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“The earthquake happened on Buddha’s birthday,” a friend somberly explained to me yesterday. “I’m afraid that things in China are going to get worse. I have a bad feeling about our country right now.” She went on to explain that while Buddha has no power to create or stop such disasters, she felt that the occurrence of the earthquake on Buddha’s birthday was an ominous sign. My friend is only 25 years old but she is a follower of what she calls ‘Tibetan Buddhism.’ Her husband, who is also a Buddhist, encouraged her to practice the religion.

Lesson 34: The First Commandment "Come let us praise the Lord with joy:  let us joyfully sing to God our savior.  Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; and make a joyful noise to Him with psalms.  For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.  For in His hand are all the ends of the earth:  and the heights of the mountains are His.  For the sea is His, and He made it:  and His hands formed the dry land.  Come let us adore and fall down:  and weep before the Lord that...

Hitting the wedding date jackpot, 7/7/07 BY TANIA PADGETT tania.padgett@newsday.com July 4, 2007 Last year, when Jeffrey Neale, 28, and Elizabeth Wiener, 26, were planning their wedding, Neale was more than happy to leave the details to his fiancee. That is, except one: He wanted them to be married on July 7, 2007. "We had to get that date," said Neale, an assistant vice president at AIG Financial Products Corp. in Wilton, Conn. "Nobody is going to forget it and triple 7s are lucky." Wiener, a graduate student from Roslyn Harbor, heartily agreed, and the couple rushed to put a...

WASHINGTON -- Even by the standards of the luminaries who sweep through Washington, the little girl in front of Lafayette Elementary School almost six miles north of the White House was special. Politicians, power brokers and the occasional celebrities who come through town hope to be respected and maybe, in a childlike place in their grown-up hearts, genuinely liked. Sajani Shakya, 10, is worshipped. In Nepal, Sajani is a living goddess, one of about a dozen such goddesses in her homeland who are considered earthly manifestations of the Hindu goddess Kali.

It seems that a prof that sees value in intelligent design theory has been barred from tenure. http://www.iastate.edu/~nscentral/news/2007/jun/statement.shtml

Some Scientists Worry That Sophisticated Center Will Distort Children's Views of Science According to an ABC News poll, 60 percent of Americans believe God created the world in six days. In Petersburg, Ky., this weekend, a creation museum is opening that depicts a story far from what you may have learned in science class. Exhibits at almost every natural history museum teach that dinosaurs are millions of years old, and that they died out long before human beings existed. But at the Creation Museum, they say God created dinosaurs and humans at the same time. The Creation Museum, designed by...

(CNSNews.com) - Billboards that show a man turning into a monkey and an online game entitled "Let's See How Evolution Works" are two elements of a new national campaign launched by a Christian group to call attention to the "lack of proof" for the theory of evolution. Billboards at six locations in Oregon and Georgia ask "Are They Making a Monkey Out of You?" and additional signs are planned for Pennsylvania, Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, according to Julie Haberle, founder of the Who Is Your Creator non-profit organization. The billboards direct viewers to the group's website, which presents a...

JEFFERSON CITY — A dire, apocalyptic prophecy in the Bible's Book of Revelation is getting a new audience: state legislators. Several evangelical Christian groups say the federal Real ID Act, which will standardize state drivers licenses and link them to corresponding national ID numbers by 2009, represents the "mark of the beast," the devilish number 666 that is attached to the godless. The nearly 2,000-year-old passage is referenced along with the prophetic locusts, plagues, oceans of blood and rivers of fire found in the Bible. Soon after, according to scripture, the antichrist takes control of the world and Jesus Christ...

The 2005 Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District decision in our fair state was thought to resolve the debate that Intelligent Design is a religious movement, just a new wrinkle on Creationism. That hasn't happened largely because Intelligent Design, or I.D., is not.

TO THE unsuspecting visitor, Patrick Henry College looks like a typical American liberal-arts college tucked away amidst the rolling green farmlands of Virginia. Its curriculum is far from typical, however, and anything but liberal. Witness this lecture on faith and reason in an idyllic red-brick college building reminiscent of colonial America. As the speaker takes to the podium, several students silence their cellphones. One puts down his copy of The Wall Street Journal and takes out his Bible. They bow their heads and pray to Jesus, then stand up and sing a hymn, belting out "Holy, holy, holy" with gusto....

By Daniel Golden, The Wall Street Journal AMES, Iowa -- With a magician's flourish, Thomas Ingebritsen pulled six mousetraps from a shopping bag and handed them out to students in his "God and Science" seminar. At his instruction, they removed one component -- either the spring, hammer or holding bar -- from each mousetrap. They then tested the traps, which all failed to snap. "Is the mousetrap irreducibly complex?" the Iowa State University molecular biologist asked the class. "Yes, definitely," said Jason Mueller, a junior biochemistry major wearing a cross around his neck. That's the answer Mr. Ingebritsen was looking...

From their website : ---------------------------------- Welcome to Truth in Science, a new organisation to promote good science education in the UK. Our initial focus will be on the origin of life and its diversity. For many years, much of what has been taught in school science lessons about the origin of the living world has been dogmatic and imbalanced. The theory of Darwinian evolution has been presented as scientifically uncontroversial and the only credible explanation of origins. This is despite the National Curriculum which states: Pupils should be taught… "how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical...

ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON -- Federal health officials are again examining what's known - and what's still to be learned - about the safety of a mercury mixture that's stirred controversy since dentists began using it to fill cavities in the 1800s. A joint panel of outside experts voted Thursday to reject a draft report that concluded that dental fillings used by millions of people are safe. Yet the panel did not go so far as to declare the mercury-laden amalgam a danger, only that more study is needed because of the risk it poses to some groups. "For the general...

Fact, Fable, and Darwin By Rodney Stark I write as neither a creationist nor a Darwinist, but as one who knows what is probably the most disreputable scientific secret of the past century: There is no plausible scientific theory of the origin of species! Darwin himself was not sure he had produced one, and for many decades every competent evolutionary biologist has known that he did not. Although the experts have kept quiet when true believers have sworn in court and before legislative bodies that Darwin's theory is proven beyond any possible doubt, that's not what reputable biologists, including committed...

LUCKNOW: It’s not the kind of thing that routine school assemblies witness. On Wednesday, Lucknow’s prestigious Loreto Convent organised a date with Lord Jesus Christ that led to students fainting and horrified parents asking what the school up to? The school principal, a dozen staff members and about 250 Class VIII to XII girls were privy to the 'special' occult session that had a medium ‘transforming’ into Christ and blessing them. A dozen students fainted and a couple needed medical attention. Most girls were either horrified or too shocked to explain the phenomenon. Principal Sister Monica on Saturday admitted some...

Philosophers, scientists and other intellectuals close to Pope Benedict will gather at his summer palace outside Rome this week for intensive discussions that could herald a fundamental shift in the Vatican's view of evolution. There have been growing signs the Pope is considering aligning his church more closely with the theory of "intelligent design" taught in some US states. Advocates of the theory argue that some features of the universe and nature are so complex that they must have been designed by a higher intelligence. Critics say it is a disguise for creationism. A prominent anti-evolutionist and Roman Catholic scientist,...

There have been a couple books that have been turning points in the development of design theory. Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Darwin's Black Box and The Creator and the Cosmos are all such books. From what I have seen, Creation as Science is the next groundbreaking book. It does what other design books have failed to do, formulate a testable scientific model for design. The author began this in Origins of Life and Who Was Adam?, but here it is the focus of the book. **** Creation As Science: A Testable Model Approach to End the Creation/Evolution Wars Development...

Show links Darwin, Hitler ideologies Holocaust was fallout of evolution theory, says new production -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: August 19, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com Charles Darwin should share with Hitler the blame for the 11 million or more lives lost in the Holocaust, a new television special explains. And, the program says, the more than 45 million American lives lost to abortion also can be blamed on that famous founder of evolutionary theory. The results of Darwin’s theories "This show basically is about the social effects of Darwinism, and shows this idea, which is scientifically bankrupt, has probably been...

A comparison of peoples' views in 34 countries finds that the United States ranks near the bottom when it comes to public acceptance of evolution. Only Turkey ranked lower. Among the factors contributing to America's low score are poor understanding of biology, especially genetics, the politicization of science and the literal interpretation of the Bible by a small but vocal group of American Christians, the researchers say. “American Protestantism is more fundamentalist than anybody except perhaps the Islamic fundamentalist, which is why Turkey and we are so close,” said study co-author Jon Miller of Michigan State University. The researchers combined...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Merck & Co. Inc.'s vaccine to prevent the world's most prevalent sexually transmitted infection sailed through a panel of U.S. health experts, despite early fears of opposition from the Christian Right that it might lead to promiscuity and a false sense of security.