Free Republic

In "The attack on biblical creation in UK schools continues," Phil Robinson reports that in the dechristianized U.K. unrelenting attacks against special creation (Genesis account) display a level of aggressive intolerance that is hard to stomach, coming as they do from self-proclaimed scientifically-enlightened ‘voices of reason.’ Some schools have already banned the teaching of special creation in favor of evolutionary science. (creation.com, Mar. 9, 2014) Other shrill 'voices of reason' go so far as to connect special creation to mental illness and child abuse. During a radio interview in Australia famous physicist and atheist propagandist Lawrence Krauss said that while...

RUSH: We're gonna start in Dallas. This is Neil. Neil, it's great to have you on the program, sir. Hello. CALLER: Rush? RUSH: Yeah. CALLER: It's so obvious of what's going on here with Sterling. It was construed. It was set up. Somebody infiltrated him through his girlfriend -- RUSH: Oh, no. Wait a minute now. CALLER: -- and told her what to do, told her how to do it. RUSH: Don't do this to me, Neil. (laughing) CALLER: They want his team, Rush! RUSH: Neil, don't do this to me. CALLER: They want his team. RUSH: Do you realize...

Ask Alan Lane. In October, the president and CEO of Silvergate Bank in La Jolla, Calif., was up in Sacramento for a roundtable convened by the California Bankers Association and the state's Department of Business Oversight. Reading a laundry list of about a dozen issues on the department's radar, Commissioner Jan Lynn Owen mentioned Bitcoin — the Internet currency, payment system and technology that's been grabbing headlines, igniting controversy and inspiring innovation across the globe. Lane pricked up his ears, in part because the $616 million-asset Silvergate had been in discussions about banking a Bitcoin startup.

Salesman called preacher and told him that he was robbed through magicThree women clad in traditional Arabian abayas (gowns) entered a travel agency in the Gulf Kingdom and stole SR11,000 (Dh11,000). A brief YouTube film showed one woman asked the sales man to change a SR500 note, but instead of giving her SR500, he handed the woman all the money he had. Once they have gone, the salesman called a preacher and told him that he has been robbed through magic by three women. “They came in and asked to buy air tickets to Jeddah,” the man told Sheikh Abdul...

An NRI couple has been arrested in Saudi Arabia on charges of practising black magic, official sources said here today. Seikh Nizam and Noor Jehan, originally from Odisha's Kendrapara township, had shifted to Turba city of Saudi Arabia few years ago where they claimed to be a healer and mystic.The couple was arrested last month after authorities reportedly found a variety of occult items in their possession, including herbs, Consulate general office of India office in Jeddah said. Raj Kumar, the community welfare officer of the consulate in Jeddah told PTI over phone, "The couple had allegedly resorted to black...

Our technocracy is detached it is from competence. It's not the technocracy of engineers, but of "thinkers" who read Malcolm Gladwell and Thomas Friedman and watch TED talks and savor the flavor of competence, without ever imbibing its substance. These are the people who love Freakonomics, who enjoy all sorts of mental puzzles, who like to see an idea turned on its head, but who couldn't fix a toaster. The ObamaCare website is the natural spawn of that technocracy who love the idea of using modernity to make things faster and easier, but have no idea what anything costs or...

“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22). “And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth, and there was given to him the key of the bottomless pit." (Rev. 9:1) In his Concise Commentary Matthew Henry identifies falling stars as tepid, indecisive, weak or apostate clergy who, "Having ceased to be a minister of Christ, he who is represented by this star becomes the minister of the devil; and lets loose the...

Saudi police arrested a Yemeni magician who targeted a well-known billionaire with an expensive ring carrying the rich man’s image and a talisman, a newspaper reported on Wednesday. Police at a checkpoint in the central town of Wadi Al Dawasir stopped a car coming from the southern province of Jazan near the border with Yemen after suspecting its driver. “They found a ring on him, which he said he had bought from Yemen for SR150,000. The ring has a picture of a well-known Saudi billionaire,” the Arabic language daily Al Watan said. “The man also had a large piece of...

Christian magicians are rising to defend themselves against assertions made by a Christian Post columnist that the performance of magic may involve the occult. They are upset with columnist Dan Delzell's opinion that the U.K.-based magician Dynamo's illusion of levitating alongside a red London double decker bus was real. Delzell related the performance to "witchcraft and contact with evil spirits, and the presumption that the art of magic is a gateway to demonic involvement." Delzell's column incited a number of Christian magicians to leave comments criticizing his assumption that magic performances are linked to demonic power. These magicians included Jim...

A British illusionist has stunned on-lookers in London after seemingly 'levitating' off the roof of a moving double-decker bus. Thirty-year-old Dynamo, whose real name is Steven Frayne, looked totally at ease as he appeared to dangle in mid-air with only one hand resting on the bus to keep him from falling to the traffic below

Ayn Rand was no fan of C.S. Lewis. She called the famous apologist an “abysmal bastard,” a “monstrosity,” a “cheap, awful, miserable, touchy, social-meta­physical mediocrity,” a “pickpocket of concepts,” and a “God-damn, beaten mystic.” (I suspect Lewis would have particularly relished the last of these.) These insults and more can be found in her marginal notes on a copy of Lewis’ Abolition of Man, as printed in Ayn Rand’s Marginalia: Her critical comments on the writings of over 20 authors, edited by Robert Mayhew. Excerpts appear below, with Lewis’ writing (complete with Rand’s highlighting and underlining) on the left and...

Father Earl 'Magic' Johnson II 'Couldn't be prouder!' Wicked gossip rag TMZ caught Johnson's gay, 20-y.o. son out on the Sunset strip this weekend while the lad was home from NYU for the holiday: man is this kid laying-it-on-thick with the purse, mink stole, and effeminate accent- OK we get it already, dude.  Just remember when you're paying $100 for a Lakers ticket that the owner's son is wearing mink coats with diamond necklaces to five-star restaurants while daddy Magic sends the rest to Obama. He told the interviewer he's a big Lakers fan still though, and is 'hoping and praying' for...

Hall of Fame basketball player Earvin “Magic” Johnson spoke out on behalf of President Obama’s healthcare law on Monday. “ObamaCare is working. I talk to a lot of CEOs of hospitals. It is working,” he said on MSNBC. Johnson was speaking on "NOW with Alex Wagner" about the NCAA basketball tournament, but he veered into politics at the end of the segment, lauding conservative Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) decision to accept the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. II’m glad that Gov. Scott down in Florida accepted ObamaCare because it will work,” he said.

<p>We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. [...] Surely, we can do better than this. If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief [...] then surely we have an obligation to try.</p>

The new standard for teaching science in public schools should prohibit teaching religious beliefs like evolution as if they were the equivalent of scientific theories. Science should be defined as using experimentation and observation to discover information about physical reality. Explanations of what happened in the ancient past cannot be verified using experimentation and observation. ----------advertisement----------- Contrary to a popular myth pushed by those who want to make science a substitute for religion, science has yet to produce a new explanation for the development of life or the origin of the universe. The idea that the universe came out of...

This work was originally published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol. 27, No. 3, Fall 1994, pp. 117-194. The paper received considerable notice, and in 1995 the Mormon History Association recognized Joseph Smith and Kabbalah: The Occult Connection with its annual award for the best article in Mormon studies. [snip] The one thing about which we might all agree concerning Joseph Smith is that he was not the usual sort of person. He did not approach life itself--or his religious commitment--in a usual way. Yet the character of our historical investigation of Joseph Smith and his times has...

The owners of the Orlando Magic are coming under fire for a 2009 donation they made on behalf of one of their executive's marriage beliefs.The Douglas and Maria DeVos foundation, which is financially supported by Amway president Doug DeVos, donated $500,000 to NOM, the National Organization for Marriage.The organization is among those leading the charge against same-sex marriage initiatives in several states.Now, gay rights activists are calling for a ban of the Michigan-based Amway and all of its affiliates, including the Orlando Magic, which is also owned by the DeVos family.Here's the official statement from Amway on the issue,...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KGPKpIuX3cY

... the Obama campaign in North Carolina – a major battleground in the 2012 election – faces a tough task as it seeks to capture the fickle youth vote that flocked to the polls in record numbers four years ago. A Harvard Institute of Politics national poll released Tuesday shows Obama with a 43 percent to 26 percent advantage against presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney among 18- to 29-year-old likely voters.

I was recently awoken from a Zyrtec-induced (allergies are the worst) stupor in my American Revolution seminar class when I heard my professor make an off-handed comment about “magic words.” Having recently spent an undisclosed number of hours watching multiple Harry Potter movies, I assumed that he was referring to words like “Wingardium Leviosa” shouted with a swish and flick of a magic wand. Needless to say, I was a little off. The magic words he meant have probably never echoed through the halls of Hogwarts, yet they have become unbelievably common in our cultural vernacular. What my professor meant...