SARASOTA -- Jesse Knowlin wanted to become a teacher's aide and seemed to be the perfect candidate. He was a youth minister at a Sarasota church. He had part-time work at a summer camp. He helped children get ready for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test at the Boys & Girls Club of Sarasota . And those who knew Knowlin raved about his honesty, his creativity and his patience with children. Knowlin was arrested Wednesday, charged with performing a lewd-lascivious act on a person younger than 16, a felony. After questioning the second teenager, detectives added charges Thursday, bringing the total to seven counts of performing lewd-lascivious acts in the past year during sleepovers at his home. Knowlin was being held Thursday night at Sarasota County Jail, and it was not clear whether he had hired a lawyer. A Washington native who graduated from the Ringling College of Art and Design , Knowlin was a popular youth minister at Bethlehem Baptist Church and was known in teac...

Sent in by Atheist Tooth Fairy NASHVILLE, Tenn . (AP) — The 5-year-old daughter of Grammy-winning Christian music star Steven Curtis Chapman was struck and killed Wednesday by a sport utility vehicle driven by her brother, authorities said. The girl, Maria Sue, was hit in the driveway of the family's home Wednesday afternoon by a Toyota Land Cruiser driven by her teenage brother, said Laura McPherson, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Highway Patrol. The brother, whose name and exact age weren't available, apparently did not see the girl, McPherson said. No charges are expected. "It looks like a tragic accident," she said. Several family members witnessed the accident, which happened in Williamson County just south of Nashville. The girl died later at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, hospital spokeswoman Laurie Holloway said. In a statement, Velvet Kelm, a publicist for Chapman, said Maria was the Chapmans' youngest daughter. Chapman, who is ori...

WOODSTOCK, Va. - A Luray area pastor will appear in a Shenandoah County court today on charges he robbed a dollar store at gunpoint this month. Police charged 55-year-old Hobert Wayne Bryant with robbery, use of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and eluding police during the May 8 incident. Employees at a local Dollar General store told police a man wearing a blue coat, dark knit hat and sunglasses entered the store some time after 4 p.m., displayed a gun and demanded the contents of the cash register before fleeing in a white Ford Taurus. Woodstock police later stopped Bryant driving the same car. Inside, police found cash, a disassembled shotgun and a 40-caliber, semiautomatic shotgun. Bryant has been the longtime pastor of Rocky Branch Baptist Church , near Luray. STORY LINK

Famous scientist also dismisses belief in God as product of human weakness LONDON - Albert Einstein: arch rationalist or scientist with a spiritual core? A letter being auctioned in London this week adds more fuel to the long-simmering debate about the Nobel Prize-winning physicist's religious views. In the note, written the year before his death, Einstein dismissed the idea of God as the product of human weakness and the Bible as "pretty childish." The letter, handwritten in German, is being sold by Bloomsbury Auctions on Thursday and is expected to fetch between $12,000 and $16,000. Einstein, who helped unravel the mysteries of the universe with his theory of relativity, expressed complex and arguably contradictory views on faith, perceiving a universe suffused with spirituality while rejecting organized religion. The letter up for sale, written to philosopher Eric Gutkind in January 1954, suggests his views on religion did not mellow with age. In it, Einstein said that...

A Northern Illinois pastor faces charges of sexually assaulting a teenage girl. Forty-year-old Jonathon Christopher Powell faces two counts of criminal sexual assault of a victim between 13 and 17 years old. According to the church's Web site , Powell is a senior pastor at New Hope Baptist Church in the village of Machesney Park . ed: (This information has already been removed from their website) A telephone message left at the church after business hours Monday was not immediately returned. No telephone listing for Jonathon Christopher Powell could be found. Powell is being held in the Winnebago County Jail on $250,000 bond. STORY LINK

by Lucia Guatney, Cherry Creek High School If you saw things the way I do, you'd think that the title of this article was an oxymoron. High school, from my personal experience at least, is rampant with anti-intellectualism and general ignorance (lamentable considering that it's supposed to be a place where ignorance is eliminated). It seems that only a minuscule minority of students cares about anything other than which friend is dating which other friend, which band just came out with a new album, or anything outside of their social lives. That's why it seemed so important to me to start a freethought group. Not just because there was a lack of skepticism (though there are quite a lot of creationists), but also to get students to start thinking and caring about the world around them. I went to my first CFI conference (The Secular Society and Its Enemies) last November in the splendid city of New York. I hadn't a clue that meeting fellow student freethinkers coul...

CLEVELAND, OHIO -- Artis Caver, former pastor of Harvest Missionary Baptist Church, has been judged harshly by a jury of his peers. Caver was found guilty Thursday in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court on 25 counts of money laundering, perjury and theft stemming from accusations he stole nearly $400,000 from the church's bank account. Jurors in Judge Nancy Margaret Russo's courtroom deliberated for about two hours before reaching the verdicts. Caver was found guilty on single counts of theft and forgery, three counts of perjury and 20 counts of money laundering stemming from 2000. The pastor, indicted by a Cuyahoga County grand jury in December, had used the majority of the money to rescue his failing bus business, AFC Charters Inc., according to Assistant County Prosecutor James Gutierrez. The 56-year-old Caver, now pastor of New Life Cathedral in Cleveland, was led away in handcuffs after the verdict as a handful of members of the financially struggling Harvest Missionary B...

The Roman Catholic Church has officially recognised a shrine in the French Alps where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to a young shepherdess - the first such recognition in France for almost 150 years. But the presence of a government minister drew instant political fire, with the French Left claiming that the country's staunchly secular values were being undermined. Notre Dame du Laus , which already draws some 120,000 pilgrims each year, was formally acknowledged by the Vatican after three years of research into its credentials by a team of theologians, historians and psychologists. There have been suggestions it could grow to rival Lourdes , the last place in France to receive the Church's official apparition stamp – in 1862 – and which today struggles to cope with five million pilgrims each year. About 6,000 Catholics, including more than 20 bishops and cardinals, attended a solemn Mass at the sanctuary of Benôite Rencurel – who was 16 when she first reported se...