and virtue.

On our radio program we often talk about the challenges the millennial generation face especially in an age with greater hostility toward Christianity. They also must do so in a digital world that moves much faster than in previous generations. This book will equip them and their parents to address many of the cultural issues other generations never had to consider.

Another helpful aspect of the book is the attempt to answer or refute many of the cultural lies in our society. Technology helps spread these lies quickly. Christians will need biblical discernment to deal with so many lies that are assaulting biblical truth.

They say that young people can either: celebrate, create, confront, co-opt, or correct cultural trends and habits. Obviously we must stand for biblical truth and correct culture trends, but we also must do it with love and compassion. This book provides a model for all of us to follow.

My discussion yesterday about the attributes of sound money ended with a sobering realization that the US money supply has dramatically increased in the last year or so. One obvious result has been inflation. There is also every reason to believe that the Federal Government and the Federal Reserve will print even more money to meet our financial obligations.

Most of our economic problems in the last few decades have been currency-based. When you print too much money, you have inflation. Investors will be paid back in devalued dollars. Citizens receiving entitlement payments will be paid in devalued dollars. This will be the result of fiat money.

In previous centuries, kings and citizens engaged in coin-clipping. This was a form of inflation, but at least it was visible. Today, paying back investors and citizens with devalued dollars is less visible and more insidious.

In what many regard as one of the most important economic books of the twentieth century, British economist John Maynard Keynes noted how inflation affects a nation and its citizens. He said: “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.” He also added, “There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law that come down on the side of destruction and does so in a manner that not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

What is the impact of inflation? The impact is felt in higher prices. In fact, the classical definition of inflation is “a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.”

Inflation is in our future. A wise investor should take note.

Each day we use some form of money, but we rarely think about the key attributes of money that make it work in our daily financial transactions. In my booklet on a Biblical View of Money, I explain that scarcity is one of the most important aspects of money as a medium of exchange. We can see this by looking at other forms of money used in the past.

Money originally took the form of stones, beads, and shells. Cattle and agricultural produce might have been seen as forms of money, but they would only work in a barter system and could not be divided or stored the way money can be used.

The Rai stones on Yap Island were large circular stones carved from limestone. They were brought from the neighboring island and difficult to procure (mine and transport). That changed when David O’Keefe was shipwrecked on the island. He realized that he could go to the other island and using modern tools and transportation could increase his supply of the stones. This ultimately led to the demise of these stones as money.

In western Africa, special beads were used as money for centuries. They were precious because glassmaking technology was expensive and not very common. Their limited supply made the beads sound money until European explorers visited the region. Once they began to import mass quantities of glass beads from Europe, the value of this form of money collapsed.

Seashells were another form of money around the world. They also suffered the same fate when advanced technology and boats flooded the market.

There is a lesson for us today. The money supply in America has been increased by more than a third in just the last year or two. The dollars in your wallet or purse are worth less than a year ago and will be worth even less in the future. This is the unfortunate lesson of the history of money.

We all want the pandemic to end. But hoping that it will end and predicting that it will end once everyone is vaccinated is something very different. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but COVID-19 isn’t going away whether all Americans are vaccinated or not.

Most scientists believe that this coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) will become an endemic virus. That would mean that it would continue to circulate in the global population for years to come. The journal Nature did a survey of 100 immunologists, infectious-disease researchers, and virologists who were working on the coronavirus. They asked if they thought it would be eradicated or merely become an endemic virus. Nearly nine in ten (89%) felt that would likely be the case.

More recently, Harvard University School of Public Health attempted to answer the question, “What will it be like when COVID-19 becomes endemic?” Answering that question depends on a few factors. Have enough people gained immune protection from vaccination and natural infection? What is the strength and duration of immune protection from vaccination and natural infection?

Both questions are up for some debate. The current administration talks about the millions of adults who are not vaccinated but ignores that a significant number of those millions may have natural immunity because they are of the 100 million who had COVID.

The duration of immunity is becoming an issue as more scientists and doctors are talking about rolling out a booster shot. If you get a measles shot, you are good for life. A tetanus shot can last you for a decade. But some of the COVID-19 vaccines seem to be losing their ability to prevent a subsequent infection.

Predicting the end of the pandemic may be a great political talking point, it appears that this coronavirus will be with us for a long time.

It’s becoming more and more difficult to keep track of every crisis in America. We have a immigration crisis on our border. We have had a crisis of getting Americans and others out of Afghanistan. We have a drug crisis and a mental health crisis. Racial tensions and a rising suicide rate are just a few examples.

You might assume that President Biden wouldn’t want to call anything else happening a crisis. But earlier this month he used the hurricanes that hit the US to argue that we are in the middle of a “climate crisis” In fact, he says, it is “code red” for the world. The White House national climate adviser warns that climate is now a “health emergency.”

If you look at the weather records, you will discover two things. First, hurricanes are not touching land at higher frequencies than the past. Second, the storms that do make landfall are no more intense than in previous years.

But let’s for a moment agree with the president and his administration. If we really want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are supposedly altering our climate, where should we focus our attention? More than half of the global population resides in cities, which are responsible for the vast amount of greenhouse gases spewed into the atmosphere. And it turns out that the top 25 “megacities” produce a majority (52%) of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

There’s just one problem. The latest list shows that 23 of the 25 worst offenders are “megacities” in China. The two cities that aren’t in China are Moscow and Tokyo. President Biden will have little or no influence on any of those cities. In case you are wondering, only four US cities are even in the top 50.

This brings me back to a point I have made before. If you really are concerned about greenhouse gases and climate change, climate change activists need to focus on China rather than the United States.

Professor Peter Boghossian is no longer a professor of philosophy at Portland State University. He is a liberal and is guilty of speaking out against the illiberal university. The more he did so, the more he faced retaliation and finally had to resign. You can read his full story here.

Although he and I would probably disagree about many topics, I would have enjoyed engaging in the conversation with him in the classroom. Although I have spoken in several classrooms in various Oregon colleges, I never had the opportunity to interact with him. He has had guest lecturers who were global climate skeptics, Occupy Wall Street advocates, and Christian apologists.

Sadly, you wonder if he is one of the last remaining liberals on campus. Remember that I make a distinction between liberals and the left. Liberals believe in an open and robust discussion. The left seeks to shut it down.

After his resignation letter surfaced, I was encouraged to see an op-ed by Professor Jonathan Zimmerman. He was calling his fellow liberals to “stand up for this professor.” He made a contrast between all the harsh comments made about people trying to “restrict teaching about race in American classrooms” and the deafening silence from “the vast majority of left-wing commentators” about this liberal professor from Portland State University.

What was also so interesting is the fact that the Boghossian has been “deluged with requests to appear on conservative media” even though he is not a conservative. In fact, we would like to get him on my radio program. But Zimmerman then said it might be a long time before he is invited on “liberal media” such as Rachel Maddow or National Public Radio.

All of this reminds me of what Dennis Prager said on my radio program. “You liberals think your enemy are conservatives. No, your enemy is the left.” I agree.