Ever get up for Ash Wednesday and just hate to have to get out of your car and walk into a church? Now, getting your ashes is as easy as a McDonald’s cup of coffee. Just pull up to Mt. Healthy United Methodist Church in suburban Cincinnati and Rev. Patricia Anderson Cook will appear at your window for ashes on the run.
Continue reading “Ashes To Go: Ohio Church Offers Drive-Thru Service For Ash Wednesday”
The Iranian Sharia courts have given the world a steady stream of horrific judgments — using the pretense of a legal system to mete out religious-based and perfectly medieval punishments. They have now added a fresh outrage. Despite worldwide condemnation, a trial court in Iran has issued its final verdict that Youcef Nadarkhani, 34, be put to death. His crime? Converting to Christianity. During the country’s Sharia law, such apostasy is punished by death.
Continue reading “Iranian Court Orders The Death Penalty For Christian Pastor Convicted of Apostasy”
Sometimes the Chinese are sooooo competitive. On the heels of the announcement of Russian scientists that they have grown a plant from 30,000 old seeds, Chinese scientists have announced that they have found an entire 300-million-year-old peat-forming forest at a site near Wuda, China. Of course, Americans have had the last laugh but pointing out that the Earth is only 5000-6000 years old, according to Creation Science and many of our leaders.
Scientists in Russia have announced that they have grown plants from seeds stored away by squirrels over 30,000 years ago in the banks of the Kolmya River in Siberia. The Institute of Cell Biophysics team claims to have raised plants of Silene stenophylla from the squirrel leavings. Of course, what they really found was a den of atheist squirrels since various presidential candidates and religious figures have agreed that the Earth is only 5000 to 6000 years old.
Continue reading “Atheist Squirrel Science: Russians Grow Fruit From 30,000 Year Old Seeds”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Posthumous proxy baptism is a religious practice where a living person, acting as proxy, is baptized on behalf on a dead person. It is currently practiced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church), who submit names for the ordinance. The vicarious ordinance for the deceased have included Holocaust victims, prominent Nazis, and well known Jews such as Albert Einstein.
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Fresh off an attack on the legitimacy of public education and now surging in the polls, Republican primary candidate Rick Santorum couldn’t hold back the religious zeal. President Obama’s agenda is motivated by things not quite Christian the former senator from Pennsylvania charged in a recent campaign stop in Ohio.“It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology,” he said. “But no less a theology.” My, my, what could the homeschooling Roman Catholic mean? Surely not the Big Lie that the President is a Muslim, an idea that served as the red meat of Tea Party attack dogs since Obama won the White House. No, perish the thought. The darling of the far right simply meant that the President was “imposing his values on the church, and I think that’s wrong.” Sure, just a philosophical and scholarly difference of opinion on health care policy and the First Amendment, coincidentally stuck smack down in the middle of a presidential campaign. Santorum even generously conceded that –wink, wink,– “if the president says he’s a Christian, he’s a Christian.”
The new Libyan government has adopted many of the habits of its previous regime like torture and it can now add homophobic leadership. Libya’s new United Nations delegate to the U.N. Human Rights Council used a resolution to combat violence based on sexual orientation to denounce homosexuals as threatening the survival of the human race.
Continue reading “Libyan U.N. Envoy Denounces Gays and Lesbians As Threatening Humanity”
By Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
In Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man, Stephen Daedalus is asked by his friend Cranly whether, having forsaken Roman Catholicism, he will become a Protestant. “I said I had lost the faith,” he replied, “but not that I had lost selfrespect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?”
But God works, as they say, in mysterious ways. A black man, accused of being secretly a Muslim, a socialist and an illegitimate pretender to the presidential throne, has accomplished what all of the post-Vatican II reconciliation committees and joint worship services and inter-faith conferences could not. Rev. Mike Huckabee has declared that Protestants will at last abandon illogic and incoherence. No longer will the Pope be called the Antichrist, nor Holy Mother Church the Whore of Rome. Once again, he says, we are all Catholics. My late Irish grandmother’s faith has been vindicated.
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
For those who oppose abortion no tactic is too sleazy. The scare tactic of stopping abortion by linking it with breast cancer was manna from heaven. The visceral fear of breast cancer would present the faithful with a weapon to be wielded with no regard for the facts. The fact that the scientific evidence shows no link between abortion and breast cancer fazed them not.
The recent Komen/Planned Parenthood publicity and Komen’s ties to this woo, has reanimated this long-dead controversy.
Continue reading “Lying For Jesus: The Abortion/Breast Cancer Link”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Since the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has rejected Obama’s contraception compromise, and since House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has called the mandate unconstitutional, it’s a good time to look at what the Supreme Court has decided. A critical case is Employment Division v. Smith (1990) in which J. Scalia wrote the opinion for the 6-3 majority. Although there has been a torrent of invective regarding the Smith decision, I find it well-argued and compelling.
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
It appears that the Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Republicans are not happy with the change that President Obama made to the health care contraceptive coverage requirement for religious employers. The President’s announcement about the change yesterday initially met with a “reserved response” from the bishops who said it was a 
“first step in the right direction.” Hours later, however, the bishops issued a statement “blasting the plan.” Along with others, the bishops are calling for Congressional legislation that would reverse the contraceptive policy.
In a blog post earlier today, Judy Waxman, who is Vice President for Health and Reproductive Right at the National Women’s Law Center, expressed her concern about some of the proposed legislation. Waxman wrote that “opponents of birth control in Congress are still focused on taking away access to contraception introducing extreme legislation that threatens health across the board. The pieces of legislation range from allowing any employer, regardless of whether it is a religious entity, to deny coverage of contraception to giving employers the right to refuse coverage of any health care service they find religiously or morally objectionable.”
Igor Volsky of ThinkProgress echoed Waxman’s concern. He reported that Senator Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, is expected to introduce an amendment next week “that would permit any employer or insurance plan to exclude any health service, no matter how essential, from coverage if they morally object to it.
Submitted by Mike Spindell, guest blogger
It has long been my conviction that Saudi Arabia is a bigger player on the world stage than it is given credit for in media reports. The normal Western prejudice viewing this country as a cultural, repressive backwater may be true if one looks at the non-royal Saudi citizenry. However, the Saudi Royal family and its minions are quite sophisticated in worldly matters and for years have skillfully played the game of international politics. Odiously repressive Royals, enforcing an archaic view of Sharia Law, can nevertheless be quite modern and sophisticated in outlook. Everywhere in our current and in our historic world, there have been many examples of a nation’s elite demanding adherence to repressive religious standards, while indulging themselves in what is forbidden.
“WHOWhatWHY” an excellent investigative news site run by Russ Baker, a distinguished investigative journalist, ran an article that caught my attention. This article discussed the fact that most media was diffident and/or silent in reporting that Saudi Prince Walid bin Talal, had invested $300 million in Twitter, a privately held corporation:
“Twitter’s market valuation is something like $10 billion (choose what huge number you prefer). Given that, why would this company, which is all about empowering ordinary people to communicate unfiltered and thereby get control of their lives and their governments, sell a big chunk to a representative of one of the quintessential repressive forces—an element that has a stake in preventing exactly the sort of communication that defines Twitter?” http://whowhatwhy.com/2012/02/02/close-reading-the-saudis-a-twitter-investment-and-the-end-of-arab-spring/
It is common knowledge at this point that Twitter has been the driving force in much of the uprisings now characterized as “The Arab Spring”. With Twitter, government opponents were able to organize their ranks/actions and quickly communicate news updates to people who would not be able to get this information from a controlled media. In an oil rich country, such as Saudi Arabia, ruled with an iron fist by the top half of one percent, there is great danger of overthrow by a people poverty stricken in the midst of great opulence. Mr. Baker finds it curious when in the past year Twitter has had an ominous change in policy, at the same time allowing an investment by a member of one of the world’s most repressive regimes. Is this merely coincidence or an indication of an underlying effort to prevent the Saudi Royals from following the fate of other Islamic countries ruled by despots? Continue reading “Twitters Arab Winter?”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Eve Ellis, a major fundraiser for Susan G Komen for the Cure, has raised her last dollar for the charity. Ellis calls for the resignation of CEO and founder Nancy Brinker and the nine member board to be replace. In an angry letter, Ellis condemns the decision to end funding for Planned Parenthood’s breast screening as political and misguided.
Television producers in Egypt have been shooting the novel “Dhat” by Egyptian author Sonallah Ibrahim. The problem is that the novel takes place in the 1970s “when women wore short clothing.” That will not do for professors and students at Cairo’s Ain Shams University who forcibly stopped the shooting because the clothing was indecent during that period. Presumably, they could shoot the film so long the characters are dressed according to current Islamic standards — much like requiring a film on Woodstock to be filmed with women in prairie dresses.
The top Saudi clerics have found another person to execute for free speech. We have previously seen a number of people accused of blasphemy for brief tweets or Facebook entries or even reading a book or speaking insulting thoughts at prayer. There is now a campaign to execute 23-year-old journalist Hamza Kashgari for a tweet that he sent to Mohammad on his birthday about Kashgari’s faith. There is no evidence that Mohammad is actually one of his followers but Mohammad’s followers are pretty ticked and labelled Kashgari an “apostate” who must be killed for his offense to Islam.