LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

Christian group says 800 lawyers nationwide are ready to take on cases

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY cheap_laugh)

the republicans, on page 119 of THIS DOCUMENT tells it like it is... how the Religious whackos are to be used:

"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them."
-Mike Scanlon

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY gleef)

I know this case has been alluded to here before, but there have been some updates in the sad and strange case of the Carey family murders:

Most importantly, I wanted to discuss the bizarre and troubling meeting of the ways of law, religion and psychiatry that this case presents. I'm especially concerned with the testimony diagnosing the couple as having a "Dual Psychosis". They were following the teachings of many churches throughout the country, probably including their church, although perhaps a bit more actively and literally than most other followers. The psychosis angle strkes me as a way to deflect attention away from the religious nature, the potentially organized religious nature, of this crime. Does anyone know which side offered that testimony?

(snagged from halls_of_psyche)

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Vatican: Faithful Should Listen to Science

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 34 minutes ago

A Vatican cardinal said Thursday the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific reason.

Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the comments at a news conference on a Vatican project to help end the "mutual prejudice" between religion and science that has long bedeviled the Roman Catholic Church and is part of the evolution debate in the United States.

The Vatican project was inspired by Pope John Paul II's 1992 declaration that the church's 17th-century denunciation of Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension." Galileo was condemned for supporting Nicolaus Copernicus' discovery that the Earth revolved around the sun; church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY cheap_laugh)

Vatican: Faithful should listen to Science


By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press Writer | November 3, 2005

VATICAN CITY --A Vatican cardinal said Thursday the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific reason.

Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the comments at a news conference on a Vatican project to help end the "mutual prejudice" between religion and science that has long bedeviled the Roman Catholic Church and is part of the evolution debate in the United States.

The Vatican project was inspired by Pope John Paul II's 1992 declaration that the church's 17th-century denunciation of Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension." Galileo was condemned for supporting Nicolaus Copernicus' discovery that the Earth revolved around the sun; church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

"The permanent lesson that the Galileo case represents pushes us to keep alive the dialogue between the various disciplines, and in particular between theology and the natural sciences, if we want to prevent similar episodes from repeating themselves in the future," Poupard said.

But he said science, too, should listen to religion.

"We know where scientific reason can end up by itself: the atomic bomb and the possibility of cloning human beings are fruit of a reason that wants to free itself from every ethical or religious link," he said.

"But we also know the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and becomes prey to fundamentalism," he said.

"The faithful have the obligation to listen to that which secular modern science has to offer, just as we ask that knowledge of the faith be taken in consideration as an expert voice in humanity."

Poupard and others at the news conference were asked about the religion-science debate raging in the United States over evolution and "intelligent design."

Intelligent design's supporters argue that natural selection, an element of evolutionary theory, cannot fully explain the origin of life or the emergence of highly complex life forms.

Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican project STOQ, or Science, Theology and Ontological Quest, reaffirmed John Paul's 1996 statement that evolution was "more than just a hypothesis."

"A hypothesis asks whether something is true or false," he said. "(Evolution) is more than a hypothesis because there is proof."