Free Republic

The state’s response to this resurgence of faith is an escalating campaign of repression As he stood in the hot sun and watched a dozen earth movers smash through the walls of the Sanjiang church, Mr Dai felt a great sadness and also fear – for himself and for the future of his fellow Christians. “There were so many police blocking the road and surrounding mountains. They had cut off power to the whole area and blacked out mobile phone coverage and they were trying to stop anybody coming near,” he says. By pretending to be part of the demolition...

Fr. Robert Spitzer, SJ, during a 2010 appearance on "The Larry King Show". Fr. Robert Spitzer, SJ, Ph.D., 62, is president of the Magis Center (www.magiscenter.com), headquartered in the new chancery office of the Diocese of Orange, California. The center’s goal is to demonstrate that faith and reason and science are compatible, and to combat the increasing secularization of society, particularly among young people. Fr. Spitzer was born and reared in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father was an attorney and businessman; he was one of five children. His father was Lutheran; his mother a Catholic and daily communicant. He attended...

It's interesting to note that Jesus knew his identity as the Son of God, yet he did not speak of himself with that terminology; rather, he repeatedly called himself the Son of Man... Yet, for many believers the idea of embracing and celebrating our humanity is rejected, as if our humanity is contaminated, dirty, and sinful... The Pharisees were quick to denounce people as sinful from birth, but Jesus did the opposite. He actually pointed to the little children as an example of the Kingdom of God. The notion Jesus thought any of us were born sinners is completely contrary...

John-Roger Dies At 80; Founder of Controversial New-Age Church By DAVID COLKER John-Roger's church had thousands of followers, multimillion-dollar enterprises and celebrity endorsements John-Roger, a coal miner's son who founded the controversial new-age Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness church in the 1970s that had thousands of followers, multimillion-dollar enterprises and celebrity endorsements, died Wednesday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica. He was 80. He had been in frail health for several years and died of pneumonia, said MSIA board member Mark Lurie. To awaken, keep going back inside of you The greatest challenge is not outer space; it's...

Hello, everybody. I’m 19 years old, and %100 pro-life. I’m also an atheist. But before you decide to stop reading this, you deserve to know a few things about me. I was born and raised in a Catholic family. I was baptized a month old, went to Sunday school, and went to church every Sunday. Okay, I went most Sundays. I also know that there are other divisions of Christianity, as well as other religions, and I respect your spirituality, what ever it may be. I stopped breathing twice the day I was born. They doctor didn’t think I would...

New children’s book is a gentle introduction that there is no dog but dog. For nearly two thousand years, religious groups have held a monopoly on how to teach morals to young children. Now Me & Dog, a new children’s book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gene Weingarten and illustrator Eric Shansby—both of The Washington Post—steps into the competitive arena of nighttime reads (6-8 p.m. division) with an atheist lullaby. Cue sincere hand wringing: Won’t somebody please think of the children? The setting for this shameless piece of atheist propaganda (you can quote me on that, religious right) is a walk...

Some people - and quite a few atheists - have made hay over Obama's comments, primary among them being Obama's comment that "No religion condones the killing of innocents." Inherent within Obama's statement is that no TRUE Muslim would ever kill innocent people, be they men, women or children. As such, this would fall within the parameters of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. The only problem with this is that it leaves Christians open to the charge that true Christians have (for example) bombed abortion clinics, takes away from Christians the ability to say that "No true Christian would ever...

North Alabama Freethought Association board member Kelly McCauley will open the Huntsville City Council meeting Thursday in a non-religious invocation after a secularist group threatened to sue the council over its tradition of Christian Prayer. McCauley, who according to his Meetup page was confirmed in the Lutheran Church and "dropped out" at age 23, told AL.com, "My goal is to offer a non-sectarian invocation that, I hope, will lend gravity to the meeting and point to our civic values." McCauley was invited by Huntsville leaders to give the body's first atheist "prayer" after secularist group Freedom From Religion Foundation complained...

Five years ago, a group of atheist and agnostic students launched a campaign to hire a nonreligious chaplain at Tufts University. With the recent addition of a university-funded “humanist in residence,’ it appears their prayers—or lack thereof—have finally been answered.The new position is believed to be the first-ever university-funded campus chaplain catering to atheist, agnostic and nonreligious students, according to Religion News Service.In early September, Walker Bristol, a former intern of Harvard’s Humanist Community, was hired as the first humanist chaplain at the private, Massachusetts-based university. Bristol previously served as a student leader of Tufts’ Freethought Society, a group of...

A recent study comparing views on morality of religious and non-religious people found something surprising: Religion doesn’t make our everyday lives more moral. Suppose you actually do have an angel over your shoulder telling you the right thing to do. That angel probably wouldn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know. A recent study in Science aimed at uncovering how we experience morality in our everyday lives suggests that religious people are no more moral—or immoral—than non-religious people. Whether or not we believe that divine precepts give us guidance, our behavior is remarkably similar. The fact that atheists are apparently...

Father Gjergj Simoni speaks with CNA in Tirana, Albania on Sept, 21, 2014. Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA. Tirana, Albania, Sep 22, 2014 / 07:44 am (CNA/EWTN News).- An Albanian Catholic priest shared his story of encountering persecution for his faith by the country's repressive state atheism, noting how he waited decades before his dream to be ordained was fulfilled. “When I first said I wanted to be 'like Him,' a priest told me that it was a dark path to take, but I replied: 'I see no darkness,'” Father Gjergj Simoni said. In a Sept. 21 interview with CNA, he recalled...

In case you were wondering, the satanic event scheduled to be held in an Oklahoma City civic center (thus, state operated), is still on and has sold out. HEREBut, hey! Don’t worry. These are just benign people doing their thing. Right? No consecrated Host, no harm, no foul, right?In other news, we read at The Mail: Terrified five-year-old boy has his eyes gouged out with spoon by his mother and five relatives in satanic ritualA Mexican family has been jailed for gouging out the eyes of their five-year-old relative with a spoon during a satanic ritual to bring about the...

Appearing on Charlie Rose's PBS show this week, HBO's "Real Time" host Bull Maher rebuked him for linking Islam to Christianity, defending Christians by saying a vast numbers of them do not believe in violence or treat women as second class citizens. Maher, a self-proclaimed atheist, began by refuting former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean's recent statement that vast numbers of Muslims are not like ISIS in Iraq and Syria, an al-Qaeda offshoot that seeks to form an Islamic emirate in the Levant region through "jihad." Interrupting Maher, Rose asked, "Behind every Muslim is a future member of some radical?"...

How do we decide who deserves a place in history? Generations of devoted American history buffs have spent countless hours reading and writing long books about the American Revolution without ever having come across the name of Dr. Thomas Young. Yet it was Young who came up with the idea for the original tea party—the one in Boston Harbor. And he went on from there to help kick off the Revolution in Pennsylvania, co-write the first modern constitution, and name the state of Vermont. The reason he isn’t well remembered today is just this: The grandfather of today’s Tea Party...

Why did God allow for the striking-down of people in the Old Testament? How is this reconciled with the dogma of a loving God?Protestants and modern-day "Jews" don't have an answer for this -- one beyond dualism or "mystery", I mean. But the Church does. There is mortal sin, and there is venial sin (1 John 5:17). Mortal sin -- willful and of grave nature -- separates one from God, practically killing the soul. Venial sin -- all other -- must simply be cleansed, and it does not eternally separate us from Him. And this distinction is shown in the...

In an unusual gesture for a member high in the Catholic Church’s hierarchy in Cuba, the Apostolic nuncio Bruno Musaro spoke openly about Cuba’s “extreme poverty and human and civil degradation.” Musaro made his controversial remarks while on vacation in Italy after holding a Mass in the San Pio de Pietrelcina park, in the Italian municipality of Vignacastrisi. The Cuban people are “victims of a socialist dictatorship that has kept them subjugated for the past 56 years,” Musaro said, according to the Italian newspaper, Lecce News24. “I’m thankful to the pope for inviting me to this island, and I hope...

Every once in a while people let their guard down and say what they really think. For Richard Dawkins, Wednesday was one of those days. In an extraordinary moment of public honesty, Dawkins, the British evolutionary biologist and militant atheist, wrote on Twitter that “it would be immoral to bring [a child with Down syndrome] into the world if you have the choice.” It was a statement that no doubt delighted the utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer, his friend and fellow traveler, who has advocated the killing of disabled infants on the grounds that they are not rational and self-conscious...

Take a look at some of these reviews for the religious indie hit God’s Not Dead [1]:From Britain’s Socialist newspaper The Guardian [2]: ”This warped evangelist item… veers from the suspect… to the outright hateful: by the jawdropping climax, wherein a preacher is effectively granted divine right to mow down non-believers, ‘doing God’s work’ has become indistinguishable from Grand Theft Auto. Ban this sick filth.”Here’s one from Movie Nation [3]: ”It’s a movie where rare is the voice that is raised, but deep is the rage bubbling through its rabid anti-intellectualism. When a non-believer is considered to be better...

Actor Kevin Sorbo who starred in the Christian film, "God's Not Dead," says he did not have reservations about taking on an atheist role for the movie but he admits that he does not understand the logic behind atheist's lack of beliefs and why they are "so angry." Sorbo, who is most famous for the '90s TV series "Hercules," played an atheist professor in the film whose belief system is challenged by one of his Christian students. He recently sat down with Access Hollywood Live to discuss the film's success and his take on skeptics. "I'm a Christian myself and...

July 8, 2014 - I regret to inform you that satanists are planning a "Black Mass" on city property at the Civic Center in Oklahoma City on Sunday, September 21, 2014. Please spread the word to all your friends so we can stop this sacrilege. Your voice and prayers were decisive at Harvard University ­-- the "Black Mass" there was stopped. Canceled. Saint Michael won a great victory that day. And God can win again. Please help TFP Student Action gather 50,000 petitions. Your petition, together with many more, will be presented to the Civic Center, as well as the...