Daily Archives: March 4, 2017

In a recent interview, Pope Francis talked about being truthful to the teachings and practices of Christianity.

If youre a Christian who exploits people, leads a double life or manages a dirty business, perhaps its better not to call yourself a believer, Francis said.This comes as a sharp contrast between much of Christian theology, as his statement implies that works do not determine salvation, but rather belief alone.

Religion should be followed and acted upon if it is to be a force for good in the world. However, it is often used as justification for reprehensible actions that harm others. This is not to say that only Christians must have the mindset of putting into practice the teachings of religion, but that to be a practitioner of a religion, one must be pious not only in words, but in deeds.

Pope Francis also said many Christians scandalize others with their double-life practices, including fraudulent business leaders, teachers who perturb students and manipulators who discourage others from following righteous principles.

To call yourself a believer, you must live the life of a believer. This is not to say that you must be perfect, but it is to say that you must try earnestly to better others and yourself. We must not allow injustice to be perpetuated in the name of higher powers.

It is dangerous for individuals to twist the meaning of religion to correspond to their worldviews. Religion should not be used to stifle science, education or opportunity. This perversion of religion only serves to give ammunition to people who blame religion for the atrocities in the world, when the true culprit is greed. We must use religion as a tool to advance ourselves spiritually.

Religion is a well, and it spiritually brings us the water that feeds our moral and loving nature.

To be a Christian means to do: to do the will of God and on the last day because all of us we will have one that day what shall the Lord ask us? Will He say: What you have said about me? No. He shall ask us about the things we did, Francis said.

This concept can be applied not just to Christians, but to every practitioner of any belief system. We must actively fight against injustice, prejudice and inequity.

Let deeds not words be our adorning, Francis said.

Opinion columnistAdib Shafipour is a biochemistry sophomoreand can be reached [emailprotected]

Tags: atheism, Catholicism, Pope Francis

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Pope's comments about atheism are true - The Daily Cougar

Burke Community Bible Church will present a case for Christianity in an apologetics-type seminar aimed at discussing challenges made to religious views from atheists and scientists.

The church invites the community to join them for the free seminar called, Reason, Evidence and Christianity, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Foothills Higher Education Center. Doors will open at 8:30 a.m.

Napoleon once asserted, Men do not rule, ideas rule, said church pastor the Rev. David Doster. A survey of human history (which includes) Martin Luthers idea of grace, Rousseaus idea of the state and Gandhis idea of nonviolent resistance, validates this claim. There are good ideas and bad ideas. Consequently, it is reasonable to point out that ideas or concepts cannot be of equal value, especially when they contradict one another. The intent this Saturday is to provide an intelligent, cogent and well-reasoned case for Christianity that specifically addresses challenges from atheism, (including) their attempt to position science as necessarily adversarial toward religion and people of faith.

The church has invited Dr. Neil Shenvi and Patrick Sawyer to speak about the various objections atheists have to Christianity. They will give presentations on the following three topics:

Atheisms Ideological Noose

Science and Religion: Is it Either/Or or Both/And?

Why Believe? The Case for Christianity

A question and answer session will follow the presentations to facilitate discussion of the issues.

Shenvi earned a PhD in theoretical chemistry from UC Berkeley and is a former research chemist with Duke University. He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed articles on topics such as electronic structure theory, non-adiabatic dynamics, electron transfer, quantum computing and high model representation. He is a Christian with a particular interest in apologetics and the intersection of science and religion, which he has been speaking about publicly for the past decade.

Sawyer holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from UNC Chapel Hill and a Master of Arts in Communication Studies from UNC Greensboro. He is currently a faculty member and a PhD candidate in Education and Cultural Studies with a concentration in Philosophy at UNC-G. His work has been peer-reviewed and published and presented at a number of academic conferences in related fields. He has been involved in apologetics ministry for the past 25 years.

Doster encouraged people to attend the seminar, no matter what views they hold.

We welcome Christians and skeptics of all flavors to a civil, responsible and engaging discussion that will provide an objective analysis and evaluation of these issues using critical thinking, Doster said.

Those interested in attending should RSVP by contacting 828-448-2819 or dldbcbc@gmail.com.

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Church presents seminar to address challenges of atheism, science - Morganton News Herald

Fresh from his Brexit victory over Brussels, Conservative MEP and thinker Daniel Hannan now has Communism in his sights organising an ACRE conference next month in Tirana, Albaniaon the legacy of state socialism for Europe.

EURACTIV.coms Matt Tempest met him for a discussion ranging across the 1968s Prague Spring, first loves, enforced secularism, Che Guevara and the Dunblane handgun ban.

Mr Hannan, youre organising a conference on the legacy of communism and its to coincide with the centenary of the Bolshevik revolution. But it seems to me that anybody who can remember a communist government in Europe must be at least 40 years old and no communist party is in government or even poised to take power anywhere across Europe. So it has to be asked: why now?

Its exactly the centenary year. So 100 years since the beginning of what has to be reckoned, mathematically, the most murderous ideology ever devised by human intelligence. But I think this is an argument that we have to have in every generation. Youre right, there is not a communist regime still standing in Europe and most communist parties have transformed themselves into something else. But the argument has to be held again in every generation.

I read a poll last month that a third of American millennials think that more people were murdered by George W. Bush than by Stalin. When you see those idiotic Che Guevara t-shirts when people unconsciously adopt Marxist language about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, very few people realise that theyre indirectly quoting him. You realise that this is something that goes very deep and you need to show that this is not some respectable alternative among many. The ethic of coercion which was intrinsic to communist rule, leading, sooner or later, to the secret police and the gulags. You can have it in a mild version or you can have it in a brutal version, but in the end, it always ends in autocracy.

I lived in Berlin for six years and had several East German friends. None of them was nostalgic at all for the Stasi, or the Berlin wall, or for the fact that they couldnt leave the country. But there was a certain sense, youve heard of the term Ostalgie they were nostalgic for that sense of free education, full employment, effectively rent-free accommodation. Obviously, none of it was very nice but it removed that worry you have in a capitalist rat race society of How do I pay the bills every month? Is there anything in you, even from the right end of the spectrum, that can see those lures or attractions of communism?

I think something else is going on there. I think people are nostalgic for having been 17-years-old. Which is a very natural and human thing. Were all the centre of our own universes. When we think back to the bright primary colours of our teenage years; the intensity of your first adolescent crush on someone, then the Stasi and the shortages and the drabness fade into the background. Thats not really what youre thinking about. But youre right, it has created this bizarre nostalgia in every communist country from people who forget what it was really like. Theyll say things like we had time to talk.

Well, living one week like that again, without even the most basic necessities being available would be a pretty strong cure if you actually had to go back and do it. But again, this exactly illustrates why we need to keep explaining to people where it leads. This wasnt a system that just meant a bit more state control and a bit less individual liberty. It was a complete hollowing out of civil society; the destruction of everything between the individual and the state. And then, ultimately, the NKVD, the knock in the night, and the torture chambers.

Obviously, all communist governments and regimes were officially atheist and secular. Isnt there something now, when were living in a period of, supposedly, a clash of civilisations Islam versus the West or Islam versus Christianity wasnt there something progressive in this idea of secular states?

I think theres a very respectable argument for secularism on the American model, where the state is effectively holding the ring and allowing each religion to proselytise. Or even secularism on the French model, where you say all of this is a private business. But enforcing atheism, which is effectively what ends up happening because everything is enforced, is every bit as tyrannical as enforcing Taliban-style sharia law, or enforcing fundamentalist Christianity, or any other belief system. The reason that this still matters is its very difficult, even a generation on, to rebuild where civil society has been systematically hollowed out and destroyed.

In 1948, when the Communists took power in Hungary, Jnos Kdr, who went on to become the Hungarian leader, was given the job of destroying independent associations. He systematically went through and closed down every church, every charity, every chess club, every village band, every boy scouts troupe; everything that fills the space normally between the individual and the government. 5,000 organisations, he boasted, that hed liquidated. Thats what we mean by a totalitarian society. And it bizarrely leaves people both atomised and controlled because people are denied the wherewithal to relate one to the other in a voluntary way as individuals. Everything is channelled through the party and the state.

I think of you as the libertarian, free market, property rights end of the right-wing spectrum, but not really the evangelical Christian, who are more obsessed with issues around handguns, banning abortion. Am I right in thinking that those arent your pet issues?

Handguns are not a big issue in the UK. Actually, I do regret the handgun ban. I think it was disproportionate and I dont think it was anything to do with what had just happened the abomination that wed seen. Nobody serious tried to argue that it would have made a difference. But, you know, we are where we are. Its not a campaign of mine to try and reverse the ban. But I do believe in freedom. I believe, very much, in people perusing their own happiness by making their own decisions and finding virtue by not having it coerced. And the defining ethic of communism was not equality, it was coercion.

Sort of a Brexit question, the only Brexit question, and its not a totally facetious analogy; but having defeated the EU with Brexit, and looking at communist regimes, can you see something of that in the EU? Not with the violence or the oppression or the authoritarianism, but as a supranational institution; pan-states and sucking sovereignty inwards.

Not in my worst nightmares have I ever thought that the European Union is going to take away our passports, throw us into gulags or torture us. I suppose that the parallel, and its a very minor and limited one, but its an interesting one in so far as it goes, would be this. By the end of the communist era, you really struggled to find anyone who believed in it. I remember travelling in what we still called Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and I remember thinking this cant carry on because nobody believes in it. None of the people running these countries still believed, if ever they did believe, in the principles of Marxism or Leninism.

But on the other hand, how was it going to end? Because so many people had a vested interest in the status quo. So many people had learned to rise through that power structure. And in that limited sense, I think you can draw a parallel, in that there are very few true believers left in Brussels. But there are an awful lot of people who have learned how to make a good living out of it. And I dont just mean Eurocrats. I mean the armies of consultants and contractors, the big landowners getting money from the CAP, the lobbyists, the professional associations; all sorts of parastatal actors who have learned how to make a handy living out of the EU, one way or another. And just like the nomenklatura in the 1980s, they will fight very hard to maintain their position, not on dogmatical grounds, but out of sheer self-interest.

Certainly, we saw that in the UK referendum a lot of the opposition came from organisations that were directly or indirectly funded by the EU. This wasnt, in other words, about sovereignty or federalism or democracy; it was about mortgages and school fees. And that is a very difficult thing to end. But Ill end on a cheerful note. I think the communist system had been basically delegitimised after the Prague Spring. Up until 1968, you could find idealistic Marxists in central and eastern Europe, who believed that they would eventually get to the stage where they could reintroduce democracy. That once the system had been shown to work, shown to be more economically productive than capitalism, then they could have free elections again. After 1968, nobody really believed that and there were just people clinging on to their position.

I think the French and Dutch referendums in 2004 were a similar moment in Brussels. I think after that, people stopped believing that European federalism would win mass support. But they were determined to cling on to their positions. What was it in the end that brought the communist system down? Again, I can remember in the 80s, very few people saw the end coming. People would say maybe over twenty or thirty years there will be a gradual move to a more reformed kind of Marxism. And a few isolated dreamers would say, no, maybe there will be an exogenous shock; a kind of Chernobyl type massive event that will bring it all down. What was the event that brought down the Marxist system in the end? It was the smallest thing. It was the decision of the Hungarian interior ministry to stop requiring exit visas from East Germans who wanted to travel to Austria. Within two weeks, the whole rotten system had unravelled. And that, I think, does give me hope. Permanence is the illusion of every age.

So why Tirana, Albania?

Tirana is, if you like, the most vivid physical place where you can see the legacy of a communist regime. It was the ultimate autocratic system and the ultimate paranoid system. Enver Hoxha spent an immense amount of money fortifying the country. It was rather like North Korea is today. And a hungry and immiserated population, to use a Marxist word, was paying the cost of what had become a leadership cult, because thats where it ends.

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Dan Hannan on Communism, Ostalgie, first loves and enforced atheism - EurActiv

Michael Reagan has come out swinging at his brother Ron Reagan, CNN and MSNBC for a controversial TV ad that promotes atheism.

The conservative commentator took to Twitter on Friday to proclaim he was boycotting both cable news networks for running a 30-second spot that features his liberal brother plugging the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

He also said their father, the late Ronald Reagan, was "crying in heaven" over Ron's TV endorsement of the organization whose members do not believe in God.

The ad is appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and the "Rachel Maddow Show," and on CNN's "CNN Newsroom," "The Lead with Jake Tapper" and "The Situation Room."

In the ad, Ron looks into the camera and explains he is "an unabashed atheist, and I'm alarmed by the intrusion of religion into our secular government.

"That's why I'm asking you to support the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the nation's largest and most effective association of atheists and agnostics, working to keep state and church separate, just like our Founding Fathers intended."

Ron identifies himself as a "lifelong atheist, not afraid of burning in hell."

The ad had previously been refused by CBS, NBC, ABC and Discovery Science.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation describes itself as "the nation's largest association of freethinkers (atheists and agnostics), with more than 27,000 members. It works as a state/church separation watchdog."

This week, the foundation condemned a proposed West Virginia bill to name the Bible as the "official state book," calling it unconstitutional.

And last month, its co-presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Energy and Natural Resources to question President Donald Trump's nomination of Dan Coats to be director of national intelligence.

According to the FFRF, "throughout Coats' career, his religion has played an important role. He helped author Don't Ask, Don't Tell, has opposed gay marriage, and has vowed to 'defend the sanctity of life from the moment of conception' all because of his religious beliefs."

Ron has not yet responded to his brother's fiery remarks.

The political beliefs of Michael and Ron have been like night and day for years, with Michael being an unabashed conservative like their father, the late President Ronald Reagan, and Ron being a card-carrying liberal and longtime atheist.

Michael, 71, a Newsmax contributor, is the half-brother of Ron, 58. Michael was adopted as an infant by Ronald Reagan and his first wife, Oscar-winning star Jane Wyman. Ron is the only son of Ronald Reagan and his second wife, actress Nancy Davis.

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Reagan Sons at War Over Atheist TV ad - Newsmax