Free Republic

In some ways, the history of science is the history of a philosophical resistance to mythical explanations of reality. In the ancient world, when we asked “Where did the world come from?” we were told creation myths. In the modern world, we are instead told a convincing scientific story: Big Bang theory, first proposed in 1927 by the Belgian Roman Catholic priest Georges Lemaître. It is based on observations that galaxies appear to be flying apart from one another, suggesting that the universe is expanding. We trace this movement back in space and time to nearly the original point of...

It may be common for psychiatric patients who are Muslim to attribute their hallucinations or other symptoms to "jinn," the invisible, devilish creatures in Islamic mythology, researchers in the Netherlands have found. The findings demonstrate one way in which culture may influence how people perceive their psychotic symptoms, and could help Western psychiatrists better understand patients who have an Islamic background. Moreover, in today's connected world, patients may fuse the symbols from their own backgrounds with those of other cultures to explain their symptoms, study leader Dr. Jan Dirk Blom, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Groningen,...

Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad (Carlos Bledsoe): A Case Study in Lone Wolf Terrorism By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross June 1, 2009 was a Monday. Shortly after 10:00 a.m., Private William Long, 24, and Private Quinton Ezeagwula, 18, stood outside the joint Army-Navy recruiting center in northwestern Little Rock, Arkansas, taking a smoke break. The two young men, who were working at their hometown recruiting center before moving on to their first duty station, spoke of where that first assignment would take them. Long said that he would be leaving for Korea the following Monday; Ezeagwula was bound for Hawaii a day earlier, on...

It is common knowledge --at least for part of the right-- that resentment of Israel is merely an extension of Western self-hatred. We know that Israel is hated by the Arab world and many of the “have nots” of the postmodern age, because the fact that it is the only democracy and successful economy in the Middle East serves as a constant and unwelcome reminder to these countries that their problems cannot simply be blamed on the Western colonial legacy, and that, on the contrary, there is a fundamental flaw in their mentality and culture. For the same reason, the...

Yesterday at the DFW airport. It was strikingly difficult to talk to the Pakistani women selling food, with their head coverings, OBVIOUSLY pious Muslims. And turning around were Muslim Women with head coverings removing trash. I just WISH someone had the testicular power to tell these women if they want to work at an AIRPORT where travelers are sensitive about Muslim people that blow up things, they need to REMOVE their coverings, or go work at the local dry cleaning shop, or sell used tires. But to put them in the AIRPORTS knowing that all of the things that get...

An emerging ecumenical paradigm called “justpeace” offers a fresh way to view and analyze conflicts. This gives rise to the realization of a broader set of smart, effective nonviolent practices to engage hostile conflicts. See below for a recent example of this approach initiated by the ecumenical Faith Forum for Middle East Policy. A PDF of this letter is found at the bottom of the page. August 27, 2014 Dear President Obama: As religious communities, leaders, and academics, we write to express our deep concern over the recent escalation of U.S. military action in Iraq. While the dire plight of...

“As I read the news, I can’t help but wonder if we are in the last hours before our Lord Jesus Christ returns to rescue His church and God pours out His wrath on the world for the rejection of His Son,” said Rev. Graham in a post on the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) website. “I don’t know if we have hours, days, months, or years—but as Christians, God calls us to take the truth of the Gospel to the ends of the earth,” said Graham. “Our job is to warn sinners of the consequences of sin and show...

Could being born in a year deemed unlucky wind up a self-fulfilling prophecy? That may be what befell Japanese girls born in 1966, otherwise known as a year of the fire horse, or hinoeuma in Japanese. Women born in such a year, superstition holds, have troubled marriages, mistreat men, and cause early deaths for their husbands and fathers. It was one such woman, according to legend, who nearly burned down the capital in 1682, after setting a local temple on fire for love of a man who worked there. (She was sentenced to burn at the stake.) In 2010, researchers...

A 3,500-year-old inscription on a stone block found in Egypt is what archaeologists say the oldest weather report of the world. The inscription on a six-foot-tall calcite stone, called the Tempest Stela, describes rain, darkness and "the sky being in storm without cessation, louder than the cries of the masses," according to Nadine Moeller and Robert Ritner at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute who have translated the 40-line inscription. The stela's text also describes bodies floating down the Nile like "skiffs of papyrus." "This was clearly a major storm, and different from the kinds of heavy rains that Egypt...

I have a prayer request. I am having cancer surgery on Sept 16. Less than two weeks away. I'm having a mastectomy, with reconstruction. It all gets done (or at least started) on the table. Please pray for my fear, which is usually at the manageable level. And that I make it through surgery. I'll be in the hospital for one day. I opted to stay with my surgical oncologist that operated on me two years ago (cancer then too) for many reasons, one being he's THE breast cancer surgeon in Middle GA. Trouble is, after I was diagnosed, I've...

Saqqara, in Egypt, is the oldest stone complex ever built by humans—and within it sits the oldest pyramid in Egypt. It’s a piece of irreplaceable history that’s been crumbling for 4,600 years. But according to one local report, it’s currently being destroyed by the company hired to “restore” it. In fact, the company hired by Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities may have even committed a crime in its restoration. According to the Egypt Independent, preservation laws require that any new construction be less than 5 percent of the preserved structure. Instead, the company—which has reportedly never worked on a preservation project...

From 1962 to about 1972, I attended St. Cecilia Catholic Grade School from first to ninth grade in Detroit Michigan. We had approximately 300 students. Most of our teachers were priests and nuns. I later went to a public high school to finish the upper grades. I rarely visit that part of the country anymore, mainly due to travel expense and getting time off from work. I remain very close to my first family. I spoke to my oldest sister the other day who told me "There is no 'Saint Cecilia Catholic Church' anymore, at least not in this location....

CHICAGO (STMW) – A federal judge has shot down former First Baptist Church of Hammond Pastor Jack Schaap’s motion to cut his 12-year prison sentence. U.S. District Judge Rudy Lozano also denied Schaap’s request for a hearing on his motions and denied him a certificate to appeal to the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Schaap pleaded guilty in September 2012 to taking a 16-year-old parishioner, who was also a student at the church’s school and under Schaap’s care for counseling, across state lines for sex three times. Lozano sentenced him in March 2013 to 12 years in prison, two...

CONCORD, N.C. — A former Concord youth pastor was sentenced to at least 16 months in prison after pleading guilty to molesting young boys in his care. WECT-TV reported that Robert Price pleaded guilty to three counts of indecent liberties with a child.

The subject here is naval history and the naval history to come. This is particularly relevant, given the subjects I've been immersed in over the last year—the so-called war on terrorism and the attacks of 9/11, what went wrong, and what we should do to fix it. I have learned that what these two institutions—the U.S. Naval Institute and the U.S. Naval Academy—stand for are at the center of what we face as a nation going forward. The Naval Institute is one of the great intellectual institutions in this country. I first joined when I was an undergraduate in college,...

A Mauritanian groom stole from his father-in-law to pay the dowry for his bride, but the theft was discovered by the bride’s father two days after marriage. Newspapers in the north African Arab country said the groom stole nearly 500,000 ougyiya ($1,725) from his father-in-law’s company, where he works, and paid the money to him as dowry (money paid by the groom to the bride under Islamic law). “The bride’s father discovered the theft two days after marriage and knew that his son-in -law was behind it. “He wanted to go and expose him in front of his wife but...

It was the summer of 2011. We were visiting friends in North Carolina one weekend for a lovely wedding on the beach. Our strong-willed, opinionated and hyper-inquisitive children, a boy and two girls, were, at the time, 10, 7 and 6 respectively. My gorgeous, though Chicago-tough and Sicilian-sassy, wife and I were at lunch with the kids at a little seaside café the following day. A late morning ocean breeze puffed through the eatery’s open bay windows, filling our nostrils with that salty pong of damp sand and faint sea life, forecasting a beautiful day ahead. We were discussing the...

FULL TITLE: Ultra-Orthodox Jews who moved from Canada to Guatemalan village to find 'religious freedom' are forced to leave because the locals don't like them A community of Orthodox Jews have been expelled from their homes in a bitter conflict with hostile villagers. Just a few months after fleeing from Canada amid allegations of child abuse, members of the Lev Tahor community were forced to leave San Juan La Laguna in Guatemala yesterday. The village Elder's Council voted to kick them out because the group refused to greet or have physical contact with the community, according to a member of...

It’s the crime no one wants to take responsibility for. The same statements are trotted out time after time. “Missed opportunities” and “lessons have been learned” are the stock phrases we’ve grown tired of hearing from council officers and police chiefs. But the horror stories keep coming. Children being trafficked from one town to the next, raped in dingy flats then beaten, held at gun point, doused in petrol and threatened to be set alight if they so much as breathe a word. This is not happening in some war-torn Eastern Bloc country. It’s happening here in Britain .....

There has been a lot of interest in the current “Crimes Against Humanity” lawsuit against me by Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) and the so-called Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), but this is not the first time the LGBT movement has tried to silence me by use of the courts. In fact, the SMUG lawsuit is the 5th such attack I have suffered in my career. Following is an excerpt from my privately published book of testimonial stories about the Miracles that God has done in my life, titled My Life in His Hands. This excerpt is from Chapter 8, “The...