Free Republic

A lack of so-called ‘scientific evidence’ in the existence of the personal God Who spoke is not the true reason why godless Westerners reject belief in Him. Their rejection is due to a desire to live free of the moral constraints God requires. (Psalm 14:1):

Montana State Rep. Ed Stafman (D-Bozeman) has proposed an amendment to a state law that prevents pro-life doctors and nurses from being forced to participate in performing abortions. His amendment would add a pro-abortion exception allowing for unborn babies to be aborted if the woman's sincerely held religious beliefs require it. Stafman explained that "if a doctor or nurse is allowed to refuse to abort an unwanted child as a matter of conscience, shouldn't a devout pro-abortion believer have the right to refuse to give birth as a matter of conscience? The Satanic Temple asserts that abortion is a sacred...

"A person's moral sense of right and wrong, viewed as acting as a guide to one's behavior" -- the dictionary definition of "conscience." Whenever I make the common-sense argument that people need to hold themselves accountable to a morality-giving, morality-judging God -- specifically, the God of the Bible, and more specifically, the God of the Ten Commandments -- a flood of incredulous, frequently mocking, responses immediately appears in the comments section and on atheist and left-wing websites. The gist of the God-is-morally-unnecessary argument is this: "Unlike Prager and other religious people, I don't need God to tell me murder is...

Disgraced ex-FBI official Peter Strzok is suing the Department of Justice, alleging that his 2018 firing was political in nature. Strzok’s infamous anti-Trump text messages with FBI lawyer Lisa Page that appear to promise that the FBI would stop Trump from getting elected proved to be a stunning blow to the perceived impartiality of the nation’s top law enforcement agency. The most noteworthy of Strzok’s texts was on Aug. 15, 2016: “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office that there’s no way he [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take...

Why would any Republican vote for that cynical, dishonest, anti-constitutional ‘contraception’ bill?When Democrats accuse Republicans of opposing “access” to birth control, what they really mean is that Republicans oppose forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for birth control or that Republicans oppose coercing people of faith to provide birth control (including abortifacients) against their consciences.The Right to Contraception Act, a bill that passed in the House yesterday, allows reporters and Democrats to manufacture panic by claiming Republicans voted against a bill that “protects access to contraception,” even though the actual legislation was crammed with enough poison pills to kill the...

ABC’s legal analyst Sunny Hostin said Wednesday on ABC’s “The View” that Republicans’ opposition to gun legislation after the recent mass shootings “need to find a conscience.” Guest co-host Lindsey Granger said, “I understand that the overall goal is let’s get AR-15s out of here, and we don’t want them on the table, but like Chris Murphy said yesterday, let’s not let perfect be the enemy of good.”

A controversial measure to change the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act that would allow for health-related discrimination including the legal termination of workers who do not follow COVID-19 vaccine, mask or other health-related mandates heads to the House floor. House Sponsor Robyn Gabel said the proposed amendment doesn’t change the law, but clarifies it, “to protect all the people in this state.” The 1998 Health Right of Conscience Act bans discrimination against a person who declines to receive or participate in any form of health care services contrary to his or her conscience.

The fact that 24-year-old Jonathan Isaac can speak more cogently about COVID and freedom of conscience than the entire corporate press is an astonishing development.One of the most remarkable twists in the pandemic is that a handful of NBA players have emerged as the most cogent and principled defenders of liberty, common sense, and basic civic decency in America.It’s a bit unexpected. In recent years, the NBA has most often landed in the political news cycle thanks to LeBron James’ disgusting habit of bowing and scraping before the Chinese Communist Party, or Steve Kerr’s refusal to breathe a word about...

MSNBC political commentator and author George Will said Friday on “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that former president Donald Trump demonstrated how rapidly one man with a “lack of conscience” can change the entire tone of public life for the worse. Mitchell said, “In your new book, you write that it has been well said that the United States is the only nation founded on a good idea, the proposition that people should be free to pursue happiness as they define it. In recent years, however, happiness has been elusive for this nation in which too many people think and act as...

Concerns regarding recently instituted or expected mandatory vaccination policies for COVID-19 by various governmental and institutional authorities, including Catholic health care systems and universities, have been voiced by the Catholic Medical Association, the National Catholic Bioethics Center and the bishops of Colorado. These statements either critique the mandates themselves, casting them as a form of authoritative overreach, or call for wide allowance of religious/moral exemptions. There is, however, no sufficient moral reason for Catholics to request such an exemption. Furthermore, as Pope Francis has affirmed, there may be a moral obligation to be vaccinated for COVID-19 unless one has a...

A growing number of people who were approved for independent government positions must be feeling like they’re starring in a reboot of The Apprentice, with Joe Biden now playing Donald Trump’s old role. The common theme is that they all received the same message. You’re fired. Joining the list of the newly unemployed this month was Sharon Fast Gustafson, the former General Counsel for the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. Gustafson wasn’t even two years into her four-year contract at the EEOC when she received a letter from the President requesting her resignation. She wrote back, saying that she intended to...

The Department of Justice is also suing a Vermont hospital for forcing a nurse to participate in the killing of an unborn child. WASHINGTON, D.C., December 16, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Today, the Trump administration unveiled steps that the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) are taking to enforce federal conscience protection laws by holding California and Vermont officials accountable for anti-life discrimination. The announcement was made during “Life Is Winning: Celebrating 4 Years of Pro-Life Accomplishments,” an event hosted by Vice President Mike Pence at the White House, highlighting the many...

ALICE, Tex., July 30—A former Texas ivoting official, seeking “peace of mind,” says he certified enough fictitious ballots to steal an election 29 years ago and launch Lyndon Johnson on the path that led to the Presidency. The disclosure was made by Luis Salas, who was the election judge for Jim Wells County's Box 13, which produced just enough votes in the 1948 Texas Democratic primary runoff to give Mr. Johnson the party's nomination for the United States Senate, dun tantamount to elec ion. “Johnson did not win that election—it was stolen for him and I know exactly how it...

Most of us are familiar with Martin Luther’s heroic statement at the Diet of Worms when he was called upon to recant. “Unless I am convinced by sacred Scripture, or by evident reason, I cannot recant, for my conscience is held captive by the Word of God, and to act against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.” Today, we rarely hear any reference to the conscience. Yet throughout church history, the best Christian thinkers spoke about the conscience regularly. Thomas Aquinas said the conscience is the God-given inner voice...

The Supreme Court has no excuse for allowing Nevada officials to use a public health crisis to fill poker tables while emptying pews. All four gospels record that the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus cast lots for his clothing. This was not the last time government agents were more interested in gambling than God. The latest instance is in Nevada, where the state government has granted casinos special privileges denied to churches. Casinos are allowed to operate at half-capacity, while churches are restricted to a hard cap of 50 people, no matter their capacity.When this double standard was challenged in...

President Trump’s restoration of an Executive Order from the Bush Administration that allowed individuals to refuse to participate in performing abortions was voided by Manhattan U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer this week. In his 147-page decision, the Judge found that “there is no legal foundation for a person to refuse to obey a state law mandating participation in an abortion procedure. If a state requires a licensed medical practitioner to perform an abortion or to assist in its performance there is no ‘right of conscience’ escape clause.” Engelmayer rejected assertions that a patient in the 26 states that have laws...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take the case of a public school teacher who required her students to recite the Islamic "conversion prayer" or receive a failing grade. The Thomas More Law Center is defending Caleigh Wood, a Christian student in 11th grade at La Plata High School in La Plata, Maryland. Wood refused to deny her faith "by making a written profession of the Muslim conversion prayer known as the shahada – 'There is no god by allah and Muhammad is the messenger of allah,'" Thomas More said. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled...

The culture of death brooks no dissent. In Canada, doctors have been ordered to bend the knee. Here’s the story: The Canadian Charter (Constitution) guarantees “freedom of conscience and religion” — a stronger and more explicit protection of religious liberty than our First Amendment. After the Supreme Court created a right to euthanasia, Ontario passed a law requiring doctors to kill legally eligible patients who want to die or provide an “effective referral” if they have moral objections — i.e., procure a doctor known by the dissenter to be willing to euthanize patients. Referring Equals Complicity Catholic and other religious...

I was wondering, when was it that liberals become society’s conscience, particularly in the United States? I have become acutely aware that liberals try to make me feel acutely guilty of not believing in their madness. It is unrelenting and it is completely ruining the kids. What exactly is so right about gay marriage and transgenderism? I don’t see it. Where is the proof or even the scientific logic of global warming? It’s nowhere and the requisite guilt for the end of the world is supposed to be what I deserve. The world has truly gone mad.

Bishop Against Francis: "Conscience" Cannot Excuse Sin Madison Bishop Robert Morlino has criticises the idea [advocated by Pope Francis] that "conscience" can dispense from following Church teaching. Talking to EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo (August 23), he said, “Too often people have excused themselves from sinful behaviours by saying, ‘I’m following my conscience and that’s the highest law.” For Morlino a contraposition of the objective law and the subjective understanding of it is “the linchpin of so many problems since the [Second] Vatican Council”. Morlino further accuses “a desire to keep abuses away from homosexuality and move it towards paedophilia”. He points...