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AFP – Ten members of a US Christian group could be charged with kidnapping minors and child-trafficking over an attempt to smuggle a group of children out of quake-hit Haiti, officials said.
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A UFOland is to be built in Las Vegas by the Raelian movement, a religious cult which believes humans were created by extra-terrestrials.
Visitors will be able to attend a Happiness Academy and see a full-size replica of a UFO.
In 2002, Clonaid, a company linked to the religious cult, claimed it produced the world’s first cloned baby.
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The Vatican today sent a greeting to the world’s Buddhists on the occasion of the forthcoming festival of Vesakh, thanking them for their “inspiring witness of non-attachment and
contentment,” and emphasizing that Catholics and Buddhists share an appreciation of the spiritual value of poverty.
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“Overall, more people believe in the devil, hell and angels than believe in Darwin´s theory of evolution,” said a Harris Poll released Thursday. –
The Washington Times reports The numbers clearly favor the proverbial Big Man Upstairs: 80 percent
say they believe in God; among those who attend church weekly, the
number is 98 percent. Three-quarters believe in miracles, 73 percent
believe in heaven, 71 percent say Jesus is the Son of God and 71
percent believe in angels, the survey found. Seven out of 10 say Jesus
Christ rose from the dead and that the Bible is, all or in part, the
“Word of God.”
More than two-thirds – 68 percent – believe in the “survival of the
soul after death” and would describe themselves as religious. About 62
percent think that hell exists, 61 percent believe in the Virgin Birth
and 59 percent say the devil exists.
In contrast, fewer than half – 47 percent – said they believe in
Darwin’s theory of evolution; a third said they did not believe in it
while 22 percent were not sure what they thought. A full 40 percent
said they believe in creationism, though the question did not elaborate
on exactly what that term meant.
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A little more than a third of Americans believe all the text in the Old Testament or all the text in the New Testament represent the Word of God, according to the results of a newly released poll. That’s about the same as the percentage of people who believe in UFOs (36 percent) and less than the amount of people who believe in ghosts (44 percent), Harris Interactive found through its online survey. –
The Christian Post reports Notably, however, 55 percent of those surveyed affirmed their belief
that all or most of the Word of God is represented in the Old Testament
and 54 percent for the New Testament. Furthermore, 80 percent were
found to believe in God and 71 percent that Jesus is God or the Son of
God.
“That very large majorities of the American public believe in
God, miracles, the survival of the soul after death, the resurrection
of Jesus Christ, and the Virgin birth will come as no great surprise,”
staff at Harris Interactive stated. “What may be more surprising is
that substantial minorities believe in ghosts, UFOs, witches,
astrology, and the belief that they themselves were once other people.”
According to the poll, 44 percent of Americans believe in
ghosts, 36 in UFOs, 31 in witches, 31 in astrology, and 24 in
reincarnation.
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A hells angel, a lesbian and a playboy are just some of the non-Christians to agree to Bible studies and Christian mentoring as part of a new Channel Four series to air this month. –
Christian Today reports Make Me a Christian follows the three-week journey of thirteen
non-Christians who also include a witch, a Muslim, an unmarried couple
with a child on the way, and a family of six, as they get to grips with
Christianity through a number of Bible studies and mentoring from an
ecumenical team of church leaders.
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Many Christian leaders lamented the results of a Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey from June, which revealed that 57 percent of those affiliated with evangelical churches agree with the statement that many religions can lead to eternal life. But that number may not be as alarming as it first appears, said Terry Mattingly, editor of media blog GetReligion. Many survey respondents, he said, may not have distinguished between religion and denomination. –
Christianity Today reports “It’s one thing for evangelicals to say they believe salvation can be
found through religions such as Catholicism, Lutheranism, and so on,”
Mattingly said. “It is something else to say that salvation can be
found through the religions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Wicca.”
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Hashmel Turner of Fredericksburg, Va., wears two hats: City Council member and part-time pastor of the First Baptist Church of Love. Not surprisingly, Rev. Turner wants to pray in the name of Jesus Christ — including when it’s his turn to offer the opening prayer at council sessions. –
The Morning Sun [VA, USA] reports But on July 23, Turner lost the latest round in his battle to invoke
Jesus when the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the
Fredericksburg City Council’s policy requiring that prayers at meetings
be nondenominational.
In an opinion written by retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day
O’Connor (asked to take part in the case as a visiting judge), the
court ruled that the prayers at issue are “government speech” and
therefore the prayer policy does not violate Turner’s free speech or
free exercise of religion.
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One of the core arguments of Intelligent Design is that the fundamental constants of physics and chemistry are just right or fine-tuned to allow the universe and life as we know it to exist. They are precisely the values needed to have a universe capable of producing life. –
Mukul Sharma at the Economic Times comments There is evidence for this: the observed
values of the four fundamental forces of nature appear to be delicately
balanced. A slight increase in the strong nuclear force, for instance, would
mean all the hydrogen in the early universe would have been converted to helium.
There would be no water or the long-lived stable stars that are essential for
life.
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Lawyers for the ex-husband of Juanita Bynum are suing the televangelist, claiming that she has not paid the first installment of a $40,000 legal bill to his divorce attorney. –
AP reports Bynum agreed to pay the bill in four $10,000 installments as part of a
settlement agreement reached between her and Thomas Weeks III. The
first installment was due July and the next is due Aug. 8.
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A recent federal court ruling has upheld the First Amendment rights of politically conservative and Christian students at Georgia Tech. –
OneNewsNow reports The Georgia Institute of Technology, more commonly known as Georgia
Tech, will have to modify its so-called "Safe Space" program. David
Hacker, litigation counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund,
explains the situation. “A government entity – Georgia Tech, in this
instance – was basically telling students that certain ways of
interpreting the Bible were incorrect; whereas, the way that they
were interpreting the Bible was correct and the only way,” he explains.
“And that is simply something that the government shouldn’t be in the
business of doing.”
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The National Radio Hall of Fame in Chicago has drawn the wrath of homosexual activists who object to the induction of Dr. James Dobson, a major figure in the US Christian pro-life and family movement. Wayne Besen, a homosexual activist, organised a campaign against the Hall of Fame that resulted in several hundred emails demanding that Dr. Dobson be removed from the list of nominees. –
LifeSiteNews reports Dr. Dobson is the founder and head of Focus on the Family, one of
the most prominent US Protestant evangelical organisations. According
to homosexual activist Wayne Besen, Dr. Dobson is “an extremist who has
built his empire on the backs of gays and lesbians” and “a bigot who
distorts scientific research.” Focus on the Family is one of Besen’s
favourite targets and he has set up a website meant to refute the
medical and psychological research put forward by Focus on the nature
and treatment of homosexuality as a disorder.
“It is an affront for the Radio Hall of Fame to honor James Dobson, a right wing demagogue,” said Besen.
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The heirs of the Knights Templar have launched a legal battle in Spain to force the Pope to restore the reputation of the disgraced order which was accused of heresy and dissolved seven centuries ago. –
The Telegraph reports The Association of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Christ,
whose members claim to be descended from the legendary crusaders, have
filed a lawsuit against Benedict XVI calling for him to recognise the
seizure of assets worth 100 billion euros (£79 billion).
They
claim that when the order was dissolved by his predecessor Pope Clement
V in 1307, more than 9,000 properties as well as countless pastures,
mills and other commercial ventures belonging to the knights were
appropriated by the church.
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U.S. Sen. Barack Obama has continued to support Kenya’s Raila Odinga, even after Odinga has been blamed for inciting tribal violence and slaughtering Christians, according to an explosive new book written by WND senior staff reporter Jerome R. Corsi. –
WND reports In “The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality,”
Corsi argues that Odinga’s protests following his loss to U.S.-backed
Mwai Kibaki in Kenya’s 2007 presidential election led to a wave of
tribal and religious violence aimed against Kibaki’s majority Kikuyu
tribe.
The violence Obama’s ally was blamed for included the slaughter of some 50 Pentecostal Christians.
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For a man at the heart of a bitter dispute that threatens to sunder the Anglican communion, Bishop Gene Robinson seems more relaxed than almost any of the 650 bishops and archbishops gathered for the Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade assembly that brings together the leaders of an estimated 80 million Anglicans worldwide. –
The NY Times reports The easy demeanor and constant smile of this openly gay 61-year-old
Episcopalian bishop of New Hampshire, when we meet at the Falstaff
Hotel just down the street from Canterbury Cathedral, are all the more
remarkable for the fact that he is the only man among the many wearing
the Anglican bishop’s purple on Canterbury’s streets these past two
weeks who wasn’t invited to the conference. Indeed, since the
conference first met in 1867, he was the only Anglican bishop anywhere,
except those disgraced for disputed legitimacy, malfeasance or
criminality, to be told — in his case, by the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury — that there was no seat for him at the Lambeth table.
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The teen whose death led to calls for parental notification in abortion cases was married and had a child. Critics of California’s Prop. 4 file a suit asking to remove her story from the voter guide. –
The LA Times reports In court papers filed in her home state of Texas after her death, the
man with whom she lived declared himself her common-law husband in an
effort to secure custody of the child. Texas recognizes common-law
marriage and does not view a married 15-year-old as a minor, according
to an attorney for Planned Parenthood.
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That sense of taking responsibility is only one expression of what person after person has said to me: “There is no desire to separate.” When we have discussed – as we’ve had to – the possibilities of remaining divided or becoming more so, no one has relished this or thought it a good outcome in terms of our mission. And our guest speakers have, with surprising consistency, affirmed our capacity to bear with one another patiently as one of the great gifts they saw in us. –
The Independent reports But this is a point where we have to note the temptation to
congratulate ourselves, and be careful. “Anglicans are a profoundly
diverse community who nonetheless live tolerantly with each other”:
we’ve all said it, and it sounds wonderful, but it can conceal some
fault-lines – and some wounds. On its own, it could mean that nothing
matters enough to us to understand why some conflicts are unavoidable
and costly – why some feel we put unity before truth, and so feel we
have no very deep sense of truth itself.
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It’s a medical first – a 14-year-old German boy became the youngest patient in history to begin treatment to prepare him for a sex change, but a conservative group says the boy’s parents and doctors have been unfairly influenced by the homosexual lobby. –
CNS reports Tim, who now goes by the name, Kim, said he wanted to have the surgery
since he was 12, but that he considered himself a female since the age
of two. He has already begun receiving hormonal therapy, in preparation
for the operation which entails the surgical removal of his genital
organs.
Some doctors said he should be sent to a mental hospital for observation. Others approved of the sex change.
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Police in the Chicago area, investigating the slaying of five women in a Lane Bryant clothing store earlier this year, have sent 11 officers from Illinois to Texas to investigate what role a church may have played in the killings. –
WND reports The murder by an unknown gunman, previously reported as a botched
robbery, now invites more sinister speculation as police draw a
suspected connection between the collapse of a Chicago-area church and
one of the shooting victims, Rhoda McFarland.
McFarland served as an associate and youth pastor of Embassy
Christian Center in Crest Hill, Ill., but left the church in 2006 and
became the manager of the Lane Bryant store where she and four other
women were killed execution-style six months ago.
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Israeli archaeologists have unearthed a seal impression belonging to a minister of the biblical King Zedekiah, which dates back 2,600 years, during an archeological dig in Jerusalem’s ancient City of David. The finding helps corroborate the story pertaining to the biblical minister’s demand to have the prophet Jeremiah killed. –
Haaretz reports The seal impression, or bulla, with the name
Gedalyahu ben Pashur, who served as minister to King Zedekiah (597-586
BCE) according to the Book of Jeremiah, was found completely intact
just meters away from a separate seal impression of another of
Zedekia’s ministers, Yehukual ben Shelemyahu, which was unearthed three
years ago.