Free Republic

According to the authors of “The Black Book of Communism,” Communist regimes did not just commit criminal acts but were criminal enterprises in their very essence:“…all ruled lawlessly and without regard for human life (and) one particular feature of many Communist regimes (was) their use of famine as a weapon. The Bolsheviks had decided to eliminate…any challenge or resistance, even if passive, to their absolute power. This strategy applied not only to groups with opposing political views, but also to such social groups as the nobility, the middle class, the intelligentsia…the clergy…military officers and the police.” (pp. xvii, 8-9)

Could two highly intelligent men with two entirely different perspectives possibly help you come to your own personal conclusion concerning the central figure of history? Perhaps. Let’s find out. History’s central figure, of course, is Jesus Christ. And the two men I have in mind are American New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman and Canadian astrophysicist Hugh Ross. Ehrman professed faith in Christ as a teenager but is now an atheist; whereas Ross grew up in a non-religious home but is now a Christian. One man abandoned Christianity, while the other embraced it. Ross said, “I didn’t know any Christians or...

Only 28% of Generation Z Americans say they're committed to attending religious services at least once a month, as 14% identify as atheist or agnostic, according to a recent poll that suggests the younger generation is also much more likely to identify as LGBT. The "Gen Z Post Election Research" polls, released this month by the Walton Family Foundation and Murmuration in conjunction with SocialSphere, surveyed Gen Z participants ages 15 to 25 as well as adults 26 and over on a wide variety of questions as researchers attempt to gain an understanding for the habits and preferences of the...

On the muddy shores of a lake in east-central Germany, Neanderthals gathered some 125,000 years ago to butcher massive elephants. With sharp stone tools, they harvested up to 4 tons of flesh from each animal, according to a new study that is casting these ancient human relatives in a new light. The degree of organization required to carry out the butchery—and the sheer quantity of food it provided—suggests Neanderthals could form much larger social groups than previously thought.The find comes from a trove of animal bones and stone tools uncovered in the 1980s by coal miners near the town of...

Gonzalez, who became the center of an international custody battle at 5 years old, was nominated Sunday to Cuba's National Assembly. Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban national whose precarious boyhood arrival in the U.S. in 1999 prompted a fierce international custody battle, is set to become a lawmaker. Gonzalez was nominated by his local municipal assembly on Sunday to serve in Cuba's National Assembly... Gonzlaez was en route to Florida with his mother when their boat capsized on Thanksgiving 1999 and she and other migrants drowned. The boy's fate thereafter became a flashpoint in U.S.-Cuba relations. His father, a waiter named...

A prominent atheist group has issued multiple complaints accusing an Indiana sheriff’s office of “[pushing] Christianity onto inmates” after hundreds of detainees have been baptized in recent years. An attorney for the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation has fired off multiple letters to former Decatur County Sheriff David Durant accusing the Decatur County Detention Center of “multiple constitutional violations” by “promoting Christianity and coercing detainees into participating in religious exercises.” On Dec. 29, the sheriff’s office posted photos on its Facebook page of dozens of inmates being baptized. […] Durant, who left office on Jan. 1 following a four-year term...

How do you feel about religion?As Statista's Katharina Buchholz details below, depending on which country you are in, this question is more or less likely to be met with a shrug or even an objection to religious belief.In China, the highest percentage of people among the 56 countries and territories included in the Statista Global Consumer Survey is non-religious or atheist, the latter describing people rejecting the idea that there is a God.You will find more infographics at StatistaAmong European countries, Germany ranks high for the share of its non-religious and atheist population, which stands at around a third of...

When members of the small Pennsylvania chapter of Secular Democrats of America log on for their monthly meetings, they’re not there for a virtual happy hour. “We don’t sit around at our meetings patting ourselves on the back for not believing in God together,” said David Brown, a founder from the Philadelphia suburb of Ardmore. The group, mostly consisting of atheists and agnostics, mobilizes to knock on doors and make phone calls on behalf of Democratic candidates “who are pro-science, pro-democracy, whether or not they are actually self-identified secular people,” he said. “We are trying to keep church and state...

As media attention on "Christian nationalism" looms large in American politics heading into the 2022 midterms, Christian scholars this week debated the definition of the term and whether the increased media focus is an attempt to intimidate Christians from sharing their values in the public square. The Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University held a debate Thursday titled "Is Christian Nationalism a Threat to America?" Luige DelPuerto, the editor of Colorado Politics in The Denver Gazette, moderated a discussion between Centennial Institute Director Jeff Hunt, whose organization hosts a prominent annual conservative summit, and Scott Wasserman, the president of the...

In this episode, Pastor Allen welcomes back friend of the ministry Eric Metaxas for a conversation about faith, current events, and Eric's new book "Is Atheism Dead". You can find more from Eric at his website, https://ericmetaxas.com/.

The American left has plenty to complain about these days. Liberals who support standard Democratic Party platform planks such as legal abortion, more gun control, and public schools over private schools or homeschooling, have been drenched in bad news coming from various Supreme Court cases and polls showing a widespread rejection of their agenda in the coming elections. There is plenty of blame to go around, at least in their minds. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court is near the top of the list of villains for many. Conservative elected officials passing laws they disagree with are also common...

Republican lawmakers are questioning the constitutionality of a Biden State Department program to fund the spread of atheism and humanism internationally. At the end of June, a group of 15 Republican members of Congress wrote to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken about a State Department funding program from April 2021 that "would award grants of up to $500,000 to organizations committed to the practice and spread of atheism and humanism, namely in South/Central Asia and in the Middle East/North Africa." Noting that both atheism and humanism "are official belief systems," the GOP legislators wrote, "Any such...

The Biden administration is raising up an army of atheist missionaries. The government recently announced plans to fund a program that would send Americans abroad to promote atheism and humanism in South/Central Asia, North Africa and the Middle East. The program would be funded by your tax dollars - as much as a half million dollars per organization. They are literally going to use a government tithe to spread a godless message of hopelessness to the world. Congressman Jim Banks, the Republican from Indiana, is demanding answers — writing in a letter to President Biden and Secretary of State Antony...

On April 8, 1966, the pictureless front cover of Time Magazine asked a bold and direction question: “Is God Dead?” This was just two days before Easter Sunday, and in the decades that followed, it became increasingly common for anti-God, anti-Jesus, anti-Bible essays to be featured in various secular publications at this time of year.Now, in keeping with this anti-God attitude during this sacred season, an April 15 op-ed piece for the New York Times was headlined, “In This Time of War, I Propose We Give Up God.” How deeply sensitive for the Times to post this anti-God essay on...

The guest essay literally proposes killing God. “The God-shaped hole” posits that humans are hardwired to seek meaning through a divinity. Certainly, no culture has ever been without a God—and that’s true for Marxist cultures, which have sought to make a god of man, always with deadly results. The most recent example of this comes from a guest essay at the New York Times from a very angry, lapsed Orthodox Jew who insists that the world would be better if it “passed over” God. It’s a sad, foolish essay but one that the Times thought worth running on the holiest...

Despite an increase in the overall number of atheists worldwide, new research reveals that the population of religious people is growing at a faster pace than that of their secular counterparts. Lifeway Research has identified “7 Encouraging Trends of Global Christianity in 2022” based on data collected by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at the Massachusetts-based Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Specifically, the data titled the 2022 Status of Global Christianity report, demonstrates that “religious faith is growing faster than the irreligious.” The 2022 Status of Global Christianity report includes statistics about Christianity from 1900, 1970, 2000 and mid-2022...

"It is getting worse," David Curry, president and CEO of Open Doors, told Christian Headlines.... Chinese Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping "knows that he cannot stamp out" the nation's Christians, Curry said. There are an estimated 96 million Christians in China, the report says. "And so he is slowly strangling Christian faith, and he's doing it with high-tech surveillance. They watch, and they track everybody in what they're doing – through facial recognition and other things. Imagine if the IRS owned every camera in every restaurant on every street in America. We would be very concerned that the IRS has...

Maryland Proposed HB 181 aims to alter and remove references to God from our State Constitution. This goes into a hearing on 02/01 at 1:30pm. The bill is sponsored by Delegate Terri Hill (Representing Balt & Howard Counties) DEL HILL can be reached at 410-841-3378, 301-858-3378. You can write to her at 214 Lowe House Office Bldg, 6 Bladen St, Annapolis MD 21401

As 2021 comes to a close, we’re reflecting on our most popular stories of the year. The following article was one of our most read this year. Come back to movieguide.org in 2022 for more inspirational content!Actress and former AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL winner Adrienne Curry recently apologized to Kirk Cameron for hating him due to his Christianity and belief in God.“I sneered at the mention of his name because my agnostic beliefs set me above all others in my infinite godless greatness,” Curry confessed on her Facebook. “When I really ask myself why I did so, my only truthful...

Five billion years ago, the universe was Earth-less. It remained that way till a vast number of asteroids smashed together and compacted into a giant rocky orb. But that raises a question: The Earth's surface is 70% water, so where'd the liquid come from? A long-standing theory is that a water-rich class of asteroids, called carbonaceous or C-type asteroids, could've pelted the Earth during its creation and brought along water. There's a caveat though, and the C-type asteroids may be only half the story....