Free Republic

As Islamists continue to kill innocents, they provide more fuel for the oft-made atheist claim that religion is evil. Atheist Richard Dawkins condemned the recent attacks in France by tweeting, "No, all religions are NOT equally violent. Some have never been violent, some gave it up centuries ago. One religion conspicuously didn't." Dawkins is right that some religions and religious people have consistently perpetrated evil. Atheists often use this fact to support atheism. However, the existence of evil turns out to be a bigger problem for atheists to explain than for theists. The kind of evil Dawkins and the rest...

I’m not a scientist, and I don’t play one on TV. But I can examine scientific evidence and ask the question, “How is life possible?” This past Christmas, the Wall Street Journal ran an essay of mine entitled “Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God.” The content will be familiar to those who have read my latest book, “Miracles,” or heard me talk about it here at BreakPoint. I noted that the initial euphoria over the possibility that there were a septillion -- that’s one followed by 24 zeros -- planets capable of supporting life in the universe was followed...

Traditional values groups are rallying around an Army chaplain who was rebuked by his commander for distributing information on Christianity during mandatory suicide prevention training. Twenty nonprofit organizations dedicated to religious freedom have signed a letter to Army Secretary John McHugh, urging him to overturn action against Capt. Joseph Lawhorn, an evangelical and onetime infantryman. His commander, Col. David Fivecoat, who heads the brigade at Fort Benning, Georgia, that molds new Rangers, issued a “letter of concern” on Thanksgiving. He took action after one soldier complained to the website MilitaryAtheists.org, which posted an article. The atheist group later said it...

7 Truths We Have Forgotten from R.C. Sproul Jr. Jan 03, 2015 Category: Articles Every generation has not just its blind spots, but its amnesiac moments—truths once held, even honored, that the rising generation let go of. One might call these things “Slipping Off the Shoulders of Giants.” Here are seven truths our fathers in the faith grasped that we have forgotten: It’s not about me. One of the reasons the greatest generation earned their title is because they sacrificed for others. In our day, because we engage in distant wars for hazy reasons, our soldiers are left fighting for mere...

Someone close to me once said that to believe we are alone would be nothing less than the arrogance of man. Yet this article points out that the math and science behind life on any planet shows that even we shouldn't exist, much less life anywhere else... At what point is it fair to admit that science suggests that we cannot be the result of random forces? Doesn’t assuming that an intelligence created these perfect conditions require far less faith than believing that a life-sustaining Earth just happened to beat the inconceivable odds to come into being?There’s more. The fine-tuning...

The fine-tuning necessary for life to exist on a planet is nothing compared with the fine-tuning required for the universe to exist at all. For example, astrophysicists now know that the values of the four fundamental forces—gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the “strong” and “weak” nuclear forces—were determined less than one millionth of a second after the big bang. Alter any one value and the universe could not exist. For instance, if the ratio between the nuclear strong force and the electromagnetic force had been off by the tiniest fraction of the tiniest fraction—by even one part in 100,000,000,000,000,000—then no...

Greetings, I have been listening to and reading a lot of your material over the last year, and have been learning a lot - not least from the Defenders podcast. I've been searching in your material for the answer to a specific question, but haven't found it - and therefore I write you now. I'm trying to sort out the matter of free will and God's foreknowledge, and I've come to understand that there is no contradiction between God's foreknowing a free choice, and that choice being truly free. Foreknowing doesn't equal determining. But - here is my question: How?...

The left’s Christmas tradition is to minimize the holiday, because they have no understanding of Christmas or the Person being celebrated.  They even go so far as to claim Jesus never existed.  It’s easy to come to the conclusion that Jesus is not God when you start with the position that there is no God at all.  And I think God might want it that way. The deniers see a vengeful, capricious deity, whose rapacity for our affection and devotion causes him to become our ultimate stalker—watching every move we make, ready to pounce in judgment.  This god has no...

A commonly heard claim is that Jews, Christians and Muslims all believe in “the same God.” These are comforting words and of great assistance to those wishing to engage in interfaith dialogues and tri-faith ventures. But is this true? To answer that question, let’s look at what is said and taught about Jews and Christians by Allah, the god of Islam, and Muhammad, Allah’s prophet. We’ll start with the Koran. The KoranMuslims believe the Koran is the infallible, timeless and perfect word of Allah. So what does Allah say in the Koran about Jews and Christians?To set the stage, Allah...

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, one of the largest secular groups in America, announced it is erecting 11 different billboards across Chicago this week with various messages. Some of the ads ask people to "think for (themselves)," while others argue that kindness "comes from altruism" and not from "seeking divine reward." "Research shows that atheists and other nonbelievers remain at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to social acceptance. One reason for that is that even though at least 20% of the population today is nonreligious in the United States, many Americans have never knowingly met an...

Don’t Forget to Worship God! A Call to Better Liturgy from an Unlikely Source By: Msgr. Charles Pope We have discussed before many of the trends of modern liturgy and how the focus has shifted from God to the “assembly.” Too much of modern liturgy today is anthropocentric (focused on man).Back in the 1990’s, Thomas Day observed in the book Why Catholics Can’t Sing, that liturgy today often comes down  to “the aware, gathered community, celebrating itself.” Many modern songs go on at great length about how we are the gathered, we are the flock, we have been sung throughout all of...

The link above (not the picture) will take you to this somewhat prophetic song.

I have been devoting my columns this month to the Ten Commandments because we need a fixed moral anchor to solve the problem of evil. And nothing is as effective as the Ten Commandments. Two weeks ago PragerUniversity.com released eleven five-minute video courses — one for each commandment and an introduction. The series has received over 2 million views. Everything needed to make a good world is contained in these Ten Commandments. Whatever your faith, or if you have no faith, I invite you to watch the videos at www.prageru.com. They are cleverly animated with text and graphics. Here is...

My father, James W. Bryan III 74, was in the hospital for dehydration. This morning at 10 AM he had a pulmonary embolus. Luckily he was very well oxygenated and was sent to ICU immediately. TPA anticoagulant was introduced and he is responding well to blood pressure medicine. Precedex given. working good. May have to increase. He is responding well to all medications. Thank you for your prayers and concerns. If you guys don't have an Trust or family plans in these types of events consider this a warning. Luckily we have everything set up should things go south.

Christian Broadcasting Network reporter David Brody has been slowly releasing excerpts from his interview with likely Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, who has told Brody that liberals are responsible for “hate speech” and that he “feels fingers” from God telling him to make a run for the White House. Today, Brody released another segment from his interview where the conservative activist was joined by his wife, Candy, to describe how God is calling him to make a presidential bid. “We recognize that we are being instruments in the hand of God, he is the one who really orchestrates all of...

"God is good to me, he's bestowed on me a healthy dose of unawareness." Pope Francis, see here. “From the start I said to myself: ‘Jorge, don't change, just keep on being yourself, because to change at your age would be to make a fool of yourself.’” (From the same article). Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand reminds us that, "The capacity to grasp values, to affirm them, and to respond to them, is the foundation for realizing the moral values of man. Now these marks can be found only in the man who possesses reverence. Reverence is the attitude which can...

Published on American Thinkerby Enza Ferreri I'm not sure how conservative Americans will view the recently-published book Democracy as a Neocon Trick (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) by Alexander Boot. It’s a very unusual work, in that, whereas critics of America are generally on the Left end of the political spectrum and those on the Right tend to unquestionably defend the “land of the free”, this is a criticism of the US from a non-Leftist viewpoint, indeed from a traditional, conservative, Christian, pre-Enlightenment viewpoint. I don’t agree with everything the author says about America, but he’s such a brilliant philosopher...

by Dave Jolly Disney’s anti-God agenda was made very evident recently when they censored and reprimanded a 10 year old girl just for mentioning God and her church. Lily Anderson of Angier, North Carolina was on the Disney Channel’s website. It was her birthday and she was happily answering questions on the website. When Lily got to the question that asked her what the most important things in her life were, she typed in: “God, my family, my church and my friends.” Responses are posted online for others to read and Lily was excited to let them know that God...

It turns out you can give thanks for a lot of different folks on the Disney Channel website – but you can’t thank God. I received a Facebook message on Sunday from Julie Anderson, of Angier, North Carolina...... Lilly loves the Disney Channel – and as she was browsing the channel’s website she noticed a question. The Disney Channel wanted to know what she was thankful for. So Lilly typed in her answer. “God, my family, my church and my friends,” the 10-year-old wrote. Lilly pressed the return key and waited for her answer to appear on the website. But...

Now is as good a time as any to tell this story, since I’m telling it from the end.  It’s always easier to tell a story from the end, and here’s where mine ends. Today we closed the prayer room. We didn’t officially close it, because the door is still unlocked.  But come Monday, all the furniture, sound system, and security cameras will be picked up and taken away.  Today we removed all that gear and its wiring, and boxed everything up for removal. Rewind to May 14, 2005, 6:18pm.  That’s the date and time stamp of a file on...