Free Republic

"We know that a large population of 'Christians' are actually atheists who feel trapped in their family's religion. If you know god is a myth, you do not have to lie and call yourself 'Christian' in order to have a festive holiday season. You can be merry without the myth, and indeed, you should," said David Silverman, President of American Atheists.

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....

One of the great losses to Western Culture is the increasing refusal to accept that there is a Natural Law to which we may commonly refer. This is especially problematic in pluralistic and secularist societies like the post-Christian West where reference to the sacred text of Scripture is not considered authoritative by many.Hence, it has been the long practice of the Church, even before secularizing trends to base her witness to the truth not only on Scripture but also on Natural Law. The recourse to such a basis for discussion is now largely impossible for us, as most secularists have...

While thinking about the real problem with our culture I wondered about how much we need pro-life pregnancy centers where ever there is a culture of death center. I stumbled upon this site and immediately recognized it as a means to empower the individual, forget the republic. Libertarians have nothing on these people. Masters degrees in community organizing. Who'd a thought.

The adverse impact of “political correctness” on American culture cannot be overstated. Its sinister influence has been monumental and subversive in the extent to which it has reshaped American values, literally driving the population farther away from its Christian moorings, and redirecting civilization toward hedonism, socialism, atheism, humanism, and a host of other anti-Christian philosophies. As Chicago University Professor Allan Bloom rightly documented in his bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind, the average college student in the last 50 years has been brainwashed to accept the notions that truth is relative, absolutism is therefore wrong, and that the only...

Now things were coming together. The Progressive worldview, and the Libertarian, Rand-worshipping worldview -- are all part of the same existentialist family tree containing Sartre and Alinsky. Rand's humanistic objectivism is as cold and Godless as Sartre's humanistic existentialism. These pseudo-intellectuals are the reason Christianity has been quietly erased line by line, year after year in the popular psyche. God was dead to Nietzsche, Sartre, and Ayn Rand. Even Sartre's famous cousin, Albert Schweitzer, denied the divinity of Christ.They were simply players in a full-court press for a total paradigm shift that has led us to the Mad Max dystopian...

Soon after the completely senseless murder of an Australian athlete in Oklahoma, former Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer pleaded with Australian tourists to boycott the United States due to our supposed proliferation of guns which, as Mr. Fischer evidently believes, leads to an increase in violence and crime. “I am deeply angry about this because of the callous attitude of the three teenagers [but] it’s a sign of the proliferation of guns on the ground in the USA,” he said. The problem with Mr. Fischer’s statement? The data simply does not support his accusation, and even statistics from Mr....

Chesterton is perhaps the most articulate twentieth century practitioner of this Christian paradoxical imagination. He judges that a serious breakdown of the fundamental moral suppositions deposited by biblical faith and the classical tradition is underway and accelerating. He believes that this declension is due to a loss of conviction in our culture about the reality of the Incarnation, that God truly became a human being in Jesus Christ with all the import that that has for human existence. For Chesterton, the doctrine of the Incarnation is the hinge that holds together what is, for the Christian, a vision of the...

Over the past few years, evangelical atheists have switched places with fire-and-brimstone Christians: where once it was the Christians who brooked no disagreement, now it is the atheists; and it is the atheists, too, who perform cartwheels on the heads of pins. Christopher Hitchens once even managed to argue of the Reverend Martin Luther King, of all people, that ‘In no real as opposed to nominal sense . . . was he a Christian’. A weaselly self-righteousness is now the hallmark of the celebrity unbeliever. Meanwhile, it is the Christian who nods diligently in any discussion, taking pains to reassure the atheists...

Whittaker Chambers and Totalitarian Islam Playwright David Mamet recently acknowledged that he had been profoundly influenced by Communist apostate Whittaker Chambers’s 1952 anti-Communist memoir, Witness. Mamet described how reading Chambers’s opus inspired “the wrenching experience” of forcibly reevaluating the way he thought, particularly his confessed leftist-herd co-dependence. Also, echoing the delusive herd mentality of the Left’s ad hominem attacks in the 1950s on Chambers — whose allegations of Communist conspiracies have been entirely vindicated with irrefragable documentation from the captured Soviet Venona cables — Congressman Peter King’s staid initial hearings of March 10, 2011, on American Muslim radicalization engendered similarly...

Why has the American society changed so drastically in the past few decades? How did the feminist movement get started? How did Obama get elected? Why are there so many single parent families? Where is God?

I was asked by the Young Adult group in my parish to address some ads on our local buses and subway trains here in Washington. The members of the Young adult group found the ads offensive and troubling, especially since they were aimed at kids. The ads are posted by the American “Humanist” Association (AHA) and are indeed aimed at kids and teenagers. The focus of the message is “Kids without God: You’re not the only one.” I have altered the ad at the upper right of this post to avoid listing its website but as you can see God...

The American Humanist Association is promoting a new Web site that is designed to furnish children with a naturalistic or atheistic perspective on science, sexuality, and other topics. The stated goal of the Web site is laudatory: “to encourage curiosity, critical thinking, and tolerance among young people, as well as to provide accurate information regarding a wide range of issues related to humanism, science, culture, and history.” The problem is that those values have no inherent connection with naturalism, which is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that there is nothing beyond the physical contents of the universe. One doesn’t need...

The truth is a hard thing to hear and even a more bitter pill to swallow. But until we face the truth, we are doomed to sink lower into the abyss as a society. The truth is that a godless nation is a nation doomed to fall. We as a nation have slowly accepted and pompously come to believe that wisdom begins and stems from us. Secularism is the view that all things religious should be excluded from daily public living, specifically pertaining to political and social concerns. Thanks to secularism, the mindset today is that God and religious opinion...

In Ghana, where deeply held religious beliefs unite much of the population, a new group has formed around a shared disbelief in religion. The Humanist Association of Ghana practices a philosophy that is mostly unheard of in Ghana, which a recent survey ranked as the most religious country in the world. Nonetheless, the group has already made waves in West Africa. Last weekend, the association hosted humanists from across the region for a conference in the capital Accra, where attendees listened as speakers discussed the impact humanists could make on West African society. Lecturers talked about how humanists can stand...

The upcoming elections aren’t about Republican vs. Democrat; conservative vs. liberal; Romney vs. Obama. Not entirely, at least. They’re much bigger than all that. November signifies nothing new. It’s a microcosm of a much greater struggle – one that predates mankind. These elections are about truth vs. lies; light vs. darkness; good vs. evil. Ultimately, November represents a high point – or a low point if you prefer – in the epic clash between diametrically opposed and fundamentally incompatible worldviews. On the one hand, we have the Judeo-Christian worldview. It is both informed by and fully acknowledges absolute truth as...

A veteran’s memorial in the form of a “peace cross” in Bladensburg, Md., has come under criticism by the American Humanist Association, which has said the memorial is a “religious symbol” on public land and that the government “should not be in the business of promoting religion.” “This cross amounts to an unconstitutional government endorsement of Christianity on public land. It is an exclusively Christian symbol that does not represent the sacrifice of non-Christian soldiers. Its prominent presence on public land leaves any observer with the notion that Christianity is exclusively favored and promoted by the government, said Bill Burgess,...

According to Catholic faith, every sin can be forgiven during life because of God’s surpassing love (DS 349). However, the Scriptures speak of sins that cannot be forgiven in the sense that they constitute a terrible offense against the truth and the light, against the Holy Spirit (Mt 12: 31-32; 1 Jn 5:16). In speaking of sin this way, the Scriptures refer to a sin more radical than most mortal sins, for it is a sin whose nature blocks forgiveness. Since the time of Saint Augustine, theologians have provided us with a list of sins against the Holy Spirit, proceeding...

Kids at Soule Road School in Wilbraham, MA ate green veggies and wore green today but, begorra, under no circumstances were they celebrating St. Patrick’s Day! Instead, it was “Happy O’Green Day.” “Inclusive and diverse,” and to “ease any discomfort that may go along with celebrating St. Patrick’s Day” was the (non) reasoning behind the name change, according to principal Lisa Curtain. “Not so,” says the more diplomatic school superintendent, M. Michael O’Shea who undoubtedly has his share of Irish ancestry.

Kids at Soule Road School in Wilbraham, MA ate green veggies and wore green today but, begorra, under no circumstances were they celebrating St. Patrick’s Day! Instead, it was “Happy O’Green Day.” “Inclusive and diverse,” and to “ease any discomfort that may go along with celebrating St. Patrick’s Day” was the (non) reasoning behind the name change, according to principal Lisa Curtain. “Not so,” says the more diplomatic school superintendent, M. Michael O’Shea who undoubtedly has his share of Irish ancestry. “Soule Road has not changed the name of St. Patrick’s Day. St. Patrick’s Day is on the Soule Road...