fayfreethinkers.com

DOUG writes:
Finally, a sports figure who knows how to hold God responsible: when he does well he thanks God, and when he doesn't do well he blames God!

Buffalo Bills wide receiver Steve Johnson failed to catch an obviously game-winning touchdown pass, and later tweeted this:



See here.

See here.

ANDERSON, Ind. — An Anderson father says that because he professed religious doubt in a custody hearing, a judge took his children from him.

Craig Scarberry, 29, this month was stripped of joint custody of his three children, Kaelyn, 7; William, 6, and Ayvah, 4, because he changed his religion from Christian to agnostic.

...“I’m a good, loving father, and this ruling has taken my children away,” Scarberry said. “I wasn’t interfering in their right to be brought up in a Christian environment,” he said, noting that the children still attend Christian school and church services as they have done in the four years that he has had joint custody.

...“I thought I lived in America, where you have the right to practice what you want to practice without persecution,” he said. “I feel like I’ve suffered the highest persecution ... I had everything taken away from me.” Scarberry also was ordered to pay child support, which had not been stipulated when he and the children’s mother shared custody.

Pancol’s order included other evidence presented in court. It said there was evidence that Scarberry had used profanity in front of the children and at times “failed to control or manage his anger. ... In addition, (Scarberry) was sending a great number of text messages to (Porcaro).”

The order does not say that Scarberry was abusive or negligent toward the children.

...Pancol’s order also included evidence that the mother “had left minor children at home alone, did not feed them breakfast and did not at time(s) buckle them in their car seats.”

[Read the rest at the link above]

Noah's Ark theme park for Kentucky

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear and Answers in Genesis, builders of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, will unveil plans for a new Northern Kentucky attraction Wednesday in Frankfort.

The theme park, to be called Ark Encounter, will be in Grant County, Ky., near the Veteran’s Cemetery.

The attraction is envisioned as a full-scale wooden ark that would include associated museums, theaters, amenities, event venues and outdoor parking.

Preliminary indications are that the attraction could draw as many as 1.6 million guests per year and would cost at least $24.5 million to complete.

...The Creation Museum, opened in May 2007, was estimated to draw about 250,000 visitors per year, but surpassed one million visitors in less than three years.

Its exhibits represent the views of the ministry, including the belief that the earth is only about 7,000 years old and that dinosaurs were among the creatures on Noah’s ark.

An independent consulting firm hired by Answers in Genesis estimates the Creation Museum is directly or indirectly responsible for bringing 2,100 jobs to the area and has an economic impact of $65 million per year.

See here.

The world's most popular history book...

Proposed bill calls for bible curriculum

A bill filed at the state capitol could lead to a bible-based curriculum being taught at Arkansas' public schools The bill was pre-filed by Senator Denny Altes of Fort Smith. It would require the state department of education to develop a bible curriculum.

But that doesn't mean schools would have to adopt it. The recently proposed bill must now battle for attention in an already crammed upcoming legislative session.

Adding to its struggle is its controversial aim that would work towards implementing bible teachings into Arkansas' education curriculum. Critics argue the bill teeters the line of seperation of church and state.

"When you go in and use one religion over others that's where you cross that separation of church and state line," says LeeWood Thomas of the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers. ...

House bill 1032 would not mandate that curriculum be taught, but just developed. According to Altes, similar legislation is being considered in neighboring states like Oklahoma.

Altes told media sources Wednesday, "We've got the world's most popular history book and we're not using it in the classroom."

If passed the bill says the course would be taught to students in an objective and nondevotional manner. According to state education officials similar curriculums already exist within the state."

LINK

Merry Christmas:

Letter to the Editor by our friend Linda F.

***
Herein lies my response to Mr. Hawkins’ letter re: atheism and irrationality. I’ll give him a break since he may not own a dictionary, but calling people who require evidence to believe something “irrational” is over-the-top silly. Atheists are the biggest fans of science, empirical evidence, observation, critical thinking, peer-reviewed writings and studies, inductive reasoning and – well – proof. If that’s “irrational”, then Noah Webster, the dictionary guy, needs a good tongue-lashing. The noted physicist, astronomer, philosopher and author Dr. Victor Stenger put it this way: He noted that if atheists believe in something but are presented with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, they disregard the belief as no longer valid. Religionists disregard the evidence entirely and hang on to the belief regardless of proof or impossibility. It’s simply the difference between skeptics and people of religious faith. Man’s scientific, medical, political and social progress over the millennia has come on the backs of doubters – many of whom experienced torture, imprisonment, even death, at the hands of the “faithful.” When you hear the clippety-clop of hooves, think horses or even zebras, not unicorns.

Linda F.

What it looks like when religious conservatives have power:

The Telegraph

"In 1984, George Orwell wrote: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” We in the West managed to avoid this fate by defeating first Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, but fascism is alive and well in the Arab world. In Islamic, one-party states like Sudan, Orwell’s most pessimistic dystopian predictions have come to pass. The stomach-churning twist that these regimes have given to Orwell’s definition of fascism is to divide the powerful from the powerless along gender lines. As in 1984, the boot belongs to a policeman; but in Islamic republics, the face being stamped on nearly always belongs to a woman.

You may want to brace yourself before clicking on this video. It’s not for the faint-hearted. It depicts a defenceless women being brutally whipped by a laughing, Sudanese policeman. When a second policeman realises his colleague is being filmed, he decides to join in. The woman’s crime? She was wearing trousers, a breach of Sudan’s Islamic Legal Code.
This video is just the latest example in the litany of crimes against women committed in the name of Sharia, the so-called sacred law of Islam. In Iran, we have the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the woman condemned by a Sharia court to death by stoning for committing adultery; in Afghanistan, Bibi Aisha, the beautiful, 18-year-old who was tried by a Taliban court, found guilty of abandoning her husband and brutally disfigured."

Astronomer Sues the University of Kentucky, Claiming His Faith Cost Him a Job

In 2007, C. Martin Gaskell, an astronomer at the University of Nebraska, was a leading candidate for a job running an observatory at the University of Kentucky. But then somebody did what one does nowadays: an Internet search.

The University of Kentucky hired someone else. And Dr. Gaskell sued the institution.

Whether his faith cost him the job and whether certain religious beliefs may legally render people unfit for certain jobs are among the questions raised by the case, Gaskell v. University of Kentucky.

New York Times

Unfortunately, not from The Onion:

"Religion: Pope blames secular society for clergy sexually abusing children

About the ongoing scandal surrounding the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy, Pope Benedict said the fault lay not only with the Church but also with the "context of our times." The pope went on to equate child pornography with drug use, and blamed the sexual promiscuous decade of the 1970's for priests sexually abusing children.

For Catholic clergy sexually abusing children, the Pope blamed a secular society in which he said the mistreatment of children was frighteningly common."

http://www.examiner.com/humanist-in-nat ... g-children

Invoke the Beast?

Officers took a teen from north suburban Gurnee, Ill. for a psychological evaluation after finding him engaging in a Satanic ritual in a public park.

After having an argument with his mother, the 15-year-old left his house with a knife, telling her he was headed to the garage to cut up some veal for a "devil-worshipping ritual."

His mother tried to stop him, according to a TribLocal story: she grabbed his hoodie to try and restrain him, but he twisted her wrist and pulled away.

He then went to nearby Gowe Park, behind Warren Township High School. When police found him there, he was burning candles and had drawn a pentagram in the ground in charcoal, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

He told officers he was "trying to invoke the beast."

See here.

I used to "invoke the beast" quite often when I was a teenager. Seriously, like several times a day. But certainly never in public...that is really not acceptable behavior.

However, all masturbation jokes aside, how is this news? It's just some teenager full of angst playing make-believe with his magic candles. He doesn't need a psychological evaluation...he needs to get laid.

.

Inside a Nazi Christmas Party, 1941

"...for the religious views of Hitler himself, the evidence is conflicting: In public statements he sometimes praised Christianity (once calling it "the foundation of our national morality"), but in private conversations -- including one recalled by the Third Reich's official architect, Albert Speer -- the Führer is said to have abhorred the faith for what he deemed its "meekness and flabbiness."

courtesy of Life Magazine, 1970

.

L.Wood wrote:... but in private conversations -- including one recalled by the Third Reich's official architect, Albert Speer -- the Führer is said to have abhorred the faith for what he deemed its "meekness and flabbiness."

DOUG
It is true that there is a lot of false and misleading information out there about Hitler's view of Christianity. Although Hitler may have once made a comment to Speer that Christianity may seem to some people to be meek and flabby, and without more context it is not clear what his feelings were (eg. "Speer, some people might see Christianity as meek and flabby..."), his clear and known actions show a Hitler who was firmly behind Christianity. He implemented what he called "practical Christianity" in Germany as part of a national program, and it was mandatory to be a Christian if you wanted to be an SS officer.

There is no case for making Hitler out to be anti-Christian, and plenty of material to show that he considered himself to be a Christian.

Our friend Jeffery Tate has started a Unitarian Universalist group in Rogers. They regularly. See their website here:

Unitarian-Universalists of Benton County, AR

They are on Facebook here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Unitarian ... 629?v=info

I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest:
"If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
"No," the priest said, "Not if you didn't know."
"Then why," asked the Eskimo, "did you tell me?"

- Annie Dillard

here's a website someone has put a lot of work into - it's not quite as polished as I think it should be, but whoever did it is on the right track....

www.truth-saves.com

Betsy wrote:here's a website someone has put a lot of work into - it's not quite as polished as I think it should be, but whoever did it is on the right track....

http://www.truth-saves.com

DOUG
Thanks for the link, Betsy. The website has a lot of good material.

.

The Preacher and the Fur Coat(s)

"A Dallas pastor accused of stealing more than $10,000 worth of fur coats, designer purses and electronics from a church member's home on Christmas Eve says that she's really innocent.

"I thought I was helping," Sandy McGriff, 52, told reporters by way of explaining why she was found at the home of Serita Agnew by police last week.

McGriff, pastor of the Church of the Living God, spent part of Christmas Day in jail, and was released on $26,000 bail. Police responded to a neighbor's 911 call around 5:30 pm on Friday, according to The Dallas Morning news. Officers found a broken kitchen window and saw McGriff carrying two fur coats out of the house. They also found a laptop and three purses in McGriff's Jaguar. From the Morning News' initial report:

McGriff told officers that a friend had sent her to pick up her coats and that her arm was injured because she could not find a key under the doormat and had to break in through the window.

Police called the resident, Serita Agnew, who told them she had not given anyone permission to go into her house or take her property."

Then, the story morphs-

"But McGriff, who has been a pastor for eight years, told a different story to reporters who she invited to her home on Monday. In a taped interview (video below), McGriff admits to speaking with Agnew on Christmas Eve, but says she was simply in the neighborhood later when "something" told her to drive by Agnew's house. There, she saw two men coming out from the side of the house. She pulled into the driveway to investigate. After not finding the spare key, she went around the building, and "saw that the window was broke."

"My mistake was, I did not call 911 and I went through the window," McGriff said. "I just used poor judgment."

She went in the house. "I said 'well let me get what I know that they would probably want,'" McGriff said. She got the laptop first, and then said she saw the coats on the way out. She did so, McGriff said, to prevent the items from being taken should the two men come back. It's what she would have done in any situation, she says."

TPM has the rest...

.

L.Wood wrote:"I said 'well let me get what I know that they would probably want,'" McGriff said. She got the laptop first, and then said she saw the coats on the way out. She did so, McGriff said, to prevent the items from being taken should the two men come back. It's what she would have done in any situation, she says."

This excuse is so lame I will bet that this explanation never makes it to court. Her attorney will talk her out of it. No jury or judge would buy it for a second.