Free Republic

A LABOUR politician has defended his beliefs in extra-terrestrial life - after claiming to have fathered a child with an alien. Married father-of-three Simon Parkes, who represents Stakesby on Whitby Town Council, said his wife had rowed with him after revealing he had a child called Zarka with an alien he refers to as the Cat Queen. The 53-year-old driving instructor said he has sexual relations with the alien about four times a year. “What will happen is that we will hold hands and I will say ‘I’m ready’ and then the technology I don’t understand will take us up...

It's something most Christian parents worry about: You send your kids off to college and when they come back, you find they've lost their faith. The prospect of this happening is why many parents nudge their kids towards Christian colleges, or at least schools with a strong Christian presence on campus. But in many ways, the damage has been done long before our children set foot on campus. That's the message from a recent article in the Atlantic Monthly. My friend Larry Taunton of the Fixed Point Foundation set out to find out why so many young Christians lose their...

Rabbis, priests, bishops in Britain I love the remark made by one Oxford don about another: ‘On the surface, he’s profound, but deep down, he’s superficial.’ That sentence has more than once come to mind when reading the new atheists. Future intellectual historians will look back with wonder at the strange phenomenon of seemingly intelligent secularists in the 21st century believing that if they could show that the first chapters of Genesis are not literally true, that the universe is more than 6,000 years old and there might be other explanations for rainbows than as a sign of God’s...

The mainstream American right has remained almost entirely silent about the recent suicide of the French historian, Dominique Venner. The reasons for this, I do not know—perhaps it is a squeamishness about the symbolism of his final act, or a lack of understanding of it. Perhaps it is a refusal to see what the people of France already see, and are rising up against.Venner shot himself on the altar of the Cathedral of Notre Dame on May 21st, 2013. The image of this act ought to make us pause in awe. The American left immediately dismissed him as a...

Last week, in Nice, France, I was privileged to participate along with 30 scholars, mostly scientists and mathematicians, in a conference on the question of whether the universe was designed, or at least fine-tuned, to make life, especially intelligent life. Participants — from Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Berkeley, and Columbia, among other American and European universities — included believers in God, agonistics, and atheists. It was clear that the scientific consensus was that, at the very least, the universe is exquisitely fine-tuned to allow for the possibility of life. It appears that we live in a “Goldilocks universe,” in which both...

The untold story of the Communist destruction of the Our Lady of Consolation Trappist Abbey at Yangjiaping in 1947Part 1, Accusations“He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.” John 1:10I have just returned from another year in China where I have witnessed the Church grow. I have seen churches struggle to accommodate the crowds who come for Holy Mass, and I have listened to countless stories of Christian suffering under China’s Communist rule. Over the years I have traveled with, worshipped with, and prayed with Chinese Catholics. Priests have...

A direct descendant of Charles Darwin has become a Catholic apologist. Laura Keynes, a great-great-great-granddaughter of the English naturalist, has joined Catholic Voices, the project set up to speak up for the Church in the media She writes in this week’s Catholic Herald about how she returned to her childhood Catholic faith after a period of agnosticism. The daughter of an atheist father and a mother who had converted to Catholicism but later became a Buddhist, she was baptised Catholic. But she says she drifted into agnosticism in her teens and “away from any contact with the Church”. When she...

MOSCOW, June 13 (Alexey Eremenko, RIA Novosti) – Physics and theology are hard to combine –and an attempt to open a theology department at a prestigious Russian nuclear physics institute has stirred up a storm of protest and verbal sparring between scientists and clerics, highlighting Russia’s increasingly tense religious-secular divide. The new department is due to open in the fall at Moscow’s National Research Nuclear University (MEPhI), ranked the third best institution of higher learning in Russia, according to a 2012 survey by the business weekly Expert. But the plan has numerous ardent critics, who call it an infringement on...

This is according to Fr. Lee Eun-hyung, General Secretary of the Catholic "Committee for the Reconciliation of the Korean People", who spoke to Aid to the Church in Need“We suspect that after the long period of persecution there are still about 10,000 people who will remember in their hearts their Catholic faith.” But “I find it difficult to believe that there is an organised underground Church in North Korea,” Fr. Lee Eun-hyung, the General Secretary of the Catholic "Committee for the Reconciliation of the Korean People", said in an interview with Aid to the Church in Need (the foundation that...

Starting today till Friday, a Vietnamese delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Bùi Thanh Sơn will meet Under-Secretary for Relations with States Mgr Antonio Camilleri. In recent months, the Communist state has cracked down on human rights activists, Catholics included.Hanoi (AsiaNews) - The fourth meeting of the Joint Vietnam-Holy See Working Group began this morning in Rome as part of ongoing talks between the Vatican and Hanoi to establish full diplomatic relations between the two sides. The Vietnamese delegation is led by Deputy Foreign Minister Bùi Thanh Sơn, who will meet Under-Secretary for Relations with States Mgr Antonio Camilleri, who...

Is it rational to believe in God?  Many people think that faith and reason are opposites; that belief in God and tough-minded logical reasoning are like oil and water.  They are wrong.  Belief in God is far more rational than atheism.  Logic can show that there is a God.  If you look at the universe with common sense and an open mind, you'll find that it's full of God's fingerprints. A good place to start is with an argument by Thomas Aquinas, the great 13th century philosopher and theologian.  The argument starts with the not-very-startling observation that things move. ...

People can believe a lot of crazy stuff nowadays and not be fired from their jobs, but a senior research associate at the Catholic University of Leuven learned that you better not believe that God can heal. The university is the oldest and largest in Belgium. It was founded in the 1400s under the approval of the Vatican. But as modern Europe has secularized, so has the University, and even here, faith has come under fire. Fernando Pauwels worked at the University's Research Institute for Work and Society for 11 years without a negative review when he was suddenly fired....

A Christian scholar and author has taken the experience of growing up under the influence of a stepfather who cherished the objectivism philosophy of Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged) and his biological father who became a follower of Jesus Christ, to write a book about two world views that he feels can come together for the good of society. Mark David Henderson's book, The Soul of Atlas, begins by asking the question, "Do the two most influential books in modern culture, the Bible and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, share common ground?" Henderson has a unique closeness to the subject of Rand's...

A member of a Christian organization that posted a Decalogue outside a Florida courthouse said an atheist group posting a monument in the same location has the right to do so. American Atheists will soon be posting what is believed to be the United States' first atheist monument on public property outside of the Bradford County Courthouse later this month. Ken Weaver, member of the Starke, Fla.-based group Community Men's Fellowship, told The Christian Post about how he feels regarding the atheist monument bench. "Simply put, while we do not agree with the 'faith' of the American Atheists that disregards...

When children are desperate for attention they scream and cry, talk show hosts in need of attention make fun of Catholics. Actually "make fun" isn't the proper term. They hurl hate at Catholics with a smile on their face so they can accuse anyone who's offended of being humorless. Television host Bill Maher has long lost the power to shock because he's so consistently misinformed and hateful about religious people. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't take note of what is said by him and others like him. Sometimes when I write about anti-Catholic screeds from the media some see...

EDITOR'S NOTE: For the last half of the twentieth century, Antony Flew (1923-2010) was the world's most famous atheist. Long before Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris began taking swipes at religion, Flew was the preeminent spokesman for unbelief.However in 2004, he shocked the world by announcing he had come to believe in God. While never embracing Christianity—Flew only believed in the deistic, Aristotelian conception of God—he became one of the most high-profile and surprising atheist converts. In 2007, he recounted his conversion in a book titled There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His...

The American Atheists of Cranford, N.J., announced Friday they will be sending books on atheism to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to be placed next to Gideon Bibles inside every cabin and lodge at the state's parks. On April 28, Ed Buchner, the former president of American Atheists, a nonprofit organization that was founded by Madalyn Murray O'Hair in 1963, complained to the Department after he found "nine Bibles" inside his cabin, according to American Atheists. In a move to avoid controversy, and a potential lawsuit, the decision was made to remove all Bibles from the state's parks that...

[SNIP] The Church's predictions came as it launched an attack on plans by the First Minister, Alex Salmond, for a new class of “belief” ceremonies – alongside traditional religious and civil weddings. The Scottish Government is currently attempting to overhaul the marriage laws north of the border, primarily to introduce same-sex marriage. But the bill would also include a wider update of matrimonial laws including plans to create a “third way” to get married, through so-called “belief” ceremonies to accommodate those who do not belief in a deity but do but do promote a belief system. It follows the popularity...

On 10 May the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church was received by President Xi Jinping, leading to the creation of a new Moscow-Beijing axisThe overture to Patriarch Kirill’s official visit to China marked an important moment in relations between China and the Orthodox Church. Yesterday, in the Great Hall of the People, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church had the privilege of meeting Chinese President, Xi Jinping. “You are the first Patriarch of Moscow and the first supreme religious leader from Russia to visit our country,” Xi told Kirill, presenting this unprecedented event as a “clear sign of...

HOUSTON, TX (Catholic Online) - Finding that there is no law against what they were doing, a judge ruled that the cheerleaders violated no laws by holding banners during football games that made references to God. Koutnze Middle School cheerleaders say they have a tradition of making biblical and religious references on the banners which they hold at the end of halftime and the players run through when they return to the field. It's a widespread tradition practiced at schools across the nation. However, when the "Freedom from Religion Foundation" a litigious atheist organization whose purpose is to destroy any...