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The head of the British Red Cross has admitted the charity struggled with the Grenfell disaster because its workforce is too white.

Attempting to create the impression that faithful Christians whose beliefs are at odds with newly sanctified cultural mores are incapable of doing their job. "Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?" Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) asked Notre Dame Law School professor Amy Coney Barrett, a nominee for a federal appeals court, yesterday. Since Durbin inquired in the form of a question, we can only assume that Barrett's answer was pertinent to the confirmation. That is problematic considering the Constitution explicitly states that no religion—not even a belief in orthodox liberalism—should be a prerequisite for holding a federal office. At least...

In 2014, Colorado Civil Rights Commissioner Diann Rice compared Jack Phillips, a Christian baker who was sued for declining to make a cake for a same-sex ceremony, to perpetrators of the Holocaust. She said: I would also like to reiterate what we said in … the last meeting [concerning Jack Phillips]. Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust … I mean, we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And to me it is...

THE proportion of Scots who say they have no religion has reached a new high, a survey shows. The latest Scottish Social Attitudes survey found that nearly six in 10 (58%) describe themselves as having no religion, up from 40% in 1999. The survey, carried out by ScotCen, revealed that those aged 18-34 were the least likely to be religious, at 74% compared to 34% of those over 65. The Church of Scotland has been hardest hit by the drop in religious affiliation, with just 18% saying they belong to the Kirk compared to 35% in 1999. The proportion of...

Mark Zuckerberg recently stated his desire to have Facebook act as a community for it’s users, replacing “churches” and “community support groups.” Speaking at Facebook’s first Communities Summit in Chicago last week, Mark Zuckerberg discussed a number of topics, including Facebook’s new mission statement which was changed from “connecting the world” to a new goal, to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” ... CNBC reports that later at the rally, the Facebook CEO discussed the use of Facebook as a community tool to bring it’s users closer together, “It’s so striking that for...

Zeeya Merali is a freelance science writer and author of A Big Bang in a Little Room: The Quest to Create New Universes. Her work has appeared in Nature, Scientific American, Discover, Science, New Scientist, and on the BBC. She has also published two textbooks with National Geographic and has worked on NOVA's television series The Fabric of the Cosmos. She has a PhD in theoretical cosmology and lives in London. Artwork illustrating the concept of an alternate ‘bubble’ universe in which our universe (left) is not the only one. Some scientists think that bubble universes may pop into existence...

A recent Gallup poll shows that 76 percent (76%) of U.S. adults believe that God had a hand in creating man in his present form or guiding man as he developed. According to Gallup, “[t]he percentage of U.S. adults who believe that God created humans in their present form at some time within the last 10,000 years or so — the strict creationist view — has reached a new low. Thirty-eight percent of U.S. adults now accept creationism, while 57% believe in some form of evolution.” […] Today, of the U.S. adult respondents, 76 percent said they believe God had...

In “Physics: A cosmos in the lab,” a review of A Big Bang in a Little Room: The Quest to Create New Universes by Zeeya Merali, cosmologist Andreas Albrecht writes at Nature, The question of cosmic origins, and the possibility that humans might create new universes, can connect with religious concerns. These form a substantial thread through A Big Bang in a Little Room that significantly reduced the book’s appeal to me. I am an atheist. I respect that many people are deeply religious (some are very close to me) and that religion can have a positive, even beautiful,...

...the University of Miami received a donation in late April from a wealthy atheist to endow what it says is the nation’s first academic chair “for the study of atheism, humanism and secular ethics.” ...established after years of discussion with a $2.2 million donation from Louis Appignani, a retired businessman and former president and chairman of the modeling school Barbizon... ....“I’m trying to eliminate discrimination against atheists,” said Appignani, 83, a Florida resident. “So this is a step in that direction, to make atheism legitimate.” ....It took some persuading for the University of Miami to agree to create a chair...

Franklin Graham is a voice crying in the wilderness. "I believe we are perilously close to the moral tipping point for the survival of the United States of America," Graham wrote in Decision magazine. "I refuse to be silent and watch the future of our children and grandchildren be offered up on pagan altars of personal pleasure and immorality." The Supreme Court has already redefined marriage. The nation has become a killing field for Islamic radicals. And Christians have become targets for practicing their First Amendment rights. "There now exists deep-seated antagonism and hostility toward Christianity in every seat of...

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama delivered a videotaped Christmas message to the nation yesterday. In this message, the president said: "Today, like millions of Americans and Christians around the world, our family celebrates the birth of Jesus and the values He lived in his own life." The president and his family are on vacation in Hawaii. The last piece of legislation he signed was on Dec. 18. It was the omnibus spending bill, which permits funding of Planned Parenthood. ...

7th Graders Forced To Deny God Is real, Or Take Failing Grade

It wasn’t like we didn’t see this coming but it’s certainly arriving faster and harder than even some of the more conservative estimates would have predicted. Now that gay marriage (or just any old marriage if you prefer) is a “constitutionally assured right” in the United States, Left side proponents are taking their victory laps. But at the same time they’re going to stick to the established talking points of telling everyone not to worry… nothing bad is going to happen to anyone else. You’re just not adjusted to the New and Improved Post-Homophobic Christianity. (From the Daily Beast) The...

Concerns are arising among Christians and online commentators after a homosexual activist recently told a national publication that churches “must be made ‘to take homosexuality off the sin list.'” Mitchell Gold is the founder of Faith in America, an organization that aims to “end the harm to LGBT youth and families from misguided religious teaching.” He served on the board of directors for the Human Rights Campaign for seven years, and was named on of the “Top 50 Most Powerful Gay People in America” in 2007 by Out Magazine. In an article written by Frank Buni of the New York...

Richard Dawkins: Children need to be ‘protected’ from religion ‘You have to write off those people’ who put the Bible ahead of science, author says Children need to be “protected” from religious indoctrination in schools, biologist and atheist campaigner Richard Dawkins has said, backing a campaign by Atheist Ireland to overhaul our education system.Speaking to The Irish Times in advance of a public talk at Trinity College Dublin on Tuesday evening, Prof Dawkins said: “There is a balancing act and you have to balance the rights of parents and the rights of children and I think the balance has swung...

Writing for the Christian Post, Melissa Barnhart notes that, "The Rev. Franklin Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritans Purse, says the government's attacks against Christianity and bans on traditional Christmas themes while society glorifies sin is 'like little children shaking their fist at Almighty God.' 'What's happening is we're glorifying sin, we're lifting up sin. And it's like little children shaking their fist at Almighty God,' Graham told Fox News host Megyn Kelly during a Wednesday segment of 'The Kelly File.' Speaking about atheists and secularists' actions to ban celebrations of Christmas in schools and government...

Christian students at a Colorado public high school were told they could no longer meet to pray, sing religious songs or discuss religious topics during free time – because such activity violated the U.S. Constitution, a lawsuit filed in federal court alleges. Chase Windebank is a senior at Pine Creek High School in Colorado Springs. Three years ago he started meeting together informally with his classmates for prayer and religious fellowship. The young people would meet in an unoccupied choir room to sing songs like “Amazing Grace” and discuss the issues of the day from a religious perspective. But all...

Sure, Atheism Is a Religion, to which Neil deGrasse Tyson and Cosmos Seek Converts David Klinghoffer October 28, 2014 1:46 PM | Permalink Some Twitter correspondents objected to my comment, in connection with our new book The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos, that "Cosmos is not appropriate for public schools, where you're not supposed to advocate any religion, including atheism." But of course Tyson-style atheism counts as a religion. As I'm hardly the first to say, it has almost all the trimmings that religions commonly do: An account of origins (panspermia and Darwinian evolution), a philosophical commitment to a certain way...

The Human Rights Commission in Lexington, Kentucky has a chilling message for Christian business owners who refuse service to LGBT organizations: leave your religion at home. “It would be safe to do so, yes,” Executive Director Raymond Sexton told me. “Or in this case you can find yourself two years down the road and you’re still involved in a legal battle because you did not do so.” On Tuesday, a Lexington Human Rights Commission hearing examiner issued a recommended ruling that the owner of a T-shirt company violated a local ordinance against sexual-orientation discrimination. You can read the ruling by...

Darwinist Denies Human Exceptionalism in NYT The New York Times is consistently anti-human exceptionalism, never missing an opportunity to publish articles that seek to reduce humans to just another animal in the forest.Today, the Sunday Review section has University of Washington biology professor, David P. Barash, bragging that he works to destroy faith in his classes (“The Talk”), insisting to his students that science and religion are incompatible.That kind of ideological indoctrination is par for the disturbing course in universities, but not the one of the areas with which I grapple. However, I would be remiss not to point out...