Struggle to stay Christian

Washington Times | Julia Duin | Nov. 27, 2008

He sat in my office, a Turkish scholar and theologian who helps people who are tortured for their faith. According to Ziya Meral, it’s the converts from Islam to Christianity who are some of the most forsaken on Earth. The police don’t help them; their families hate them; and their friends want to kill them. And some of the worst treatment occurs in the gulags of America’s allies.

“Egypt is one of the worst countries in terms of torture,” Mr. Meral said. “Once you are detained, that’s it. The security services can keep you without charges for six, seven months, and then renew those charges.” [Read more…]

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Matter is Merely Vacuum Fluctuations

NewScientist.com | Stephen Battersby | Nov. 20, 2008

Matter is built on flaky foundations. Physicists have now confirmed that the apparently substantial stuff is actually no more than fluctuations in the quantum vacuum.

The researchers simulated the frantic activity that goes on inside protons and neutrons. These particles provide almost all the mass of ordinary matter.

Each proton (or neutron) is made of three quarks – but the individual masses of these quarks only add up to about 1% of the proton’s mass. So what accounts for the rest of it? [Read more…]

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Moral Tradition and the Assault of Gay Activists

OrthodoxyToday.org | Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse | Nov. 24, 2008

It used to be that when the voters settled on something — even twice, the matter was decided. No more. Proposition 8, the bitterly fought constitutional amendment restricting marriage to one man and one woman that squeaked by in California recently, needs to be “overturned” — or so the homosexual activists tell us.

Overturn a constitutional amendment? If judges can overturn the amendment, then effectively we have no constitution and we will be governed by the whims of a non-elected judiciary. Say goodbye to the constitutional republic. [Read more…]

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103 years later, Einstein’s proven right, e=mc2

AFP | Nov. 21, 2008

It’s taken more than a century, but Einstein’s celebrated formula e=mc2 has finally been corroborated, thanks to a heroic computational effort by French, German and Hungarian physicists.

A brainpower consortium led by Laurent Lellouch of France’s Centre for Theoretical Physics, using some of the world’s mightiest supercomputers, have set down the calculations for estimating the mass of protons and neutrons, the particles at the nucleus of atoms. [Read more…]

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Metropolitan Jonah’s Vision of Orthodoxy in America

OCAnews.org | Met. Jonah | Nov. 21, 2008

Being Orthodox is not about what we do in church, that’s maybe 5%. Being an Orthodox Christian is how we live. It’s how we treat one another. It’s our self-denial and our self-giving. It’s our self-transcendence. And, ultimately, what does that lead to, but the complete fulfillment of our personhood in Christ, so that we become who God made us to be in a communion of love with one another.

One of the most important things, so far as tasks go that I think it’s a vision that we can embrace as a community. It’s going to be something that will help us in our mission, it will help us in our outreach. One of the things that’s convicted me, very much, is where are the Orthodox hospitals? Where are the Orthodox schools? Where are the Orthodox institutions of charity? [Read more…]

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‘Freedom of Choice Act’ nightmare for bishops, pro-lifers

Why is the Orthodox Church silent on this? Why aren’t the Orthodox bishops taking a public stand against FOCA and Obama’s abortionist policies?
NCR | JOHN L. ALLEN JR. | Nov. 13, 2008

America’s Catholic bishops have been talking about abortion and politics at least since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, but their discussion this week in Baltimore had a special sense of urgency – driven by what many bishops and their pro-life advisors regard as a looming nightmare scenario under the new Obama administration in the “Freedom of Choice Act,” or FOCA.

Candidate Obama pledged to support the Freedom of Choice Act, which was first introduced in congress in 2004 but to date has not made it out of the committee stage. It acknowledges a “fundamental right” to abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy and at subsequent stages for health reasons. It would also bar discrimination in the exercise of the right “in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services or information.”

In effect, FOCA could undo most, or even all, of the existing restrictions on abortion under a patchwork of state and federal laws. Experts say that around the country there are currently some 300 such restrictions, including parental notification laws, waiting periods, requirements of full disclosure of the physical and emotional risks inherent in abortion, and limits on partial birth abortion. [Read more…]

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Obama addresses global warming summit

Boston.com | Foon Rhee | Nov. 18, 2008

Obama is pledging to make America more energy independent and to also slash carbon emissions by focusing on alternative sources such as wind and solar. He is also vowing to work more cooperatively with other nations on climate change.

“Few challenges facing America — and the world – are more urgent than combating climate change,” he says in the video. “The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We’ve seen record drought, spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season. Climate change and our dependence on foreign oil, if left unaddressed, will continue to weaken our economy and threaten our national security. [Read more…]

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Orwell’s Children

American Thinker | Bruce Walker | Nov. 16, 2008

It has been sixty years since George Orwell wrote his chilling dystopian classic, 1984, and it has been thirty years since we saw the creepiest example of educated and free people willingly walking into a living dystopia. November 18, 1978, three decades ago, 918 people drank Kool-Aid laced with cyanide. Jim Jones, the communist leader of Jonestown, Guyana, had become “Big Brother.” Soviet and Communist Chinese propaganda films and condemnations of capitalist and imperialist America blared continually to the subjects of this island of Leftist Hell. [Read more…]

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