No God But Atheists Want a Church
May 4, 2008
he fastest-growing faith in America is no faith at all. And now some atheists think they need a church, says an article by Sean McManus in New York magazine.
The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released the results of its “Religious Landscape” survey in February and found that 16 % of Americans have no religious affiliation. The number is even greater among young people: 25 % of 18- to 29-year-olds now identify with no religion, up from 11 % in a similar survey in 1986.
For most of its modern history, atheism has existed as a kind of civil-rights movement. Groups like American Atheists have functioned primarily as litigants in the fight for church-state separation, not as atheist social clubs. “Atheists are self-reliant, self-sufficient, independent people who don’t feel like they need an organization,” says Ellen Johnson, president of American Atheists for the past thirteen years. “They’re so independent that if they want to get involved, they usually don’t join an organization—they start their own.”
Read More
If this is your first time visiting Bible Prophecy In The News, I'd like to invite you to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Muslim Leaders Want Mecca to Be Center of World Time Zones
April 22, 2008
Greenwich Mean Time GMT could be replaced by “Mecca Time,” if a group of Muslim leaders get their way.
At the conference, “Mecca, the Center of the Earth, Theory and Practice,” Muslim scientists and clerics called for the change, arguing that the holy city in Saudi Arabia is the center of the Earth and should be the reference point for world time, not Greenwich, England, the British Broadcasting Corp. reports.
One geologist at the Qatar conference said Meccas longitude is perfectly aligned with magnetic north and should therefore replace the English city, which has been measuring time zones since 1884, the BBC reports.
Attendees of the conference also reviewed the “Mecca Watch,” an invention by a French Muslim which reportedly rotates counter-clockwise and displays Meccas direction from any point in the world, the BBC said.
The conference is part of a trend called “Ijaz al-Koran” or “miraculous nature of the holy text,” which tries to find precedents for modern science from passages in the Koran, the BBC reports.
But its critics say Ijaz al-Koran confuses spiritual truth — which depends on constant faith — with empirical truth, which depends on ever-changing science, the BBC said.
More Catholic Schools Closing Across US
April 13, 2008
For 46 years, crime, recessions and hurricanes proved no threat to the daily ritual of St. Monica School, where the entire blue-and-white uniformed student body gathered outside each morning to join in prayer.
Come June, though, the tradition will fade away, and “amen” will close St. Monica’s morning recitations for the last time. The school, a home-away-from-home for mostly minority students, will close.
As Pope Benedict XVI next week makes his first trip to the U.S. as pontiff, Catholic schools across the country, long a force in educating the underprivileged regardless of their faith, face the same fate as St. Monica.
About 1,267 Catholic schools have closed since 2000 and enrollment nationwide has dropped by 382,125 students, or 14 percent, according to the National Catholic Education Association. The problem is most apparent in inner cities, in schools like St. Monica with large concentrations of minorities whose parents often struggle to pay tuition rather than send them to failing public schools.
U.S. Visit Will Give Pope A Defining Moment
April 9, 2008
When Shepherd One lands outside Washington, D.C., on April 15, the jet carrying Pope Benedict XVI to a six-day visit in the USA will deliver a complex and surprising man.
Jewish Leader Calls Hagee Extremist
April 3, 2008
The leader of the largest branch of American Judaism said Wednesday that synagogues in the movement shouldn’t work with the Rev. John Hagee, a Christian Zionist, calling him an “extremist” on Israeli policy who disparages other faiths.
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the liberal Union for Reform Judaism, said Hagee and his group, Christians United For Israel, reject any Israeli land concessions to achieve peace with the Palestinians.
Reform Judaism supports creating a Palestinian state; Hagee sees a biblical mandate for the territory so End Times prophecy can be fulfilled.
Yoffie also condemned Hagee’s views on Roman Catholicism and Islam. The San Antonio pastor has suggested that Catholic anti-Semitism shaped Adolf Hitler, among other comments.
Hagee has vehemently denied he is anti-Catholic and said his remarks have been mischaracterized.
Gospel of Godlessness
March 24, 2008
Holy Week has offered an opportunity to cue up the media attacks on Christianity and faith.
The first salvo in the annual Easter faith-flagellation fest came last week from Comedy Central on a show called “Root of All Evil.” Comedian-prosecutors were tasked with making the case as to which defendant was the “root of all evil.” The choices were Oprah and the Catholic Church.
Said the Catholic Church “prosecutor”: “Then there’s the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary. God impregnated Mary. We have a whole religion based on one woman who reeeeeeally stuck to her story.”
Sadly, most Christians are not surprised by this kind of invective. The media — entertainment and news — often treat Christianity and faith in God with indifference if not outright hostility.
For atheists it’s a different story. In 2007 three books by atheists — Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens — made the best-seller lists. The news media used this fact to shine the spotlight on atheism and atheists throughout the year. And while there is nothing wrong with reporting a trend, media coverage of the godless and their beliefs was virtually uncritical. Unlike Christianity and Christians, atheism and atheists got a free ride.
At times, the media blatantly promoted atheism. In September, ABC’s “Good Morning America Sunday” ran a feature on an atheist convention. ABC proclaimed that atheism was “unleashed,” that “more and more” people were becoming atheists, and that the “stigma” of being an atheist “may be fading.”
“Apostles of Atheism,” a just-released special report from the Media Research Center’s Culture and Media Institute, examines the 2007 coverage of atheism by several national news outlets. CMI reviewed all news programs on ABC, CBS and NBC, every 2007 issue of Newsweek, Time and U.S.News & World Report, and four news programs aired on taxpayer-funded National Public Radio (”All Things Considered,” “Morning Edition,” “Weekend Edition” and “Talk of the Nation”).
Is Atheism Getting a Free Pass
March 19, 2008
The Institute examined the apparent “rise in atheism,” subject covered in broadcast news programs, three leading weekly news magazines, and four programs on taxpayer-funded National Public Radio, all shown during 2007
Although only eight percent of Americans call themselves atheists, the report found that not only is the news media hostile toward religion, particularly Christianity, but the media may be spreading a “Gospel of Godlessness” on the American public.
“Whether deliberately or not, the news media did not subject atheism or atheists to the same skepticism to which they subject Christians and Christianity,” the report said. “Journalists who look at America’s majority religion through a skeptical prism should equally apply their critical faculties to atheism.”
In their report, CMI details their discovery of imbalances in the media’s coverage of the religion. Among the findings:
Vatican and Muslims Prepare For Historic Meeting With Pope
March 3, 2008
Muslim representatives and Vatican officials begin talks this week that they hope will lead to an unprecedented Catholic-Islamic meeting.
Five representatives from each side will meet on Tuesday for two days in Rome to work out the details of a larger meeting that will include Pope Benedict later this year.
“We have to bring the dialogue up to date following the great successes of the pontificate of John Paul II,” said Yahya Sergio Yahe Pallavicini, vice-president of the Italian Islamic Religious Community.
Catholic-Muslim relations nosedived in 2006 after Benedict delivered a lecture in Regensburg, Germany, that was taken by Muslims to imply that Islam was violent and irrational.
Muslims around the world protested and the Pope sought to make amends when he visited Turkey’s Blue Mosque and prayed towards Mecca with its Imam.
After the fallout from the Regensburg speech, 138 Muslim scholars and leaders wrote to the German-born Pontiff and other Christian leaders last year, saying “the very survival of the world itself” may depend on dialogue between the two faiths.
The signatories of the Muslim appeal for theological dialogue, called the “Common Word,” has grown to nearly 225 since.
“Now there is a need for deeper dialogue on doctrine, theology and the character of religions in today’s world and the challenges we face,” Pallavicini told Reuters.
“We must try, together with the Pope, to get on a path of dialogue on issues confronting humanity today,” he said.
Besides Pallavicini, the Muslim delegation to the preparatory talks will include a Turk, a Briton, a Jordanian and a Libyan.
The Vatican delegation includes Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Vatican’s Council for Interreligious Dialogue, the head of the Pontifical Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies in Rome and a professor from Rome’s Gregorian University.
Study: 3 in 4 U.S. Mosques Preach Anti-West Extremism
February 24, 2008
An undercover survey of more than 100 mosques and Islamic schools in America has exposed widespread radicalism, including the alarming finding that 3 in 4 Islamic centers are hotbeds of anti-Western extremism, WND has learned.
The Mapping Sharia in America Project, sponsored by the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, has trained former counterintelligence and counterterrorism agents from the FBI, CIA and U.S. military, who are skilled in Arabic and Urdu, to conduct undercover reconnaissance at some 2,300 mosques and Islamic centers and schools across the country.
“So far of 100 mapped, 75 should be on a watchlist,” an official familiar with the project said.
Oxford To Spend 4 Million To Understand Why Man Embraces God
February 20, 2008
University of Oxford researchers will spend nearly $4 million to study why mankind embraces God. The grant to the Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion will bring anthropologists, theologians, philosophers and other academics together for three years to study whether belief in a divine being is a basic part of mankinds makeup.
“There are a lot of issues. What is it that is innate in human nature to believe in God, whether it is gods or something superhuman or supernatural?” said Roger Trigg, acting director of the center.
He said anthropological and philosophical research suggests that faith in God is a universal human impulse found in most cultures around the world, even though it has been waning in Britain and western Europe.
“One implication that comes from this is that religion is the default position, and atheism is perhaps more in need of explanation,” he said.
The study will be funded by the John Templeton Foundation, a U.S.-based philanthropic organization that funds wide-ranging research into questions that deal with the laws of nature and issues of spirituality.
Prophecy In The News Ads
Did God Send A Prophet In The Last Days?
Latest Bible Prophecy In The News Headlines
- Blood Moon Eclipses, Signs In The Skies
- Israel at 60: Will Israel Strike Iran Before Bush Leaves Office
- Child Viral Death Toll Up to 34 In China - 25,000 Infections
- Radio Talk Show Host Bernie Ward Admits To Child Porn in Plea Deal
- Global Free Market For Food and Energy Faces Biggest Threat In Decades
- Burma Death Toll 500,000! Worse than Tsunami
- Fear Grips China As Some 12,000 Children Infected With HFMD Virus
- Myanmar Believes 13,000 Dead, Missing From Cyclone
- Catholics Have Become Key Clinton Base: Analyst
- Scientists Look To Create New Species By Breading Apes With Humans
Sections
- A Perilous Planet
- Coming Economic Collapse
- Disease & Pestilence
- Israel Gods Timepiece
- Moral Decay, Iniquity, Love Waxes Cold
- Prophecy In The News Featured Story
- Prophecy News Misc.
- Science and Technology
- Wars, Rumors of Wars & Terrorism
- Watch Russia
- World Religion, Spirituality & Atheism
