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A fast-food eatery — or thermopolium — discovered at Pompeii has been completely excavated, helping to reveal some top dishes of the ancient Roman city. The site is about 18 miles southeast of Naples, Italy. Luigi Spina/Archaeological Park of Pompeii ================================================================== Ever wonder what a 2,000-year-old fast-food restaurant might look like? Well, new photos from researchers might give you an idea. Archaeologists said on Saturday they excavated a complete thermopolium — a Roman food counter — in the ancient city of Pompeii. Researchers are analyzing the findings to create a more complete picture of the daily life — and diet...

A growing number of places of worship around the world are employing robotic priests, who can recite prayers and even comfort worshippers experiencing spiritual crises Religions around the world are evolving as technology progresses, and now some faiths are relying on "god robots " to spread the good word. Back in the Middle Ages, Christian "robots" of a kind were fashioned to perform the religious pageantry of the Easter and Christmas rituals. In the 16th century, a mechanical monk was created by a Spanish clockmaker that incredibly remains fully functional to this day. The automaton beats his chest and raises...

A Homo erectus skullcap found northwest of Johannesburg in South Africa has been identified as the oldest to date, in research published in Science. The hominin is a direct ancestor of modern humans, experienced a changing climate, and moved out of Africa into other continents. The discovery of DNH 134 pushes the possible origin of Homo erectus back between 150,000 and 200,000 years. Credit: Therese van Wyk, University of Johannesburg. ____________________________________________________________________________________ An unusual skullcap and thousands of clues have created a southern twist to the story of human ancestors, in research published in Science on 3 April. The rolling hills...

While it is extremely difficult to measure the extent to which religion impacts Americans, one polling organization has attempted to do so using four criteria. The poll was designed to acquire a sense of how the 50 states compare with each other on the matter of which has the most religious population. The four criteria used were the importance of religion in people’s lives, frequency of attendance at worship services, frequency of prayer, and absolute certainty of belief in God (“How Religious...?,” 2009). As one might expect, more Americans in the “Bible Belt” states indicate that religion is very important...

Atheists are embracing Gods and creationism Elon Musk, the billionaire inventor and entrepreneur, the twenty-first century’s answer to Howard Hughes, believes we are living in a computer simulation. The chances that we exist in ‘base reality’ are billions to one, he says.Last week he told an audience of Silicon Valley tech evangelists: ‘Forty years ago we had Pong. Like, two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were.’‘Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously, and it’s getting better every year. Soon we’ll have virtual reality, augmented reality.’‘If you assume any rate...

President Barack Obama today showed off the gift items that he says he carries in his pocket. Obama showed the items during an interview with YouTube personality Ingrid Nilsen, today at the White House, saying they were given to him by people he has met during his political career. "I carry these around all the time,." he said. "I'm not that superstitious so it's not like I think necessarily I have to have them on me at all times," he explained. "But it does remind me of all the different people that I've met along the way and how much...

Google’s director of engineering Ray Kurzwell is promising that with robots in our brains, we’ll be godlike OMG, here comes Google. Now that the UN is prepping to force a robot like lifestyle on unsuspecting humanity with its Agenda 21 morphed into Agenda 2030, Search Engine giant Google, will impose robot-hood on human beings on the same 2030 deadline. As if life isn’t tough enough with the cunning that comes with human DNA, what with terrorists posing as refugees, psychopaths‎ in the workplace and politicians getting elected with the express intention of fundamentally transforming a nation, not to mention paying...

TEHRAN, Iran — The chief of an elite unit in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has accused the U.S. of having “no will” to stop the Islamic State group after the fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi, an Iranian newspaper reported Monday. The comments by Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Guard’s elite Quds unit, come just after U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter accused Iraqi forces of lacking the “will to fight” in an interview aired the day before. It wasn’t clear whether Soleimani’s remarks came as a direct response to Carter’s, though tensions remain high between the two countries...

Icelanders will soon be able to publicly worship at a shrine to Thor, Odin and Frigg with construction starting this month on the island’s first major temple to the Norse gods since the Viking age. Worship of the gods in Scandinavia gave way to Christianity around 1,000 years ago but a modern version of Norse paganism has been gaining popularity in Iceland.

It used to strike me as impossible for global warming to cause cold weather. Then I realized that I could chill a soft drink in the oven if there were no room left in the refrigerator to bake a cake. Up until then I did not know that the same cause can have opposite effects. In my unenlightened state, it never occurred to me that carbon dioxide could cause both excessive heat and excessive cold, both drought and flood. I should have known. After all, we calm hyperactive children with stimulants and cure addiction to drugs with addicting drugs. When...

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is a false religion created by and for members of the most rich, catered, defensive, politically-correct, over-protected, over-nurtured, over-fed society the world has ever known, and the fact that it uses the name Jesus and various select Christian buzzwords allows it to be passed off as Christianity.

President Obama thanked the group that used to be his reelection campaign, Organizing for Action, in event tonight in Washington. "The work you are doing is God's work," Obama told supporters.

Italian archaeologists have unearthed a 2,600-year-old intact Etruscan tomb that promises to reveal new depths of one of the ancient world’s most fascinating and mysterious cultures.

The Biblical and historical evidence shows that the Moabites worshiped Baal. The pre-Islamic and Muslim sources show (a) that the Meccans took over the idol Hubal from the Moabites and (b) that Allah and Hubal are actually identical. Thus, whether the Meccans are Ishmaelites or not, the evidence is still strong and sufficient to conclude that Muhammad's Allah is actually Hubal, i.e. the Baal of the Moabites and thus not the God of the Bible. Muhammad incorporated the characteristics and names of various other gods into his new monotheistic message about Allah, but he apparently started the construction of Allah...

Seven centuries after their demise, the skeletons of 12 plague victims have been unearthed in the City of London, a find which archaeologists believe to be just the tip of a long-lost Black Death mass burial ground. Arranged in careful rows, the bodies were discovered 2.5 metres below the ground in Charterhouse Square in works for a Crossrail tunnel shaft beside the future ticketing hall for Farringdon station. Tests are needed to confirm the skeletons' provenance, but the discovery should shed more light on life and death in 14th-century Britain and help scientists to understand how the plague mutated.

Over the years I have repeatedly discussed with LDS members Mormonism’s teaching about persons being able to become a god. The reactions have been varied. Some readily admit that this is LDS teaching and they wholeheartedly accept it. Most, however, try to qualify it and downplay it. They have done this in two different ways. The first is by saying that Mormonism teaches that they can become like God. They claim that even though LDS Scripture clearly says that people can become gods. The classic passage is D&C 132:20: “Then shall they be gods, because they have no end; therefore...

The pre-mortal period is a period of organization, growth, and purposeful development...This organization of the spirits from the "intelligence" which is co-eternal with God is for the express purpose of exaltation, to become "Gods like himself..."... ...Brigham Young said:...The Lord has organized mankind for the purpose of increasing in that intelligence and truth...until he is capable of creating worlds on worlds, and becoming gods...Believing that "the power of choice of all intelligent inherit from the Gods of eternity...is innate."... ...Complete independence of action is an attribution of deity, and only those most valiant during their probation on earth who will...

This Sunday, in Gospel Doctrine Class, the study is on 2 Nephi 31-33. One of the summary statements in the heading of chapter 31 says, “Eternal life comes to those who kept the commandments after baptism.” Since I posted about eternal life just a couple of months ago (see the post for 1-13-12) and there showed that the Bible says eternal life is the present possession of believers through faith, I thought I would, in this post, explore what Mormonism says about eternal life. I’m going to do that with quotes from the last chapter of their basic manual, Gospel...

How many Mormon Gods are there? From our series entitled, "Are Mormons Christians?":

Did Brigham Young say that every man is "a God in embryo"? From our series entitled, "Are Mormons Christians?":