TV Gameshow – Who Wants To Convert From Atheism?

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What happens when you put a Muslim imam, a Christian priest, a rabbi and a Buddhist monk in a room with 10 atheists?

Turkish television station Kanal T hopes the answer is a ratings success as it prepares to launch a gameshow where spiritual guides from the four faiths will seek to convert a group of non-believers.

The prize for converts will be a pilgrimage to a holy site of their chosen religion — Mecca for Muslims, the Vatican for Christians, Jerusalem for Jews and Tibet for Buddhists.

But religious authorities in Muslim but secular Turkey are not amused by the twist on the popular reality game show format and the Religious Affairs Directorate is refusing to provide an imam for the show.

“Doing something like this for the sake of ratings is disrespectful to all religions. Religion should not be a subject for entertainment programs,” High Board of Religious Affairs Chairman Hamza Aktan told state news agency Anatolian after news of the planned program emerged.

The makers of “Penitents Compete” are unrepentant and reject claims that the show, scheduled to begin broadcasting in September, will cheapen religion.

“We are giving the biggest prize in the world, the gift of belief in God,” Kanal T chief executive Seyhan Soylu told Reuters.

via Turkish TV gameshow looks to convert atheists | Entertainment | Reuters.

Turkish Arms Sale To Lebanon Shocks Israel

DEBKAfile quotes senior Israeli military circles as staggered by the discovery that US president Barack Obama had approved a large Turkish arms sale to the Lebanese army, including the services of Turkish military instructors. This was taken as further proof that the US president is deaf to Israel’s immediate security concerns. Lebanese president Gen. Michel Suleiman has more than once threatened neighboring Israel. When he signed the arms deal in Ankara Tuesday, April 21, he once again pledged publicly to place the Lebanese army at the disposal of the Shiite terrorist Hizballah in any confrontation with Israel.

If that happened, said one Israeli source, Israel could find itself under attack not just by Hizballah as in the past, but by a Lebanese army, well trained and armed by Turkey. He noted that more than 50 percent of Lebanon’s fighting manpower are Shiites loyal to Hizballah.

The conviction is growing in Jerusalem that the US president endorsed the transaction as a means of breaking up the long-standing military pact between Israel and Turkey, because it interferes with his Middle East objectives. Our sources note that neither Washington nor Ankara bothered to inform Israel of the transaction or its scope.

After meeting Turkish president Abdullah Gul, Suleiman at the head of a large Lebanese military delegation signed the contracts for the sale and declared with deep satisfaction: “We reviewed the new [US] policies towards the region in the light of President Obama’s recent visit to Turkey.”

Source

Israeli Intel Warns Netanyahu, We Have Become An Obstacle

A classified assessment relayed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Obama
and his senior advisers would incrementally diminish U.S. strategic cooperation with Israel developed over the last 20 years.

“Obama wants to make friends with our worst enemies and until now the worst enemies of the United States,” an Israeli source familiar with the intelligence assessment said.

“Under this policy, we are more than irrelevant. We have become an obstacle.”

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Hong Kong Christens An Ark of Biblical Proportions

This city’s three billionaire Kwok brothers have just the answer for the rising waters threatening the global economy: the world’s first life-size replica of Noah’s ark, built to biblical specifications off the coast of this recession-struck Chinese financial center.

The message in its 450-foot-long hull, its rooftop luxury hotel and 67 pairs of fiberglass animals: “The financial tsunami will be over,” says Spencer Lu, the Kwoks’ project director at Noah’s Ark, which is opening soon.

The land-bound ark wasn’t built in response to the current global turmoil; it has been in the planning for 17 years. But the financial storm provides a nice marketing hook for the Kwoks’ ambitious project, which will probably need to lure visitors from beyond Hong Kong’s city limits to be an economic success

It also ups the ante in the competition to build a big ark. Middle brother and ark champion Thomas Kwok insisted that it be constructed according to biblical specs, in part to distinguish it from one in the Netherlands that actually floats and boasts real farm animals but is just one-fifth the size of the biblical original.

Minders of the Dutch ark say they were in touch with the Hong Kong team and don’t see it as competition. “We stand for the same goal as far as I can tell,” said Jacky Baken, a 35-year-old gardener who quit her business to work full time on the ark. She says the group is at work on a full-size water-going version. And, she says, “We’re still the first one with the floating ark.”

These are just the latest additions to a veritable ark armada built around the world by the devout and the merely driven — from a 300-foot-long ark built by a pastor in the Canadian town of Florenceville, New Brunswick, to one built by Greenpeace in 2007 on Turkey’s Mount Ararat, warning of “impending climate disaster.”

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Obama – US Not A Christian Nation

Barack Obama told an audience in Turkey that the US is not a Christian nation. Sean Hannity aired the video.

Obama Reaches Out To Muslims

President Barack Obama used an address in the Turkish capital to stress that the U.S. isn’t “at war with Islam,” as he pledged to ease tensions between the West and the Muslim world.

“I know that the trust that binds us has been strained, and I know that strain is shared in many places where the Muslim faith is practiced,” Obama said in a speech today to the Turkish parliament in Ankara. “Let me say this as clearly as I can: the United States is not at, and will never be, at war with Islam.”

Obama, making his first visit to a Muslim country as president, stressed the cultural ties and shared history between the U.S. and Turkey in an alliance that has made the world “more secure.” The two can use that partnership to bridge the religious and cultural divide between the West and the predominantly Muslim East, he said.

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Group To Search for Noah’s Ark in Turkey

It’s one of the most familiar Bible stories.

Saddened by the wickedness of man, God directs the righteous Noah to build an ark for his family and two of each species of animal.

Together, they ride the ark through 40 days and 40 nights of torrential rains that God unleashes upon the Earth. And when the waters subside, Noah and the animals return to land.

“That seems almost like a fairy story,” said archaeologist Randall Price, who is director of Liberty University’s new Center for Judaic Studies. “But we believe it was an actual event.”

This summer Price, 57, plans to continue on a journey to prove just that as he joins an expedition to Mount Ararat. His team believes that it is there, in Eastern Turkey, where Noah’s Ark remains preserved underneath layers of rubble and ice.

“There’s a whole trail of history pointing to it [Mt. Ararat],” Price said in a recent interview. “But in our age, people tend to think it is more of a story like Jack and the Bean Stalk.’ Our aim is to show that the Bible is good history.”

He pointed to Genesis 8:4, which states, “and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat,” in The New International Version of the Bible.

For centuries, expeditions have set out to find Noah’s Ark but have been unable to find any concrete evidence, beyond that of an unwavering faith, to support its existence.

Retired Continental Airlines Pilot Richard Bright, 64, has visited Turkey more than 30 times over the past 25 years in search of the vessel.

“We’ve received many leads over the years, dating back into antiquity,” he said. “We’ve had so many reports over the years, and they talk about the same mountain.”

Last fall, a new tip peaked both his and Price’s interest.

A Kurdish shepherd told them that he had seen the ark, and even climbed on top of it, when he was a boy.

The team hypothesizes that the ark is preserved in several pieces beneath a glacier on the mountain, and every so often the glacier recedes, exposing part of the vessel.

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