Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon, has published a book “Proof of Heaven” that purports to show his personal view of the afterlife. Alexander says that he was a skeptic until he fell into a coma in 2008 with meningitis. He then claims to have experienced consciousness after death. He describes how he found himself greeted by a beautiful blue-eyed woman in a “place of clouds, big fluffy pink-white ones” and “shimmering beings.” He then came out of the coma . . . and eventually wrote a book.
Category: Religion
We have another despicable crime committed by fanatics in the name of religion. Malala Yousufzai, 14, is an incredibly brave girl who wrote about the atrocities against women and girls under Taliban rule — writing about conditions and crimes in the area. She was honored internationally for her advocacy. A Taliban gunman walked on to her bus as it was leaving her school and asked for her by name. Another girl pointed her out but Malala denied being the girl so the gunman shot both girls in the name of Allah.
Reflecting a trend in other Western nations, Americans who describe themselves as without a religion continue to grow in number. They now represent one-fifth of all Americans and a huge one-third of adults under 30. It is an incredible disconnect with our politicians who continue in both parties to push faith-based politics. Some of these individuals may believe in the concept of a divine being but not associate with a particular religion. Perhaps sensing this trend toward agnostic and atheist views, U.S. politicians have increased their attacks on those who do not believe in an almighty being (here and here).
A Pew Research Center survey has shown that, despite the faith-based politics of both Democratic and Republican leaders, most citizens like separation of church and state — including separation from politics. Two-thirds said that religious organizations should not endorse or openly support candidates. For a prior column on the issue, click here.
Continue reading “Two-Thirds of Americans Polled Support Separation of Churches From Politics”
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In August, Todd Akin—Republican candidate for the US Senate from Missouri—got into hot water with his party and became the “laughing stock of the planet” for remarks that he made about how women who are “legitimately raped” rarely get pregnant. Akin said the following during an interview on KTVI-TV:
First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. . . But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. You know I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.
Writing for Wired, Brandon Kleim said of Akin:
Aside from the sheer biological ludicrousness of Todd Akin’s ideas on female physiology, one unsettling subplot to the debacle is his presence on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
That’s right: A man who, to put it gently, ignores what science tells us about how babies are made, helps shape the future of science in America. It would be shocking, but for the fact that many of the committee’s GOP members have spent the last several years displaying comparable contempt for climate science.
Kleim also wrote about other Republicans on the committee who seem to show a contempt for science and scientists:
The committee’s chair, Ralph Hall (R-Texas), lumps “global freezing” together with global warming, which he doesn’t believe humans can significantly impact because “I don’t think we can control what God controls.” Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) thinks cutting down trees reduces levels of greenhouse gases they absorb. Mo Brooks (R-Alabama) still trots out the debunked notion that a scientific consensus existed in the 1970s on “global cooling,” which he portrays as a scare concocted by scientists “in order to generate funds for their pet projects.”
‘We ought to have some believable science.’
Dan Benishek (R-Michigan) strikes that climate-scientists-as-charlatans note, dismissing contemporary research as “all baloney. I think it’s just some scheme.” Paul Broun (R-Georgia) says that “Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human-induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community.”
Reading University Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society was forced to remove a “blasphemous pineapple” named Mohammed as a form of hateful or discriminatory speech. The pineapple was intended to spark debate over whether
The Reading University Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society (RAHS) took part in the fair on Wednesday, in order to to “encourage discussion about blasphemy, religion, and liberty.”
Continue reading “Student Group Forced To Remove “Blasphemous Pineapple””
It appears that stripping naked is becoming something of the rage around the country. After a Michigan State Professor stripped naked in his math class, Sarah Butler brought her three children to a high school and stripped naked in what she believed was a logical response to the approaching end of the world.
Her attorney insisted that the incident in front of the suburban Philadelphia high school was triggered by an adverse response to a prescription drug. I can accept that but what I find intriguing is the fact that her two adult children and teenage son also stripped naked in front of the school.
People looking at the IKEA catalogue in Saudi Arabia thought that there seemed something was missing: women. IKEA decided to airbrush out every picture of women in the catalogue while leaving men and children. In one example of the deletion the father, daughter and son are still shown in a bathroom scene but the mother has been removed. The ultimate symbol of women being invisible in the Kingdom.
Continue reading “IKEA Deletes The Images Of Women From Catalogue In Saudi Arabia”
We have yet another rampage by Muslims protesting religious intolerance. Muslims claimed that a Buddhist man posted a picture deemed insulting to Islam. They responded by promptly burning down at least four Buddhist temples and then burning down the homes of at least 15 Buddhist families. That should show people not to be religiously intolerant.
We have previously seen Rev. John Hagee and his rather twisted sense of the divine (here and here). Now it appears that he is turning to military history and explaining how prayer and fasting clearly ended the civil war. Hagee was introduced recently by Glenn Beck as “a prophet of our times” and sat enraptured as Hagee explained how Lincoln was able to bring an end to the civil war with a day of prayer and fasting.
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, while commenting on the infamous anti-Islam film, said “When some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others’ values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected in such a way.”
Note that Ki-moon goes beyond just religious values and beliefs and includes all values and beliefs. That view is nonsense.
The filmmaker of “Innocence of Muslims,” the anti-Mohammad video that sparked the recent protests and deaths around the world, has been arrested by federal authorities for allegedly violating the condition for his probation on a 2010 conviction for bank fraud — violations that could land him in jail for three years. Given the calls for his arrest and even execution by Muslim allies, the arrest raises obvious concerns that the Administration is again defending free speech while quietly moving to punish those who cause religious strife.
Continue reading “Controversial Filmmaker Nakoula Arrested For Alleged Probation Violations”
For many years, I have been writing about the threat of an international blasphemy standard and the continuing rollback on free speech in the West. Much of this writing has focused on the effort of the Obama Administration to reach an accommodation with allies like Egypt to develop a standard for criminalizing anti-religious speech. We have been following the rise of anti-blasphemy laws around the world, including the increase in prosecutions in the West and the support of the Obama Administration for the prosecution of some anti-religious speech under the controversial Brandenburg standard. Now that effort has come to a head with the new President of Egypt President Mohamed Mursi calling for enactment of an anti-blasphemy law at the United Nations. Mursi is also demanding legal action against the filmmaker by the United States despite the fact that the film is clearly protected by the first amendment.
Railway Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour has put a $100,000 bounty on the head of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man who made the anti-Islamic film “The Innocence of Muslims.” The offer to pay anyone who kills the filmmaker is reminscent of the Fatwa placed on the head of Salman Rushdie for his book, The Satanic Verses. However, this is not just a government official but an official in the government of a U.S. ally calling for the murder of a U.S. citizen. Yet, Bilour insisted “I am a Muslim first, then a government representative.”
Respectfully Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
In light of the ever-increasing influence on National and local politics by churches and clergy, I was interested in the recent news that over 1,000 churches will be challenging the IRS by telling their parishioners who they want them to vote for in the upcoming national elections. The event is dubbed “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” by its organizers and it is designed to challenge the IRS on its prohibition of churches from intertwining politics and religion, as a requirement of maintaining their tax-free status. Continue reading “Pastors Take on the IRS”