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by Ed Stetzer March 3, 2014 The following post is a guest post from Dr. Jerry Johnson. Jerry A. Johnson, Ph.D., is President & CEO of National Religious Broadcasters (NRB). He's a theologian who has taught on cinema and theology. This post is about the March 28, 2014 movie Noah. I interviewed Jerry about the film last week at the NRB meeting. In that interview, he mentioned asking Paramount to add a disclaimer and they just did (see the bottom of this post). Last Friday, Jerry shared five positives of Noah, and today he's sharing five negatives. Here are...

Margaret Sanger, a founder of Planned Parenthood, wrote in her autobiography that an abortion at any stage is the taking of a human life. “To each group we explained simply what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way—no matter how early it was performed it was taking life," wrote Sanger. Planned Parenthood, which is now the leading abortion provider in America, will this week give House Minority Nancy Pelosi, its Margaret Sanger Award. Planned Parenthood says Pelosi has earned the honor through her “leadership, excellence, and outstanding contributions to the reproductive health and rights movement over the course of...

WARNING: Graphic language… Joe Newby at The Washington Examiner has found a real doozy of a “comedian.” Her name is Laura Levites – with obviously no connection to the priests of the Old Testament. (She’s an atheist with a fondness for Ricky Gervais.) “I would personally like to castrate every Male Conservative Christian so that they have NO reproductive rights,” she wrote on Twitter, using the hashtag “#HobbyLobby.” She certainly knows how to draw attention to herself. Newby said that’s not all. She also expressed her hatred of Christians in a tweet calling conservative Christians “scumbags,” claiming they are “really...

If you believe in ghosts, panic when you break a mirror and would rather walk on to the road than under a ladder, you are not alone. In fact, Britons are more likely to have faith in the supernatural than in God, a survey has found. It showed more than half give credence to the supernatural and superstition – compared with just 49 per cent who believe in God. Similarly, more people believe they have extraordinary powers such as a sixth sense than regularly go to church.

Glenn Beck was invited to see “Noah” by an executive vice president of Paramount Pictures over the weekend, who requested that the multimedia personality see the movie before taking a position on it with his audience. “I felt like kind of a dirtball, basing my review on something that I hadn’t seen, on someone else’s review,” Beck said on radio Monday. “That’s what people do to me. They don’t listen or watch, then they review. It was wrong of me to do.” Unfortunately — though Beck said everyone at Paramount was extremely gracious — he has only more words of...

On March 17, a team of radio astronomers announced they discovered purportedly direct evidence for cosmic inflation—a critical component of the modern Big Bang model. To make this discovery, the researchers used a specialized telescope called BICEP2 located on the Antarctic plateau.1 Radiation that has its strongest intensity in the microwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum comes to us from all directions in space. Secular researchers interpret this cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) as "relic radiation" from a time about 400,000 years after the alleged cosmic explosion. Now, a team of astronomers led by John M. Kovac of the Harvard-Smithsonian...

A prominent evangelical charity is reversing a policy change announced two days ago to hire Christians in same-sex marriages. The humanitarian relief agency World Vision said in a letter to supporters Wednesday that the nonprofit had made a mistake by changing its policy for the U.S. The aid group’s leaders said they were broken-hearted over the pain the decision had caused. …

Indie film “God’s Not Dead” is rocking the weekend box office, bringing in $2.8 million from just 780 theaters on Friday. Its $3,613 per-screen average was better than any movie in the market except for “Divergent” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” The Wrap noted Saturday. It was running third after Friday and will likely come in around $8 million for the three days. The low-budget PG-13 drama about a Christian college student (Shane Harper) in an epic battle with an atheist philosophy professor who threatens to fail him if he refuses to disavow God’s existence. Freestyle Releasing co-president Mark Borde...

After less than three months consideration, the IRS has issued its statement clarifying th etax treatment of Bitcoins (and other virtual currencies) before the April 15th Deadline. The finding, summarized, is that Vitual currencies will be treated as property (not as a currency) which, as WSJ notes, means an investor who buys bitcoin would typically have a capital gain or loss when it’s sold. The price of Bitcoin is rising modestly on this news...

Cosmos Scrubs Religion's Positive Influence from the History of the Scientific Revolution Casey Luskin March 25, 2014 5:45 AM | Permalink We live in interesting times. On the one hand, we're constantly assured that science and religion don't conflict. At the same time, we're told -- sometimes by the same people -- that religion hinders science. Perhaps this is to be expected. Materialists want to project a religion-friendly image because popular culture expects it, while at the same time they make arguments that they hope will ultimately erode religious belief. This requires a tricky balancing act, on vivid display in...

A prolific thief broke into the vestry of a North London church; grabbed the weekly collection, an iPhone and some silver, and began his getaway. He pushed past a female curate and raced towards the exit, but Father Andrew Cain got to the doorway first. Tall and broad-chested, he bellowed: “Get on your knees!” The ecclesiastical citizen’s arrest was widely celebrated in Britain at the time. Two years later, Cain is about to make headlines again, but this time his career is hanging in the balance. Defying the church’s orders, he will become the first Church of England clergyman to...

Former President Jimmy Carter says the Bible is to blame for women’s making less money than men in the workplace. […] “That is really derived, I would say, indirectly from the fact that religious leaders say that women are inferior in the eyes of God, which is a false interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.” […] “It is disturbing to realize that women are treated most equally in some countries that are atheistic or where governments are strictly separated from religion,” he said. …

“The existing abuse of females is the worst and most pervasive and unaddressed human rights violation on earth,” says former President Jimmy Carter, who is making the rounds of various news shows to promote his new book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power.Carter—repeating something he’s stated previously—said the abuse is “indirectly” derived “from the fact that religious leaders say that women are inferior in the eyes of God, which is a false interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. But when they see that the pope, and the Southern Baptist Convention and others say that women can’t serve as...

San Francisco-based mobile gift card app provider Gyft officially added US retail giant Walmart to its merchant network on 24th March. The company took to Twitter to release the news that the largest physical retailer in the US, which earned more than $325bn from its US retail stores in 2012, and garnered more than $460bn in sales worldwide that year, had been added to its service.

Science has become the new religion of power mongers. The reduction of science to religion deprives rational persons of objective science and imposes religion onto the public through government. These concerns are relative and could have been argued a century ago. But they increased exponentially over recent decades. It is now impossible to produce objective science, while the values of power mongers are forced onto everyone through science as religion.

You've probably heard that Cosmos, the new version starring Neil deGrasse Tyson, is causing waves because it's on FOX, and it actually talks about (gasp!) evolution. But this week, Christians upped the ante on crazy by demanding "equal time" for creationists. You know, because they need things to be "balanced." In his typically incisive style, deGrasse explained one reason why that's a silly idea. “You don’t talk about the spherical Earth with NASA, and then say let’s give equal time to the flat Earthers..."

Susan Patton, aka “The Princeton Mom” has finally released her book, Marry Smart, based on the controversial letter she published last year in The Daily Princetonian, which advised young women to focus on finding a husband while in college. Liberal feminists hate the book. I mean, they just hate it. Which makes me want to read it, actually. Anyway, Patton generates so much wrath because she points out one of the big lies behind modern feminism. The lie is this: that to be successful and happy you need to focus on your career and not marriage or children throughout your...

CALGARY — The Calgary woman who was killed by Taliban gunmen in a luxury hotel in Kabul Thursday was devoted to peace and wasn't afraid, her grieving brother said Friday. Zeenab Kassam, 57, one of two Canadians killed in the attack, had been teaching English to girls and boys as an aid group volunteer in Afghanistan's capital city for the past year and a half and didn't express fear, Karim-Aly Kassam said. "This is not about the Afghan people, this is about a small, extreme minority of very dangerous people who've found a home in Afghanistan," Kassam said. "She was...

VATICAN CITY, The 4-year-old grandson of the president of Malta met Pope Francis at the Vatican and presented the pontiff with a plastic dinosaur as a gift. Luca Abela, 4, grandson of Maltese President George Abela, met the pope Friday alongside his two siblings, the president's wife and the head of state's two adult sons, the Italian news agency ANSA reported Friday. The young boy presented Pope Francis with a gift, a plastic dinosaur, and the pontiff took time to play with the boy and his siblings after meeting with the adults, ANSA said.

Next week, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America will present House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) with the Margaret Sanger Award. The award is the group’s “highest honor” and is named for a woman who believed in breeding better humans through eugenics. Planned Parenthood is the nation’s leading abortion provider, having performed 327,166 of the procedures in 2012, according to its latest annual report. Pelosi, a Catholic, will receive the Margaret Sanger Award at the PPFA’s annual gala in Washington, D.C. on Mar. 27. She is being honored, according to PPFA, because of her “leadership, excellence, and outstanding contributions to...