This time of year, nativity scenes are going up, but one in particular is drawing a chorus of critics. The display is at a 3rd Street boutique and features a scantily clad Virgin Mary near wise women posed with shopping bags. "I'm not a Bible-thumper , not someone who is going to jam my beliefs down your throat," display critic Kaaren Benton said. "I just said to them, your display is degrading, it's disgusting and it is an insult to my religion." Diane Gan, another critic of the display, said that she didn't like the display because it desecrated Mary and it showed a lack of respect. The public relations representative for Madison, the boutique chain, says they are making no comment. Some onlookers wonder why people are making such a fuss. "It's done in good taste," Los Angeles resident William Smith said. "If the image had high heels and garter belts, yeah, but no." "There is so much going on in the world...

Judge grants Freethinkers’ request for kiosk at Arkansas state Capitol Winter solstice display to be erected at the Arkansas state Capitol. More information and photos of the display are available by clicking here . An atheist group’s display marking the winter solstice will join the traditional Nativity scene on the Arkansas state Capitol grounds as a result of a ruling by a federal judge Monday. U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright granted a preliminary injunction in favor of the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers, who sued Secretary of State Charlie Daniels after he refused to grant permission for the group to put up its display, dubbed the Box of Knowledge. “We liked the outcome,” said Mark Love, an electrical engineer who is the registrar for the society. “We wanted to be included and to be able to express our message. It looks like it’s going to happen.” STORY LINK MORE: Arkansas judge allows secular solstice display to join nativity scene at state Capitol Secre...

Image by DQmountaingirl via Flickr What is the essence of human nature? Flawed, say many theologians. Vicious and addicted to warfare, wrote Hobbes . Selfish and in need of considerable improvement, think many parents. But biologists are beginning to form a generally sunnier view of humankind. Their conclusions are derived in part from testing very young children, and partly from comparing human children with those of chimpanzees, hoping that the differences will point to what is distinctively human. The somewhat surprising answer at which some biologists have arrived is that babies are innately sociable and helpful to others. Of course every animal must to some extent be selfish to survive. But the biologists also see in humans a natural willingness to help. When infants 18 months old see an unrelated adult whose hands are full and who needs assistance opening a door or picking up a dropped clothespin, they will immediately help, Michael Tomasello writes in “Why We Cooperate,” a book...

Court officials were skeptical at first when on Monday a potential juror submitted a name change form with "Jesus Christ" on it. But the 59-year-old Birmingham woman, who previously went by Dorothy Lola Killingworth, assured the presiding judge that was her name. "It raised eyebrows, so I asked her if that were truly her name," Circuit Court Judge Scott Vowell said. "She assured me that it was. She had her name changed in the Probate Court, and she presented her driver's license." Christ was sent to Judge Clyde Jones 's courtroom for a criminal case. She was excused because she was disruptive, court officials said. Instead of answering questions, she was asking them, a court employee in Jones's office said. Efforts to reach Christ today were unsuccessful. Court administrator Sandra Turner said she and others in the jury assembly room were somewhat shocked at first when the woman insisted Christ was her name. And when her name was called, seve...

The congregation at First 6th Street Baptist Church in Port Arthur got a surprise last Sunday, Nov. 15. Near the end of a sermon on forgiveness, their new pastor - the Rev. Donald R.A. Toussaint Sr. - said he had something he needed to tell them. According to church members who were at the service, Toussaint waved some unspecified documents and disclosed that 28 years ago he was accused of robbery and murder. He added that he had nothing to do with those crimes and said he was forced into this admission because "someone had spent $19.95 to dig up old records" in the case. Toussaint said the matter was closed and did not need to be brought up again. That expressed hope that the issue was settled was not to be, as shocked members of the church committee that had overseen the search for a new pastor - and selected Toussaint from a field of 20 finalists - wondered how that information had not come up on the background check they did on all the candidates. By the time a meeting ...

A former pastor at the Live Oak Community Church in Oakley was jailed Monday on charges he supported a lavish lifestyle by incurring debt in the church's name, including a $111,000 mortgage loan obtained by falsifying documents. Arcadio "Larry" Pineda, 65, was charged Friday with three felonies — grand theft and two counts of filing false documents. Investigators with the District Attorney's Office arrested him at his Oakley home Monday and booked him into Contra Costa County Jail in Martinez on $110,000 bail. Pineda filed falsified documents with the secretary of state and the county recorder in 2008 to gain false authority to obtain the mortgage loan that used the church building as collateral, deputy district attorney Ken McCormick said. Pineda spent all but $10,000 of the $110,000 loan to make payments on numerous credit cards taken out earlier in the church's name and used to pay for a trip to Israel, dinners, donations to political campaigns, his DirecTV b...

Police are searching for a Gaston County pastor charged with raping and molesting a teen girl. Robert Lee Adams, 46, began sexually abusing the girl when she was younger than 13 and got her pregnant about three years later, according to the Gaston County Police Department. Authorities have been searching for Adams for nine months. The girl gave birth in the summer of 2008, and an investigation led police to Adams, said Gaston County Police Capt. Joe Ramey. Ramey said Adams was pastor of Mount Calvary Tabernacle at the corner of Linwood Road and Camp Rotary Road in west Gastonia. Adams’ last known address is 1319 Rosewood Drive, Dallas . “We hope someone recognizes Mr. Adams and calls us so we can take him into custody,” Ramey said. “Obviously with these kinds of allegations and warrants outstanding, this is not someone we want to be loose in the community.” Adams may be traveling in a 1970s-model orange pickup truck. People have reported seeing Adams locally in Forest City and out-of-...

Image via Wikipedia Evangelist Tony Alamo was sentenced Friday to 175 years in prison for taking little girls as young as 9 across state lines to have sex with them. The decision punishes him for the rest of his life for molesting children he took as “brides” in his ministry. Alamo, 75, had denied the charges, claiming they came from a Vatican-led conspiracy against the church he led, called the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries . During Friday’s hearing in Texarkana , Ark., some of Alamo’s victims testified about how their families were destroyed while the evangelist took over their lives. Alamo was convicted in July on a 10-count federal indictment. U.S. District Judge Harry F. Barnes said Alamo used his status as father figure and pastor and threatened and threatened the girls with “the loss of their salvation.” “Mr. Alamo, one day you will face a higher a greater judge than me, may he have mercy on your soul,” Barnes said. [...more...]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints via last.fm LEXINGTON, MO (AP) -- Authorities on Wednesday were searching a rural property in western Missouri for bodies and buried glass jars containing notes written more than 15 years ago by children who may have documented sexual abuse by five members of their own family. Lafayette County Sheriff Kerrick Alumbaugh pleaded for the public's help, saying investigators "believe that there are other victims out there, and we believe people in the public can give us more information." Alumbaugh said authorities believe there may be bodies buried on the property outside Bates City, which is about 30 miles east of Kansas City . He refused to say to whom any of the bodies would have belonged. The property and a nearby home is owned by a man unrelated to the case who is cooperating with authorities. A small excavator could be seen moving across the property Wednesday. Two ambulances were parked nearby, and crews were searching...

BALTIMORE (AP) -- A preliminary report commissioned by the nation's Roman Catholic bishops on the roots of the clergy sex abuse scandal found no evidence that gay priests are more likely than heterosexual clergy to molest children , the lead authors of the study said Tuesday. The full report by researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice won't be completed until the end of next year. But the authors said that their evidence to date found no data indicating that homosexuality was a predictor of abuse. ''What we are suggesting is that the idea of sexual identity be separated from the problem of sexual abuse,'' said Margaret Smith of John Jay College, in a speech to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. ''At this point, we do not find a connection between homosexual identity and the increased likelihood of subsequent abuse from the data that we have right now.'' The entire story can be read by clicking here .

"Don't believe in God? You're not alone." was the message on a billboard put up by the Cincinnati Coalition of Reason (Cin CoR) on Reading Road at 12th Street, one block south of Liberty Street in Cincinnati. It went up on Tuesday but by Wednesday afternoon the group was told it would have to come down again. Lamar Advertising , the company that owns the billboard, leases the land on which it stands and the landowner wanted it taken down. He (or she) had been receiving death threats. Fred Edwords, national director of the United Coalition of Reason, said, "We weren't given the landowner's name or precise details, Nor did we pursue them. It was sufficient to learn that this person had received multiple, significant threats and that Lamar would act quickly to alleviate the problem. Nothing like this has ever happened to us before." The billboard campaign in Cincinnati is only one of ten going on nationwide this year and, while the current situation ...

Image by Paul Keleher via Flickr The leaders of the Roman Catholic Church traditionally couch even the harshest disagreements in decorous, ecclesiastical language. But it didn't take a decoder ring to figure out what Rome-based Archbishop Raymond Burke meant in a late-September address when he charged Boston Cardinal Seán O'Malley with being under the influence of Satan , "the father of lies." Burke's broadside at O'Malley was inspired by the Cardinal's decision to permit and preside over a funeral Mass for the late Senator Ted Kennedy . And it has set the Catholic world abuzz. Even more than protests over the University of Notre Dame 's decision to invite President Barack Obama to speak, disputes over the Kennedy funeral have brought into the open an argument that has been roiling within American Catholicism. The debate nominally centers on the question of how to deal with politicians who support abortion rights . Read the entire article: Pries...

( Amherst, NY ) — In response to the recent tragic events at Fort Hood, Texas , the Center for Inquiry , a secularist think tank, has released a statement/editorial from Ibn Warraq , Islamic scholar and leading figure in Quranic criticism. Warraq is a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry and author of five books, including Why I Am Not a Muslim and Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism (both published by Prometheus Books ). The statement follows below. Denying Reality, or the Heavy Cost of Political Correctness, by Ibn Warraq In the wake of the murder of 13 and the wounding of 38 soldiers at Fort Hood on November 5, media analysts, politicians, and other sundry experts scrambled to present the accused perpetrator of the acts, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, as a victim. In so doing they served, knowingly or otherwise, as apologists for radical Islam . From CNN to the New York Time s, NPR to the Washington Post , the killings were presented as...

A pastor charged in connection with the sexual assault of a teenage girl has entered a guilty plea in the case. Timothy Allen Ortiz, 44, Midland, appeared before Midland County Circuit Court Judge Jonathan E. Lauderbach late this morning to enter the plea. According to court papers, Ortiz entered the plea to a count of third-degree criminal sexual conduct-incest, a charge that was added after he was arraigned . In return for the plea, the original charge of third-degree criminal sexual conduct involving force or coercion will be dismissed. Each of the felony charges is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Ortiz was arrested Sept. 21 at his home by Midland County Sheriff's deputies, and was arraigned the next day by Midland County District Court Judge John H. Hart, who set bond at $200,000 cash. Ortiz last month waived a preliminary exam in the case, which is a hearing for a judge to decide if a crime was committed and if there is probable cause to believe it was committed b...

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care . Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians. Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city. "If the city requires this, we can't do it," Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. "The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. F...

AURORA, Colo. - The pastor of an Aurora church was behind bars Tuesday evening, charged with sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust . The Rev. Isaac Aryee was arrested on Oct. 26th at his church, Praise Chapel International Ministries, on E. Mississippi Ave. The case has been referred to the Denver District Attorney 's Office which says the case file is currently under seal. However, a D.A.'s office spokesperson confirms that the victim in the case in a 15-year-old girl whom Aryee met through the church. Prosecutors believe it was an ongoing sexual affair. Rev. Aryee and his wife moved to Colorado from Ghana in West Africa in 2002, according to the church's official Web site. A background check shows Aryee was also arrested by Denver Police in 2002 for soliciting a prostitute. LINK | LINK