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Everything Wrong With Exodus 4 in the Bible | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | PatheosEverything Wrong With Exodus 4 in the BibleMay 16, 2021Hemant Mehta

The video below, from my YouTube channel (please subscribe!), discusses all the problems with Exodus 4.

Gods about to try a whole bunch of OTHER magic tricks to convince Moses to go along with the plan.

If you like what youre seeing, please consider supporting my work on Patreon.

(Original image via Shutterstock)

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Everything Wrong With Exodus 4 in the Bible | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos - Friendly Atheist - Patheos

The following column is adapted from The Michael Savage Show podcast, available for download on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts are heard.

Today, were talking about Bidens bombs. Now, what do I mean by Bidens bombs? Is he bombing anyone? Well, hes bombing America with his left-wing fanaticism.

What Donald Trump built in four years, Biden will destroy in four months. Ive never seen anything like this.

One mistake after the other. Immigration policies that were somewhat controlled, caravans that were coming from Central America, now flooding America and being sent all over the country with first-class travel by Catholic charities and other gangster groups.

Biden is now welcoming asylum seekers like theyre the promised citizens that America never had before. All of them Einsteins, waiting to be discovered.

Where are they coming from? And why are they being brought into America and sent into towns that dont want them? Why has he melted down our border?

For the votes, no other reason.

Bidens bomb number two: He canceled the Keystone pipeline, killing thousands of high paying union jobs. Thats even though the Keystone XL pipeline was known by the Obama administration to have almost no environmental impact.

Biden has stopped new drilling leases on federal lands, which will kill income for New Mexico, which voted for Biden. This attack on energy has eventually caused a rise in gasoline prices, which is going to get even worse, by the way, hurting lower income Americans the most.

More of Bidens bombs. Siding with teacher unions over the needs of families who were trying to earn a living as teachers. He refused to order teachers back to work, indifferent to the real science. What is science anymore?

After years of the liar, Fauci. Science said schools can open safely. Unions said No, we want our teachers to collect money for not working. Why is he doing that?

What about the Middle East bomb? Whereas Trump brought the Arabs and the Jews together, Biden has put the Abraham Accords on ice, freezing arms sales to the UAE which were included in that deal.

Biden is not speaking with Israels Benjamin Netanyahu. Why are they trying to stir up hatred and war in the Middle East? Because war is the middle name of the Democrat party.

Mark my words, ladies and gentlemen of the Savage Nation. I said this to you when Biden won, that within six months there would be a war somewhere in the world to unify the American people.

Bidens demolition crew is also stirring up a war with Russia. Both for the added billions in military contracts and to galvanize the people behind him.

Remember, war always brings people together.

This is the Democrat playbook.

Lets talk about the economy.

They jammed through an absurd, almost $2 trillion aid package with no votes from the Republican party, destroying Bidens campaign promise to work across the aisle, to be a unifier.

Biden pushed an almost $2 trillion new aid package but businesses cant find employees with everyone staying at home rather than going to work because the governments taking care of them.

And there still remains a trillion dollars that are unspent from prior packages!

Now lets talk about God. Biden omitted the word Godfrom his National Prayer Day declaration. The president boasted about Americas remarkable religious vitality and diversity.He had to throw the word diversity in there.

He quoted the late Congressman and civil rights leader, John Lewis, but he made no mention or reference to God or any other deity.

Donald Trumps National Day of Prayer proclamation last year mentioned God eight times. Even Obama mentioned God twice in his last National Day of Prayer declaration in 2016. Bush mentioned God four times in his 2008 proclamation, but Biden did not mention God once.

Why? Because he is godless.

His administration is atheistic, communistic. We all know that theres no one else to pray to except God, yet President Biden omitted the word God.

Think about that very carefully. Even if youre an atheist, what is he saying? That HE is God.

And now lets talk about what hes doing in promoting the left-wing racial radicals. According to a great article by Michael Goodwin of the New York post, this man is shameful beyond belief.

For just one example, the hate crimes against Asian-Americans is an epidemic but has Biden once mentioned the demographic committing these heinous crimes against Asians? Its African-American street thugs largely, not white nationalists.

Its not white people who are beating up Asians by and large. Biden should say Stop it. Were going to throw the book at you. If you do it one more time, youre going to get a go away for life.

Todays podcast goes into detail on Bidens bombs and his wrecking ballon America. Pay close attention because thats going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

A National Radio Hall of Fame recipient, Savage has hosted his radio show for more than 25 years and launched The Savage Nation Podcast in January of 2019 with one of the most successful podcast debuts. A prolific New York Times best-selling author, Dr. Savages latest book is Our Fight for America: The War Continues. To read more of his reports Click Here Now.

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Biden's Demolition Crew in the White House | News Talk WBAP-AM - WBAP News/Talk

When members of your church or other religious affiliation dispute the existence of mental illness and advise you not to take psychiatric medication prescribed by a doctor, they're advising you to make a huge mistake. The person advising that will not suffer the consequences themselves, you will. You can be a good Christian, Hindu, Muslim, or any of the above and can still listen to the reality-based warnings and advice from a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist is a medical doctor who specializes in certain brain disorders treatable with psychiatric drugs.

On the other hand, a psychiatrist should never be advising you not to have a religious practice, albeit in my experience I have never seen that happen. Religion and science do not conflict. They are two different things that address completely different areas of human lives.

Some of the greatest scientists and scholars have been highly religious. Gregor Johann Mendel was a meteorologist, mathematician, biologist, Augustinian friar, and abbot. After his death he gained recognition for discoveries that led to the modern science of genetics. He studied how characteristics in plants were transmitted. In high school, I got the impression that my biology teacher was big into church. I was told by a fellow student that he volunteered at the church doing cleanup.

You do not have to be atheist to understand and believe science. Our President is highly religious and at the same time touts "listen to the scientists," in his powerful speeches about beating coronavirus.

I am not religious, but it doesn't mean I lack belief in a higher power. Something takes care of me and got me through dozens of situations that by all rights I should not have survived. The higher power must have work in store for me or would not be taking care of me in this way. When people are in rough times, in which we don't know how we are to get through a situation, even the non-religious like me will be tempted to ask for help from something greater.

Those who pervert science into something it is not might reject the spiritual, and this leads to cruelty. I am not saying you need to believe in god to be a good person--you do not. My point is that atheistic people who disbelieve in human personhood and believe people are machines that arose by chance, might also reject the validity of human suffering. This could lead to cruel experimentation on people.

I've heard a psychiatrist say, "consciousness could be an illusion." How crackpot of an idea is that? To assert consciousness is an illusion is in total contradiction to the most basic truth known by a conscious entity: "I think therefore I exist." If consciousness were an illusion, we would be unaware that we are here. Who is reading these words? How is it that you are aware of them? Consciousness is not an illusion; it is a subjective absolute truth.

Atheism is not the same thing as agnosticism. No one can prove or disprove a theory that explains how the universe came to be. We can prove and disprove many things about the universe and about the people in it. And it has been shown that science is applicable to mental illness. If you are a good Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Sikh, other, it doesn't make you more or less likely to become mentally ill, and none of these religions will cure it.

I once believed meditative attainment could cure my mental illness; it can't. I've gained meditative attainment in my past, and then when I believed it had cured my condition, I relapsed from not taking medication. Afterward I was aware that the attainment I'd created was erased. And it can take years to regain this--if it is even possible. The damage to function that occurs in a relapse of psychosis will make any type of mental development harder to regain. I am not speaking of Buddhism specifically but of mindfulness, which can be practiced generically in the absence of any religious beliefs.

Many doctors and many psychiatrists seem to reject the notion that human suffering exists. This is a sign of being disconnected. If science is to help the human species, it must be used to remediate aspects of the human condition. It must not be used solely for profits of innovators. Human beings employ massive amounts of time and energy devising methods of getting more. This is also apparently not in conflict with many religious practices.

Doctors in the U.S. and in NAZI Germany have experimented on human beings. This was perceived as conscionable because people believed they were forwarding science. This is an atrocity like any other. A religious person could do this to people as could a non-religious person. Religion is a separate issue from people's acts of kindness and unkindness. That's an opinion. Many religions teach compassion. Yet the lesson does not always take. Some religions teach members that anyone outside of their religion goes to hell. Some religious people are lacking enough in basic perception that they would not be suitable to practice science. Yet many atheistic people are unsuitable as well, because ruling out the possibility that something conscious could have created the universe shows lack of thought. No one knows how the universe came about. Science can describe the universe but that is all it can do. Religion is not sufficient to explain things either, since our religions create a concept of god from human imagination, not from known fact.

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ON MENTAL ILLNESS: There is No Conflict Between Religion and Science. Category: Columns from The Berkeley Daily Planet - Berkeley Daily Planet

Todaymarks the 40th anniversary of the death of the Reggae king, who succumbed to cancer in Miami on May 11, 1981, aged just 36.

He played a gig at the Glasgow Apollo less than a year earlier, in July 1980, as part of the Tuff Gong Uprising tour of Europe.

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Those at the show recalled a night like no other as the Wailers took to the stage along with the joyous accompaniment of the I-Threes backing singers.

One man in the 3,000-strong audience recently told a fans forum: The atmosphere was electric, a vibe Ive never experienced before or since. Im an atheist, but it was like being in the presence of a god.

Journalist Frank Morgan, a reporter at the Evening Express in Aberdeen at the time, was among the crowd.

He told a newspaper last year: I'll never forget the palpable air of excitement before we got into the Apollo. There was a buzz even on Renfield Street as I arrived from Aberdeen with my then-girlfriend and an old mate from school.

The band came on and began a chug-along reggae beat. The I-Three backing singers came on and began to chant "Mar-ley woaaaahhh" over and over and soon the entire audience was singing along."

With the crowd wound up to fever pitch, Marley then appeared, skanking onto the stage from the left, the reporter recalled.

"The noise was deafening as the Apollo went crazy, Mr Morgan recalled.

The reporter said Marley cut a small figure on the stage with his body dwarfed by his huge mass of dreadlocks.

He added: But I doubt I've ever seen such a hard-working performance from an established star. The energy was so strong you felt you could have reached out and touched it.

The performance peaked with Marley playing Redemption Song on acoustic, with Glasgow written on his guitar.

The crowd were mesmerised and it is said Marley cried during the song.

Bob Marleys night in Glasgow was a one-off, but he did have an affinity with the city given his regard for Celtic Football Club.

In his autobiography, Celtic legend Dixie Deans recounted a chance meeting with Marley in Australia, where the musician spoke of his wish to go to Celtic Park and kick a few balls there.

The football and fitness fanatic kept videos of the teams matches at home in Jamaica and had great respect for the Lisbon Lions squads who won the European Cup in 1967 against all the odds.

While touring Europe in 1980, he taped Old Firm games and took the recordings home for his son Rohan to watch.

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Bob Marley: Reggae king's only Scottish gig remembered on 40th anniversary of his death - The Scotsman

Photo: Stephen Meyer, via Discovery Institute.

The New Atheism is dead, or so maverick writer Freddie deBoer argues in his recent provocative Substack essay. But that doesnt mean the New Atheists lost. On the contrary, he thinks they won by losing.

DeBoer explains:

Every day religion recedes a little bit more into the background as ordinary people, religious or not, abstract religious meaning in their lives to the point where its hard to know how you would begin to define why the distinction between believer and nonbeliever actually matters.

DeBoer argues that this receding has, ironically, been hastened by the replacement of New Atheists with voices who are more friendly towards traditional theists, like social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Unlike Dawkins or Hitchens, Haidt isnt out to take away anyones deeply held religious faith. In fact, hes happy to work together with Jews and Christians, because as he argues in books like The Righteous Mind, in his view religion is a beneficial evolutionary accretion grounded in literal falsehood, of course, but to a pragmatic end.

DeBoer himself is no Christian, or a religious believer of any kind. Far from it: Hes an avowed atheist Marxist! But that of course offends him on the Christians behalf, because he perceives it as a more grievous insult to sincere Christians than Christopher Hitchens could ever come up with. At least Hitchens respected Christians enough to challenge them to a fight, rather than letting them go with a pat on the head.

Stephen Meyer couldnt agree more with Freddie deBoer. In conversation with him, I raised this very sociological question, pointing out that some might argue he is beating an already dead horse by using writers like Dawkins as a foil in Return of the God Hypothesis. Meyer conceded that sociologically, Dawkins may indeed be pass. But the stakes are still just as high. The questions have never gone away, and churlish as he was, like his fellow New Atheists, Dawkins had a knack for asking them well. These guys have the requisite zeal to challenge those beliefs head-on, and therefore, they force the really important discussion about what does the evidence actually say pro or con for theism versus materialism? Meyer is one of those Christians deBoer is irritated for, whod rather go at it hammer and tongs with a Hitchens than engage with materialists who merely condescend to theistic belief, who pat you on the head and say, Well, thats nice for you.

Another name that came up in our conversation was Bret Weinstein, a biology professor who became famous for standing up to a woke mob at Evergreen State College and subsequently becoming a professor in exile. Meyer and I share an admiration for Weinstein, but we find his attempt to save religion lacking in the the same way deBoer finds Jon Haidts attempt lacking. Weinsteins personal coinage is that religion is literally false, but metaphorically true. For example, if an island tribe believes an ancient spirit is stirring the waters to cause a tsunami, they will escape to high ground and survive, which is the really important thing, whether or not the whole ancient spirit business was so much superstitious nonsense.

But was their belief true, though? Well. What is truth?

This is really just Stephen Jay Gould all over again. Gould famously proposed the idea of non-overlapping magisteria, or NOMA, where you can neatly partition your beliefs into the scientific on one side and the religious on the other, and never the twain shall meet. But our friend Freddie is unconvinced that its so easy as all that:

[T]he meaning and rules for life which people so often praise in religion in the abstract stem from the very supernatural elements which people are now so eager to do away with. Yes, religion provides psychic comfort in an unfriendly world, but it does so because it imposes sense on senselessness through the existence of one (or many) who literally determine what sense is. Yes, religion helps guide moral decisions, but it does so because it posits an entity from whom unerring moral precepts flow. Yes, religion helps rescue people from feelings of meaninglessness, but it does so because it tells people that they have a specific moral purpose that is defined by a creature of infinitely greater wisdom than ours. Yes, religion soothes the sick and elderly, but it does so because it tells them that they will soon be joined with a maker who will grant them some sort of eternal reward. You take away the supernatural element, as so many now seem eager to do, and youre kicking two legs out from under a three-legged stool.

Thank you! Just so! Indeed, its all very well to acknowledge, like Haidt does, the Pascalian God-shaped hole in our hearts. Its all very well to say that religion is part of human nature. But as deBoer puts it poignantly in a previous essay, you cant worship a God-shaped hole. If you go to Mass or synagogue looking for nothing more than a vague religious fix, while quietly congratulating yourself that youre not like those silly fundamentalists who dont know how Science works, that fix will only last so long. The journey will be an aimless and likely short one.

It doesnt look like deBoer has plans to climb aboard the God hypothesis train himself any time soon. But at the very least, he recognizes why people should care where that train is going, and why it matters that its not just making an aimless circle. We can certainly shake hands with deBoer on that point, even as we cordially invite him to reconsider the destination for his own journey.

See more here:

Where Steve Meyer Agrees with an Atheist Marxist - Discovery Institute

We heard that the annual National Day of Prayer has also spurred atheists to actionand theyre using the occasion to do good works in their community.

The Atheist Community of Polk County, Florida, for instance,11 is organizing a number of community service events and an awareness campaign to suggest that fellowship doesnt require faith.

Its all part of an annual effort to celebrate a national Secular Week of Action instead of observing the National Day of Prayer, which was set aside in U.S. federal law for people of faith to pray for the nation on the first Thursday in May.

In place of observing a day of thoughts and prayers, secular groups nationwide organize service projects. This years emphasis is on a compassionate response to hunger and homelessness, which were exacerbated due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The nonprofit which covers the metro areas of Lakeland and Winter Haven, runs several ongoing programs to address social issues. They even partnered with a church in a unique food pantry coalition as a direct response to the COVID-19.

Joining the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Lakeland, the project, called It Takes a Village, uses volunteers to deliver food pantry supplies directly to the homes of recipients who may be quarantined or unable to visit the pantry.

INTER-FAITH: Muslim Youth Protect Catholic Church After Deadly Attacks in France: We will protect churches ourselves

These local atheists also run a chapter of Street Warriors to provide hot meals to people experiencing homelessness, and a Backpack Program that supplies weekend groceries for elementary students.

In addition to providing much-needed food to folks throughout the County, the Secular Week of Action includes a litter clean-up of the groups adopted roadway in Haines City on Sunday May 2 at 8:45am.

Their Street Warriors service project will also be meeting on Sunday (4:00 PM to 6:00 PM) in Winter Haven to pack up food, then hit the streets, to feed people experiencing homelessness.

RELATED: Theyve Collected 20 Million Pounds of Food From People Who are MovingAnd Delivered it to Food Banks

Under the slogans Good without God, Community without Church, and Fellowship without Faith, Polk County Atheists Co-founder Sarah Ray says that one of the most important thing her group provides is a sense of community.

We want to let other nonbelievers know that there is a secular community here they can turn to. And we want to challenge the misconceptions and stereotypes about atheists. We are good people, were your neighbors, co-workers, and friends.

They will also be providing a secular invocation at the Polk County Board of County Commissioners Meeting two days before the National Day of Prayer. Providing secular invocations gives us an opportunity to remind elected officials at all levels that nonbelievers exist in their constituency.

Join their weekly ongoing charitable events, with details found on Meetup.comor find an event this week in your area of the U.S. here.

SAY AMEN! And Share the Secular Good News on Social Media

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Atheists Respond to National Day of Prayer This Week With Action to Feed the Hungry and Clean Up Litter - Good News Network

A month ago, Bleeding Cool posted the following Heroes Reborn spoilers or potential spoilers. Heroes Reborn is a new Avengers-focussed event fromJason Aaron running through May and June. How on the ball were we? Well, the first issue is published on Wednesday, so feel free to mark out homework Nothing, I think, that will ruin the comic. But might give you a greater idea of the world that is being created in the first issue with Ed McGuinness.

1. So Where Are The Avengers Then? This is the tease for Heroes Return from Marvel Comics. "Welcome to a world where Tony Stark never built an Iron Man armor. Where Thor is a hard-drinking atheist who despises hammers. Where Wakanda is dismissed as a myth. And where Captain America was never found in the icebecause there were no Avengers to find him." We have a couple of others to add Jennifer Walters never became the She-Hulk, and works as a lawyer. And Carol Danvers is a pilot, well-regarded, but never promoted to Captain and not in receipt of the powers of Captain Mar-Vell. Pietro died, which is how Wanda has his powers as the Silver Witch. And the very existence of the Squadron Supreme stopped the Avengers from needing to be formed. We reckon this is all down to Mephisto but no sign of him yet.

2. What's With Blade, Then? Heroes Reborn #1 states "But why is the Daywalker Blade the one man alive who seems to remember that the entire world has somehow beenreborn?"I have theories for another day, but this is not a place for theories, but a place for spoilers. Because Blade is also the last of the vampires. It is not just a world without Avengers. But a world without vampires. And he is starting to think that this new world is a better one than the one with Avengers and vampires in it. We reckon this is all down to Mephisto Vs Lilith but no sign of them yet.

3. What's Up In Doctor Doom's Grill?Issue 2's solicitations promises that "America's solar-powered, super-sentinel of liberty looks to return his archenemy Victor Von Doom to the Negative Zone". But doesn't Doctor Doom have the might of an entire country behind him? Not any more. Doctor Doom was elected out of Latveria, after the Squadron Supreme forced the country to hold free and fair elections.

4. Who's Got The Venom Suit?We all saw a Venom character with a red Hydra logo. That is The Black Skull, and it is the Red Skull, joined together with a symbiote, in a similar fashion as to how Norman Osborn became the Red Goblin on Earth 616.

5. Stop Being So Negative. Remember that mention of Doom being banished to the Negative Zone? That's what happens to enemies of the state, and we saw in previews that image of Reed Richards and Ben Grimm working at that facility. Others banished to the Negative Zone include Avengers the Hulk, the Star Brand and Ghost Rider

6. Remains Of The Gods.The last of the Asgardians (if you don't count Thor and he doesn't, he's an atheist now) is All-Gog, the final All-Father of Asgard. There will be no more.

HEROES REBORN #1 (OF 7)MARVEL COMICSMAR210497(W) Jason Aaron (A) Ed McGuinness (CA) Leinil Francis YuA WORLD WITHOUT AVENGERS!Welcome to a world where Tony Stark never built an Iron Man armor. Where Thor is a hard-drinking atheist who despises hammers. Where Wakanda is dismissed as a myth. And where Captain America was never found in the ice because there were no Avengers to find him. Instead this world has always been protected by Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the Squadron Supreme of America. And now the Squadron faces an attack from some of their fiercest enemies, like Dr. Juggernaut, the Black Skull, the Silver Witch and Thanos with his Infinity Rings. But why is the Daywalker Blade the one man alive who seems to remember that the entire world has somehow beenreborn?Rated T+In Shops: May 05, 2021 SRP: $5.99

Excerpt from:

Rewind: Five Spoilery Teases For Marvel's Heroes Reborn, Out This Week - Bleeding Cool News

Within days of each other, the Salk Institute in California announced it had successfully implanted human stem cells into a monkey embryo, and Richard Dawkins, the renowned evolutionary biologist and professional atheist, characterized the Catholic belief in the Real Presence as ridiculous. He went as far as couching his dim opinion of the Real Presence in Shakespearean terms: That way madness lies.

The experiment on monkey embryos and human cells which seems more at home in a black and white B-grade science fiction movie of the 1950s and the pronouncement against the fulcrum of Catholic teaching are different forms of the same attack. I realize attack is a strong word, but if one does not understand he is under attack, he is not prepared to defend himself.

Defense of the Real Presence does not need my assistance. The graces I have received from my most recent consumption of it, though, tells me to resist the temptation to go at Richard Dawkins with similar dismissing and cutting words. But thinking I could argue or cajole Dawkins into a belief in it is beyond my pay grade.

I can still try to understand Dawkins by placing him within the context of Scripture (something I think he would also reject outright).

The Real Presence was codified at the Last Supper, but the teaching began earlier in the Gospels and the early returns from the polls were not promising. As usual, Jesus pulls no punches in the sixth chapter of John. His body is real food and his blood real drink. People began to talk.

Soon the murmurs turned into recordable speech. This is a hard saying, who can listen to it? (John 6:60). And then the people started to vote with their feet. They seemed just as sure of the impossibility of what Jesus taught as any degree-wielding modern scientist.

If you have ever seen a YouTube video of Dawkins as he debates people of faith or viewed some of his lectures where he indulges his atheist leanings, you know he does not suffer fools and his contempt for those who rely on bizarre rituals or tribal beliefs of the supernatural are all categorized in his personal fool phylum.

It would not take extrasensory abilities to predict what Dawkins makes of St. Peter and the other apostles who, although they did not fully understand the Real Presence when they first heard it, believed in Jesus enough to know to stay put.

Dawkins faith lies elsewhere, in places like the Salt Institute. It would be logical to assume Dawkins sees these men and women as the embodiment of scientific endeavor, traveling wherever science takes them, even if it is a place they should not go.

Richard Dawkins (Wikipedia)

But without God at the center of things, the Salk Institutes breakthrough of inserting human tissue into nonhuman tissue is a natural progression.

The end goal of the Salk Institute experiment is to create a source of human organs for transplant. It sounds as altruistic as it does cannibalistic. Ironically, this circles back to Dawkins and his opinion of the Real Presence. To Dawkins, the Real Presence represents a logical black hole; he insinuates smugly that a Church that forbids cannibalism but celebrates the Real Presence is schizophrenic at the very least.

The difference that Dawkins will not or cannot accept, and that I am not the man to convince him of, is that cannibalism requires dead flesh, and the Real Presence is the living God who avails himself to us in the most intimate and real way.

A successful Salk Institute experiment, on the other hand, is contemporary cannibalism, and the flesh it will be creating under pristine and antiseptic conditions will eventually fail, as all flesh is prone to do.

The Salk scientists call these hybrid creations chimeras. One of the meanings of chimera is a thing that is hoped for or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve.

Is the Real Presence easy to understand? I think we all have a lot more in common with both first-century doubters and modern-day evolutionary biologists than we may be willing to admit. And I have been taking it for granted, so thank you, Dawkins, for the challenge to make me look in the mirror (and open my Bible).

If Jesus meant what he said and said what he meant, then we know the Real Presence is no chimera, but rather supernatural evidence that with God, nothing is impossible.

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Chimeras, Richard Dawkins, and the madness of Catholicism - Angelus News

The number of marriages celebrated last year more than halved compared to 2019.

Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures show civil marriage ceremonies were the most popular overall.

Just over 9,500 marriages took place in 2020, including 314 same-sex couples.

That is down 53 per cent on the previous year.

The average age for those getting married rose last year, for a groom it was 35.7 years and a bride 37.8 years.

For same-sex couples the age was 40.

Commenting on the report, statistician Carol Anne Hennessy said: There were 9,523 marriages in Ireland in 2020 including 314 same-sex marriages. This equates to a crude (unadjusted) marriage rate of 1.9 per 1,000 population. The number of marriages celebrated in 2020 fell by 53.1 per cent from 2019, reflecting the impact of Covid-19 restrictions.

The timing of weddings may also reflect the impact of Covid-19 restrictions. The cooler month of December was the most popular for opposite-sex weddings, while February was most popular for same-sex marriages. April was the least favoured month to tie the knot for all couples.

Friday and Saturday continue to be the most popular days to tie the knot for opposite-sex couples, while Friday followed by Thursday were the most favoured days to wed for same-sex couples. Sundays and Wednesdays were the least popular days of the week to marry for all couples.

Atheist Ireland has said our laws must catch up with this reality, and stop giving privilege to the Catholic Church," in response to the popularity of civil ceremonies over religious ones.

A statement from the group read: For the first time ever, in 2020, there were more Civil marriages than Catholic marriages in Ireland. 42.1 per cent of marriages were Civil, compared to 34.6 per cent that were Catholic.

Yet most of the children of these couples will have to attend a state-funded school run by the Catholic Church, where they will be taught Catholic doctrine about marriage, including that marriage is only between a man and a woman.

Marriages by all traditional Churches, including Christian and others, are now an overall minority at 43.4 per cent. This includes 42.1 per cent Catholic, 1.2 per cent Church of Ireland, and 7.6 per cent other religions.

Of the other 14.3 per cent of marriages, 7.8 per cent were humanist and 6.7 per cent were spiritualist. Legally, humanist marriages are counted as secular while spiritualist marriages are counted as religious.

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Civil ceremonies overtake religious as marriages fall by 53% in 2020 - BreakingNews.ie

Reading the April 4 column, ''Easter is a promise that death is not the end,'' and the April 10 letter, ''Repository's Easter newspaper disappointed,'' compelled me as an atheist to speak out.

I appreciate Charita Goshay's April 4 column mentioning the recent Gallup poll that ''the number of Americans connected to a house of worship has fallen to 47%for the first time in 100 years,'' which I see as good news.People are beginning to realize that you can be moral without attending church, because you don't need religion to tell you that getting along with othersand not hurting themis the right thing to do.

As for the letter complaining about the Repository's Easter page, I thought it was just fine, but it does bring up the question of the paper recognizing no holidays at all, or all holidays from other cultures which would include: Ramadan,Eid al-Fitr, Juneteenth,Diwali, Indigenous Peoples Day(replacing Columbus Day), Hanukkah,and Kwanzaa, to name just a few.I would also add that religion and secular beliefs should be about compassion for all, and tolerance, tolerance for the LGBTQ+ community, reproductive rights, and supporting the separation of church and state, and that if you use religion to justify sexism, homophobia, and anti-choice rhetoric, then your beliefs are hurtful, wrongand immoral.

The cancel culture belongs to those who want everyone to be heterosexual, anti-choice, homophobicand Christian, while the compassion culture recognizes that LGBTQ+ people have rights, support Black Lives Matter, Indigenous people, all people of color, reproductive rights, and support immigrants and refugees.

Keeping religion out of public schools and the government is the right thing to do, because by being secular, were including everyone, and thats what compassion without religious discrimination is really about.

Nancy Dollard,Lake Township

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Letter to the Editor: By being secular, we include everyone - Canton Repository