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While Americans watched in shock as a CBS News report detailed the near-100 percent abortion rate for unborn babies with Down syndrome in Iceland, people in Iceland were celebrating at an annual diversity festival. Gunnar Ingi Gunnarsson, the pastor of a small Baptist church in Reykjavík, pointed out the sad irony of this in a column for Christianity Today. The only Baptist pastor in Iceland, Gunnarsson said abortions have skyrocketed in the country, and very few people – including clergy – speak out against them. He is one of the few who goes against the pervasive atheistic, anti-life beliefs in...

What is Life? Msgr. Charles Pope • August 3, 2016 • What is life? It seems the simplest and most basic reality, but it is hard to define in a way that is satisfying. One philosopher I know defined it as “ordered energy.” But does that really advance the understanding of the mystery we call life?Consider an example: I have in one hand a small rock, and in my other, an acorn. They are similar in both shape and color. Now I place each of them in the ground and water them. The small rock just sits there; even...

It has become axiomatic that life naturally evolved out of nonliving materials billions of years ago. Given enough time and the chemical opportunity, living cells self-assemble. However, the experts on the development of complex molecules from simpler ones, the synthetic chemists, do not know how this process actually occurs. There are no known pathways to create the components that make up a living cell from nonliving matter. They have no idea how amino acids (the building blocks of proteins and enzymes), nucleotides (the building blocks of DNA and RNA), saccharides (also called carbohydrates or sugars, the scaffolding for DNA and...

A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday reversed a ruling that prevented Arkansas from cutting off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood following the release of controversial videos secretly recorded by an anti-abortion group. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis reversed a federal judge's ruling forbidding Arkansas from carrying through with Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson's directive to suspend Medicaid reimbursements to a Planned Parenthood affiliate. That ruling by U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker in Little Rock had come in a lawsuit by three women who claimed Arkansas violated their rights under the federal Medicaid law to choose any...

An Open Letter to My Colleagues James TourLife should not exist. This much we know from chemistry. In contrast to the ubiquity of life on earth, the lifelessness of other planets makes far better chemical sense. Synthetic chemists know what it takes to build just one molecular compound. The compound must be designed, the stereochemistry controlled. Yield optimization, purification, and characterization are needed. An elaborate supply is required to control synthesis from start to finish. None of this is easy. Few researchers from other disciplines understand how molecules are synthesized. Synthetic constraints must be taken into account when considering the...

Editor’s note: The following excerpt on “Teepee Etiquette — The Unwritten Law of the Lodge,” was taken from The Book of Woodcraft and Indian Lore (1912) by Ernest Thompson Seton. Seton said he gathered these maxims on American Indian hospitality “chiefly from observations of actual practice, but in many cases from formal precept.” They’re still largely apropo for modern hosts entertaining visiting guests in their “teepee” (though your mother-in-law may disagree).Teepee Etiquette — The Unwritten Law of the Lodge Be hospitable.Always assume that your guest is tired, cold, and hungry.Always give your guest the place of honor in the...

I picked up a guy a week or two ago who was in his mid 30s that looked a little scruffy, covered in tats and a very wild and woolly beard. He wanted to go to a low-budget, no-name, mom-and-pop motel a few miles away. He looked a little sketchy, but I noticed that he had the eagle and anchor Marine Corps emblem tattooed on his forearm, and I said, “Marine Corps, huh?”He said, “Yes Sir, two tours in Afghanistan.” As I have said before, I always thank a member of our military whenever I encounter them, and I...

A U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday that an Arkansas law restricting the use of the so-called abortion pill could proceed, overturning a lower court's decision in 2015 that blocked the law a day before it was to go into effect. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis sent the case back to the federal district court in Little Rock, telling the court it must estimate approximately how many women would likely be harmed by the law before the case could proceed further. Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which runs two of the three clinics providing abortions in...

Approaching 63 early next year I’m seriously considering retiring. Still plan to work, 3 day weekends every week. In ’17 you could make around 20K, after that they would take a dollar off funds for every $2 made over ... apparently that figure will go up in ’18. Naturally the apprehension is giving up 20% for the rest of my life but I have a small pension which evens it out. But money lost nevertheless. What price is wrong for a better quality of life and precious time? Did you retire early and regret it or not and wish you...

July 11, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – Twelve hours of prayer for Charlie Gard will begin at 5 a.m. London time on Thursday (12:00 a.m. EST). This "worldwide prayer vigil" for the 11-month-old whose parents are fighting to keep him on life support is being organized by Rev. Patrick Mahoney, one of the human rights activists who's assisting Charlie's parents. "Thursday's court hearing will determine if Charlie Gard lives or dies," Mahoney wrote on Facebook. "In response to this, we are inviting people from all across the world to pray with us for this critical hearing on Charlie all day Thursday." "We...

The Government intends to fund abortions in England for women arriving from Northern Ireland, the Chancellor has said. Abortion is banned in Northern Ireland unless the woman's life is at risk or her mental or physical health face permanent and serious risk. Charities have welcomed the Government's move, with some hailing it as a "landmark moment". "We are absolutely delighted that the Government has committed to funding abortion care for women who travel from Northern Ireland to England," said a spokeswoman from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. "This is a landmark moment: for years the women of Northern Ireland, despite...

A mix of what Jesus wants me to tell you in my videos & one of my favorite places as a child in Chepachet, R. I..

A Catholic religious order in Ireland has agreed to withdraw from the administration of three hospitals, because of concerns that Catholic moral principles would influence health-care decisions. The Sisters of Charity announced that they cede control of the St. Vincent’s Healthcare Group, which the hospitals, handing over ownership to a secular corporation—which will also be called “St. Vincent’s”—established for that purpose. Irish health minister welcomed the move, saying: “It directly addresses concerns regarding the question of religious influence in the new National Maternity Hospital and further illustrates the constructive role of the sisters to facilitate this landmark project.” A plan...

AbstractAbstract The history of the life–Earth system can be divided into five ‘energetic’ epochs, each featuring the evolution of life forms that can exploit a new source of energy. These sources are: geochemical energy, sunlight, oxygen, flesh and fire. The first two were present at the start, but oxygen, flesh and fire are all consequences of evolutionary events. Since no category of energy source has disappeared, this has, over time, resulted in an expanding realm of the sources of energy available to living organisms and a concomitant increase in the diversity and complexity of ecosystems. These energy expansions have...

Someday, future generations of Americans will look back on us and wonder how and why such a rich and seemingly enlightened society, so blessed and endowed with the capacity to protect and enhance vulnerable human life, could have instead so aggressively promoted death to children by abortion—both here and overseas. They will note that we prided ourselves on our commitment to human rights, while precluding virtually all protection to the most persecuted minority in the world today—unborn children. And they will demand to know why dismembering a child with sharp knives, pulverizing an infant with powerful suction devices, or chemically...

Even so, our Creator is still there to remind us—most graphically at dawn and at dusk— that no matter what the news of the day, God is in His heaven. No ‘News’ on the Internet can possibly compete with the largely overlooked ‘Real News’ that begins and ends each and every day. Whether or not we’re up early enough, or too busy to notice, the birdsong of ‘God’s Orchestra’ announces each breaking dawn. Sometimes it begins with the chirp of just one or two little birds, calling out to other feathered friends before the full chorus joins in. It’s almost...

Democrat Heath Mello lost his race for Omaha mayor Tuesday in a setback for supporters who argued that the Democratic National Committee and abortion rights groups were wrong to attack the anti-abortion former state senator. Mello, a 37-year-old Catholic from Omaha's working-class south side, had become a flashpoint for the internal Democratic battle over whether a candidate's position on reproductive rights should disqualify him from support by the national party after its crushing losses around the country last year. Republican Jean Stothert, a 63-year-old former nurse and city council member elected in 2013, was elected to a second term. It...

Even if a new drug proves to prolong human life, it won't receive regulatory approval for that purpose unless the FDA accepts that aging is a treatable medical condition.David Sinclair has been reverse-engineering the aging process for two decades. As the co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School, Sinclair and his colleagues have identified several key enzymes and interactions inside cells that cause them to “lose their identity” over time, making our bodies more susceptible to diseases like cancer, heart disease, and dementia. But what if aging itself is the real...

Freedom From Truth: FFRF is beyond all reason by Daniel Clark “Our purpose is to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church,” At least that’s what Freedom From Religion Foundation Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote in a thinly veiled threat to the Allegheny County Council, to dissuade it from installing a plaque in the county courthouse that says “In God We Trust.” That principle, like everything else the FFRF stands for, is a lie. If Gaylor and friends can point to anything in the U.S. Constitution that prohibits a Pittsburgh courthouse from acknowledging God, this particular resident...

The White House says President Donald Trump is appointing the former president of a leading anti-abortion organization to a senior position at the Department of Health and Human Services. Charmaine Yoest, who actively supported Trump in his campaign, will serve as assistant secretary of public affairs at HHS. From 2008 until February 2016, she was president of Americans United for Life, which campaigned at the federal and state level for tough restrictions on abortion. Among the many state bills backed by the group under Yoest's leadership were measures that would ban most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, require women...