God Burns Widow's House, But Saves His Own Stuff

The headline says it all: Firefighters say Bible pulled from burned house is 'a miracle'.

"A family is counting their blessings tonight after an early morning fire in Dearing, GA destroyed most of their home. But one pretty special item was left unscathed ... Bernice Hunt's Bible was pulled from the ashes without a charred edge or a burnt page. The only damage at all was a little moisture from the fire hoses."

So let me see if I get this. God decided to burn this woman's house to the ground. He let all of her possessions go up in smoke. She already lost her husband, has cancer, and had open-heart surgery ... presumably God was responsible for all of that too.

So what 'miracle' does God perform for this poor, sick widow? He saves his own Holy Bible from the flames!

I mean, after all, it is His own word, isn't it? I guess if I were God and was going to burn down a sick widow's house, I'd want to get my stuff out first.

The real mystery is how thoroughly this attitude about God pervades Judeo-Christian-Islamic thinking. It's automatic: some massive catastrophe comes along and causes death, destruction and grief, but somewhere there's a tiny random fluctuation in events that spares a baby or a bible, and that is the miracle.

God, as usual, gets all the credit and none of the blame.

Kentucky Church Bans Interracial Marriage?

Seriously, can this be real?

Pike church takes stand against interracial marriage

"A small Pike County church has voted not to accept interracial couples as members or let them take part in some worship activities.

The decision has caused sharp reaction and disapproval in the Eastern Kentucky county."

The article points out that this is the same county where the Hatfields and McCoys had their famous feud.

The good news? Most Kentuckians disapprove and are embarrassed by this overt racism.

"It sure ain't Christian. It ain't nothing but the old devil working."

"Most of us thought that we'd moved well beyond that."

"It's not the spirit of the community in any way, shape or form."

Amen to that!

Truth has a Liberal Bias!

Those damned college professors! They're always teaching the facts! And everyone knows that Truth has a liberal bias. Well, these students aren't taking it lying down:

Conservative College Students Launch Website to Battle Liberal Academia

What courage! Real conservatives, standing up to those liberal professors ... but wait ...

Alas, it turns out these students aren't really concerned about conservative politics. They're Christians, and they're angry that the professors don't respect their beliefs, which probably include creationism, suppression of homosexuality, and the subjugation of women. According to Editor-in-Chief Zachary Freeman:

"I think perhaps we (as a nation) have lost our faith and our understanding. The College Conservative works to indirectly promote the biblical truths."

In other words, they want the school to "respect" them by not teaching real biology, botany, physical anthropology, evolution, geology, physics, psychology, and probably even world history. They want watered-down cultural anthropology and sociology, and they probably don't want philosophy at all, unless it's from C.S. Lewis' books.

I have some news for you, Mr. Freeman: the Bible is not a good source of truth!

Catholics Persecuted over Gay Adoption in Illinois? Not Even Close.

Once again, the Roman Catholic Church is giving out misinformation instead of facing the truth.

Catholic Charities, an Illinois adoption agency, had to close its doors because it lost funding from the state. According to attorney Peter Breen, the state is breaking the plain language of the law and violating the will of the citizens:

"The Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act only passed after specific assurances that the law would not impact the work of religious social service agencies. Specific protections for these agencies were written into the law, but unfortunately, Illinois officials refused to abide by those protections. This stands as a stark lesson to the rest of the nation that legislators promising 'religious protection' in same sex marriage and civil union laws may not be able to deliver on those promises."

Gosh, that sounds awful, doesn't it?

But this is nothing more than a smokescreen to hide the real truth. They lost on Constitutional principles that had nothing to do with the Illinois Civil Union Act.

The simple fact is that the Catholic Charities can continue to provide adoption services – if they can raise funds privately. They just can't have the taxpayers' money to do it. As Waymon Hudson at Redeye put it:

"At the heart of the issue is the over $30 million dollars that Catholic Charities receives from the state of Illinois for foster care and adoption services. This effectively moves them from a private faith-based organization, which does have built-in religious exemptions as the name of the civil unions law implies, to an administrator of state-funded public services. The are essentially acting as an agent of the state."

The Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act, which they try to claim is being violated, only says that they don't have to perform marriages or adoptions for same-sex couples (or for anyone else they don't like). Nobody is going to force a Catholic priest to stand in his own church and marry two men or two women.

The United States Constitution cuts both ways: it protects our rights to worship or not as we please, but it also says churches can't discriminate using public funds. The Catholic Church has every right to discriminate, however uncaring or cruel it might be. But they can't spend our tax dollars to do it.

So why the smokescreen? Why can't the Catholics just admit that they lost their legal fight fair and square? Because they want to look persecuted. It's the good ol' Underdog Meme – the idea that somehow Catholics and other Christians, who make up roughly 80% of America's population, are a persecuted minority whose rights are being trampled. It's laughable on the face of it. But sadly, people always root for the underdog, so the meme propagates.