Free Republic

Back in the days of intense Harry Potter warfare, I wrote an "On Religion" column in which a very articulate mother explained why she was seriously considering homeschooling her child. First of all, she said it was clear that her local public schools didn't take religion all that seriously. A kind of watered-down faith was OK, but she was sure that her family's intense religious beliefs and traditions would clash with the culture in nearby schools. She didn't want to have to compromise her family's beliefs in order to fit in. Then there those omnipresent books about a certain young...

When fluoroscopes were all the whiz-bangy, modern rage--before they discovered it would give the Dr.s, Nurses & Patients CANCER--physicians and surgeons discovered a new medical 'disease'--your organs were sagging, they weren't positioned the way Gray's anatomy specified, the solution: an operation to hike up your guts. Hey scientists (YouTube: old Biff knocks on young Biff's head, "Hello, Hello"), atmospheric C02 is in a self-regulating system, if there's an excess, increased tree and plant growth take it out of the atmosphere.

In Secular France, Catholic Conservatism Makes A Comeback By James McAuley December 8. CHARTRES, France — For many French voters, François Fillon is more than a leading contender for president in next year’s elections: He is viewed as a crusader in the throes of a holy war. When Fillon handily won both rounds of France’s conservative primaries last month, he campaigned mostly on a genteel conservatism of economic restructuring and strengthened national security. But in a country that firmly defines itself as “secular” in its constitution, Fillon’s unexpected victory represented an astonishing prospect: the political reawakening of Catholic France after...

By the time the guns of World War 1 had been silenced and the armistice had been enacted, Turkey had been stripped of her vast Empire, the 400 years long Ottoman rule was broken and Turkey was reduced to the borders we now recognize, a shell of what she once controlled. Exactly one hundred years ago, in the midst of the War, Ottoman Turkey’s leaders undertook a genocide eradicating as many Assyrians, Greeks and an entire population of Armenians from Turkish soil. Three million Armenians, lived in Turkey, it was the first “Christian Kingdom” , the Armenian King having been...

Nation-building has become a very controversial term. And with good reason. Our conviction that we can reconstruct any society into another America is unrealistic. It ignores our own exceptionalism and overlooks the cultural causes of many conflicts. It assumes that a change of government and open elections can transform a tribal Islamic society into America. They can’t and won’t. But it’s also important to recognize that what we have been doing isn’t nation-building, but Islam-building.

Much of my wife Mary's and my time is spent traveling the country, helping to elect conservatives to the House and Senate. I am chairman of the Conservative Campaign Committee. On a rare stop back home in Florida, we decided to enjoy a day at our favorite, New Smyrna Beach. After multiple stops for gas, banking, and Walmart, we were finally on our way. It brought back fond childhood memories of hot summer family trips to the beach; mom, dad, fat Aunt Nee, and five kids all crammed into a station wagon with no air conditioning. The ritual included picking...

Atheists Blast Ted Cruz's Response When Asked How Important It Is for a President to 'Fear God' Atheists are decrying Ted Cruz’s recent claim that any president who does not pray to God each day is unfit to serve as commander-in-chief.The Center for Freethought Equality, a secular lobbying group, released a statement on Monday condemning the Texas senator and Republican presidential candidate over a response that he gave to a question at the National Religious Liberties Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday.Cruz, who was asked how important he believes it is for “the president of the United States to...

N THE AFTERMATH of September 11, more than several former national security and intelligence officials fashioned new careers as critics of the Bush administration's war on terror. Among the more prominent of these former officials is Daniel Benjamin, who worked for the National Security Council from 1994 to 1999. Benjamin's criticism flows from his belief that prior to the war in Iraq, as he wrote in Time magazine earlier this year, "there was no pre-existing relationship between Baghdad and al-Qaeda." Still worse, the invasion of Iraq has made us "less safe" and "above all, the invasion and occupation of Iraq--have...

The way in which we behave this Easter weekend is as good an indicator as any that this Britain is now an all but totally secular society. How many people have you heard describe the past six days as Holy Week — even though that was what everyone, atheist or Christian, used to call it. I can recall in my teens listening to an edition of Radio Four’s Any Questions on Good Friday. On the panel was a bishop, and a novelist and commentator called Marghanita Laski, an intellectual lady who made no secret of her atheist views.

Does Rand Paul classify himself as a "free-thinker?" I was looking around to see how he might be associated with that atheist/agnostic group and the word "dignity" came up in the first piece below [that uses the term free-thinker]. So I search "Rand Paul" and "dignity" and found that he uses that word in his speeches. So just wondering what anyone knows about his religious leanings other than his traditional association with the Episcopal church. And does he use "dignity" as a euphemism for "social justice" - "getting along" - as a liberal-libertarian stand in [REPLACEMENT] for religion [Islam, Judaism,...

LONDON [MENL] -- Aides of deposed President Saddam Hussein, under the guise of Al Qaida fighters, have been leading the insurgency against the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. Islamic sources said many of the Al Qaida-aligned cells that have appeared over the last two years stemmed from units in the Saddam military. The sources said Baathist operatives have adopted Islamic identities to exploit support among Muslims for Al Qaida. The Baathist strategy was formed during Saddam's rule, the sources said. They pointed to the "Return to Faith Campaign" directed by then-Iraqi Vice President Izzat Ibrahim Al Douri, which sought to curry...

The war against Islamist terrorism has been going in the wrong direction, and the cancer has metastasized under the present administration. As we get rid of one Islamist tumor, more pop up. But the most dangerous of all Islamists are ruling Iran and are determined to make themselves untouchable by possessing their own nuclear bomb. We have wrongly chosen to ignore the majority moderate and secular Moslems in the Middle East and here at home. Those advising the White House and the State Department are lobbyists for the Islamist dictators, not secular Moderate Moslem Americans. For reasons unknown, the Obama...

We have all heard what has come to be a liberal dictum, that the State must remain neutral as regards religion or irreligion. One can show fairly easily that the men who wrote our constitution had no such neutrality in mind, given the laws that they and their fellows subsequently passed, their habits of public prayer at meetings, and their common understanding that freedom without virtue, and virtue without piety, were chimeras. To show that that understanding persisted, all one need do is open every textbook for school children published for almost two hundred years; or recall that Catholic immigrants...

Deputy Minister of Religious Affairs Eli Ben-Dahan (Jewish Home) on the first day of classes Monday visited the “Reishit” school in Tel Aviv, a rapidly growing religious school in the traditionally secular city. At the school, located in southern Tel Aviv, Ben-Dahan spoke before hundreds of students. Reishit boasts some 400 students, the highest number in its history. If the students "work hard they can get to anywhere they want. Any one of you can be an IDF general, a rabbi, minister, or director of a large company," remarked Ben-Dahan at the school. "We need faith in religious and state...

The weekend before last I had a wonderful time meeting up with other SPL members and representing Secular Pro-Life at San Francisco’s various pro-life events. On Saturday afternoon, SPL spoke at the Walk for Life West Coast rally, then gathered together and held our banner high for the entire Walk. On Sunday, pro-life atheist Ellen and I tabled at the first ever west coast Students for Life of America training conference, which lasted all day. Throughout all of these events, I was inspired by the number of religious pro-lifers who so warmly welcomed us. They said our speech was refreshing...

The times in which we live are often described as “secular.” This word comes from the Latin “saecula” meaning “world.” Hence in saying our age is secular is another way of saying our times are worldly. We may think it has always been so but such is not the case. To be sure, it IS the human condition to be a little preoccupied with the world. But previous times have featured a much more religious focus than our own. The Middle Ages were especially known for way in which faith permeated the culture and daily experience. The Rose window to...

One of the more common misunderstandings of the modern age, we might even call it a delusion, is to confuse explanation with meaning. Through scientific method and other empirical ways of studying, we have gotten very good at explaining many of the processes and mechanics of the natural world.But to give explanation, is not the same as to ascribe meaning. To answer how things work is not the same as to answer why.Why, for example, do things exist at all? Why is there existence vs. nonexistence? Why is there observable order in the universe vs. chaos. Showing for example the...

Where’s the Human in Humanism? Humanist Ads Violate their Own Humanist Standards By:   Some parishioners have recently expressed distress over an Ad campaign of the American Humanist Association. Rather provocative Ads are appearing on buses and subways here in the Nation’s Capitol and I suspect elsewhere as well. As Christmas draws near, the “Humanists” have made it a practice in recent years to tweak Christians (as well as Jews and Muslims) and attempt to make the concept of faith look ridiculous. They generally do this by quoting a sacred text and interpreting it in a mechanistic, fundamentalist and literalistic  manner....

The times in which we live are often described as “secular.”  This word comes from the Latin “saecula” meaning “world.” Hence in saying our age is secular is another way of saying our times are  worldly. We may think it has always been so but such is not the case. To be sure, it IS the human condition to be a little preoccupied with the world. But previous times have featured a much more religious focus than our own. The Middle Ages were especially known for way in which faith permeated the culture and daily experience. The Rose window to...

"....A federal appeals court said last year that such a “steady drumbeat” of Christian invocations violates the Constitution’s prohibition against government endorsement of religion...............After the lawsuit was threatened, the town made more of an effort — that’s how the Baha’i representative and the Wiccan got involved — but all agree that the overwhelming number of prayers offered over the approximately 10 years covered by the suit were offered by Christians, and most contained direct references to Christianity. When the case reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, a unanimous panel of the court said it was not...