Free Republic

One man’s personal experience of state school anti-Christian intolerance in the USA The year was 1996. I had just moved to Arizona with my family, and though as a musician I had some income, it was not enough. So I worked as a substitute elementary school teacher. At the beginning of the day the students would recite the American Pledge of Allegiance. In many schools, students would then recite this well-known excerpt from America’s Declaration of Independence: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable...

The assault on America's religious beliefs is not a new one. It is derived from a practice which Damon Linker, the author of Theocons: Secular America Under Siege referenced in his December 2007 article for The New Republic titled, "Atheism's Wrong Turn, Mindless argument found in godless books." He stated that far from being what modern journalists incorrectly label the "new atheism," the campaign to "act as missionaries for unbelief" is centuries old. Advertisement The American version of this mission to demonize religion is founded on a distorted interpretation of the establishment and free-exercise clauses of the First Amendment. Those...

The fastest-growing faith in America is no faith at all. And now some atheists think they need a church. It seems unlikely that many of the 850 or so people at the Society for Ethical Culture on a recent Saturday night believed that God was still extant. But evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and possibly the most famous atheist in the world, was not taking any chances. He gave a PowerPoint presentation driving home that religion does not meet any of the standards of basic scientific inquiry, before casually flicking away a few of His last...

As the onslaught of new emails-comments from believers/disbelievers pours in over this Ben Stein movie, Expelled, I am amused, appalled and mystified at the whole thing, and the posture of those are so adamantly in favor of adding "In the beginning..." to the nation's science curricula. It's "not about religion," ID/Creationists/Monkey Trial adherents say. Yes, it is. Doesn't lying bother you? You want your religion imposed on America's kids in science classrooms. You want to "test" and "debunk" Evolution as a "belief system." And then you don't want YOUR belief system, which can't withstand tests under any of those criteria,...

Representative tries to put the fear of God in atheistRead Eric Zorn's full post: Rep. Monique Davis to atheist Rob Sherman: `It's dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!' By Eric Zorn | Change of Subject April 6, 2008 Did you hear about the state legislator who last week blasted a Lutheran minister during a committee hearing for spewing dangerous religious superstitions, and then attempted to order the minister out of the witness chair on the grounds that his Christian beliefs are "destroying what this state was built upon"? Of course you didn't, because it didn't...

The leader of Britain's Catholics claimed yesterday that "Judaeo-Christian values" were the only thing binding British society together, on the eve of a lecture series on the place of faith in British public life.Speaking to the Guardian, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor hit out at representatives of an "aggressive secularism" that he believes is gaining ground in the UK, defended the Catholic Church's combative intervention last week in the debate over "hybrid" embryos, and argued that Christian leaders should hold a privileged position over the representatives of other faiths when it came to their input into public policy.The cardinal's comments are likely...

A former member of the U.S. Supreme Court serving on an appeals court panel has justified a city's decision to ban prayers at council meetings that are "in Jesus name," calling it a "reasonable" restriction on a councilman's speech rights. The comments came this week as the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard a case handled by the Rutherford Institute on behalf of Rev. Hashmel Turner. Turner, a resident of Fredericksburg, Va., and a member of its town council, was part of a rotation of council members who took turns bringing a prayer at the council meetings, and he...

Historical facts clearly prove the murderous evils of atheism and big government At a minimum, atheist dictators in the Soviet Union, Red China, Cambodia, North Korea, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia murdered 105 million people in the 20th Century, more than 60% of the mass murders, genocide and political murders in that time. In comparison, only about 2% of the 169 million examples of democide in the 20th Century were due to religious conflict. Also in comparison, the Crusades murdered only 1 million people over several centuries, the Spanish Inquisition only murdered 350,000 people over several centuries, and the witch hunts added...

"An age of science is necessarily an age of material­ism," wrote Hugh Elliot early in the last century. "Ours is a scientific age, and it may be said with truth that we are all materialists now."[1]One does not have to look far to discover the con­tinued accuracy of Elliot's assessment. Scientific materialism--the claim that everything in the uni­verse can be fully explained by science as the prod­ucts of unintelligent matter and energy--has become the operating assumption for much of American politics and culture. We are repeatedly told today that our behaviors, our emotions, even our moral and religious longings...

Revealing how the liberals don't want separation of church and state when it comes to their politics. http://www.thebulletin.us:80/site/news.cfm?newsid=19250142&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=623508&rfi=6

In the house I grew up in, there was no god but Science, and the PBS Nova programming was his prophet. There was a little-g god, as we attended church every week, but we were just there for the dose of morality and the teachings of Jesus. So what if we did not believe in concepts like heaven or hell, probably not the devil, and now that you mention it, that idea of an omnipotent creator? Going to church wouldn’t do us any harm. There is no fire and brimstone with Methodists — just a few hymns, a quiet sermon,...

Listen to Huckabee say that the first amendment gives us freedom of religion AND freedom FROM religion. Sorry Huck, but freedom FROM religion isn't a right. If it was it would be a right to suppress the free exercise of other people's religion.

How liberals and atheists have misinformed people about the Founding Father's religiuos beliefs. http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=19238913&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=623508&rfi=6

The No. 2 atheist activist in Illinois doesn't have an office or a car. Reporters have been banned from her home -- her mother is adamant on this point -- so the McDonald's across the street from Buffalo Grove High School has to serve as her impromptu media headquarters. None of which is surprising, when you consider that Dawn Sherman is all of 14. Her lawsuit challenging the new Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act in Illinois has already resulted in a temporary injunction blocking the law's mandatory moment of silence for the 13,000 students in Township High School District...

To hear some Floridians tell it Tuesday night, introducing the word ''evolution'' into state science-education standards would be a needed step into the 21st century. Others at a meeting at Everglades High School in Miramar urged state education officials to give other theories of the origin of life equal space -- and let students decide what to believe. ''We don't teach science in Sunday school,'' said Ken Loukinen, president of the Atheists of Broward County. ``Please don't teach religion in science class.'' The public forum -- the fourth statewide and only one in South Florida -- was the last before...

FORT WORTH: A passenger on a Fort Worth bus says the T. Bus Service discriminated against her religion. Christine Lutz says she was reading her Bible to her children when the bus driver asked her to stop or get off the bus

The “In God We Trust” inscription, currently on the edge of the presidential $1 coin, apparently will return to the obverse (front) or reverse (back) of the coin, thanks to a bill recently passed by Congress. Photo Terms of Use WASHINGTON (BP)--Presidential one dollar coins are the only U.S. coins currently being issued by the United States Mint that have the inscription "In God We Trust" along the edge, but public pressure soon may send the motto back to the front or back of the coins. Legislation introduced by Sens. Sam Brownback, R.-Kan., and Robert Byrd, D.-W.Va., that would...

One presidential hopeful is a preacher, another proudly Mormon, and most openly tout their Christianity. In an arena where faith can make or break a politician, the one in 10 Americans who profess no religion feel left in the cold. "They're very disconcerted," said Darren Sherkat, an atheist sociology professor specializing in religion at Southern Illinois University. "They're horrified by both the Democratic and Republican rhetoric surrounding religion -- that people who are not religious ... are immoral, that they're not qualified to serve in public office," he said.

“It is unconstitutional for the government and the public schools to include endorsements of the Christian religion.” So goes the conventional propaganda that has gradually permeated much of the judiciary of the United States in the last half century. The result is an ongoing and systematic elimination of allusions to God, Christ, and the Bible in the public life of America. In order to see the falsity of this contention, all one need do is spend a little time examining the utterances of the Founders themselves. The indications of the Founders’ attachment to Christianity, and the necessary inclusion of its...

Connecticut atheists, taking advantage of a town's policy of allowing holiday-season displays in its public park, have erected a 10-foot tall sign in celebration of the winter solstice that includes a message blaming the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on religious believers. The 3-sided sign was erected in the Town of Vernon's Central Park on Dec. 1 by the Connecticut Valley Atheists. The two sides facing Main Street feature a pre-attack image of the Twin Towers with the sun shining between them and the message, "Imagine no religion," drawn from the John Lennon anthem, "Imagine." Use of the image...