Free Republic

On his November 10 Huffington Post, Nicholas Graham and nearly every commenter thereafter, purposefully distorted what Governor Palin said about prayer and the 2012 presidential race. The universal misconstruction of Palin's comments was that she was "praying to become president" in 2012 and that somehow God was speaking directly to her. But reality is she did not say that at all. Graham offhandedly claimed that Palin said that she was waiting "for a sign from God" as to whether she would run in 2012. Further distorting her comments, he claimed she was "confident God would show the way to the...

Ads proclaiming, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake," will appear on Washington, D.C., buses starting next week and running through December. The American Humanist Association unveiled the provocative $40,000 holiday ad campaign Tuesday. In lifting lyrics from "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," the Washington-based group is wading into what has become a perennial debate over commercialism, religion in the public square and the meaning of Christmas. "We are trying to reach our audience, and sometimes in order to reach an audience, everybody has to hear you," said Fred Edwords, spokesman for the humanist group...

Denver, Sep 25, 2008 / 05:33 pm (CNA).- The Democratic Party has been hijacked by elites hostile to religion, said Mark Stricherz, author of the book "Why Democrats are Blue" and a Democrat himself, during the Casey Lecture delivered on Tuesday at the Archdiocese of Denver. The Casey Series of Lectures was started by the Archdiocese of Denver in 2006 to promote Catholic thinking in political life, inspired by the life and political activism of the late Pennsylvania Governor Robert Casey, a devout Catholic and a Democrat. Stricherz, who has focused his investigation on the historical transition that turned the...

We are constantly reminded about the destructive consequences of religion -- intolerance, hatred, division, inquisitions, persecutions of "heretics," holy wars. Though far from the whole story, they are, nevertheless, true. There have been many awful consequences of religion. What one almost never hears described are the deleterious consequences of secularism -- the terrible developments that have accompanied the breakdown of traditional religion and belief in God. For every thousand students who learn about the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials, maybe two learn to associate Gulag, Auschwitz, The Cultural Revolution, and the Cambodian genocide with secular regimes and ideologies....

The Democratic National Convention's Aug. 24 interfaith service in Denver is supposed to be about unity. But to a Washington, D.C., coalition that supports nontheistic views, it's about division. The Secular Coalition Group, a lobbying organization for church-and-state separation, is pushing to get an atheist on the speaker list, and contends the service is divisive because it alienates nonreligious Democrats at a time when the party needs to unite to support the presumptive nominee, Sen. Barack Obama. "We can all hold different beliefs," said the group's executive director, Lori Lipman Brown, "but we can still come together as patriotic Americans."...

Amazing … that there are that many of us voting Republican, that is. Didn’t we see some numbers in this vein not long ago pointing towards a more lopsided outcome? The atheist vote’s just a sexy detail in an omnibus poll of religious voters. The good news: Obama’s lost seven points among Christians since June and has seen his support soften considerably in several subgroups. The bad news: Pretty much everything else, especially the fact that McCain’s only gained one point in the same period and trails among every “faith segment� except one. If Obama has a “Catholic problem,� what...

Watching the Oregon returns on CNN last Tuesday night, I was intrigued by an odd statistic: among those who described themselves as professing “no religion,” 61% cast their ballot for Senator Obama. I proceeded to scour Democratic exit polls to see if this was some sort of fluke. It was no fluke: of the 30 states where I could find comparable data, Obama won the “no religion” crowd an astonishing 26 times! ... Obama’s popularity among this cohort is at once baffling and understandable. It is understandable because its members tend to be younger, better educated, predominantly male, gainfully employed...

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.

A months-old U.S. Supreme Court ruling quickly weakened the ability of taxpayers to sue government for violating the separation of church and state, legal experts say. The court ruled in June that taxpayers could not sue over executive branch spending that allegedly promoted religion. The 5-4 decision dismissed a lawsuit by the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation that challenged President Bush's faith-based initiative.Taxpayers only have the standing to sue when Congress specifically authorizes money for religious purposes, Justice Samuel Alito wrote. Otherwise, courts would be clogged with cases complaining about the day-to-day activities of government employees, he wrote. At the...

The political fashions that begin in Britain tend to find their way to Canada extremely quickly, especially when they come from the left side of the body politic. A new report from the think-tank of the governing Labour Party states that, "Britain is no longer a Christian nation and Christmas should be downgraded in favour of festivals from other religions to improve race relations." The report goes on to call for a new form of "birth ceremony," at which the state and parents would agree to "work in partnership" to raise babies. It demands action to "ensure access" for ethnic...

NEW YORK — A week into the cross-country launch of a radio talk show for "Godless infidels," the son of the late former President Ronald Reagan will be a guest. Ron Reagan will speak this weekend on Freethought Radio, which Air America Radio is now broadcasting nationally, about his own atheism.

In a time when modern science and scholarship have begun to cast doubts on traditional faith, many on the left, right, and center are increasingly abandoning traditional religion. While most such people on the center-right are content simply not to believe, many on the left continue to cling to the salvationist ethos. In the past, that impulse was satiated with communistic reveries. If religion was the opiate of the masses, socialism was the heroin of the secular leftist. That no longer seems, at least outwardly, to be the case. With a worldwide record of abject failure, socialism lost its claim...

Joe Biden Says Democrats Have Been Too Fearful to Discuss Religion Monday , August 13, 2007 ADVERTISEMENT NASHUA, N.H. — White House hopeful Joe Biden said Monday that Democrats lost the last two presidential elections in part because they let themselves be portrayed as anti-God. Democrats have been too afraid to talk about faith, Biden said at a Rotary Club luncheon. But what voters really want to know is whether a president believes in something bigger than themselves and whether he or she respects the faith of others, he said.

Jack Kinsella - Commentary The Omega Letter Hating Christ . . . I was reading the comments posted by readers of the Huffington Post in response to a column posted by Max Blumenthal about the "Christians United For Israel Tour" Washington summit meeting, hosted by San Antonio pastor John Hagee... The column was entitled, "Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United For Israel Tour." Blumenthal's column fairly dripped with hate for Christians in particular, but reserving some for Jews who collaborate with them. "CUFI has added the grassroots muscle of the Christian right to the already potent Israel lobby. Hagee and...

Not surprisingly, the Bible Belt region lives up to its name with states like Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia containing the highest percentage of those who believe the Bible is literally true. Alabama and Arkansas came out on top as 75% say they believe the Bible is literally true. West Virginia (70%) and Tennessee (68%) are close behind. The northeast region of our map represents the other extreme. In Vermont and Massachusetts, only 22% of those respondents believe the Bible is literally true—the lowest percentages in all states surveyed. Earlier this summer, a national survey found that 54% of...

Godless: The Church of Liberalism by Ann Coulter Coultergeist A Review by Jerry Coyne H. L. Mencken once responded to a question asked by many of his readers: "If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?" His answer was, "Why do men go to zoos?" Sadly, Mencken is not here to ogle the newest creature in the American Zoo: the Bleached Flamingo, otherwise known as Ann Coulter. This beast draws crowds by its frequent, raucous calls, eerily resembling a human voice, and its unearthly appearance, scrawny and pallid....

Spare us from the God-haters By MICHAEL COREN Toronto Sun July 22, 2006 In West Virginia local activists are trying to remove a picture of Jesus that has hung on the wall of a local school for many years. Various so-called civil liberties groups claim that such a portrait is an infringement of basic human rights. Elsewhere in the United States assorted opponents of organized religion have been fighting for decades to ban prayer in schools, to force teachers to take down copies of The Ten Commandments from classrooms and to eliminate all mentions of God from public halls...

The title and theme of a book which received one the largest advance paid to a conservative author can now be revealed: Ann Coulter's GODLESS is set for release on 6/6/06. The book -- which condemns what Coulter calls "The Church of Liberalism" -- will have a startling first printing of 500,000 copies, a publishing source tells the DRUDGE REPORT. With chapter titles such as ON THE SEVENTH DAY GOD RESTED AND LIBERALS SCHEMED, and THE HOLIEST SACRAMENT: ABORTION, controversialist Coulter ups the ante in her fourth book for CROWN FORUM.

Our Battle for the Soul of America By Rabbi Aryeh Spero People of faith look around our country at forms of behavior now accepted and wonder how is it possible that during their own lifetime things have so dramatically deteriorated. ----------------- The truth is the A.C.L.U. never believed in separation of church and state as much as using it as a hammer to dampen Christianity, its symbols, its values. The proof? In the last two years it has taken up the cause of defending Islamic “religious rights” – from wearing full-length burkas at community swimming pools to public school recitings...

Several years ago (1996-97), I was thinking about the term “religious right.” It seemed that there should be some contrasting term, but none came immediately to mind. So I had to make some up: agnostic right, atheist right, atheist left, etc. I had the benefit of a university’s library services at the time, so I asked for a count of the term “religious right” in American periodicals. The annual count was in the hundreds per year. Contrasting terms had a combined count of under twenty. I’d only heard the term religious right as an attack term back then. This seemed...

It's quite possibly the last special interest group to establish a voice in Washington. The Secular Coalition for America has hired Lori Lipman Brown as its congressional lobbyist and national voice. Brown's main job? To educate the public about mistaken notions regarding atheists while making sure religion doesn't get a ringside seat at issue debates. "My beef is with people who have taken [religion] out of the 'sacred' sphere and used it instead as a political tool," Brown told CBSNews.com. "Having done that denigrates religion." In today's climate of piety, when the president unabashedly uses religious imagery in his speeches...

 Early warning shots-- the War against Religion......developing:  The Left's 'Dominionist' Demons -- As near as I can tell, "Dominionism" is the Left's version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. A big lie used to justify bigotry and irrational hatred.    "Dominionist" Fantasies     Why I'm Rooting for the Religious Right -- The professional haters of the "religious right" are a bunch of narrow-minded, doctrinaire bigots     Scary Stuff: Venom Against Conservative Christians (Discussed on Rush Limbaugh) more-- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1395264/posts    The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party(Moonbat Warning!)  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1395231/posts    Dominionist Domination: The Left runs...

In certain precincts of a world encouraged to embrace differences, Christ is out. The terms "B.C." and "A.D." increasingly are shunned by certain scholars. Educators and historians say schools have been changing the terms "Before Christ," or B.C., to "Before Common Era," or B.C.E., and "anno Domini" (Latin for "in the year of the Lord") to "Common Era." In short, they're referred to as B.C.E. and C.E. The new terms were introduced by academics in the 1990s in public elementary and high school classrooms. Candace de Russy, a national writer on education and Catholic issues and a trustee for SUNY,...

In a world encouraged to embrace differences, B.C. and A.D. are increasingly finding themselves on the wrong end of the religious sensitivity meter. Educators and historians say schools from North America to Australia have been changing the terms Before Christ to Before Common Era and anno Domini (Latin for "year of the Lord") to Common Era. In short, they're referred to as B.C.E. and C.E. The change has stoked the ire of Christian conservatives and some religious leaders who view it as an attack on a social and political order that has been in place for centuries. Ironically, for more...

According to How Stuff Works: As the newly elected pope accepts his new role, it is tradition for him to select a new name. This papal tradition dates to 533 and the election of Pope John II, whose birth name was Mercurius, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia. Good thing, because I don't think Pope Benedict XVI (formerly Cardinal John Ratzinger) would be too happy if that task were left to the Kos Kids. They've decided to call him "Ratf*****" Here are a few examples. I did see comments from a couple of dissenters. One seemed primarily concerned that calling the...

The Freedom from Religion Foundation issued a press release Sept. 13, 2001, calling the September 11 attacks by Islamist terrorists "the ultimate faith-based initiative." The release went on: "Religion is not the answer, it is probably the problem." And: "Prayer had its chance on September 11 and it failed." September 11 "should have clinched the idea this is a naturalistic universe," group leader Mr. Barker says. "To stand by and do nothing makes God an accomplice. If He exists, why are we worshipping this monster?" The fight against God and for abortion rights appear intertwined for Mr. Barker's mother-in-law, Mrs....

It takes planning to produce a classic chapter in television history. "We've rehearsed," Thom Bird, a Fox News producer, bragged to Variety before Pope John Paul II died. "We will pull out all the stops on this story." He wasn't kidding. On the same day that boast saw print, a Fox anchor, Shepard Smith, solemnly told the world that "facts are facts" and "it is now our understanding the pope has died." Unfortunately, this understanding was reached 26 hours before the pope actually did die, but as Mr. Smith would explain, he had been misled by "Italian reports." (Namely from...

I am a nonbeliever. But looking upon fellow nonbelievers, I much dislike what I see. They condemn religion as much as they condemn President Bush. I much prefer people who do believe. If war came, I'd grab a rifle for their side. Tom Wolfe sums up the animus well in his new novel, "I am Charlotte Simmons," which is about a lot more than getting drunk and doing it. In one scene, the school president meets with the basketball coach and a history professor who has caught the team's sole white starter in plagiarism. But that's not the best part....

NEW YORK, April 8 (UPI) -- The head of a leading Roman Catholic lay group says U.S. leftists are about to unleash an avalanche of invective against the church and its leadership."The storm is about to hit," William Donohue of the Catholic League said in a news release. "For the most part, anti-Catholic bigots and the disaffected dissidents within the Church have been quiet. What they have been waiting for is about to happen: the week between the end of the mourning and the beginning of the conclave is upon us. And that means the left is ready to explode."...

TESTING THE FAITH Bill Maher: Christians have neurological disorder Says parents 'drill' religion into kids' heads using biblical 'fairy tales' Bill Maher Television personality Bill Maher, host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," says Christians and others who are religious suffer from a neurological disorder that "stops people from thinking." Appearing as a guest on MSNBC's "Scarborough Country" this week, Maher told host Joe Scarborough: "We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I do believe that. I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think flying planes into a building...

Big Canadian real estate is on the market. A rather sizable chunk of Lord Robert Baden-Powell's Empire is available for investors, homebuilders, fishing resort prospectors, or blacktop barons. Scouts Canada is pounding in "for sale" signs at the entrances of a number of Scout camps across the country, including at least twenty camps in Ontario. But don't worry. No Boy Scouts will mourn the loss of their summer camps, for the Boy Scouts of Canada no longer exist. Thinking they could become more inclusive, the Boy Scouts of Canada Board of Governors decided in November 1998 to admit females, atheists,...

MAHER: Yes, we are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I do believe that. I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder.

The tsunami of sea water was followed instantly by a tsunami of spittle as the religious sputtered to rationalize God's latest felony. Here we'd been placidly killing each other a few dozen at a time in Iraq, Darfur, Congo, Israel, and Palestine, when along comes the deity and whacks a quarter million in a couple of hours between breakfast and lunch. On CNN, NPR, Fox News, and in newspaper articles too numerous for Nexis to count, men and women of the cloth weighed in solemnly on His existence, His motives, and even His competence to continue as Ruler of Everything....

A long-overdue debate has been ignited thanks to a recent article by Washington Times reporter Julia Duin posted on Poynter Online. In it Duin asserted that too many newspapers, TV news stations and networks are failing to cover religion, and those that do have been failing to hire journalists who truly understand religion.

Did anyone see Bill Maher on MSNBC's Scarborough Country tonight? I know he's done it before, but Maher went on another one of his hate-filled rants against religion, calling the millions of people in America who go to church on Sunday as having a "neurologiocal disorder." He then referred to Christianity (veiled) as a "fairy tale." What was almost as bad, however, was that Scarborough just sat there and was unable to retort Maher's EASILY REFUTABLE OBJECTIONS! (ALL of which are answered in books like Kreeft and Tacelli's "Handbook of Christian Apologetics." or Paul Copan's "That's Just Your Interpretation.") Just...

I am really tired of the implicit assumption in almost all MSM reporting that “evangelicals” and other (non-Moslem, of course) religious fundamentalists are more “moral” than the rest of us. Since when did we secularists (religious and otherwise) cede the definition of morality to them? If you ask me, it’s pretty damn “immoral” to discriminate against gays and working women, or to force a thirteen year old girl who has been raped by her father to give birth to that child. What’s more, I don’t find a literal reading of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, to be a very...

Bracing for what's to come from a Republican-controlled White House and Congress, people who don't believe in God are joining forces as never before to make sure their rights don't get trampled in what they perceive as a stampede of religious zeal. Riding a post-election spike in new memberships, groups of humanists, agnostics and other non-theists are raising funds to put their first-ever lobbyists on Capitol Hill. To shape an agenda, leaders from as many as 20 non-theistic groups will convene Jan. 15-16 for their largest summit since Ronald Reagan took the Oval Office with help from the Moral Majority...

As Christians prepare to celebrate the birth of the Christ child and Jews give thanks and praise to God for sustenance even in alien lands and hostile cultures, it's a great time to reflect on how the relentlessly secular entertainment industry reflects -- in fact, mocks -- the religious beliefs of its American audience.  In the arid land of secular orthodoxy, there is no alarm at simple "spirituality" if it is trendy and harmless, and the God-idea is conveniently controlled by the individual, instead of the individual submitting to a sovereign you-know-Who. Even traditional faiths can be tolerated by Hollywood...

Four days after the election, Democratic partisan and comedian Garrison Keillor announced on his national radio show that he was recovering from his Election Day shock by embracing a new purpose: "to pass a constitutional amendment to take the right to vote away from born-again Christians." Amid laughter and applause from his audience, Keillor said, "Born-again people are citizens of heaven," not of America. "If you feel that … tribulation and suffering are just the natural conditions of life, that higher education is vanity, that there is only one book that you need to read … if you feel that...

Election exit polls showed that twenty-two percent of voters ranked "moral values" as the most important issue, above terrorism and the economy. Nearly 80 percent of that group voted for George Bush. As the dust settles in the aftermath of his decisive victory, people are still talking about the so-called moral divide in America. Were the polls flawed? Does it matter? What divide is this? The irreligious have morals values, too. They just differ in many ways from those of Christians. For example, they may claim that the moral law derives from man's best efforts through trial-and-error evolutionary processes. Christians...

October 31, 2004FAITHBattle Cry of Faithful Pits Believers Against the RestBy DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK LLENTOWN, Pa., Oct. 27 - With one Sunday left before the election, conservative churches and Christian groups are rallying their members with a singularly intense battle cry: that this presidential race, more than any before, is a contest pitting faithful of all kinds against unbelievers."I see it as a spiritual divide between true believers and seculars," said Neil E. Kulp, pastor of First Baptist Church, echoing comments made in dozens of other interviews. "I think we as a nation are more divided now than we were...

Like many comedians, when Bill Maher talks, it's difficult to tell where the shtick ends and the truth begins. Or, for that matter, whether there's any difference between the two. So when Maher is already riffing on religion as a reporter walks into the Los Angeles offices of his HBO show "Real Time With Bill Maher" for an hourlong interview about his spiritual beliefs, it's hard to say if the commentary is spontaneous or part of a routine. "If there was just one topic I could talk about for the rest of my career, I would pick religion," Maher says,...

Dear friends, GAMPAC, the GODLESS AMERICANS POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE, has endorsed Sen. John Kerry and Sen. John Edwards for President and Vice President of the United States. The November election is a crucial one for our nation, and in particular the First Amendment separation of government and religion. The winner will likely be in the position of naming key appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary. Other important legislative issues, as well as the fate of the faith-based initiative — a dangerous experiment aiding religious groups and imposing a “Religion Tax” on the American...

Democratic operatives have unleashed against my President the meanest and most unrelenting smear campaign I have ever seen – and I’m no youngster. Many stories have been circulating around the web. Billionaire George Soros will spend $25 million in the final two campaign weeks in his attempt to ruin President Bush’s reelection chances. Senator John Kerry demands Sinclair Productions not air the broadcast of “Stolen Honor” before Election Day unless he gets equal airtime. An Ohio judge ruled to allow voters to cast ballots outside their districts in that state, a move that encourages election fraud. Ralph Nader’s name has...

Democrats Rely on Non-Religious Voters By RICHARD N. OSTLING, AP (Aug. 26) -- After years of talk about the close ties between religious conservatives and the Republican Party coalition, an opposite factor is gaining wider notice: the Democrats' reliance upon non-religious voters. "Seculars have become an increasing portion of the Democratic electoral coalition and especially of the party's activist base," says Geoffrey Layman of the University of Maryland, who dates the trend from 1972 and considered it obvious by 1992. A religiously linked values clash is redefining U.S. politics, Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio of City University of New...

A newly formed group encouraging political action on behalf of “Godless Americans” has announced that it is endorsing the Sen. John Kerry for president and Sen. John Edwards for vice president in the 2004 national elections.

Found on this site: http://dailykos.com/story/2004/7/26/14184/8954Here's their statement of purpose from the group's page at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KerryPagan/This is a group for Pagans and Agnostic believers. George Bush has voilated our constitutional rights. He has blurried the line between church and state. The great thing about America is that a Pagan's vote is just as powerful as a Christian's vote. Although we tend to be a free unorganized crowd, we are a community of American's with the same rights as any other community. Preserve your rights. Claim your justice. It is time to rise up and as "we the people" are required to...

"The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek, a goodly apple rotten at the heart. O what a goodly outside falsehood hath!" -- William Shakespeare The Presbyterian Church USA is vying for the title of the leader of America's Irreligious Left. It has done so by sanctimoniously weighing in on a complex foreign-policy issue, announcing this month that tiny Israel is an evil, undemocratic state akin to a racist South Africa. Say what? The Presbyterian Church's leaders, upset with Israel, which dares to defend itself from...

The Godless Americans Political Action Committee (GAMPAC) has formally endorsed John Kerry for President. The committee, that was formed in March, announced at a press conference that they represent nearly 30 million Americans that could translate into as many votes. Their website is: www.godlessamericans.org This endorsement of Kerry, by those who do not believe in God, and want to outlaw all references to God in public places, re-define marriage, make homosexuality the norm, advance a culture of vulgarity and kill all babies of inconvenience, [should not] come as a surprise. If elected, Kerry will fully represent them. Before this...

Bin Laden May Be Fishing for Allies on Europe's Secular Left By Brian Michael Jenkins The Al Qaeda leader set aside his usual religious rhetoric in favor of phrases from the Marxist revolutionary lexicon. In his latest audiotaped message, Osama bin Laden has offered immunity from further terrorist attacks to "our neighbors north of the Mediterranean" that "do not attack Muslim nations." In other words, Bin Laden is telling European nations that if they pull their troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq, Al Qaeda will put them on its temporary "do not disturb" list. Is this a serious offer, or...