Free Republic

During a Spanish interview with Telemundo, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush endorsed amnesty for what he referred to as the “11 million” illegal aliens living in the U.S. in defiance of the law. “For the 11 million people [who are here illegally], they must come out of the shadows, receive a work visa, start paying taxes and also pay a small fine, learn English, don’t receive government benefits, but they come out of the shadows and they receive legal status after some time,” Bush said on Monday, according to a translation provided by CNN. Bush starts out on the wrong...

The lead singer of a Grammy-nominated Christian metal band pleaded guilty Tuesday to trying to hire someone to kill his estranged wife. Timothy Lambesis, 32, remains free on $2 million bond until he is sentenced May 2 on one count of solicitation of murder in Vista Superior Court, north of San Diego. He could get nine years in prison. Lambesis, of the band As I Lay Dying, was recorded telling an undercover agent that he wanted his wife killed, according to prosecutors. The investigation began last April after Lambesis allegedly told a personal trainer at his gym that he wanted...

<p>I hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend.</p> <p>I made a first post in the general section yesterday and would like to see what sort of opinions I can find here amongst those who perhaps have a more relogiously attuned perspective.</p>

Trailer Because it's billed as a more personal project for Mark Pellington after a string of interesting, idiosyncratic thrillers ("Arlington Road," "The Mothman Prophecies"), "Henry Poole Is Here" is all the more disappointing. Pic's tendency to lecture on the power of faith and religion and on the demerits of science seems to assume an almost childlike audience that needs to be spoon-fed Pablum. This tale of a single man whose medical death sentence is reversed in part by a neighborhood of believers won't advance the profile of the always-likable Luke Wilson, and Christian moviegoers will have to show up in...

The assault on America's religious beliefs is not a new one. It is derived from a practice which Damon Linker, the author of Theocons: Secular America Under Siege referenced in his December 2007 article for The New Republic titled, "Atheism's Wrong Turn, Mindless argument found in godless books." He stated that far from being what modern journalists incorrectly label the "new atheism," the campaign to "act as missionaries for unbelief" is centuries old. Advertisement The American version of this mission to demonize religion is founded on a distorted interpretation of the establishment and free-exercise clauses of the First Amendment. Those...

Albert Einstein described belief in God as "childish superstition" and said Jews were not the chosen people, in a letter to be sold in London this week, an auctioneer said Tuesday. The father of relativity, whose previously known views on religion have been more ambivalent and fuelled much discussion, made the comments in response to a philosopher in 1954. As a Jew himself, Einstein said he had a great affinity with Jewish people but said they "have no different quality for me than all other people". "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of...

New film takes Da Vinci Code conspiracy theories and shaky evidence to new heightsJoseph Brean, National PostWhen Ben Hammott discovered the apparent tomb of a Knight Templar at the bottom of a hole in a cave in the countryside of southern France, he thought he had discovered the final resting place of Mary Magdalene, and so he did what any amateur treasure hunter in this age of the Da Vinci Code would have done. He returned with a Hollywood director, lowered a pole into the tomb with "some sticky stuff on the end," removed the shroud from the body, plucked...

The fastest-growing faith in America is no faith at all. And now some atheists think they need a church. It seems unlikely that many of the 850 or so people at the Society for Ethical Culture on a recent Saturday night believed that God was still extant. But evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and possibly the most famous atheist in the world, was not taking any chances. He gave a PowerPoint presentation driving home that religion does not meet any of the standards of basic scientific inquiry, before casually flicking away a few of His last...

As the onslaught of new emails-comments from believers/disbelievers pours in over this Ben Stein movie, Expelled, I am amused, appalled and mystified at the whole thing, and the posture of those are so adamantly in favor of adding "In the beginning..." to the nation's science curricula. It's "not about religion," ID/Creationists/Monkey Trial adherents say. Yes, it is. Doesn't lying bother you? You want your religion imposed on America's kids in science classrooms. You want to "test" and "debunk" Evolution as a "belief system." And then you don't want YOUR belief system, which can't withstand tests under any of those criteria,...

The leader of Britain's Catholics claimed yesterday that "Judaeo-Christian values" were the only thing binding British society together, on the eve of a lecture series on the place of faith in British public life.Speaking to the Guardian, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor hit out at representatives of an "aggressive secularism" that he believes is gaining ground in the UK, defended the Catholic Church's combative intervention last week in the debate over "hybrid" embryos, and argued that Christian leaders should hold a privileged position over the representatives of other faiths when it came to their input into public policy.The cardinal's comments are likely...

A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness's account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that recorded an asteroid thought to have been more than half a mile across. The tablet, found by Henry Layard in the remains of the library in the royal place at Nineveh in the mid-19th century, is thought to be a 700 B.C. copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer watching the night sky. He referred to the...

<p>ABC may have set a loathsome new MSM low in insulting traditional Christians. On today's "Good Morning America," the network lumped the "Christan right" with the 9-11 Islamic terrorists as driving people to atheism.</p> <p>Some are reacting to religious extremism, like the Islamic fundamentalism behind the terrorist attacks of 9-11, but also the rise of the Christian right in the U.S.</p>

Burger King recalls 'sacrilegious' desserts JOHN INNES THE fast-food chain, Burger King, is withdrawing its ice-cream cones after the lid of the dessert offended a Muslim. The man claimed the design resembled the Arabic inscription for Allah, and branded it sacrilegious, threatening a "jihad". The chain is being forced to spend thousands of pounds redesigning the lid with backing from The Muslim Council of Britain. It apologised and said: "The design simply represents a spinning ice-cream cone." The offending lid was spotted in a branch in Park Royal last week by business development manager Rashad Akhtar, 27, of High Wycombe....

Do You REALLY Want To Be Like Jesus? One of THE most overused phrases among Christians today is, “I just want to be more and more like Jesus.” HOLD ON–I am NOT saying that is something bad…it’s just that I don’t think that some people have a CLUE what they are talking about when they say those words!People from a churched culture grow up with a “safe” picture of Jesus–he had feathered hair, wore a white robe with a purple sash, was a constant giver of hugs and carried a lamb where ever He went.However, in reading Scripture that is...

As if we were back in eighteenth-century France, atheist tracts are abroad in our land, their flamboyant titles defiant. The God Delusion, God Is Not Great, Letter to a Christian Nation, Atheist Manifesto, Atheist Universe: These are not subtle insinuations against God, requiring inferences from readers, but open opposition inviting readers to join in thumbing their noses. The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, newly published, offers comfort and scholarly reassurance, if not consolation, to atheists who might otherwise feel lonely--as, believing what they do, they surely must. Atheism isn't what it was in the eighteenth century. Now, the focus of the...

First, I would like to thank all of you who wrote or called me after seeing the program. I truly appreciate hearing your comments and your individual points of view. I am also sorry that it is simply impossible for me to respond to every e-mail I receive. When I was first asked to appear in a television documentary about the Shroud of Turin, sometime in 1996, I was very insecure about taking a public stand on the Shroud and wondered if I should do it at all. Somewhat ironically, since I am Jewish, I consulted with a Catholic priest...

Canadian Catholic News OTTAWA, Canada (CCN) – A recent Canadian Press-Decima Research Poll shows Canadians are divided on the role God played – or did not play – in the creation of humans. But that does not mean the Intelligent Design controversy raging in the United States will come to Canada. According to the poll released July 3, 26 percent of Canadians believe “that God created human beings pretty much in their present form within the last 10,000 years or so,” while 34 percent said “human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but...

LONDON (Reuters) - The upcoming Simpsons movie takes a typically irreverent dig at religion and environmentalists, and features a nude scene involving 'toon teen Bart that had the audience at a preview show applauding. A 10-minute clip from "The Simpsons Movie," the first time Homer, Marge, their family and friends have made it to the big screen, was shown in London late on Wednesday ahead of its release worldwide later in July. The clip offered several clues as to the plot, suggesting that the environment and religion would me a major themes. Rock band Green Day is booed and pelted...

"The God Delusion" Debate Wednesday, October 3, 2007 The Alys Stephens Center Birmingham, Alabama Remaining true to our goal of engaging secular culture on critical issues in a thoughtful, respectful manner, Fixed Point Foundation will sponsor a debate on what is arguably the most critical question of our time: the existence of God. The decision one makes regarding this question has implications that reverberate throughout eternity to be sure, but it also affects temporal existence from government policy to the individual. Historically, man’s belief in the transcendent has served as a restraint on his conduct and provided hope for his...

For well over a century now, the idea that something about modernity will ultimately cause religion to wither away has been practically axiomatic among modern, sophisticated Westerners.1 Known in philosophy as Friedrich Nietzsche's famous story of the madman who runs into the marketplace declaring that "Gott ist tot," and in sociology as the "secularization thesis," it is an idea that many urbane men and women no longer even think to question, so self-evident does it appear.2 As people become more educated and more prosperous, the secularist story line goes, they find themselves both more skeptical of religion's premises and less...