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If viewers happened to be tuned into CSPAN several weeks ago, they were in for quite a spectacle. CSPAN was re-airing a conference that took place in May of 2005 with the ominous title, “Examining the Real Agenda of the Far Religious Right.” Sponsored by the New York Open Center, the conference was anything but open-minded. Instead, participants launched into a litany of complaints against the so-called Christian Right that bordered on bigotry. I half expected it to end with a pitchfork armed mob breaking down the doors of a local church. Perusing the Open Center’s website, one will find...

God, Darwinism, Intelligent Design and Secular Humanists. My humble opinion: The Theory of Evolution is just that - A Theory. The Theory of Intelligent Design is just that - A Theory. Both theories have some facts that support them - and other facts that don't support them. It used to be that places of higher learning taught students to think for themselves based on scientific facts and evidence. But what "facts" support intelligent design? 1. Evolution doesn't explain anything on how it all began. As a theory, it is grossly incomplete. At least intelligent design has a theory on the...

About those "secular" menorahs    TERRY MATTINGLY When it comes to decorating tabernacles and temples, the God of Israel cares about the fine details. Consider these Exodus instructions: "Thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold: of beaten work shall the candlestick be made: his shaft, and his branches, his bowls, his knops, and his flowers, shall be of the same. And six branches shall come out of the sides of it; three branches of the candlestick out of the one side, and three branches of the candlestick out of the other side." Counting the center candlestick, this created a...

The War Against The Light By GEORGE A. KENDALL    We elderly and semi-elderly people can still remember a time when nothing was less controversial than the words “Merry Christmas.” If you said them in July, of course, you might be regarded as more than a little eccentric, perhaps in need of professional help of some kind, but even then people would have been puzzled, not offended. In my childhood, in the 1940s and 1950s, I used to go about town, at Christmastime, and wish everyone I saw a Merry Christmas, without having an anxiety attack over the possibility that...

Tehran, 16 Dec. (AKI) - The wife of Iranian journalist, Akbar Ganji, who is imprisoned in a Tehran jail has said that her husband has again received death threats in prison. "A representative of the chief prosecutor visited my husband in jail, and issued a new death threat saying that he will only leave the cell wearing a 'kaftan' [the traditional white blanket that is used to wrap those who die in Islamic countries]," said Massoumeh Shafii, the wife of the dissident journalist. She said she was told this by prison officials - who over the last four weeks have...

IS GOD BAD FOR SOCIETY ? Europeans are much better off than Americans because of their lack of faith. That's the conclusion of a paper published in the Journal of Religion and Society. Once, secularists, atheists, agnostics and materialists argued that a society without faith could be as just and moral as one built on the absolute standards of a Judeo-Christian foundation. Today, as the secular world's war with God rages, they are going further – building a pseudo-scientific case that faithless societies are actually better off. Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a self-proclaimed "social scientist," writes:...

LONDON, September 27 (IranMania) - Iranian dissident student leader Ali Afshari has been sentenced to six years in jail for "attacking national security", a source close to him said. He was also sentenced to five years deprivation of civic rights, which bars him from holding any official post, such as teaching, as well as public speaking. Afshari can appeal both Revolutionary Court verdicts, according to AFP. The activist, a member of a pro-reform student movement known as the Office to Consolidate Unity, has spent three years behind bars since 2000 including one year in solitary confinement. In 2001, Afshari appeared...

While the pro hardline government media in Iran called the meeting between the Iranian and Canadian foreign ministers successful, Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs, said, after meeting with his Iranian counterpart that his country had prepared a new resolution to condemn human rights violations in Iran and would propose it to the United Nations General Assembly. The new resolution condemning Iran's human rights record followed by IAEA resolution last week, which paves the way for referring Iran's nuclear file to the UN Security Council, has already created new challenges for Iran's foreign policy makers. An Iran analyst believes that although...

The following statement was issued today by the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Ambeyi Ligabo: "I wish to express again my deepest concern regarding the situation of journalist and writer Akbar Ganji whom I met on 8 November 2003 at the Evin prison, while visiting the Islamic Republic of Iran in my official capacity as Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. On that occasion, relevant Iranian authorities...

Why Iran, asked friends and relatives. Why should a group of women journalists decide to go on a busman’s holiday to Iran of all places? “You will have to cover your heads and won't be allowed to talk to men,” exclaimed a colleague. Iranian embassy officials were equally curious. The usual reasons were trotted out — it is an unlikely destination for a holiday with the family, but it is of interest to journalists as an important country in India’s neighbourhood. The visas finally arrived, just as we were giving up hope, and were accompanied by elaborate instructions — heads...

Tehran, Iran, Aug. 22 – An Iranian student activist was sentenced to one year in prison for organising anti-government demonstrations, the head of a student organisation said on Monday. Amir-Hossein Balali, a former student activist in Amir-Kabir University of Technology, had also been accused of inciting public anger against the state during the years 1998-2001, Yashar Qajar said. He also faced charges of insulting Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Balali had previously been arrested in the summer 2001 and held in solitary confinement for one month on similar charges. According to Qajar, Balali has been active in setting up...

A woman dressed as a bishop leads an anti-religion demonstration in Cologne August 19, 2005. Pope Benedict arrived in his German homeland on Thursday on the first international trip of his pontificate, a visit to the World Youth Day attended by hundreds of thousands of young Catholics. After the jubilant reception he received from 400,000 young Catholics Benedict's agenda centred on the closed-door talks at the presidential villa in nearby Bonn and the religious meetings in Cologne. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski Demonstrators dressed as a priest and a nun kiss in front of a large model dinosaur during an anti-religion demonstration in...

APART FROM the horseracing tipster on the BBC’s Today programme, no one has a worse record for predictions than the sociologist of religion. The classical sociologists expected organised religion to wither on the vine. Religion might be the heart of a heartless world and the opiate of the people, but, once the people were liberated and prosperous, there would be no need for supernatural consolations. As societies modernised, and human life was organised in an increasingly rational manner, superstition (for which read religion) would disappear. In global terms, none predicted the pentecostal and charismatic surge within Christianity. None foresaw the...

Al Muhajiroun (Khavarej) is referred to a clandestine group of four who cooperated to assassinate four leaders at promptly the same time: Imam Ali who was a religious leader (the fourth Suni's Khalif and the first Shiite's Imam), Moavieh who was the leader of the land, Amro Aas who was a canning politician and a senior advisor to Moavieh, and - Of the four only one, namely Ibn Moljam, successfully carried out his assassination by wounding Imam Ali with a poisonous sword, during the Imam's pray. Imam Ali died of his wound on the third night, the 21st, of Ramadan....

Akbar Ganji is dying in a hospital in Tehran. He is not a prophet. He is not calling for a revolution. He is not doing George Bush a favor. He is a man who speaks his mind and is willing to die for it. But he must not die. We must do everything we can to force the authorities to let him go home. Ganji is not everyone's favorite dissident. He quotes Khomeini, he looks up to Ayatollah Montazeri, and his circle of friends and allies includes leading religious reformists such as Saeed Hajjarian and Abdolkarim Soroush. Because of his...

SMUGGLED photographs of Akbar Ganji, Iran’s most famous political prisoner, show him ghostly white and gaunt with sunken eyes. He is close to death after 56 days of a hunger strike. Mr Ganji was rushed from the Evin prison in Tehran to Milad Hospital last week as his health deteriorated. Massoumeh Shafiie, his wife, said doctors have tried to feed him intravenously but he has pulled out the feeding tubes. Mr Ganji, an investigative journalist, was jailed for six years in 2000 on charges of “acting against national security”. Some charges related to an article he wrote linking some of...

New York, August 3, 2005) - The Iranian government intensified its attacks on independent human rights defenders by arresting prominent lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani and threatening Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, Human Rights Watch said today. On Saturday evening, July 30, agents of the Judiciary, operating under the authority of Tehran chief prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, arrested Soltani inside the offices of the Lawyers Association in Tehran. The next day, a Judiciary spokesman announced that Soltani was arrested for "revealing secrets relating to the case of nuclear spies." Soltani is currently being held in Evin prison in Tehran but has yet to be...

On June 8, 2005, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited President Bush in the White House. Among the topics the two discussed were freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. Speaking from the Oval Office, Bush declared Turkey's democracy to be "an important example for the people of the broader Middle East."Turkey remains an important ally of the United States despite recent bilateral tensions over the Iraq war and its aftermath. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have valued Turkey not only as a strategic military partner in the Cold War but also, in recent decades, as a democratic outpost...

 The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies Kay S. Hymowitz Summer 2005 Read through the megazillion words on class, income mobility, and poverty in the recent New York Times series “Class Matters” and you still won’t grasp two of the most basic truths on the subject: 1. entrenched, multigenerational poverty is largely black; and 2. it is intricately intertwined with the collapse of the nuclear family in the inner city. By now, these facts shouldn’t be hard to grasp. Almost 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers. Those mothers are far more likely than married mothers to be...

Today's culture wars can be directly traced to the cultural transformations of the 1960's. As a matter of fact, that critical decade represented nothing less than a cultural revolution of sorts--a revolution Stanley Kurtz describes as "both a fulfillment and a repudiation of the vision of America's founders." Kurtz makes his case in "Culture and Values in the 1960's," a fascinating essay published in Never a Matter of Indifference: Sustaining Virtue in a Free Republic, recently released by the Hoover Institution Press. Edited by Peter Berkowitz, Never a Matter of Indifference is a thought-provoking collection of essays on moral character...

On Sunday they packed 'em in -- a circumstance you wouldn't have noted for some long while in English churches, which, like European churches in general, seem to resound mainly with historic echoes. But there was praying to be done, and it seemed to the English people meet, right and their bounden duty -- as the Book of Common Prayer would have it -- to lay their sorrows and perplexities before the Lord. And so, three days after the explosions and screams that scarred a London morning, something like the old European civilization popped back into view. I didn't say...

Some recent events would seem to indicate that the American Civil Liberties Union is lost in the woods without a compass. A moral compass, that is. For the last five years, the ACLU has been fighting the federal departments of Defense and Housing and Urban Development because of their support for the Boy Scouts of America – support that has taken the form of raising money for their national jamborees, allowing military personnel to lead Scout troops in their personal capacities, and providing access to government facilities for free. Now, a federal judge has sided with the ACLU and ruled...

Nineteen days have passed since I began my hunger strike. I have lost nineteen kilograms. I am imprisoned. I do not have permission to make phone calls or read newspapers. I have been denied visitation. I cannot walk outside my cell. The liars say they have no political prisoners. They say the political prisoners are not on hunger strike. They distort the facts by calling a cell a suite, saying that prisons are as comfortable as they can be in a hotel! Calling a donkey a parrot does not miraculously turn the donkey into a parrot! Prisoner is someone whose...

If you’re an evangelical Christian, a Jew, a Catholic or any kind of believer – you have an implacable enemy – one who hates you and wants to destroy you. When I say hate, I’m not talking about pique, annoyance or a vague aversion. I mean hate the way Nazis hated Jews, the way white supremacists hate blacks, the way the Hutus hated the Tutsis. Once you reach this realization, it gives you an almost Zen-like clarity of vision and focus. Because then you understand your enemy, what motivates him, and what he is capable of. And you begin to...

Is Conservatism compatible with capitalism? Theorists such as Joseph Schumpeter thought (as did Marx) that the central process of capitalism was "creative destruction." Too much destruction, and there isn't much left to conserve. The conclusion would have to be that capitalism drives out conservatism, but for the last half century, America has been developing a dramatic refutation of this abstract thesis. It is a development that would have astonished students of American culture in the middle of the 20th century. In those days, Louis Hartz declared that America was a liberal society lacking both conservatism and socialism because it had...

LONDON -- Monkey business proved to be lucrative Monday when paintings by Congo the chimpanzee sold at auction for more than $25,000. The three abstract, tempera paintings were auctioned at Bonhams in London alongside works by impressionist master Renoir and pop art provocateur Andy Warhol. But while Warhol's and Renoir's work didn't sell, bidders lavished attention on Congo's paintings. An American bidder named Howard Hong, who described himself as an ''enthusiast of modern and contemporary painting," bought the lot of paintings for $26,352, including a buyer's premium. The sale price far surpassed predictions. "We had no idea what these things...

At around the age of eighteen, I became interested in politics. Prior to that, my attention was focused elsewhere due to my age, I believe. I did not understand the real meaning of political language, but I tried, mostly without success, to seek out sources to research and understand it. When I turned eighteen, in accordance with Muslim education, I completed an intensive program of Islamic study, which took four to five months. During this time, I began reading non-Iranian, secular books. While reading history, sociology, anthropology, and religious texts, it became clear to me that, when religion moves from...

It seems the L.A. Weekly wants to seek out and destroy Christianity itself instead of any particular sect thereof. I can say this because the newspaper has admitted as much in a recent column (go here). More on that later. This June 10 column has identified Christians as “Christers,” the kitschy new hate word created by anti-religionists in the U.S.A. to describe their foe: you and me. The Weekly uses this pseudo word some 16 times in the Op Ed even going so far as to make it appear as if the word was used in a Wall Street Journal...

(RNS) "The God Who Wasn't There" is a feature-length documentary exploring the theory that Jesus Christ never existed. It begins its theatrical screenings in New York and other cities throughout the United States on Friday, June 17. Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times says the film is "provocative -- to put it mildly." Christianity Today called it "an irreverent, Michael Moore-like documentary." The film claims that Jesus is a fictional character, a legend never based on a real human being. Directed by former Christian Brian Flemming the film includes interviews with liberal religious leaders and non-believers. "Many Christians believe...

Regime Change in Iran: Interview with Gary Metz Ryan Mauro - 6/3/2005 Gary Metz operates the Regime Change Iran web site (http://www.regimechangeiran.com), one of the top-notch blogs keeping readers up-to-date on developments inside Iran. RM: Given the fact that there were such large intelligence failures when we went into Iraq, and such a large portion of the American population feels the war is a mistake, how can we trust the intelligence coming out of Iran? GM: Our intelligence inside of Iran is not what it should be. It will take years to build the kind of intelligence this country needs...

Each spring as high school graduation approaches, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sends out a letter to public schools warning them that no one can pray or make remarks referring to their faith at graduation. But the ACLU goes further than that. They typically demand that public schools censure any speech that might be viewed as having a religious tone. It is not enough that the school not sponsor prayer or religious activities, the ACLU believes government must prevent people from doing or saying anything that may have religious meaning. I sat on a public school board and saw...

While American universities may proclaim diversity as an exalted value, a recent study shows that the only freedom of thought that really exists on campus is "to believe the dominant political ideology. Other ideologies are marginalized." (Klien and Western. For full text of study, follow links below.) But Phil Mitchell doesn’t need a study to validate what he has experienced for over 20 years. "The truth is, universities are the most hostile, narrow-minded and intolerant environment in society," Mitchell said. Mitchell, 57, is a former history professor at the University of Colorado (CU) and a deeply committed Christian. He was...

US chastity ring funding attacked The silver ring is a constant reminder of the abstinence promise The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against the US government over its funding of a nationwide sexual abstinence programme.The ACLU says the Silver Ring Thing programme violates the principle that the state budget cannot be used to promote religion. The programme, which targets teenagers, is an offshoot of a Christian ministry. Since 2003, it has received more than $1m from the Department of Health and Human Services. Symbolic ringThe funding is part of a government initiative to expand abstinence-only sex...

The emotions this movement inspired coincided with the one deeply moral political phenomenon that postwar America has experienced--Martin Luther King's civil-rights movement. The Rev. King's multiracial civil-rights marches and their role in overturning de jure and de facto segregation in the U.S. were a political and moral achievement. In retrospect, it's clear that the moral clarity of the early civil-rights movement was a political epiphany for many white liberals. Some have since returned to traditional, private lives; others have become neoconservatives. But many active liberals carried along their newly found moral certitude and quasi-religious fervor into nearly every major public-policy...

Shuffling out of the movie theater last weekend, I emitted a silent scream, frustrated by yet another example of Christianity under assault, the tumescent epic, “Kingdom of Heaven,” a film so utterly contemptuous of Christians and adoring of Muslims that a leading authority on the Crusades branded it “Osama Bin Laden's version of history.” “What insane times we live in,” one film critic notes. “Here we are in the midst of the War on Terror, and all Hollywood can do is continually bash Christianity.” In an industry historically known for coddling communists (the blacklist, Jane Fonda, Stone, Spielberg and others...

The National Broadcasting Company is continuing its anti-Catholic ways. And not even being subtle about it. Blasphemy is "the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for God." Sacrilege is "gross irreverence toward a hallowed person, place, or thing." On February 22, NBC broadcast an egregiously insulting episode of the sitcom "Committed,” using consecrated Communion wafers as comic fodder. In the name of humor, two of the show's characters flushed a Communion wafer down a toilet! For "good" measure, the show portrayed a priest as a vulgar ignoramus. For Catholics, that Communion wafer literally is the Body...

TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) -- Outraged by scenes of young boys and girls using Shiite Islam's most sacred mourning day as an opportunity to flirt in public, Iran's religious hard-liners are calling on authorities to stamp out such "vulgar displays." Failure to do so, some newspaper commentators said, would force pious citizens to take matters into their own hands. "Let the officials realize that the heroic and passionate people of Iran can easily deal with a handful of hoodlums and promiscuous elements that ridicule our sanctities," the hard-line Jomhuri-ye Eslami daily said in an editorial last week. The main focus of...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi announced Wednesday he's forming a broad coalition to fight for the post of prime minister after Iraq's dominant Shiite political party nominated a conservative for the job. "There are other lists and other brothers in smaller lists which won the elections, and we are working with some of those lists to form a national Iraqi democratic coalition which believes in Iraq and its principles," Allawi told a news conference. Allawi said he considered al-Jaafari an "honorable man," but when asked if he feared that the alliance could impose Islamic rule in Iraq,...

Would you first save the dog you love or a stranger if both were drowning? The answer depends on your value system. One of the most obvious and significant differences between secular and Judeo-Christian values concerns human worth. One of the great ironies of secular humanism is that it devalues the worth of human beings. As ironic as it may sound, the God-based Judeo-Christian value system renders man infinitely more valuable and significant than any humanistic value system. The reason is simple: Only if there is a God who created man is man worth anything beyond the chemicals of which...

In "Better Answers: The Case For Judao-Christian Values," http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42234 Dennis Prager said....."There is an epic battle taking place in the world over what value system humanity will embrace. There are essentially three competitors: European secularism, American Judeo-Christianity and Islam. I have described this battle in previous columns." Under the aegis of European secularism, Americans have been lured and seduced into liberating themselves from the social constraints of America's traditional Judao-Christian moral ethics, which served as both eternally unchanging moral anchor and as the anchor to objective reality. "This much needed liberation," we were told, "is a sign of social enlightenment."...

There is an epic battle taking place in the world over what value system humanity will embrace. There are essentially three competitors: European secularism, American Judeo-Christianity and Islam. We do in large measure because values based on G-d and the Bible have been replaced by secular values. The result was predicted by the British thinker G.K. Chesterton at the turn of the 20th century: "When people stop believing in G-d, they don't believe in nothing — they believe in anything." In fact, it was a secular Jew, the great German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, who understood that despite its anti-Semitism...

Offended' secular fanatics continue to attack Christmas By JAY AMBROSE Guest Commentary TO INSIST that the placing of a nativity scene in a government building at Christmastime represents an effort to establish a state faith is a laughable absurdity, and there's an appropriate way to describe those who carry on about it: secular fanatics. A fanatic, after all, is someone who is irrational and extreme in devotion to a cause. The cause in this instance is keeping the government from trying to impose a faith on the population, the sort of thing that happened repeatedly in 16th-century Europe, leading to...

That Other ChurchLet's face it: Secularism is a religion. Let's treat it as such.David Klinghoffer | posted 12/21/2004 12:01 a.m. A 2004 survey of religion and politics revealed a religious minority that constitutes at least 7.5 percent of the American population. It referred to this informal denomination as "Secular." Sponsored by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the poll shows the fairly uniform political orientation of secularists: Only 21 percent regard themselves as politically conservative. A large majority, 79 percent, favor what the survey terms "gay rights" and support legal abortion. For each element in the Judeo-Christian family...

One December a few years back, I was in Santa Claus, Indiana, and went to the Post Office - a popular destination thanks to its seasonal postmark. "Merry Christmas!" I said provocatively. But Postmistress Sandy Colyon was ready for me. "A week ago," she said, "I'd have had to say 'Happy Holidays', but we've been given a special dispensation from the Postmaster-General allowing us to say 'Merry Christmas'. So Merry Christmas!" That's "Christmas" at the dawn of the third millennium - a word you have to get a special memo from head office authorising the use thereof. In America, most...

I am not going to make many friends with this column, but the opinions in it need to be stated. Conservative thought does not require an individual to be religious or apply it to politics. Further, by failing to capitalize on this, we are holding our movement back. Now I know some out there are jumping for joy, but others want to burn me at the stake. The various reactions show how we are failing to truly unite the conservative movement. The secular conservatives are being ignored while religious conservatives are not willing to compromise with the secular conservatives. Right...

It’s appallingly looking NOT like Christmas Ev’rywhere you go: Leftists are at it once again, using their anchormen On a campaign to spread disdain you know. Yes, it’s that time of year again…when socialists, atheists, and malcontents (AKA – members of the ACLU and all who support the positions it advocates) get together to conspire – not necessarily by the fire, mind you – to spoil everybody’s good time. Let’s see what they’ve accomplished so far this Christmas season (yes, I said “Christmas” – sue me!): Federated Department Stores – you know, of Macy’s and Miracle on 34th Street fame...

This approach would force students to study American history without consulting the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, every inaugural address, the bulk of writings by America's founders and much more. Taken to further extremes, it would deprive Stevens Creek students knowledge of the Roman Empire from Constantine on, the Crusades, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, most of the greatest artwork before the 20th Century, the oevre of English-language authors from Chaucer through Eliot (C.S. Lewis no doubt is strictly forbidden!), and the musings of great scientists who to this day puzzle over the existence of G-d. The result: a curriculum that...

Where’s the American Civil Liberties Union when you need them? The Christian group barred from Denver’s annual Parade of Lights certainly will not receive any help from the ACLU though they professedly protect “all” civil liberties. If any other group, the more depraved the better, was being barred from participation in the parade, the ACLU would have jumped at the chance to protect such “rights” in court. “Better watch out, better not shout Amen, the ACLU is coming to town.” Yes, tis the ACLU’s season or so they think. We the people take for granted that the ACLU, one small...

One of the best things about living in America is if you have a sufficient amount of money, you can buy just about anything on the planet legally. You might have to make some phone calls and wait for a while, but eventually you can purchase anything you want. But as anyone who has ever picked the name of the person who wants ''nothing special,'' in the office gift exchange, or has the child who does NOT want the ''Super Plus Dragon Head Crushing Mega-Poke-Zord-o-Saur'' can tell you, some of the hardest things to find are the simplest Such was...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!