Free Republic

To think that Boris and Natasha lived right here in South Dakota, and we didn't even know it! Recently, Walter Kendall Myers and Gwendolyn Steingraber-Trebilcock-Myers - a couple who once lived in Aberdeen - were arrested for spying. The news rocked the nation. Well, actually, the nation immediately forgot the story. Still, South Dakota hasn't forgotten. It's not every day suspected spies are found traipsing through your own neighborhood. The espionage likely started after they left Aberdeen, but you still wonder if that abandoned shopping cart you saw in aisle 8 of Kessler's might have contained a coded message. The...

The first of five U.S. cities will be hit by a new atheist holiday ad campaign this Thanksgiving weekend. Washington, D.C., residents can expect to see ads proclaiming, "No God?...No Problem!" inside buses and rail cars. Washington, D.C., residents can expect to see ads proclaiming, “No God?...No Problem!” inside buses, rail cars and on the side or tail of buses by week’s end. The campaign, sponsored by the American Humanist Association, will then target the transit systems of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. According to AHA, the holiday ad campaign is the first by a humanist group...

Stan was experiencing in jail all of these changes within his very person. From the first night, slamming his body against the cell floor in desperation, to this moment of confessing liberation, he had traveled quite the inner journey.

Just a few years ago, it seemed curious that an omniscient, omnipotent God wouldn’t smite tormentors like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. They all published best-selling books excoriating religion and practically inviting lightning bolts. Traditionally, religious wars were fought with swords and sieges; today, they often are fought with books. And in literary circles, these battles have usually been fought at the extremes. Fundamentalists fired volleys of Left Behind novels, in which Jesus returns to Earth to battle the Anti-Christ (whose day job was secretary general of the United Nations). Meanwhile, devout atheists built mocking Web sites like...

It is mind-boggling to think that our generation alone is uniquely standing on the precipice of time and where no generation has ever stood. We are living in the days spoken of by the ancient prophets. These prophets spoke of the Israelites being gathered back into their own land, in passages such as Ezekiel 37:21: This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land. This began in 1948. The “dry bones” of Ezekiel 37...

Psalm 118: 1 1 Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever. 550 BC (for the sake of argument) is when this Psalm was written. Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good…… Fast forward to 1621 in a little colony in what is now Massachusetts, we again see people gathering together to give thanks. Who were they giving thanks to? Did they throw the celebration as thanks to the Indians for not killing them? Was it done to show the people back in England and Holland how successful they were in the new...

Thanksgiving has become the holiday most associated with a celebration of gluttony, heavy on the gravy and light on the “Thanks” part. Be honest, have you spent more time thinking about your list of "Thanks" or the grocery list? Did you get the Pecan Pie? Food is the focus, followed by sports, napping and elastic waist bands which of course only serve to allow for more food....

Sarah Palin not anti-choice enough? A far right group claims the former Alaska governor's rhetoric on abortion sounds too "liberal" and "pro-choice" BY KATE HARDING In Salon today, Max Blumenthal writes of Sarah Palin, "her career has become a vehicle through which the right-wing evangelical movement feels it can express its deepest identity in opposition both to secular society and to its representatives in the Obama White House. Palin is perceived by its leaders -- and followers -- not as another cynical politician or even as a self-promoting celebrity, but as a kind of magical helper, the God-fearing glamour girl...

There are naysayers enough. The faith builders are needed. The hope messengers are necessary.

In the light of what is, what is not, what is going to be, how then shall we proceed? At the very least in light of life’s realities, be thankful! God is good no matter what or why or who and God’s saving grace is sufficient for you. Thanksgiving Deserves the Right Attitude A right attitude towards God is needed, not a attitude of indifference and rejection as in Romans 1:21 – “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were [they] THANKFUL; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”...

CNN correspondent Max Foster’s short report about Richard Dawkins on Tuesday’s Situation Room played more like a commercial which promoted the militant atheist’s new book. Despite Dawkins’s past inflammatory statements about Christianity, Foster only labeled him “an outspoken critic of creationism....[whose] atheist views have put him at the center of controversy” [audio clip available here]. Anchor Suzanne Malveaux’s introduction for the correspondent’s report highlighted the 150th anniversary of the printing of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species,” and how Dawkins was a “controversial successor [to Darwin] carrying the torch for evolution.” Foster gave a very basic description of Dawkins’s...

Prior to Thanksgiving I went into Boston where they sold clerical collars. I, a Protestant, would dress as a priest. It was the only way I could be certain that I’d be safe at nighttime in Sculley Square — the dregs section of the metro. It was after all where the prostitutes stood on corners, vagrants slept in the gutters, and a downtown mission sang hymns like, “Softly and Tenderly, Jesus is Calling.”

Filmmaker Spike Lee said that God put Barack Hussein Obama in the Oval Office. He is certain that Barack Hussein Obama will walk into the White House because heaven ordained it to be so. Lee says that he can feel it. It is without question. There is such certainty in Lee's conviction.

King Solomon said in the Book of Ecclesiastes there’s nothing new under the sun. Women have killed or attempted to kill their unborn babies throughout human history, way before 1973, when the Supreme Court found a long-hidden, deeply buried “right of privacy” in the U.S. Constitution to have abortions. Roe v. Wade made the act legal and culturally acceptable. This Generation X-er can’t recall a time when abortion was as high-profile as it’s been in 2009. This year, a nut murdered George Tiller, a man nationally known for performing partial-birth abortions. Several months later, another nut murdered pro-life activist Jim...

As Americans gear up for the holiday season, they're fine-tuning wish lists, digging out unfortunate Christmas sweaters and bracing for the onslaught of holiday advertising campaigns. This year adds a new contender to the long list of groups vying for attention, and it comes with a twist. The American Humanist Association today launched its first nationwide "godless holiday campaign." Its slogan: "No God? ... No Problem!" The ads, which show smiling people in Santa hats, will appear first on Washington, D.C., buses and subway trains over Thanksgiving weekend. In early December the campaign will expand to Los Angeles, San Francisco,...

The Jesus Story always ends in overcoming the enemy. Always. Then appropriate that overcoming-yet-to-be in the present tense by exclaiming "Thank you, Jesus."

The newest threat to the United States is the Oval Office’s Marxist Muslim and his shadow government/czars impregnating evil government. He is out to destroy our democracy, in that sense beheading the infidels. He has long publicly witnessed that he is Muslim, though too many have never recognized that as fact.

Scientists have watched as a new species is “born”—or is that “evolved”?—on one of the Galapagos Islands, home of Darwin’s famous finches...

"How in the world would I sum up my life except to say 'God, at the end of the day I have really nothing but my faith, my reliance on You Lord…'" ...

Sarah Palin haters will stoop to just about anything to malign the woman they most fear – including lying. That's what Huffington Puffington Post columnist Max Blumenthal did Sunday when he claimed the former vice presidential candidate cited an "urban legend" in a speech when she said the Treasury Department had moved the phrase "In God We Trust" from presidential coins. Blumenthal and his pseudo-news organization characterized Palin's statement as a "rumor" that "most likely originated with a 2006 story on the far-right website WorldNetDaily." Actually, it wasn't "a rumor." It was, what we call in the news business, a...

My wife and I were in Israel in 1966, passing from Jordan into Israel. We went through the Mandelbaum Gate, prayed at the Wailing Wall, visited holy sites, including Gordon’s Calvary where we observed the communion sacrament with friends. Since then it has pained me to think Israel would lose any of that land fought for. I believe it was a miracle that they won that war in six days.

The Great Rift Valley extends some 4,000 miles southward from Syria north of Israel, through the Gulf of Aqaba, through Ethiopia, and all the way to Mozambique in southeast Africa. It harbors a giant fault, which has been under investigation as a model for sea floor spreading. A recent geologic event rent a gaping crack through the desert of Ethiopia, causing safety concerns for locals. These crustal plate motions may foreshadow rifting events further north in the Great Rift Valley...

46 year old Johnny Depp has been named The Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine for 2009. This marks the second time Mr. Depp has earned that honor, the first time was in 2003. This is rather unusal since he has mostly been under the radar in 2009, while other candidates such as Ryan Reynolds (The Proposal) and Robert Pattinson (Twilight) have made big waves. Johnny Depp however has stood the test of time. He's been a major, if not minor heart-throb since 1987 when he first appeared in 21 Jump Street. He reached true stardom with his silent portrayal...

Volcanic activity in 2005 accompanied the formation of a deep, wide rift in Ethiopia on part of the 4,000-mile-long north-to-south trending Great Rift Valley fault. Studies show that the injection of mantle material that “unzipped” the earth along the fault operated the same way as similar material does in less-accessible undersea rifts. Scientists knew that rifts were formed in this manner, but the suddenness of this one’s formation astonished them...

Today's America is in need of a spiritual reawakening. It may come upon just that as the righteous remnant remains faithful in prayer and thanksgiving.

Capital punishment is back in the news. There were actually those who protested the execution of mass-murdering Islamic terrorist John Muhammad, just as there will, no doubt, be those who protest the execution of mass-murdering Islamic terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan. More alarming to me is what appears to be an increase in people saying that capital punishment doesn't square with their "Christian faith." Let's get something straight: There are few things the Bible is more clear about than the fact that God commands us to put murderers to death. Not only does he command it, but he says that failure...

Molecular biologist Michael Behe described a system made of several interacting parts, whereby the removal of one part would disrupt the functioning of the whole, as irreducibly complex. Both creation scientists and intelligent design proponents highlight examples of irreducible complexity in their studies. The very structure of these systems--with their interdependent parts working all together or not at all--demands design, not chance. Nevertheless, a team of evolutionary molecular biologists think they may have refuted irreducible complexity. They recently studied the parts of a particular cellular machine involved in protein transport, claiming that it was actually reducible to its component parts...

Today many in the United States are crying out to President Obama and Government to do more and more to fix our social ills. The notion that Big Government has all our answers and the solutions we need in this very chaotic and unstable world is fairy tale. It is one that is rooted in the personal belief that Fallen Man through and by the efforts of Big Government or "Socialism" can bring security and comfort to it's inhabitants. There is no man made ideology or system that can ever usher in a world Utopia of perfection and bliss. These...

Knockout strategies have demonstrated that the function of many genes cannot be studied by disrupting them in model organisms because the inactivation of these genes does not lead to a phenotypic effect. For living systems, this peculiar phenomenon of genetic redundancy seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Genetic redundancy is now defined as the situation in which the disruption of a gene is selectively neutral. Biology shows us that 1) two or more genes in an organism can often substitute for each other, 2) some genes are just there in a silent state. Inactivation of such redundant...

Today many in the United States are crying out to President Obama and Government to do more and more to fix our social ills. The notion that Big Government has all our answers and the solutions we need in this very chaotic and unstable world is fairy tale. It is one that is rooted in the personal belief that Fallen Man through and by the efforts of Big Government or "Socialism" can bring security and comfort to it's inhabitants. There is no man made ideology or system that can ever usher in a world Utopia of perfection and bliss. These...

The Ice Age has been a longstanding problem for uniformitarian thinking, with many unsolved mysteries. No mere tweaking of today's climate conditions would cause such a catastrophe. A creationist model based on the revealed events of Scripture, however, offers a possible answer...

Evolutionary philosophy is a bottom-up storytelling project: particles, planets, people. Naturalists (those who say nature is all there is) believe they can invent explanations that are free of miracles, but in practice, miracles pop up everywhere in their stories. This was satirized by Sidney Harris years ago in a cartoon that showed a grad student filling a blackboard with equations. His adviser called attention to one step that needed some elaboration: It said, "Then a miracle happens." Examples of miracles in evolutionary philosophy include the sudden appearance of the universe without cause or explanation, the origin of life, the origin...

You know, maybe it’s because I’m just a dumb old small town Texan, but having listened to Sarah Palin speak for a couple of years now, on everything from geopolitics, to energy independence, to eating at Dairy Queen, I’ve never had a problem understanding a single word she has ever said.

It is stunning to read and hear about this “coin controversy.” At a recent speech in Milwaukee I discussed the troubling fact that we too often move God to the side in our public life, and gave as an example the shift of the words “In God We Trust” to the edge of the dollar coin. My comments were not about this President or this Congress – this change predated them. I was merely making a point about a disturbing trend in our country, after which I moved on to discuss some encouraging trends. People who try to read more...

The God Concept Allie Winegar Duzett, November 11, 2009 Some cognitivists out there claim that the “God Concept” comes naturally to children. In their worldview, children come up with the concept of God to explain away things that just don’t make sense to their underdeveloped minds. However, as those with children understand, “the ‘God concept’ is often slow in coming.” These were the words of Dr. Marjorie Gunnoe, a professor of psychology at Calvin College, at a recent Heritage Foundation conference, Religious Practice and the Family: What the Research Says. She told a story about interacting with a five-year-old in...

Well, you’ve heard about Sham-Wow – here’s the Real Wow: Find God in Just 60 Days or we’ll return your meaningless existence with no obligation! My new Klavan on the Culture video with visuals once again by Justin Folk who actually personally decapitated Richard Dawkins to get that shot of his head floating in muck. Is that dedication or… what? Anyway, here’s the vid: Cannot embed here

Taken from UK Telegraph article:Fort Hood gunman had told US military colleagues that infidels should have their throats cut One of Hasan's neighbours described how on the day of the massacre, about 9am, he gave her a Koran and told her: "I'm going to do good work for God" before leaving for the base.

10 Ways Darwin Got It Wrong This year marks the bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birthday and, coincidentally, 150 years since the publication of his book On the Origin of Species. One of the most influential books in modern history, it has helped shape philosophy, biology, sociology and religion in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. But both Darwin's theory and his book are doomed by major flaws. by Mario Seiglie Was Charles Darwin right about his theory? More importantly, how vital is it to find out the correct answer? Unlike other scientific theories, Darwinian evolution touches not only science but...

After giving free markets a bad name, investment banks are turning to religion. These guys really have no shame. They pose as free marketeers when every penny they make is propped up by government, and now they want to invoke the good words in the Bible to justify their scamming. IB's are now hitting the churches of London, before they divvy up this year's loot. It is an attempt to do what they do best, confuse great truths with their scams. Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer John Varley stood at the wooden lectern in St. Martin-in-the- Fields on London’s Trafalgar...

"My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” – Mary worshipping God in Luke 1:46–47 Mary was simply a very godly young woman who loved the Lord and trusted in Him despite great risk to her own reputation. She repeatedly appears as a devout woman who loved God and was a loving mother to Jesus. Contrary to some aberrant teaching, she did not remain a virgin, but mothered other sons such as James and Jude, who visited Jesus with Mary during His ministry (Matthew 12:46; Mark 3:31–35; Luke 8:19–21) and later became pastors who penned...

The ideal of the coolly rational scientific observer, completely independent, free of all preconceived theories, prior philosophical, ethical and religious commitments, doing investigations and coming to dispassionate, unbiased conclusions that constitute truth, is nowadays regarded by serious philosophers of science (and, indeed, most scientists) as a simplistic myth...

In Washington State, another referendum on gay couples' equality was also a squeaker. But in this one, gay couples won. The state's domestic partnership law grants gay couples all the rights of married couples at a state level. The usual forces tried to reverse it, as they tried in Maine. But in Washington, the gay side won by 51.1 to 48.9 percent. Again, it's such a slender margin, it's stupid to draw any vast conclusions. But I do want to point out that, from the perspective of just a decade ago, to have an even split on this question in...

Is there good without God? John Mark ReynoldsTheology 10.30.2009 Can people be good without God? How can people be good, in the moral and ethical sense, without being grounded in some sort of belief in a being which is greater than they are? Where do concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, come from if not from religion?Children often repeat ideas gained elsewhere as if they were their own profound insights. I remember in school “inventing” what I thought was a stunning new idea for propulsion only to be told that jet engines were, in fact, fairly common....

LAKELAND - Motorists along one of Lakeland's major thoroughfares are being greeted with a billboard asking a provocative question: "Don't believe in God?" Then there's the answer: "You are not alone." The billboard went up Sunday on eastbound Memorial Boulevard near Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, making Lakeland the second Florida city to have a billboard sponsored by an atheist organization.

The early 21st century stands as a period of profound moral confusion. On the one hand, mothers and doctors are permitted to crack open the skulls and suck out the brains of nearly-born babies with government sanction under the banner of partial birth abortion. Should these very same people hike into the woods and crack open a bald eagle egg, they could face serious prison time. It would therefore seem that contemporary society is marked by two seemingly contradictory extremes—- that of extreme license and that of excessive control. However, upon closer inspection it could be concluded that these conditions...

Sting: Obama Was 'Sent From God', Critics 'Violent and Full of Fear' By Lachlan Markay Created 2009-10-30 13:58 Many Hollywood leftists consider President Obama a figurative godsend. Some, including Sting, think he was literally sent from God. The former Police front-man told the Associated Press that he believes that Obama is a gift from Heaven, delivered to shepherd the befuddled masses to providence (h/t Ace [1]). "In many ways, he's sent from God," Sting said in an interview with the AP [2]. He heaped praise upon the President for his ability to lead the country though the "mess" in which...

Now, I can see where many of you would think this was a terrible thing to go through. You’re right, it is terrible but it has also been a time of great blessings. God has definitely taught me some valuable lessons about how our thoughts effect us. I want to share with you what I learned first hand, and I pray it will have a positive effect on your life as well.

With Halloween only a few days away, discussion of the paranormal is a staple of the creepy holiday each year. Anybody have any interesting anecdotes about their experiences with hauntings, Ouija boards, and ghosts? Even aside from the typical Halloween characters, have you encountered situations that you think were direct interventions from God? Anyone want to share their paranormal stories?

After practicing everyday since January, the Glorious Leader aces every hole!

We all know honesty is the key to any relationship. To show dishonesty in business dealing is not only immoral but illegal. Aside from the moral and legal issues it is simply bad for business. Every business has its reputation following it good or bad....