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Along with Medvedev and his wife.

Transcendence is to the sci-fi genre what Noah is to the Bible. Both are poorly conceived reboots of a literary form into pseudo-visionary garbage. Each film also exemplifies the current trend of agnostic filmmakers playing God. In Transcendence, Johnny Depp, as the obviously named Will Caster, unleashes his berserk world-dominating ambitions after he dies and is resurrected as an artificially intelligent computer program with the power to “overcome the limits of biology.” In Noah, filmmaker Darren Aronofsky reconceives the Biblical story of the Flood and God’s covenant with man through His servant (played by Russell Crowe) as a smart-ass...

Rastafarian inmates are being handed Bob Marley CDs, drums and shakers after their religion was officially recognized by prison chiefs. New rules mean Rastafarianism is an approved religion alongside Christianity, Islam and other major faiths. The pack has been created to ensure Rastafarian prisoners can pray together in a “fulsome and harmonious way”, a faith advisor said. However, the religion’s followers have been told that one common element of their religious practice is barred: they cannot smoke cannabis in jail. …

That pretzel you're munching is not only an ideal accompaniment to a beer, it has a connection with Lent that dates back to the fourth century. In the Roman Empire, the faithful kept a strict fast all through Lent: no milk, no butter, no cheese, no eggs, no cream and no meat, according to CatholicCulture.com Ancient Romans made small breads of water, flour and salt, as a reminder that Lent was a time of prayer. The breads — the first pretzel-like breads — were shaped to form crossed arms to symbolize prayer, as praying was done with arms crossed their...

They are the colourful carpets used to coat the streets of Guatemala's cities during their iconic Easter Holy Week processions. And this year the strongly Catholic country has a new reason to celebrate - it has been recognised by Guinness World Records for producing the longest sawdust carpet in the world. Using 5,000 volunteers to create it, as well as 54 tonnes of sawdust, the record-breaking carpet measure a whopping 6,600ft - more than 2,000ft longer than the previous record holder.

Gay marriage has its second hearing at the federal appellate level Thursday as lawyers for two Oklahoma women and the county clerk who would not give them a marriage license square off in a Denver courtroom. The appeal of a lower court’s January ruling that struck down Oklahoma’s gay marriage ban is the second time the issue has reached appellate courts since the U.S. Supreme Court shook up the legal landscape last year by finding the federal Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional. The same three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard a similar Utah case...

Israeli archaeologists have unearthed a rare sarcophagus featuring a slender face and a scarab ring inscribed with the name of an Egyptian pharaoh, Israel's Antiquities Authority said Wednesday. The mystery man whose skeleton was found inside the sarcophagus was most likely a local Canaanite official in the service of ancient Egypt, Israeli archaeologists believe, shining a light on a period when pharaohs governed the region. "This is a really beautiful face, very serene," said Edwin van den Brink, an Egyptologist and archaeologist with Israel's government antiquities authority. "It's very appealing." Van den Brink said archaeologists dug at Tel Shadud, an...

A rare "blood moon tetrad" will arrive with the start of a total lunar eclipse, beginning late on Monday evening--or, for most of the East Coast, early Tuesday. The eclipse, in which the full moon will be darkened by the earth's shadow, will coincide with the Jewish festival of Passover. In a bizarre, rare calendrical coincidence, the Jewish holiday of Sukkot in October will also feature a solar eclipse--as will both Passover and Sukkot next year as well.

A wooden cross that sits in front of an Upstate church was set on fire over the weekend, according to an incident report from the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office. A church deacon at St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church on Old Howard Gap Road reported the burned cross on Saturday morning. He told deputies that someone set fire to the large wooden cross which had a wreath and purple cloth over it between 6 p.m. Friday and 9:30 a.m. Saturday. According to an incident report, church leaders believed that a purple cloth and crown of thorns on the cross were set...

A humorous video walks you through the exodus of the Jews as if it happened today.What if Moses had Facebook? That's the question a Jewish group in Israel began formally asking in 2011. And by Monday - on the eve of Passover - more than 2.5 million people had clicked in to watch a YouTube video trying to answer that question, all with a jazzy version of the Passover classic, "Dayenu," set in the background. When Aish.com first publicized the "Google Exodus - Passover Movie," just 50,000 people had seen the clever 2:17-minute clip. Silicon Valley plays a prominent role...

Free (until 4/16) viewing of The Tabernacle: The Veil

Noah, the fanatical environmentalist anti-religious big budget movie, has crashed to 6th place, where it’s closely tied with the low budget God’s Not Dead, a Christian film. Noah had a budget of $125 million and is struggling to make that back. God’s Not Dead has a budget of $2 million and has made it back many times over. Noah is playing in over 3,282 theaters, while G0d’s Not Dead is playing in 1,860 theaters. While the final box office figures for the weekend aren’t in yet, current estimates place Noah in 6th place with $7 million for the weekend and...

...This is not the article I set out to write. The facts – or at least my recollection of the facts – changed and I had to change with them. My original thesis was that several years ago LGBQT activists gave assurances that their agenda did not have to conflict with religious liberty rights and that they rejected any claims that opposing homosexual rights was akin to racial discrimination. I thought they too had once claimed, as law scholar Doug Kmiec said nine years ago, that it was “inconceivable” that “a successful analogy will be drawn in the public mind...

The University of Kentucky has stopped a campus-wide survey asking students if they think homosexuality is a “sin,” apparently deciding that knowing this information is not worth the negative publicity it is receiving. The survey, originally reported on by Campus Reform, asked students if they agree or disagree with statements such as “Male homosexuality is a perversion” and “If it were possible, I would be straight.” It was not made clear in the survey who would be reading students’ responses or if the survey was confidential, sparking concern and confusion among some. …

A Saudi court in Jeddah has ordered the permanent closure of a liberal website for publishing what was perceived as “anti-Islamic content”, Al Arabiya reported on Sunday, citing the Saudi news website Sabq. According to Sabq, a number of Saudis had demanded the closure of the Saudi Liberal Network for posting stories and comments that are considered against religion and morality. …

A progressive talk show host this past week did a partial review of Karl Marx’s ten recommendations to establish communist society. He discussed the abolition of rights of inheritance, not completely dismissing it. He also discussed the progressive income tax which he endorsed; of course no self-respecting progressive would ever disagree with that. It is a cornerstone of progressivism. The analog would be that when you go to the grocer’s. The check out clerk would ask for your income statement before determining the charges. He did admit that Marx wanted to destroy all rights of property; mighty charitable of him....

The lunar eclipse this week will be the first of four "blood moons" and because significant events have occurred in history around the time of blood moon tetrads, many are wondering whether the biblical prophecy of the coming apocalypse is near. “Conspiracy websites draw parallels between lunar eclipses and historical events, like the fall of Constantinople and the founding of the State of Israel,” reports CTV News on April 13.

Local radio is reporting that there has been a shooting at the Overland Park, Kansas Jewish Community Center around 1:00 p.m. Central time. Man walking up to people asking if they are Jewish and boom. News conference at 5:00. Evidently CNN is reporting.

The husband and wife team behind the Oscar-winning Frozen said on Thursday that while Disney is open to bringing songwriters from diverse backgrounds, God is the only thing that they have seen censored since they have worked there. Speaking on NPR's Fresh Air show, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez told host Terry Gross that some of the preconceptions outside of the industry folks might have about Disney may not be exactly true. "Disney is not this sanitized place that you might imagine it to be. I mean, they hired Ashman and Menken after they did "Little Shop of Horrors," which...

Japanese Tech Firm NTT Is Scanning the Ancient Texts in the Vatican Apostolic Library Almost 600 years after Pope Nicholas V founded the Vatican Apostolic Library, the Holy See is now turning to 50 experts, five scanners and a Japanese IT firm to digitize millions of pages from its priceless manuscripts, opening them to the broader public for the first time. When the project is finished, one of the richest and most important collections of historical texts in the world will be available with a click of the mouse—and free. The plan marks a revolution for an institution known as...

Preaching to the choir may not impress movie critics, but it seems to work at the box office, if the success of the micro-budget Christian movie "God's Not Dead" is any indication. The indie film about a college student who debates his atheist professor about the existence of God has grossed about $35 million in ticket sales so far, making it one of the biggest surprises of the year, with little sign of stopping as it enters its fourth weekend in theaters. In a landscape dominated by dystopian teen sci-fi and Marvel superheroes, that may not seem like a lot...

In 2012, Harvard researcher Karen King revealed the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife." A small piece of papyrus, the lightly worn document was written in Coptic Egyptian, with parts missing and ink faded, and didn't say much. But what it did say, wrote Ariel Sabar in Smithsonian Magazine two years ago was enough to “send jolts through the world of biblical scholarship—and beyond.� The fragment’s 33 words, scattered across 14 incomplete lines, leave a good deal to interpretation. But in King’s analysis, and as she argues in a forthcoming article in the Harvard Theological Review, the “wife� Jesus refers to is probably Mary Magdalene, and Jesus...

Megachurch pastor John Hagee is warning his San Antonio congregation and international following of a “world-shaking event that will happen between April 2014 and October 2015.” And, no, he's not talking about Fiesta. Hagee, founder of the Cornerstone Church, points to “four blood moons,” a rare astronomical event of four consecutive and complete lunar eclipses, known as a tetrad, which begins April 15. The San Antonio pastor asserts the dates of the eclipses signify a major event that will change history in a book released in October, a series of sermons and a TV special airing on Tuesday, the first...

Reverend Deborah Lindsay, Minister of Spiritual Care at First Community Church in Ohio, is a YouTube viral video star because of her call on Christians to avoid anti-Muslim sentiment. Unfortunately, her chief outreach partner is a Muslim Brotherhood-tied mosque named the Noor Islamic Cultural Center. A video of her sermon, uploaded in September 2010, has been viewed over one million times. Her outreach to Muslims was also the subject of an article in the Columbus Dispatch. In it, she is quoted as comparing jihad to Lent. […] The audience, especially non-Muslims like Rev. Lindsay, is led to believe that this...

Shameless Vanity. Doomonyou Junior is getting married to the love of his life this Sunday afternoon. Mrs. Doomonyou and I are driving down from Petaluma to Riverside tomorrow and would like to ask for prayers for safe travel, a good wedding rehearsal and dinner, and a blessed wedding.

A faded fragment of papyrus known as the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,” which caused an uproar when unveiled by a Harvard Divinity School historian in 2012, has been tested by scientists who conclude in a journal published on Thursday that the ink and papyrus are very likely ancient, and not a modern forgery. Skepticism about the tiny scrap of papyrus has been fierce because it contained a phrase never before seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife...’ ” Too convenient for some, it also contained the words “she will be able to be my disciple,”...

An Italian court on Wednesday recognized a gay couple as married for the first time in Italy, which does not have any form of official acknowledgement of same-sex unions. The court in Grosseto in Tuscany ordered the city council to list the couple, who had their wedding in New York in 2012, as married in a ruling that was immediately hailed by gay rights campaigners as historic. “This is an unprecedented case in our country,” Sergio Lo Giudice, a senator for the Democratic Party and a former head of the watchdog Arcigay, told reporters. …

Chris and Leah Wedding. This Priest's Amazing Surprise That Stunned a Wedding and Left the Bride in Tears.

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla.,A Florida man had a very specific request when he asked a judge to switch up his public defender. Gustav Potthoff, who is accused of attacking his roommate with a butter knife because he thought he looked like Jesus, told an Orange County judge that he deserves to “be with someone of my own kind." Potthoff is an atheist. "It's just my human rights and everything else," said Potthoff. "I'm allowed to be with someone of my own kind." The judge told the 51-year-old that if he wants an atheist attorney, he’s going to have to pay for...

Can a Christian be a liberal? Short answer: no. There is no way a Christian can buy into Liberal ideology and be faithful to the bigger-than-Dallas teachings of the scripture and expect to continue enjoying his hard-won religious liberties. For the “Christian” to lean politically to the left means that he must blow off huge chunks of the Bible and replace the scripture with the make-believe notions of postmodernism’s malleable “Christ.” Only after torturing the scripture can the Christian then fit liberalism into his supposed relationship with God.

<p>Darren Aronofsky’s Noah dominated the U.S. box office on its opening weekend and won critical acclaim, but not without controversy. The film, based on the biblical story in Genesis of Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood, arrived amid a deluge of outrage from religious groups. Some Christians fumed at the film’s straying from biblical Scripture. Meanwhile, a host of Muslim-majority countries banned Noah from screening in theaters because representations of Noah, a prophet of God in the Koran, are considered blasphemous. Such images “provoke the feelings of believers and are forbidden in Islam and a clear violation of Islamic law,” read a fatwa issued by Cairo’s al-Azhar University, one of the foremost institutions of Sunni Islam. Egypt has not banned the film, but Indonesia, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have. “It is important to respect these religions and not show the film,” lectured the main censors of the UAE.</p>

Hello. I am member of Mozilla's development team and these postings here lately force me now to react. Let me first clarify one thing. I do that because someone has finally to speak out some things... Things which should clearly brought out to the public.... First, the incident about our short time CEO Eich..... many of us do NOT agree with what has happened. There has been a massive amount of pressure inside and outside of Mozilla which brought him to resign from his post. About the ads in the new tab page... Our reasoning for this is to make...

Myth-Making Aside, Eugenics Was a Mostly Progressive Enterprise Wesley J. Smith April 6, 2014 4:58 PM | Permalink I have often stated that biologist/eugenicist Charles Davenport (pictured above) was one of the great villains of American history. A new book by Paul Martin, Villains, Scoundrels, and Rogues: Incredible True Tales of Mischief and Mayhem, includes a chapter on this odious man. Good.But -- if the excerpt in Salon is a reliable indication, there may be other agendas afoot in Martin's writing about Davenport. Indeed, a reader of the article would never guess that eugenics was primarily supported by political progressives who rejected human exceptionalism. From "Hitler's Favorite American": What's...

The "Unintelligent" Are Not Wanted in Life! Wesley J. Smith April 3, 2014 | Eugenics is pernicious. Its core philosophy holds that some human beings are better than others based on invidious categorization of human capacities and characteristics.Eugenics leads to oppression and even killing. The old eugenics unleashed involuntary sterilization in the U.S. -- as well as infanticide and the murder of disabled adults in Germany.Those horrors put eugenics into hibernation, but it has awakened in the very places it started in the first place -- among the intelligentsia. Oxford bioethicist Julian Savulescu is a leading neo-eugenicist. Now, he proposes...

Black people are the fathers and mothers of civilization, white men are the devil, the Christian god is nothing more than a ghost and only a small percentage of people understand the world. These are just some of the ­beliefs behind the bling — the gaudy Five Percent Nation ­medallions worn by Jay Z and Carmelo Anthony.

Asking for prayer for a young lady by the name of Tami. She has cancer and is undergoing treatment. She is the daughter of the lady who stopped for my nephew, Ronnie, when he fell asleep at the wheel driving home from AZ. They were behind Ronnie, on their way to Bethesda, MD, for cancer treatments, saw the accident, and stopped to help...and even drove him to Maryland where his family could pick him up. He is well. They were his miracle. Now, that family deserves a miracle. Let's pray for one. Thank you all.

Jay-Z causes controversy by wearing gaudy medallion of 'Five Percent Nation' group who believe whites are 'wicked and weak' • The Brooklyn-born rapper wore a medallion representing the Five Percent Nation at a Nets game last week • One of the main tenets of the Nation of Islam offshoot is that white people are 'weak and wicked' and that black men hold the power of God • When asked if the medallion holds any importance to him, Jay-Z said: 'A little bit' • Jay-Z was spotted wearing the nation's symbol last year while giving radio interviews for his new album,...

I want to with all FReepers are very blessed upcoming Easter Season. Thought I would share this video to get ya' in the mood. I LOVE this beautiful arrangement and will be doing the flute solo with ensemble on Palm Sunday (pray that I'm not a bundle of nerves ;-) ). Enjoy! He is risen!!!! RIMTB If anyone is interested...The piece is called "Old Rugged Cross" and the arrangement is done by Marty Hamby for ensemble.

A Church of England decision to accept gay marriage would be “absolutely catastrophic” for Christians in troubled countries, the Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday. Anglicans in countries such as South Sudan, Nigeria and Pakistan are in danger as a result of liberal positions taken by the leaders of churches in the west, he said. The Most Reverend Justin Welby said he had visited a grave containing 369 bodies in South Sudan, where some people believed “if we leave a Christian community here we will all be made to become homosexual and so we will kill all the Christians”. […] The...

For the past 200 years in both North America and Europe, the Judeo-Christian worldview has been specifically targeted by modern environmental thinkers for being anti-natural. Much of this green opposition originally came forth from the dark and chilly northern forests of Germany and New England ...

Hair samples said to have come from a hairbrush used by Hitler’s long-term lover, Eva Braun, were tested by a BBC’s documentary and discovered to share qualities with the Eastern European Jewish genome. […] The scientists were surprised to discover a specific genome sequence—haplogroup N1b1—within the small group of maternal DNA which is associated with Ashkenazi Jews. …

I saw Noah, or shall I say, endured most of it before leaving prior to the actual ending. I was interested in how this story would be approached. It was an ambitious effort. The movie was high on visual impact, and low on cohesiveness or rationality. At various moments throughout the film, I felt as though I was watching two or three different movies all entwined. The director tried to say so very much the results were tedious a fragmented. Taken in portions, encapsulating certain scenes, the movie shows great promise and forethought. There are many beautiful scenes displaying the...

Noah’s Ark could have floated even with two of every land animal in the world packed inside, scientists have calculated. Although researchers are unsure if all the creatures could have squeezed into the huge vessel, they are confident it would have handled the weight of 70,000 animals without sinking. A group of master’s students from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Leicester University studied the exact dimensions of the Ark, set out in Genesis 6:13-22. According to The Bible, God instructed Noah to build a boat that was 300 cubits long 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high —...

Noah’s Ark would have floated even with two of every animal in the world packed inside, scientists have calculated. Although researchers are unsure if all the creatures could have squeezed into the huge boat, they are confident it would have handled the weight of 70,000 creatures without sinking. A group of master’s students from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Leicester University studied the exact dimensions of the Ark, set out in Genesis 6:13-22. According to The Bible, God instructed Noah to build a boat which was 300 cubits long 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high—recommending gopher wood...

With the release of its new biblical blockbuster Noah, Hollywood has once again proven it knows all too well the secret of the one animal singled out for greatest contempt among all the different species identified as non-kosher. Do you know why the pig has always been the personification of the forbidden food we are most warned against consuming? The rabbis explain it’s because every other animal that is not kosher lacks the two signs, split hooves and chewing its cud, that are both necessary to identify it as permissible. A cow is an example of an animal that fulfills...

I hope I am posting this in the right area. I don't post much, but am asking for your thoughts and prayers for my 13 year old son who is about to go through his 2nd kidney transplant due to FSGS. He has been battling this since he was 3 years old. My son, Joshua will be admitted to the hospital this morning for surgery to install a catheter into his neck/chest and also shut down his transplanted kidney that he received from his dad 3 years ago. He will then stay at the hospital for the next few weeks...

Part of this year’s Lenten discipline for many religious people has been to see two bad religious movies, “Noah” and “God’s Not Dead.” Both left me longing for the comparative moral simplicity and integrity of “The Wolf of Wall Street.” In “Noah,” the main character is a brooding, misanthropic vegan. One hopes that Russell Crowe, a fine actor, does not end up being typecast a la Charlton Heston. There just aren’t many parts for brooding, misanthropic vegans. The movie itself consists of tedium punctuated by anachronism, sanctimony and animated rock people. It contains just enough spiritual pretention to make you...

A Polish priest has warned parents to be on their guard against Lego, warning the plastic blocks are a tool of Satan and can "destroy" children's souls. In a presentation aimed at parents, Father Slawomir Kostrzewa said the popular Danish toy company had taken a lurch to the dark side with its series of Monster Fighters and Zombie mini-figures, and that they "were about darkness and the world of death". "Friendly fellows have been replaced by dark monsters," he explained. "These toys can have a negative effect on children. They can destroy their souls and lead them to the dark...

Bad infection in my right leg. Went to the local VA Clinic a week ago and the physician insisted that I be rushed to the local emergency room to check for a blood clot. Hours later - no blood clot found, so ER doctor prescribed two antibiotics. Have been on them for a week now and while they've tamped the infection down, they aren't defeating it. So I've pleaded with the VA Clinic to please give me the antibiotics that have successfully fought it in the past. I'm still waiting to hear back. Meanwhile, lots of pain.

The Bible has long been a rich source of story ideas for filmmakers, and recently released movies like Son of God and Noah suggest that the biblical epic genre is far from exhausted. There are many reasons why filmmakers continue to make movies based on biblical stories. The Bible’s familiar stories feature larger-than-life characters, plenty of action, and time-tested storylines. However, from the film producer’s perspective, the primary reason why films based on biblical stories continue to be made is that these films are consistently able to make money. Darren Aronofsky’s interpretation of the biblical story of Noah opened last...