The New Atheism

Written by an Atheist, this is an interesting read on the “new atheism movement”.

“New atheism” was the surprise political hit of 2007. God-bashing books by Hitchens, Dawkins and other thinkers who come out in a rash when they hear the word “religion” flew out of the bookshops. Philip Pullman’s anti-divine Golden Compass hit the big screen. Everywhere, God was exposed as a fraud and God botherers were given an intellectual lashing.

I am as atheistic as it gets. But I will not be signing up to this shrill hectoring of the religious. The new atheists have given atheism a bad name. History’s greatest atheists, or the “old atheists” as we are now forced to call them, were humanistic and progressive, critical of religion because it expressed man’s sense of higher moral purpose in a deeply flawed fashion. The new atheists are screechy and intolerant; they see religion merely as an expression of mass ignorance and delusion. Their aim seems to be, not only to bring God crashing back down to earth, but also to downgrade mankind itself.

There’s something bitterly ironic in the fact that the new atheists pose as the successors to Darwin. Darwin himself had little interest in baiting the devout. In the early 1880s, he was asked by the radical atheist Edward Aveling to endorse a new book on evolutionary theory. Darwin, caring little for Aveling’s “anti-religious militancy”, refused. He wrote to Aveling: “It appears to me … that direct arguments against Christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion … ”

Marx, too, believed that direct assaults on religion were pointless. He argued (pdf) that religion existed as spiritual compensation for social alienation, and believed that once the true nature of religion as a comfort blanket in an alienated society had been revealed, it would become clear that religion is merely a secondary phenomenon dependent for its existence on socioeconomic circumstances. Radical critics should focus their intellectual ire on the degraded society that sustains religion rather than on attacking religion itself: “The criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.”

Old atheists sought to “illuminate men’s minds”, through advancing science or deepening our understanding of capitalist society. New atheists take exactly the opposite approach. They expend all of their energy on attacking the institution of religion and its ridiculous adherents.

Read More

US Dollar Gets Hammered

US dollar hammered | The Australian
THE US dollar posted its biggest weekly drop against the euro since April 2006 as a slumping housing market and upheaval in Pakistan made US financial assets less attractive to global investors.

The US currency fell against all 16 most actively traded currencies, except Mexico’s peso, last week as traders raised bets that the Federal Reserve would cut borrowing costs in January.

The US dollar has lost 10.4 per cent against the euro and 5.7 per cent versus the yen in 2007, and the European currency is up 5.2 per cent versus the yen, its eighth annual increase.

“The dollar is like a sore thumb getting hit by a hammer,” said Brian Dolan, chief currency strategist at Forex.com, a unit of the online currency trading firm Gain Capital in New Jersey. “US housing data shows no signs of any bottom in sight.”

Asteroid On Collision Course With Mars

An asteroid, which is believed to be on a collision course with Mars, will not affect the Earth if it hits the ‘Red’ planet in January 2008, a Russian Academy of Science spokesman said.

Sergei Smirnov said the explosion could be on a scale equal to the Tunguska event, when a meteorite, which crashed into central Siberia in 1908 caused destruction on a nuclear scale. The enigma still thrills scientists all over the world.

Source

Bin Laden Plans To Expand Terror War To Israel

Osama bin Laden warned Iraqs Sunni Arabs against fighting al-Qaida and vowed to expand the terror groups holy war to Israel in a new audiotape Saturday, threatening “blood for blood, destruction for destruction.”

Most of the 56-minute tape dealt with Iraq, apparently al-Qaidas latest attempt to keep supporters in Iraq unified at a time when the U.S. military claims to have al-Qaidas Iraq branch on the run.

The tape did not mention Pakistan or the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, though Pakistans government has blamed al-Qaida and the Taliban for her death on Thursday. That suggested the tape was made before the assassination.

Bin Ladens comments offered an unusually direct attack on Israel, stepping up al-Qaidas attempts to use the Israeli-Arab conflict to rally supporters. Israel has warned of growing al-Qaida activity in Palestinian territory, though terror network is not believed to have taken a strong role there so far.

Read More

Strange Blue Floating Image At Ohio Gas Station

A security camera caught a strange blue, “ghost-like”, floating image on video camera at an Ohio gas station. The recording lasted a half an hour.”I actually watched it for 30 minutes and then actually I watched it move and that is when I got freaked out,” said the Marathon Gas Station’s owner, Ameed Abuzahrieh.

Believer Bitter Over Prosperity Preachers

And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Florida, area pledged $500 a year to Joyce Meyer, the evangelist whose frank talk about recovering from childhood sexual abuse was so inspirational. She wrote checks to flamboyant faith healer Benny Hinn and a local preacher-made-good, Paula White.

Only the blessings didnt come. Fleenor ended up borrowing money from friends and payday loan companies just to buy groceries. At first she believed the explanation given on television: Her faith wasnt strong enough.

“I wanted to believe God wanted to do something great with me like he was doing with them,” she said. “Im angry and bitter about it. Right now, I dont watch anyone on TV hardly.”

All three of the groups Fleenor supported are among six major Christian television ministries under scrutiny by a senator who is asking questions about the evangelists lavish spending and possible abuses of their tax-exempt status.

The probe by Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has brought new scrutiny to the underlying belief that brings in millions of dollars and fills churches from Atlanta to Los Angeles — the “Gospel of Prosperity,” or the notion that God wants to bless the faithful with earthly riches.

All six ministries under investigation preach the prosperity gospel to varying degrees.

Proponents call it a biblically sound message of hope. Others say it is a distortion that makes evangelists rich and preys on the vulnerable. They say it has evolved from “its all right to make money” to its all right for the pastor to drive a Bentley, live in an oceanside home and travel by private jet.
Dont Miss

Televangelist refuses to turn over more financial documents

“More and more people are desperate and grasping at straws and want something that will alleviate their pain or financial crisis,” said Michael Palmer, dean of the divinity school at Regent University, founded by Pat Robertson. “Its a growing problem.”

The modern-day prosperity movement can largely be traced back to evangelist Oral Roberts teachings. Roberts disciples have spread his theology and vocabulary Roberts and other evangelists, such as Meyer, call their donors “partners.” And several popular prosperity preachers, including some now under investigation, have served on the Oral Roberts University board.

Grassley is asking the ministries for financial records on salaries, spending practices, private jets and other perks. The investigation, coupled with a financial scandal at ORU that forced out Roberts son and heir, Richard, has some wondering whether the prosperity gospel is facing a day of reckoning.

While few expect the movement to disappear, the scrutiny could force greater financial transparency and oversight in a movement known for secrecy.

Most scholars trace the origins of prosperity theology to E.W. Kenyon, an evangelical pastor from the first half of the 20th century.

But it wasnt until the postwar era — and a pair of evangelists from Tulsa, Oklahoma — that “health and wealth” theology became a fixture in Pentecostal and charismatic churches.

Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin — and later, Kenneth Copeland — trained tens of thousands of evangelists with a message that resonated with an emerging middle class, said David Edwin Harrell Jr., a Roberts biographer. Copeland is among those now being investigated.

“What Oral did was develop a theology that made it OK to prosper,” Harrell said. “He let Pentecostals be faithful to the old-time truths their grandparents embraced and be part of the modern world, where they could have good jobs and make money.”

The teachings took on various names — “Name It and Claim It,” “Word of Faith,” the prosperity gospel.

Read More

Sextival – First Ever Sex Festival Launched in Israel

A Three-day Sextival, the first of it’s kind is scheduled to be held in Tel Aviv in February. The event will showcase sexual products, strip shows and sex related presentations. Organizers state the event will cater to “all tastes and fetishes”.

The woman organizing the event is former model Nitzan Kirshenboim, a 32-year-old mother of two who claims to be avid consumer of these types of products and shows and says she got the idea for the event after visiting a similar event in Berlin.

“I’m actually a real nerd,” Kirshenboim claims. “I’m just the neighbor’s daughter who decided to take the initiative and say, ‘Guys, we all have sex, we all enjoy it. Why not get it out in the open?’”

Kirshenboim is producing the festival in cooperation with several local bodies that specialize in sex, including Playboy Israel, the Ego cable channel and the Sex Style store chain. She has also contacted Playboy Magazines’ Hugh Hefner, who has agreed to host a get-together in his mansion for the winners of a raffle.

The Sextival will showcase the wildest things your imagination can come up with,” Kirshenboim promises.

Due to the somewhat graphic nature The woman organizing the event is former model Nitzan Kirshenboim, a 32-year-old mother of two who claims to be avid consumer of sex products and shows and says she got the idea for the event after visiting a sex festival in Berlin.

“I’m actually a real nerd,” Kirshenboim claims. “I’m just the neighbor’s daughter who decided to take the initiative and say, ‘Guys, we all have sex, we all enjoy it. Why not get it out in the open?’”

Kirshenboim is producing the festival in cooperation with several local bodies that specialize in sex, including Playboy Israel, the Ego cable channel and the Sex Style store chain. She has also contacted Playboy Magazines’ Hugh Hefner, who has agreed to host in his mansion a get-together for the winners of a raffle.

The Sextival will showcase the wildest things your imagination can come up with,” Kirshenboim promises.

We have made a decision not to post a link to this story due to the graphic nature of the images.

2 Peter 3:3-9

3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,

4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:

6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:

7 But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Russia Test-fires Missiles on Christmas Day

Russia test-fired two separate missiles, including one capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads more than 7,000 kilometres, and launched three satellites into orbit on Christmas Day.

The RS-24, an intercontinental ballistic missile, was launched from a facility in northern Russia on Tuesday. Its warheads successfully hit targets at the Kura testing range on the Kamchatka Peninsula almost 7,000 kilometres away.

It is intended to replace an aging missile system established during the Soviet era.

Strategic Missile Forces spokesman Alexander Vovk would not confirm how many test warheads the missile held, but the Interfax news agency said the RS-24 can carry at least three.

The Strategic Missile Forces released a statement saying the missile was launched from a mobile launcher and was built by Moscow’s Heat Technology Institute.

“This missile is being created using scientific and technological solutions from the Topol-M missile which allows to significantly reduce time and cost of its development,” the statement said.

Topol-M missiles currently in use can carry one nuclear warhead about 10,000 kilometres. The RS-24 was first test-fired successfully in May.

Also on Tuesday, a Navy spokesman confirmed a ballistic missile launch from a nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea.

That missile, designated the RSM-54 Sineva, is capable of carrying four nuclear warheads up to 8,800 kilometres.

President Vladimir Putin has earmarked much of Russia’s oil revenues to update and modernize its military arsenal. He has vocally opposed the U.S. plan to establish missile defence sites in nearby Poland and the Czech Republic.

Moscow said the U.S.’ missile defence system would pose a security threat, and has promised to take counter-measures.

On the same day, Russia’s Federal Space Agency launched three satellites intended to boost the country’s space navigation system, used for both military and civilian purposes.

They were sent into orbit by a Proton-M rocket from the Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan to join Russia’s Global Navigation Satellite System — similar to the U.S. Global Positioning System.

The satellite system was established during the Soviet era, but since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union it has declined from its 24-satellite heyday.

Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Tuesday the three new satellites would bring the fleet to 18 — enough to provide navigation services across Russia.

Read More

He had previously said the service would reach 24 satellites and be available worldwide by 2010.

Questions and Answers About Americans Religion

This time of year provides an opportunity to answer frequently asked questions about exactly where America stands today in regard to religion, based on Gallup’s extensive archives.

Christmas is obviously a Christian holiday. But what percentage of Americans today identify with a Christian religion?

About 82% of Americans in 2007 told Gallup interviewers that they identified with a Christian religion. That includes 51% who said they were Protestant, 5% who were “other Christian,” 23% Roman Catholic, and 3% who named another Christian faith, including 2% Mormon.

Because 11% said they had no religious identity at all, and another 2% didn’t answer, these results suggest that well more than 9 out of 10 Americans who identify with a religion are Christian in one way or the other.

Has this changed over time?

Yes. The percentage of Americans who identify with a Christian religion is down some over the decades. This is not so much because Americans have shifted to other religions, but because a significantly higher percentage of Americans today say they don’t have a religious identity. In the late 1940s, when Gallup began summarizing these data, a very small percentage explicitly told interviewers they did not identify with any religion. But of those who did have a religion, Gallup classified — in 1948, for example — 69% as Protestant and 22% as Roman Catholic, or about 91% Christian.

It’s one thing to identify with a religion, and another to be actively religious. What percentage of Americans are actually members of a church?

Sixty-two percent of Americans in Gallup’s latest poll, conducted in December, say they are members of a “church or synagogue,” a question Gallup has been asking since 1937.

And how has that changed over time?

It’s down in the recent years of this decade and down a little more compared to the time period prior to the late 1970s. In the 1937 Gallup Poll, for example, 73% of Americans said they were church members. That number stayed in the 70% range in polls conducted in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. By the 1970s, however, the number began to slip below 70% in some polls, although as recently as 1999, 70% said they were church members. Since 2002, self-reported church membership has been between 63% and 65%.

Read More

40 Iranian Jews Make Exodus from Iran Arrive in Israel to Escape Dangers

Greeted by joyous relatives and a crowd of Israeli TV reporters, about 40 Iranian Jews landed in Israel Tuesday, leaving behind their lives in an increasingly bellicose Islamic regime for new homes in the Jewish state.

The new immigrants took a covert route, facilitated by the Israeli government and backed with funding from American evangelical Christians who see their efforts as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

Relatives screamed in delight and threw candy at the newcomers as they emerged into the airport reception hall after a long bureaucratic procedure.

Two brothers, Yosef and Michael, said they were glad to be in Israel. They declined to give their family name in order to protect relatives.

“I feel so good,” said Yosef, 16. “I just saw all of my family. You cant put that into words.”

Michael, 15, said he told all his friends where he was going, and they wanted to come along. “I was scared in Iran as a Jew,” he said. “I would never be able to wear a skullcap in the streets there.” Others said they felt safe in Iran, discounting warnings that Jews could become targets.

The brothers arrived with their parents and a sister and were greeted by their grandparents, whom they had not seen since the grandparents left for Israel six years ago.

Read More

Notre Dame Professor Tries To Solve Mystery Behind The Star of Bethlehem

For nearly 2,000 years, it’s been the one puzzle astronomers haven’t been able to fully solve. But now, one Notre Dame professor thinks he may have discovered the origin of the star of Bethlehem.

Look at an artist’s rendering of Jesus’ birth and you can always find it.

Listen to songs like “We Three Kings” and it’s clear.

The star of Bethlehem plays a pivotal role in the Christmas story.

Still, it’s role in the Bible is fairly small. In fact, there’s only one reference — in the Gospel of Matthew. “Where is he born the King of the Jews?” it reads. “For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him.”

But did that star really exist? If so, where was it? What was it? Why was it so bright?

They are questions Notre Dame Astrophysicist Dr. Grant Mathews began to ask about three years ago. And what he found took him by surprise.

“The standard viewpoint over the years is that it’s a massing of planets, or what we call planetary conjunction, when planets move past each other,” he said.

But here’s the curious thing:

Mathews says this conjunction wasn’t just a few planets.

“Basically every known planet at the time was amassed all at once,” he said.

And it wasn’t anything astronomers had recorded before.

“To have all of them line up like that at once was a very rare event,” Mathews said.

On April 17, 6 B.C., Jupiter, Saturn, the sun, and the moon all aligned in the constellation Aries. Venus and Mars lined up in neighboring constellations.

Dr. Mathews says, for the so called “wise men” this would have had great significance.

“That would have signaled to the Magi that there was newborn leader with a special destiny — a very powerful leader that was going to appear in Jerusalem,” he said.

But Mathews wasn’t convinced the planets fully explained that bright light in the East referenced in the Gospel of Matthew. So he went “back in time” to see if something else might have been there too.

He found two likely candidates. The first, is a nova — a combination of two stars that shines thousands of times brighter than a normal star.

The second is a supernova — a single star 10-20 times the size of our sun that collapses in a massive nuclear explosion. Supernovas can create light up to 100 million times as bright as a normal star.

“It is as bright as this entire galaxy of stars,” Mathews said, pointing to a picture from NASA’s Hubble Telescope.

Using other Hubble images, pictures from the Chandra X-Ray Observer Satellite, and ancient Chinese astronomy charts, Mathews scanned the skies and was astonished.

“Sure enough, in the archives, there is a supernova in Aquilla  the constellation they saw. And it’s about 2,000 years old,” he said.

Read More 

U.S. Jews, Muslims Seek Paths to Harmony

Muslims and Jews, a tiny slice of the U.S. population, are looking for new ways to get along that could set a worldwide example for two ancient but often alienated faiths, religious leaders and experts say.

“I’ve encountered (among Muslims) a more centrist, a more moderate voice that is looking to the Jewish community to help project that voice … to the greater world,” said Rabbi Marc Schneier of New York, speaking of a national summit of imams and rabbis he helped organize earlier this year.

He also cited a recent incident in a New York subway “where four young Jews were being verbally and physically assaulted on a train for wishing the passengers a happy Hanukkah, and the only individual to come to their rescue was a young Muslim man,” Hassan Askari, of Bangladeshi heritage, who was beaten.

Russia Warns of Retaliation Against U.S. Missile Shield

Russia will take “measures of reprisal” if the United States insisted on deploying a missile shield in central Europe which could threaten Moscow’s national security, a foreign ministry spokesman said Monday.

The U.S. missile defense plan will be “a strong action designed to weaken Russia’s nuclear deterrent,” said Mikhail Kamynin in a foreign ministry statement.

Russia would “have no other choice than to take measures of reprisal,” he said.

Russia’s head of strategic missile forces, General Nikolai Solovtsov, has threatened to target planned U.S. missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic if Washington ignored Russia’s concerns, the Interfax news agency reported.

Russia’s intercontinental ballistic missiles could target the planned U.S. shield if it was seen to “undermine the Russian nuclear deterrent capability,” Solovtsov said.

Washington has insisted the missile shield, which consists of a radar station in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland, is intended to stave off the threat of attacks from what it calls “rogue states.”

Earlier reports said the first missile could be put on alert in Poland in 2011 and the deployment could be completed by 2013.

Read More

Israel Would Win Nuclear War With Iran

All out nuclear war between Israel and Iran: a doomsday scenario that we all fear deeply. A new study compiled by the US Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), headed by former Pentagon analyst Anthony H. Cordesman, explored just such a nightmare scenario, noting that it could lead to the death of between 16- 28 million Iranian civilians, and 200-800 thousand Israelis.

This hypothetical, research-oriented study also explored other contingencies for unconventional warfare in our region, noting the tactics that various countries could potentially employ in such instances.

As pertains to nuclear warfare, the study found that an Israeli nuclear scrimmage with Iran would most likely last for about three weeks. Aside from the aforementioned direct casualties, the study could not determine how many additional long-term casualties would arise from fallout and radiation in the weeks and months following such an attack.

One essential requirement for nuclear confrontation in our region, according to the study, is allowing Iran’s nuclear program to develop, unhindered by a pre-emptive strike by either Israel or the United States. If US or Israeli preemption does not occur, the study found, Iran could very well have 30 nuclear warheads available for warfare between 2010-2020. Israel, by comparison, currently has 200 nuclear war heads with both air and sea launch capabilities, according to the study.

Read More

Next Page »