Free Republic

Iran is breaking bad. Officials say methamphetamine production and abuse of hard drugs are skyrocketing in the country despite potentially lethal criminal penalties for users if they are caught. The increase is partly because of Iran’s status as the gateway for the region’s top drug exporter, Afghanistan—and partly because Iranian dealers are profiting so handsomely from sales to overstressed students and exhausted double-jobbers. Ghazal Tolouian, a psychologist who treats dozens of meth addicts at a therapy camp in a mountain village northwest of Tehran, says most of her clients fall into two categories: students “who want to pass university entrance...

A Florida school board has made a controversial decision to ban the distribution of religious and political material in its schools. The Orange County School Board previously allowed copies of the Bible in their schools, but they decided to reconsider the policy after receiving a request from the Satanic Temple to hand out Satanic coloring books. The board decided that to avoid legal action, it had to ban Bibles and any other religious material from being passed out to students. …

19-year-old Alecia Faith Pennington has spent her life so sheltered by her Christian fundamentalist parents that now, as a young adult, she is finding it almost impossible to prove to the government that she actually exists. In a video uploaded to YouTube and quickly going viral, Pennington documents the various ways her parents have managed to prevent leaving even a single speck of evidence to help her gain an official identity or to prove that she is a United States citizen. For starters, they gave birth to her at home, and declined to get a birth certificate or social security...

The Vatican Conspiracy now happening shows the true nature of what and how people in this church are treated. A second shroud has been discovered in the Veronica Veil held at St Peters and they are refusing to tell their people and the world.

A West Virginia woman arrested in a bizarre home invasion Sunday night is also accused of murdering a 69-year-old pastor over the weekend, police said. Camille Brown, 19, was charged Monday with first-degree murder. She was already jailed for breaking and entering and disorderly conduct, said Beckley police Detective Morgan Bragg. He said Brown lived about a half-mile away from the home of victim Ronald Browning, a hospital chaplain, but did not know him. "I would have to say this is one of the most disturbing cases I've seen," Bragg told NBC News. "We've yet to determine a true logical...

Reports that the former Bishop of Limburg has received a new job at the Vatican, despite being ousted from his post for a €31-million spending spree, sparked bafflement on Tuesday. […] After several months living in an upscale 180-square-metre apartment in Regensburg, (Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst) is believed to have already relocated to Rome to take up a specially created post preparing catechetical materials for bishops’ conferences. “The post was created for Tebartz-van Elst and has the hallmarks of a ‘make-work’ job because the Vatican couldn’t figure out what else to do with the prelate,” the RNS Religion News Service wrote...

Anyone else see the hypocrisy?

The Supreme Court of India ruled on Monday that the country’s Muslims have a right to practice their religion, but those rights do not extend to having multiple wives. “What was protected under Article 25 (right to practice and propagate any religion) was the religious faith and not a practice which may run counter to public order, health or morality. Polygamy was not integral part of religion and monogamy was a reform within the power of the State under Article 25,” read the judgement from Supreme Court Justices T. S. Thakur and A. K. Goel.

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A French graffiti artist has told how he was attacked by a gang after refusing to take down a mural calling for religious harmony in Paris. The artist, known as Combo, 28, was left with a dislocated shoulder and bruises across his face after being set upon in a ghetto in the east of the capital. [snip] When asked whether Paris had changed since the Islamist attacks, Combo said: 'It is different, clearly.

While innocent people are being slaughtered in the Middle East and Africa by Islamist radicals, not unlike when the Jews were being rounded up and killed by the Nazis, President Barack Obama is “barely” responding and is instead negotiating with Iran and “building the Iranian Islamo-nazi caliphate,” said best-selling author and nationally syndicated conservative talk radio host Mark Levin. Levin further said that the pressure is on to “destroy” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because he was invited to speak before Congress by Republican leader John Boehner and, in his remarks, “might offend the Islamo-nazi regime in Tehran” and “offend...

This smiley face hovering in space looks like it was beamed into the heavens by a celestial keyboard. Captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, it was in fact created by a quirk of general relativity known as gravitational lensing. The glowing eyes are bright galaxies that are part of a galaxy cluster known as SDSS J1038+4849. The massive structure warps space-time, bending light like a lens to create a stretched image of distant galaxies, called an Einstein ring. The well-positioned circular shape creates the outline of the face and the wry grin.

From science to scientism in the Obama era  | An excerpt from the newly updated edition of John G. West’s Darwin Day in America Just how far some [Obama] administration officials were willing to take the idea that science should override ethical concerns became apparent with the disclosure of a multiyear experiment funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) involving more than 1,300 premature infants. As part of the experiment, premature infants were randomly assigned to receive higher or lower levels of oxygen. Those receiving lower levels of oxygen were more likely to die, while those receiving higher levels of...

“The thing from which the world suffers just now more than any other evil,” wrote author and Catholic convert G.K. Chesterton, “is not the assertion of falsehood, but the endless and irrepressible repetition of half-truths.” Jean-Paul Sartre emphasized freedom, but denied morality. Sigmund Freud stressed instinct, but suppressed the spiritual. Friedrich Nietzsche glorified the individual, but disdained the community. Karl Marx celebrated the community, but rejected the individual. Charles Darwin was enamored of empirical science, but excluded metaphysics.It is an all-too common theme. Chesterton, himself, I am happy to note, was not speaking in half-truths. More contemporaneously, Richard Dawkins has...

This is from a brochure by Priests for Life’s Father Frank Pavone that can be found here. Priests for Life has been kind enough to allow me to republish material from their site. The pictures of unborn babies throughout are my addition. All of the babies pictured could be legally aborted in at least one US state. Most people admit that abortion is wrong; surveys show, in fact, that half of all Americans are willing to call it “murder.” (See, for example, the January 1998 New York Times/CBS News Poll.) Yet a disturbing number of these same people will not...

“I perform abortions‬ because of my religious belief. I would feel I wasn’t living up to my Christian responsibility if I saw the need to not offer an answer to that need. We have a saying among Presbyterians that God alone is Lord of the conscience.” Abortionist James Armstrong, in the 1990′s film Whose Choice?

“Says who?” That challenge to authority is not confined to adolescents. It is a valid question, provided one wants a legitimate answer. The right use of authority is a staple of civilized order, and its abuse is the engine of the worst civil crimes. That is why our government has a system of checks and balances. The source of Christ’s authority was the big question when he healed and forgave sins. He taught “as one with authority and not as the scribes.” When accused of using Satan as the source of his authority over evil spirits, he replied that a...

During Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, NASCAR great Darrell Waltrip shared his Christian testimony with the thousands gathered, including Barack and Michelle Obama and the Dalai Lama, stating that he thought he was once a pretty good person, but “good people” go to Hell without Christ.

Six minute video. Hilarious comparison of the founders of two world religions. Worth a watch.

So, what causes someone to pick up a gun, walk on to a school campus, and start shooting people? Well, that’s not a question I sit around thinking about very often. But a recent online article in Aeon magazine has some insights that I think are worth sharing. The article, entitled “Running Amok,” was written by Joseph Pierre, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA. In it, he surveys the clinical literature on the perpetrators of mass killings at places like Columbine High School and the University of California at Santa Barbara. Pierre notes that in the aftermath of these killings,...