The New York Times
The U.N. report, based on 687 interviews conducted by investigators in Conakry and elsewhere in late November and early December, corroborated witness reports that more than 150 people were killed or went missing during a rally.
At least 109 girls and women were subjected to rape, genital mutilation or kidnapping, with hundreds more subjected to torture and abuse, the report said.
Asked by a legislator what France, the former colonial ruler of Guinea, was doing to ensure that these findings resulted in prosecutions, Kouchner said that the International Criminal Court had taken on the issue of its own accord.
Contributed by Gandolf
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 15, 2009) — Scientists once thought of tool use as a defining feature of humans. That's until examples of tool use came in from other primates, along with birds and an array of other mammals. Now, a report in the December 14th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, adds an octopus to the growing list of tool users.
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"There is a fundamental difference between picking up a nearby object and putting it over your head as protection versus collecting, arranging, transporting (awkwardly), and assembling portable armor as required," said Mark Norman of the Museum Victoria in Australia.
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Huffington Post
The election battle leading up to Saturday's balloting was marked by fierce campaigning and anti-gay rhetoric. Parker is a lesbian who has never made a secret or issue of her sexual orientation. If she wins, Houston will become the largest U.S. city to ever have an openly gay mayor.
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Irish Times .Com
There are profound philosophical and practical problems with this version of multiculturalism. Philosophically, it ends up eating its own tail, as respect for one “identity” ends up cancelling out another. If female genital mutilation is a protected part of an African identity, what happens to women’s rights? If it’s okay for imams to preach hatred of homosexuals, is it okay for homosexuals to teach hatred of Muslims? And who gets to define a “tradition” anyway? (Usually, of course, middle-aged or elderly men in dresses.) Most obviously, of course, the purveyors of this ideology in the religious sphere don’t actually believe it themselves. With a very few exceptions, religions are founded on the idea of a unique and superior access to the mind of God. The relativism that they sometimes adopt is merely strategic. If the Catholic bishops actually believed the stuff that they are currently spouting – that everybody’s faith or lack of faith has the same status in a lovely world of pluralism or diversity – they would be Bahais or Unitarians.
Contributed by Gandolf
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2009)
"There has long been interest in the use of newborn neurobehavior to forecast the future development of children," said Dr. Lester. "Many babies are considered 'at risk' for having behavioral, emotional or cognitive problems, especially as they reach school age, because of prenatal factors such as prematurity or substance exposure and postnatal factors like poverty or violence."
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The Oregonian
The Beagleys belong to the Followers of Christ, an Oregon City
church that relies solely on spiritual healing and rejects doctors and medicine. The hearing today in Clackamas County Circuit Court will preview some of the prosecution and defense arguments but won't delve into medical evidence.
Attorneys also will revisit issues that arose during the Carl and Raylene Worthington case. The Worthingtons, also Followers of Christ, were accused of manslaughter in the death of their 15-month-old daughter, Ava.
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Both cases involve questions about the rights of parents to treat their children with faith healing and allegations that church members are targeted for prosecution because of their beliefs.
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 16, 2009) — The conversations neurons have as they form and recall memories have been decoded by Medical College of Georgia scientists.
The breakthrough in recognizing in real time the formation and recollection of a memory opens the door to objective, thorough memory studies and eventually better therapies, said Dr. Joe Tsien, neuroscientist and co-director of MCG's Brain & Behavior Discovery Institute. He is corresponding author on the study published Dec. 16 in PLoS ONE.
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CBS
Magalhaes told detectives the woman would enter into trances and give him commands to insert the needles, police inspector Helder Fernandes Santana said. The stepfather told police the rituals happened every few days for a full month, with him inserting several needles during each session.
The lover, Angelina Ribeiro dos Santos, paid to have the needles blessed by a woman who practiced the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomble, Santana said.
Authorities initially estimated the boy had as many as 50 needles were inside the boy. After batteries of tests were performed, doctors now believe there are closer to 30 needles inside, but they don't know for sure.
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theage.com.au
IT IS because the Catholic Church opposes embryonic stem cell research that xenotransplantation remains the only option for many researchers and sufferers of serious diseases (Letters, 12/12).
Such research offers the potential to one day be able to grow tissue to replace diseased organs, hence curing many of these diseases and significantly reducing the number of animals killed for medical research.
We can only hope that eventually religious organisations will stop using their interpretations of ancient texts to hold back new forms of scientific research. In the meantime, the suffering of human and animals continues unabated.
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2009) — Individuals taking a medication to treat depression may experience changes in their personality separate from the alleviation of depressive symptoms, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Two personality traits, neuroticism and extraversion, have been related to depression risk, according to background information in the article. Individuals who are neurotic tend to experience negative emotions and emotional instability, whereas extraversion refers not only to socially outgoing behavior but also to dominance and a tendency to experience positive emotions. Both traits have been linked to the brain's serotonin system, which is also targeted by the class of antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).
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BBC
A man who encouraged his teenage son to marry and rape his 12-year-old cousin has been jailed.
The 54-year-old organised a sham Muslim ceremony between his son, then 16, and the girl at his home in Woolwich, south-east London, in March last year.
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Scotland Yard child abuse detectives then discovered several relatives of the boy had urged him to rape his cousin.
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Guardian.co.tt
The bill lists the following as tax-exempt:
1. land used exclusively as churches/cemeteries;
2. school buildings, offices, playgrounds, UWI, COSTATT, UTT, state land;
3. Land used for educational, philantrophic/religious purposes, or owned/occupied by charitable institutions;
4. land used for public hospitals and relief of the poor, whether publicly/privately-owned;
5. land owned/occupied by a foreign government/international organisation of which T&T is a member.
6. Landowners have 21 days in which to file objections to taxed amounts.
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 10, 2009)
"We were able to show that children who are exposed to tobacco smoke prenatally and during the first years of life have a higher risk of developing abnormal behavioral symptoms when they are of school age," said Dr. Joachim Heinrich of the Institute of Epidemiology at Helmholtz Zentrum München. "Moreover, it makes a difference whether the child was exposed to tobacco smoke first after birth or was already confronted with it during prenatal development."
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allafrica.com
This year, crime has manifested in a number of ways, the most prominent of which is human sacrifice. In September, the anti-sacrifice trafficking taskforce chief, Moses Binoga, said out of the 21 people murdered between January and August, 13 were juveniles.
Binoga, who was issuing guidelines to the public to curb ritual murders, said the Police had arrested 91 suspects since January, 32 of whom had been taken to court.
He said most of the victims of child sacrifice have not been under the care of their biological parents and that the killers take advantage of the laxity of the caretakers. Among these cases is that of a prominent city tycoon, Kato Kajubi, who is facing trial in Masaka High Court over child sacrifice.
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Baghdad, Iraq (CNN)
Two Shiite pilgrims were killed in a roadside bombing in Baghdad on Saturday afternoon, the latest strike targeting people marking Ashura, one of the most important annual holy periods for Shiite Muslims across the globe.
Eight other people were wounded in the strike, which occurred in the New Baghdad district of southeastern Baghdad, Interior Ministry officials said.
The incident comes amid a large troop presence...to protect Shiite pilgrims from attacks.
Hundreds of thousands of the pilgrims are expected in Baghdad and Karbala for the commemoration, which reaches its peak over the next 24 hours.
The period commemorates the martyrdom of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed who was killed in battle in Karbala in 680, one of the events that helped create the schism between Sunnis and Shiites, the two main Muslim religious movements.
From Saturday evening until Sunday in Karbala and Baghdad, Shiite pilgrims will be chanting, beating their breasts in penance, cutting themselves with daggers or swords and whipping themselves in synchronized moves until next morning.
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Thisdayonline.com
The young man, who yesterday night attempted to ignite an explosive device aboard a North-West Airlines flight going from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan in the United States has been identified as Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old son of Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, former First Bank chairman, who just retired from the bank's board a fortnight ago.
The older Mutallab... was said to have noticed the extreme nature of the boy's religious belief and has taken several measures to tame him.
The suspect, Abdulfarouk Muttalab who is an engineering student at the University College, London had been noted for his extreme views on religion since his secondary school days at the British International School, Lome, Togo.
At the secondary school, he was known for preaching about Islam to his school mates and he qwas popularly called ëAlfaí , a local coinage for Islamic scholar. After his secondary school, the young man, family sources said, once relocated to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates from where he declared to his family members that he did not want to have anything to do with any of them again.
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While I'm glad nothing happened to the Pope on a personal level, logically, they should get rid of security and let faith handle it. It would be like putting his money where his mouth is. If God wants a Pope, he'll provide one, right?
LAtimes.com
Father Federico Lombardi, the pope's spokesman, said it's not realistic to think the Vatican can ensure 100% security for the pontiff because he is regularly surrounded by tens of thousands of people for his weekly audiences, services, papal greetings and other events.
"It seems that they intervened at the earliest possible moment in a situation in which 'zero risk' cannot be achieved," he said of Vatican security officials. They will nonetheless review the episode and "try to learn from experience," Lombardi said.
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 23, 2009) — Evidence of sophisticated, human behavior has been discovered by Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers as early as 750,000 years ago -- some half a million years earlier than has previously been estimated by archaeologists.
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Local 5 News
The sacrifices of the Bible were offered not only to atone for sins but also as free will offerings to celebrate some joyous event, and as holiday offerings for the three biblical pilgrim festivals of Passover, Shavuot (Pentecost) and Sukkot (Tabernacles). Each of these three holidays was called, in Hebrew, a hag. The Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca called the Haj takes it name from this word.
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Some theologians consider such animal sacrifices spiritually primitive and in general, I, along with every single animal, agree with them. Although animal sacrifice is arguably the oldest religious ritual on earth, it's based upon a very dubious belief--that the death of an animal can correct your own moral failings.
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The rabbis introduced a daring change in Jewish worship - replacing every sacrifice with a prayer from a newly created prayer book. The prayer times were the same times as the sacrifice times, but no blood was spilled.
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This change was made necessary by historical events but had enormous impact on Judaism and the newly emerging religion of Christianity. Surrogate atonement through animal sacrifice was basically abandoned in favor of the direct and ethically superior command of confession and personal apology to anyone you had hurt. Sins were human acts that needed to be fixed by human actions, inspired, of course, by God's commands to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
Contributed by Gandolf
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Inter religious marriages are very common among the people, and these relationships work very well. The country's constitution is monogamous although polygamy is acceptable here. Female genital mutilation is being practiced equally by Moslems and Christians alike. Traditional beliefs go side by side with religion, even among Christians. Tribalism/ racism are on the rise but the nation unites as one people to protect their country. Guineans are known to segregate the 'slaves'/ griot (praise singers) from the upper class. No matter one’s status in life, the cast system affects a lot of people. But most people do get along. I have made Guinea my home for the past 12 years. I’ve witnessed many internal problems escalate, only to dissipate quietly. It's a blessing.
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The Bend Bulletin
“Those underimmunized popu- lations are the ones that get diseases,” said Dr. Peter Boehm, a pediatrician at Mosaic Medical Bend.
“Overall, community protection is going up among the young ones,” Young said. “Religious exemption data doesn't tell us specifically which shots (are not given), so we don't know where the vulnerabilities are.”
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www.newswithviews.com, Rev. Ted Pike
"He enthusiastically agrees with my explanation of why Christian America is losing our God-given freedoms and what can be done to redeem them.
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In my discussion with Coach Daubenmire, we arrive at new, workable, and biblically sound answers and solutions. But they are definitely not what you will hear in the mainstream of either left or right. Nevertheless, now more than ever, telling the whole, undiminished truth and acting upon it is the only effective way to take back America.
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In the same way, we can see the insanity of attempting to hold back an extremely complicated social and geopolitical conspiracy by only providing half the truth. No wonder we are losing!"
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ISN
“More than 1,000 have been arrested since 2008. These include witchdoctors, businessmen and women, hired killers, members of the clergy, some police officers (released on bail), parents and relatives of the victims. Hitherto, only seven have been convicted and sentenced to death by hanging [including three] for the killing of a 14-year-old boy. This has not yet been implemented, as President Jakaya Kikwete has yet to sign the execution orders,” Ntetema told ISN Security Watch.
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altmuslimah.com
The Muslim Public Affairs Council spoke out against the practice of child brides in the Muslim world in a December 9th article, “The case of an eight year-old Saudi bride,” published here. This is an area of jurisprudence that has caused contentious debate in both the Muslim and the Western worlds. Many Muslims argue that the issue of child brides is directly related to the life and practice of the Prophet Muhammad (may God’s peace and prayers be upon him).
In Islamic tradition, the Prophet is reported to have married Aisha when she was six years old, and they consummated the marriage when she reached nine years of age. However, many western Muslims and Muslim reformers in the Islamic world have attempted to re-evaluate these traditions in light of modern sensibilities that denounce child brides as repugnant or unfit for modern values. The problem they face in their revision is that this issue is entrenched in Islamic tradition making it difficult to reform. MPAC’s attempt to explain away this phenomenon is more problematic because it fails to give adequate value to the traditions that approve of child brides. MPAC also attempts to play down how wide spread the acceptance of child brides is in the Sunni Islamic legal tradition.
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BBC
On the face of it Nujood is like any other schoolgirl living in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.
But one thing makes her different: she was divorced by the time she was 10 years old.
When she was married at the age of nine, her husband was 30.
Owen Bennett-Jones met Nujood with her father, mother and several siblings at her Sanaa home and asked her first to describe her wedding day.
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TIMESONLINE
Why this African nation, which this week approved a landmark Bill banning female genital mutilation and has shown commendable past honesty in confronting ignorance about Aids, should now consider such a benighted Bill is no mystery. Prejudice has always been strong in Africa against homosexuality, as it is in the Caribbean. This has been fanned by the row within the Anglican communion over gay clergy and by the tentative attempts by a few gay Africans to call for greater tolerance. But political groups have seen easy advantage in exploiting this prejudice. In the Church, as among those seeking voter support, branding homosexuality as a Western perversion is an easy way to hit out at perceived Western cultural dominance. This link has been encouraged by the recent visit of leaders of US conservative Christian ministries that promote therapy for gays to become heterosexual.
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CBS, WINK
Nicholas Nuzzi says his girlfriend and a neighbor, who live across the street, saw the children cross Miramar Street, a busy two way road where cars routinely zip by at 35+ miles per hour.
DCF confirms they are investigating and adds that there have been "several" complaints of alleged child abuse and neglect against the many schools/daycares that Grace Community Schools runs.
The DCF spokesperson tells WINK News that the schools operate under a religious exemption, meaning they are not licensed or inspected by the State.
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Globe and Mail
Give this problem a shot before you keep reading, but don't feel badly if you get it wrong.
Bob is in a bar, looking at Susan. But she is looking at Pablo. Bob is married. Pablo is not.
Is a married person looking at an unmarried person? The answer could be (a) yes, (b) no or (c) cannot be determined.
Roughly 80 per cent of people choose (c), but it is not the correct answer, says Keith Stanovich, a professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto.
He studies why smart people do stupid things - or, in more scientific terms, how intelligence is distinct from rationality. His work offers insight into important cognitive abilities that are not measured by IQ tests. It also suggests that deficits in real-world reasoning can be corrected, whether in adults or in children.
He says most people get the Bob-Susan-Pablo problem wrong because they tend to be "cognitive misers" - they put as little mental effort as possible into solving a problem. In this case, they quickly jump to the conclusion that they don't have enough information rather than making the effort to see if they do.
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It says that the FBI and Virginia State Police negotiated the suspects surrender, so why thank God? What did a God have to do with anything? Which God? Why that God? And if a God had anything to do with it, how did it do it?CNN-- A daylong hostage standoff ended late Wednesday when an armed, disabled man wheeled himself out of a post office in Wytheville, Virginia, and was taken into custody, police said.
The alleged gunman, identified by police as Warren "Gator" Taylor, 53, of Sullivan County, Tennessee, surrendered in a wheelchair, said Wythe County Sherrif's Office Chief Deputy Keith Dunagan. All three hostages walked out without injury.
Wytheville Mayor Trent Crewe breathed a sigh of relief when the almost nine-hour ordeal finally ended.
"All of them are all right, thank God," Crewe said. "I am elated that it's over."
Negotiators from the FBI and the Virginia State Police negotiated the suspect's surrender and the release of the hostages, said a law enforcement source familiar with the situation.
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AFP news: PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A suicide bomber targeted a security checkpoint in Pakistan's Peshawar on Thursday, killing four people in the second such attack in as many days in the flashpoint northwestern city.
Attacks are escalating in the city of 2.5 million people on the edge of Pakistan's tribal belt on the Afghan border, an area Washington brands the most dangerous place on Earth and the chief sanctuary of Al-Qaeda.
The bomber targeted a checkpoint in the army cantonment, blowing himself up on one of Peshawar's busiest areas, outside a government office and a church, where Pakistan's Christian minority were preparing to celebrate Christmas.
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Peshawar's is on the frontline of Pakistan's two and a half year campaign of suicide and bomb attacks waged by Islamist militants who have carved out havens in the northwest and who oppose Islamabad's alliance with the United States.
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Thanks Boz, 2001 was probably a typo meant to be 2011, since the rest of the article uses 2011 instead of 2001.
Kansas.com
The second-largest line item on Wagnon's list is the exemption for religious organizations. That amounts to $17.9 million in 2010 and $18.6 million in 2001 [2011], records show.
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ScienceDaily (Aug. 23, 2009)
The findings may illuminate reasons why some people form false beliefs about the pros and cons of health-care reform or regarding President Obama's citizenship, for example.
The study, "There Must Be a Reason: Osama, Saddam and Inferred Justification" calls such unsubstantiated beliefs "a serious challenge to democratic theory and practice" and considers how and why it was maintained by so many voters for so long in the absence of supporting evidence.
Co-author Steven Hoffman, Ph.D., visiting assistant professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo, says, "Our data shows substantial support for a cognitive theory known as 'motivated reasoning,' which suggests that rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe.
"In fact," he says, "for the most part people completely ignore contrary information".
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The Jewish Community Online
A fragment of a manuscript measuring 6in by 5in has lifted the veil over the long-vanished world of Jewish exorcism.
The fragment, containing 150 words of a handwritten Sephardi Hebrew prayer of exorcism from the 18th century, is almost certainly unique, according to the academic who discovered it.
Dr Renate Smithuis is the official cataloguer of Manchester’s John Rylands Library Geniza, a treasure trove of 11,000 manuscript fragments rescued from a 1,000-year-old storeroom at the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, now held at the University of Manchester.
Dr Smithuis, who has collaborated with Prof Gideon Bohak of Tel Aviv University, said: “This is not an account of an exorcism or a story, it is an actual exorcism ritual prayer with the names of the three people involved, recited in a synagogue. When you read it you feel almost as though you are in the synagogue. That’s what makes it so exciting.”
A ghostly trace of the Jewish Occult
Haaretz.com
The 150-word text provides a haunting insight into the often forgotten world of the Jewish occult. While exorcisms are frequently described in Jewish texts from the Middle Ages on, this appears to be the first text that provides the prayer used in a specific exorcism.
Contributed by Gandolf
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ScienceDaily.com
The results of this study, according to the authors, advance the understanding of brain cell mechanisms that underlie decision making by coupling for the first time the mechanisms that lead to decision formation and the establishment of a degree of confidence in that decision.
"Our findings suggest that when the brain embraces truth, it does so in a graded way so that even a binary [yes/no, true/false, left/right] choice leaves in its wake a quantity that represents a degree of belief. The neural mechanism of decision making doesn't flip into a fixed point, but instead approximates a probability distribution."
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Bend Bulletin
The health of mothers and children in Deschutes County has improved in recent years, according to indicators such as immunization rates and prenatal care listed in a county report to be released in the next few weeks.
But there are also reasons for concern, according to a draft of the county public health report. These include an increase in the number of children whose parents sought religious exemptions from immunizations
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ThinkProgress.org
"The Senate is expected to vote very late tonight/early Monday morning “on the first of three motions to close off debate” on the health care bill and proceed to an expected Christmas Eve vote on final passage. Speaking against the health care bill on the Senate floor just moments ago, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) expressed his hope that a Senator of the majority caucus would not be able to make the vote:
What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote tonight. That’s what they ought to pray.
Just a few minutes later, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) interrupted while Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) was speaking to issue a challenge to Coburn:
I have been trying to reach Sen. Coburn. … This statement troubles me, and I’m trying to reach him come back to the floor and explain exactly what he meant about a senator being unable to make the vote tonight. … I’m reaching out to Sen. Coburn. I’ll be on the floor for the next 45 minutes, and I hope that he will join me there."
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A Religious Debate, by Doctor Sami Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh
"Many doctors and religious men were encouraged to start talking about female circumcision; however, the circumcision of males is still an obj ectionable topic. I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Sami Abu Sahlieh, the author of this book, that the campaign against circumcision should include both sexes, not just females. The crime is one, even if they vary in degree or form. "
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The Layalina Review
“Most Muslims accept the minaret as an architectural conduit for the call to prayer, but most do not seek political power, subscribe to the burqa, tolerate forced marriages, or accept genital mutilation of girls,” comments Ahmed Rehab at the Huffington Post.
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Guaranteed to be the craziest thing you've seen all day...
Modern Ghana.com
Witches meet in the coven (assembly of witches) every night (12:00 midnight). They make human beings captive. If your spiritual level is very low they can arrest and take the spirit of that person captive in the night and from there affect all his or her activities and even kill him or her. In their coven, spirit of human captive looks like animals e.g. goat. Anything they do to that animal representing your spirit in their coven, it will affect you physically. Whenever they kill the animal in their coven the human captives will die later. Witches can travel (spiritually) in a split second to any part of the world to attack their victims. This is because they move through the air and there is no barrier in the air. Witches press people at night to suck their blood.
Contributed by Gandolf
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NBC Philadelphia
"Our seasonal flu vaccine policy is stronger than most hospitals in our region – and it should be, because we care for the sickest of sick children," read a statement from CHOP. "Many of the children in our care have never had a chance to have a seasonal flu vaccine themselves so we have to do it for them. Many of our patients are either too young or their immune systems are too weak."
The Cowlays said they refused to get the shot for religious reasons.
"I am a Christian, and my religion prohibits me from receiving vaccines," said Tyrika Cowlay, who was a lab technician. Gary Cowlay worked in environmental services.
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ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2009) — A study led by Catalan researchers has clearly shown the importance of the first developmental life stages in the development of the symptoms of psychopathological disorders. This research confirms the existence of aggression by pre-school children towards their peers, as well as differences according to age and gender. There is a widespread lack of understanding about this important stage of life, and previous data have shown that 1% of the pre-school age population in Spain already shows symptoms of major depression.
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Contrary to belief, the majority of these symptoms start at a very early age. The problem, according to therapists, is the great lack of understanding among the general public about the importance of such symptoms in children, and the significant limitations in detecting them. “If we can do something at this age, it is possible that we could prevent the problem from becoming really established later on,” says Jané.
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OregonLive.com
Ryder Stevens is what's known in the Christian Science church as a "practitioner" of prayer-based healing.
When he speaks next week at Lake Oswego High School, perhaps he'll share the story he told me of his own miraculously fast recovery from a high school football injury just days after a doctor told him the injury would take weeks to heal.
A story he's less likely to tell is the long, painful death of 2-year-old Robyn Twitchell, whose screams of pain from a fatal bowel obstruction forced his Boston neighbors to shut their windows but never persuaded his Christian Science parents to call a doctor.
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LA Now
The spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion issued an unusually sharp and swift rebuke to Episcopal Church leaders over the election of an openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. In a terse statement, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams delivered a warning to bishops, clergy and lay representatives of the U.S. church about the confirmation of the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, a lesbian who has been in a partnered relationship for two decades.
"The election of Mary Glasspool by the Diocese of Los Angeles as suffragan bishop elect raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole," Williams said in the statement.
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Associated Baptist Press
The justices agreed to hear the Christian Legal Society’s appeal of a lower court’s decision saying the group’s student chapter at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law had to, like other school-recognized student groups, follow the university’s non-discrimination policy. The policy includes provisions prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or religion.
In 2004, the chapter asked for exemptions from those two aspects of the non-discrimination rules, saying the national Christian Legal Society’s policies prohibit non-Christians and people who engage in non-marital sex from being voting members or officers of the organization.
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Shooting yourself in the foot....
ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2009)
Joseph Strayhorn said: "The magnitude of the correlation between religiosity and teen birth rate astonished us. Teen birth is more highly correlated with some of the religiosity items on the Religious Landscapes Survey than some of those items are correlated with each other."
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According to Strayhorn: "Our findings by themselves do not, of course, permit causal inferences. But, if we may speculate on the most probable explanation, we conjecture that religious communities in the US are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself."
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From the - Island online, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ivory Coast have all lived through nightmarish civil wars after long-ruling dictators died or were killed and junior officers seized power. Gambia has been ruled for the past fifteen years by a former army lieutenant who now imports witch doctors from Guinea to hunt down the witches who he believes are trying to kill him. And now Guinea has fallen into the hands of the junior officers.
Contributed by Gandolf.
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Pewforum.org. With their distinctive appearance and religious practices, Sikh-Americans often find themselves at the center of workplace discrimination cases and other controversies involving their religious rights.
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In California, for example, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently vetoed a bill that would have required police in the state to receive training about the Sikh religion - including the faith's requirement that believers carry a small sword known as a kirpan.
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One 1984 case involved a Sikh whose job potentially exposed him to toxic gases. The employer required all employees in this position to be clean shaven because facial hair interferes with the use of a gas mask, and employees might need to use a gas mask in an emergency. The Sikh employee asked for an exemption, but the employer refused. Instead, the employer offered him a lower-paying position that did not involve potential exposure to toxic gases. The employee filed a discrimination lawsuit, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sided with the employer, ruling that the employer's concern about workplace safety justified the decision not to exempt the Sikh employee from the ban on facial hair.
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NYDailyNews.com
Jewish leaders expressed disgust Saturday when Pope Benedict XVI pushed a controversial predecessor one step closer to sainthood.
The pontiff declared Pius XII "venerable" even though he's been criticized for not doing enough to help Jews during the Holocaust.
Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, called Benedict's decision "profoundly insensitive and thoughtless."
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ScienceDaily (Feb. 20, 2009) — In a new study in Psychological Science, psychologists Jeremy Ginges and Ian Hansen from the New School for Social Research along with psychologist Ara Norenzayan from the University of British Columbia conducted a series of experiments investigating the relationship between religion and support for acts of parochial altruism, including suicide attacks.
...This study indicates that religious devotion does not cause support for suicide attacks or other forms of parochial altruism. However, the findings suggest that regularly attending religious services may make individuals more prone to supporting acts of parochial altruism (suicide attacks). The researchers theorize that collective religious rituals and services create a sense of community among participants and enhance positive attitudes towards parochially altruistic acts such as suicide attacks. Although, the researchers note, the greater sense of community, developed via religious services, may have many positive consequences. They observe, "Only in particular geopolitical contexts is the parochial altruism associated with such commitments translated into something like suicide attacks."
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Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Los Angeles and Riverside - The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles on Saturday elected the first openly gay bishop since the national church lifted a ban that kept gays out of its highest ordained ministry, a move that deepened divisions between liberals and conservatives in the faith.
Clergy and lay leaders, meeting in Riverside for their annual convention, chose the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, 55, who has been in a committed relationship with another woman since 1988, from a field of six candidates. She is a canon, or senior assistant, to the Diocese of Maryland bishops.
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Belief reduces the ability to self-correct. What good is believing in a God that wants you to be moral when belief in a God disrupts the mechanism needed to know when to change behavior?
ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2009) — Believing in God can help block anxiety and minimize stress, according to new University of Toronto research that shows distinct brain differences between believers and non-believers.
Their findings show religious belief has a calming effect on its devotees, which makes them less likely to feel anxious about making errors or facing the unknown. But Inzlicht cautions that anxiety is a "double-edged sword" which is at times necessary and helpful.
"Obviously, anxiety can be negative because if you have too much, you're paralyzed with fear," he says. "However, it also serves a very useful function in that it alerts us when we're making mistakes. If you don't experience anxiety when you make an error, what impetus do you have to change or improve your behaviour so you don't make the same mistakes again and again?"
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OttawaCitizen.com
Doctors told him they could operate, but they would not be able to heal him entirely, and he would need to use a colostomy bag.
...
He started a course of tea made by his wife and a First Nations herbalist, and injections from a faith healer.
The turning point came early one morning. “I heard this bird singing outside.” After he opened the drapes to see it, he fell to his knees by the sofa, engulfed in pain.
“I knew that bird was not just a bird. He was more than that. I asked that bird to save me.”
...
He stopped drinking, and got over his constant anger. He forgave everyone who had made life so difficult for his people. His wife was baffled. “You’re not the same person anymore, what did you do to yourself?”
His temper subsided because, “My life does not belong to me, it’s not mine. It’s borrowed time. It belongs to my Creator.”
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ScienceDaily.com
The researchers noted that people often set their moral compasses according to what they presume to be God's standards. "The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing," they conclude. "This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God's beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing."
But the research in no way denies the possibility that God's presumed beliefs also may provide guidance in situations where people are uncertain of their own beliefs, the co-authors noted.
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Star-Telegram
The seven-member court, which handles civil and criminal nondeath penalty appeals from 12 counties, has ruled on a range of issues, from child custody to investment fraud, from whether Arlington had to refund street maintenance fee collections to whether a church could be held liable for a teenager’s injuries during an exorcism.
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If prayer really worked, you could do it from where you're at couldn't you? But God should already know right? And doesn't he have a plan? Is God going to change his mind? Why would he need to unless he hadn't considered something? What the heck do these people think they're doing?
ChristianNewsWire.com
"Sen. Casey has refused to meet with any representatives of state pro-life organizations on this issue, either in Pennsylvania or in his D.C. office. So, we are traveling to his D.C. office to pray that he votes in accordance with his stated pro-life beliefs."
Pray-In Event Details---
When: Tuesday, December 15, 2009; 1 PM
Where: The Office of Sen. Robert Casey, Jr., 325 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC
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CNN.COM
Life was good for Kenny Sparks. ... At 49 he had it all. But then he began to change....Kenny has a condition known as frontotemporal dementia, or FTD.
"Many patients will lose their inhibitions; they'll act totally inappropriately, leaving their families to wonder what is wrong," said Dr. Murray Grossman, a neurologist with the University of Pennsylvania. "Some patients will have no problem spending the family fortune, taking all their money and putting it into scams, get-rich-quick schemes, or going off and buying an expensive car or boat the family doesn't need. The patients lose their reasoning."
"What's particularly frustrating for family members is, the patients don't seem to have much insight into the difficulties they are having or causing for others," Grossman said.
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Legitimizing violence and politics with supernaturalism.
Peace FM Online
Fear is said to have gripped residents of Hyiawu-Besease in the Bosomtwe Kwanwoma District of the Ashanti Region following media reports that this year’s annual general conference of the Association of Witches in West Africa (AWWA), is scheduled to be staged in the town.
The residents’ fear, has been aggravated following some weird happenings in the town since the news broke somewhere last week. Three people including a middle-aged woman, according to sources, have died under hard-to-believe circumstances in the town in the last four days.
...
The letter, which was leaked by an aggrieved witch, noted that Ghana’s share of the blood-letting exercise has been targeted mainly on the Offinso-Techiman and Obuasi-Kumasi roads.
According to the disillusioned witch, she decided to divulge the information because she hails from Ofiinso-Namong and also has relatives at Anwian-Nkwanta on the Obuasi-Kumasi road, which forms part of the designated roads for the blood theatre. Meanwhile, the local branch of the Ghana Christian Council at Hyiawu-Besease has vowed to stop the intended witches’ conference scheduled to be staged in the town.
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HuffingtonPost.com
Let me begin by saying that I have no intention to ridicule the Christian Science religion to the extent it relies upon prayer in the face of illness. It is a religious belief and practice to be respected. On the other hand, the thought of insurance coverage for such prayer sessions is ludicrous. Will we next be covering the cost of chickens killed in animal sacrifice!
The possible inclusion of such coverage is wrong for a number of reasons. First, there is no proven medical benefit to such prayer. It may work and it may not. However, there are a number of reported cases in which the reliance upon prayer in the stead of recognized medical treatment has resulted in disastrous consequences. Second, among the goals of health care reform is the reduction of costs. To add unproven spiritual remedies to the ever increasing expenses, runs contrary to that goal. and it may open the door to many other unproven remedies.
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Associated Press
Roberts' message was one of healing the whole person — body, mind and spirit. The philosophy led many to call Roberts a "faith healer," a label he rejected with the comment: "God heals — I don't."
Before Roberts came on the scene, "the idea of healing within a religious service was left to Christian Scientists or people who went to Lourdes," Cox said. "Now, it's fairly common in churches across the board. In his own way, he made that happen."
Synan, who ranks Roberts among the three or four most important Christian leaders of the last half of the 20th century, said Roberts was widely loved for bringing Pentecostals, derided as "holy rollers" for their spirit-filled worship and speaking in tongues, into the mainstream.
Just decades later, more than 1 in 4 Christians in the world today are Pentecostal, said Cox. Roberts "was onto some of this stuff intuitively long before it became as big as it has."
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A new University of Pittsburgh study reveals that craving a cigarette
while performing a cognitive task not only increases the chances of a
person's mind wandering, but also makes that person less likely to
notice when his or her mind has wandered.
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citizen.com
On 11/27, we were blessed with another sermon from Bishop Paul Blake, PRECIOUS BLOOD. It took me back to the days of my early teenagerdumb when the cruci-fiction of the Bible god, Jesus, began to gross me out. I felt somewhat ashamed and weak because everyone else seemed to enjoy it so much.
As the Bishop put it, "The concept of the shed Blood of Christ offered in substitutionary sacrifice for guilty and condemned sinners is profoundly offensive to the modern mind." Yes, I admit it, the alleged brutal, barbaric, and bloody murder of an innocent man/god to somehow pay for my sins is not only offensive, but stupid and certainly unjust. Even if I was a sinner, (there is no such thing as sin) killing an innocent being for my sin takes us back to those thrilling days of yesteryear when animal sacrifice and human sacrifice were socially acceptable.
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Well, would you make up your mind? Bless gays or not to bless gays, aren't you getting your prayers answered?
MetroWest Daily News
At St. Paul's Church in Natick, the Rev. John Strand also hailed the move.
"I'm very grateful for the decision," said Strand, who oversees a congregation that includes married same-sex couples, including some with children. "It allows the church to bless and fully support the rights the state has given."
The change, however, only applies to Shaw's diocese. At churches in Westborough, Shrewsbury, Northborough, Milford and the rest of the Diocese of Western Massachusetts, priests are barred from even giving blessings at same-sex weddings.
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MyRepublica.com
Notwithstanding the brilliance of individual Nepalis, the general enterprising and hardworking and positive spirit that all Nepalis possess, we somehow remain frozen in time with barbaric, uncivilized and primitive rituals pervading every pore of our society, more suitable to the medieval ages. While such rituals eventually became extinct in other parts of the world, in Nepal just the opposite happened, it flourished.
If we ponder over our barbaric belief and practices we will realize that these rituals are not rituals of the common people; they are in fact the rituals of our erstwhile rulers and the rich and powerful feudal class. The Shah and the Rana rulers upheld the importance of animal sacrifice as the cornerstone of Hindu religion and culture, and actively promoted it during their reign. This ensured that they would continue to become lords and the people would remain as ignorant as ever.
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2009) — A study carried out in Ivory Coast has shown that monkeys of a certain forest-dwelling species called Campbell's monkeys emit six types of alert calls. The primates combine these calls into long vocal sequences which allow them to convey messages about social cohesion or various dangers, including predation.
This study shows the capacity of this monkey species for very complex vocal communication, both in the range of transmitted messages and in the techniques used to encode these messages.
...
In this new study, the ethologists explain some of the rules that govern the semantic combinations of calls. For example, Campbell's monkeys can add a particular type of call to an existing sequence in order to make the message more precise or to alter it. They can also combine sequences relaying different messages in order to convey a third message.
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2009) — Scientists studying how bacteria under stress collectively weigh and initiate different survival strategies say they have gained new insights into how humans make strategic decisions that affect their health, wealth and the fate of others in society.
...
Each bacterium in the colony communicates via chemical messages and performs a sophisticated decision making process using a specialized network of genes and proteins. Modeling this complex interplay of genes and proteins by the bacteria enabled the scientists to assess the pros and cons of different choices in game theory, a branch of mathematics that attempts to model decision making by humans, in which an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others.
...
This has applications to human society because many people encounter similar dilemmas during their own lives. For example, should people ignore side effects and vaccinate against a new potentially lethal virus or should they not vaccinate and take the risk of being infected with the possible consequences?
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Houston Chronicle
The endorsement of a local anti-gay crusader put mayoral contender Gene Locke on the spot Monday as he considered whether social conservatives' support was worth the risk of appearing to embrace views some voters may find intolerant.
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Examiner.com
It isn't easy to be a humanist in Nigeria these days. In July, when Leo Igwe, Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Humanist Movement, held a symposium on witchcraft and children's rights, not only was it disrupted by 150 followers of Helen Ukpabio's Liberty Gospel Church, but he was attacked, had his glasses destroyed and his bag, camera and mobile phone taken from him.
And now Helen Ukpabio is suing him. For religious discrimination.
The religious belief Igwe is accused of discriminating against is her church's assertion that many of Nigeria's children are witches.
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 10, 2009) — Scientists from the University of Zurich have discovered the physiological mechanisms in the brain that underlie broken promises. Patterns of brain activity even enable predicting whether someone will break a promise.
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(CNN) -- As many as 10,000 albinos are in hiding in east Africa over fears that they will be dismembered and their body parts sold to witchdoctors, the Red Cross said in a recent report.
The killings of albinos in Burundi and Tanzania, who are targeted because their body parts are believed to have special powers, have sparked fears among the population in the two countries, the report said.
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letstalkmore.co.uk
Of course, who could forget Glenn Hoddle’s granny, the faith healer, Eileen Drewery? She was employed by disabled bashing Hoddle to exorcise the demons within the England team leading up to the 1998 World Cup. Most of the players took this incredibly seriously including ex-Arsenal midfielder Ray Parlour who when touched on the shoulders by the faith healing loony asked for a ’short back and sides, please!’
...
Former England footballer, turned illiterate pundit eye candy, Jamie Redknapp, was once ironically instructed by an osteopath to have his wisdom teeth removed in order to cure… you guessed it (or not) a knee injury?! Redknapp was forced to retire from football, aged 32.
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St. Pauls Disease from
© German Epilepsymuseum Kork - Museum for epilepsy and the history of epilepsy.
In old Ireland, epilepsy was known as 'Saint Paul's
disease'. The name points to the centuries-old assumption that the
apostle suffered from epilepsy.
To support this view, people usually point to Saint Paul's experience on the road to Damascus, reported in the Acts of the Apostles
in the New Testament (Acts 9, 3-9), in which Paul, or Saul as he was
known before his conversion to Christianity, is reported to have a fit
similar to an epileptic seizure: '...suddenly a light from the sky
flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to
him: ''Saul, Saul! Why do you persecute me?''...Saul got up from the
ground and opened his eyes, but he could not see a thing... For three
days he was not able to see, and during that time he did not eat or
drink anything.'
Click "Read more >>" for access.
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Kunstgalleri, The epilepsy motif in religious art
"Introduction:
In all epochs of the history of the human race, poverty, misfortune, illness and suffering are frequently connected with higher powers, divine entities, personal deities or 'spirits'. This also applies, last but not least, to epilepsy, for whose frequently dramatic symptoms mankind has been just as unable to find a natural explanation as it has been unable to find its cause over hundreds and thousands of years.
The various names alone which have been given to this illness in medical terminology and in the vernacular in the various historical epochs are an indication of this supposed relationship between epilepsy and the supernatural: hiëra nosos (Greek) or morbus sacer (Latin): the holy illness; morbus divinus the divine, morbus deificus that created by God, morbus coelestis the heavenly illness; or morbus astralis the star and morbus lunaticus the moon illness."
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Psychology Today or listen to
NPR broadcast
Only 3 percent of Icelanders lay claim to personal encounters, but 8 percent believe in them outright and 54 percent won't deny their existence, reveals a poll conducted in 2007 by Terry Gunnell, head of folkloristics at the University of Iceland. "Rather than believe," he explains, "they don't disbelieve."
Fearing curses, even skeptics go to great lengths to protect the hidden people. Patches of grass suspected to house invisible residents are left unmowed. To avoid removal of inhabited "elf stones," the general public can petition to divert roads and halt construction of buildings. "The Icelandic government wants to make sure that people with different beliefs are taken care of," says filmmaker Nisha Inalsingh, who explores the phenomenon in her documentary Huldufólk 102.
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Associated Press
"The idea of witchcraft is hardly new, but it has taken on new life
recently partly because of a rapid growth in evangelical Christianity.
Campaigners against the practice say around 15,000 children have been
accused in two of Nigeria's 36 states over the past decade and around
1,000 have been murdered. In the past month alone, three Nigerian
children accused of witchcraft were killed and another three were set
on fire."
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Click "Read more >>" for access.
On the Nov. 29, 2009 episode of "Meet The Press" he says the following.
"As a pastor, my job is to encourage, to support. I never take sides."
Newsweek.com
Now Warren's on the defensive again, this time for his affiliation with Martin Ssempa, a Ugandan pastor who has endorsed proposed legislation in Uganda that makes certain homosexual acts punishable by life in prison or even, in some cases, death. Ssempa has made appearances at [Warrens Church] and has been embraced warmly by Warren and his wife, Kay.
Cooperation and Fairness are expressions of logical relationships based on self-interest that even monkeys can understand. Click on "Read more >>" for access.
Abstract: The concepts of the "
Soul" and "
Free Will" are tightly coupled and are misunderstandings of
emergent properties of
complex biological systems due to fallacious
causal oversimplifications and are, in effect, a phenomena analogous to a rainbow. In the case of a soul that is separate from the self it would be judged by God for actions it did not condone. In the case of the soul as the self, the soul is locked into the body every night during
REM sleep and is catastrophically impaired by malfunctions of the body it resides in. While religions are divided on whether animals have souls and/or spirits, with or without them, animals have some of the same types of
cognitive abilities as humans and they get along well within their biological limitations. The
philosophical soulless zombie as the
null hypothesis for souls fits with established knowledge better than the "soul" described in unauthenticated bronze age "divinely revealed" texts.
These are some youtube videos that have evidently been extracted from the longer BBC mini-series
"Phantoms in the Brain" (
Episode 1,
Episode 2) featuring
Dr. Ramachandran, a world renowned neurologist. They demonstrate the correlation between the brains temporal lobes and religious experience. Click "Read more >>" to access them.
Professionals.epilepsy.com
Other changes highlighted in the literature include increased religious beliefs and a heightened concern for morality. Religious and moral themes tend to predominate when patients display hypergraphia, an increase in the volume of written material the person produces and a preoccupation with details within the content. The association of these behaviors to epilepsy, including TLE, is controversial.
Since the publication of such reports, a number of authors have questioned the linking of these personality changes with TLE. Indeed, various authors have indicated that such changes are not specific to patients with epilepsy but are also identified in other neurologic disorders. Furthermore, a recent review pointed out that patients with frontal lobe epilepsy are more likely to present these personality changes than those with temporal lobe epilepsy.
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A Grand mal seizure is the most familiar type of seizure. It causes a complete loss of motor control, uncontrollable shaking, loss of consciousness, etc during the seizure. Some seizures do not cause loss of motor control but only occur mentally. These types of seizures sometimes result in a "God Experience". This video features
Dr. Ramachandran, a world renowned neurologist. Click "Read more >>" to access it.
Dr. Ramachandran, a world renowned neurologist discusses split brain patient that has the hemispheres of their brain separated, creating two personalities, one a theist, the other an atheist. Click "Read more >>" to access it.
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Dr. Ramachandran, a world renowned neurologist describes how a brain damaged person thinks that their left arm belongs to someone else, but then will grab it to do a task with it when asked to. Click "Read more >>" to access it.
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thesundayleader.lk
Now the question is whether this pastor is responsible for the deaths of the two women who came for the meeting. I was made to understand that these two women had died in hospital. However, divine healing is real and our Lord has told us to heal the sick in His name. However, I wish to point out that only those who come in faith are healed. The Holy Word of God says, “But without faith it is impossible to please him (God)…”
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This series is presented by
Dr. Ramachandran, a world renowned neurologist. It shows the strange results of brain injury and interviews the patients.
Click on "Read more >>" to access them.
This series is presented by
Dr. Ramachandran, a world renowned neurologist. It shows the strange results of brain injury and interviews the patients.
Click on "Read more >>" to access them.
BBC News
A proposal to bless South Africa's World Cup stadiums by slaughtering a cow in each one has caused concern among animal rights activists.
The Makhonya Royal Trust, which put forward the idea, described the cattle killing ritual as a "true African" way of blessing the 2010 tournament.
Government minister Sicelo Shiceka has promised to lobby football's governing body, Fifa, in support of the plan.
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ynetnews.com
Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar said there was a whole "industry of false claims in female enlistment. We do not condemn religious girls, but the girls who seek exemptions and leading an un-religious life style.
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