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On January 22, 1973 the United States Supreme Court legalized abortion in the Roe v. Wade decision.
Justice Byron White, who dissented, stated, “The court apparently values the convenience of a pregnant mother more than the continued existence and development of the life or potential life she carries.”
Since Roe v. Wade, 58 million abortions have occurred in our country. This is roughly the population of the United States around 1869.
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Daniel Dennett, one of the “four horsemen” of contemporary atheism, proposed in 2003 that those who espouse a naturalist, atheist worldview should call themselves “the brights,” thereby distinguishing themselves rather clearly from the dim benighted masses who hold on to supernaturalist convictions.
In the wake of Dennett’s suggestion, many atheists have brought forward what they take to be evidence that the smartest people in society do subscribe to anti-theist views. By “smartest” they usually mean practitioners of the physical sciences, and they point to surveys that indicate only small percentages of scientists subscribe to religious belief.
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QUESTION: While everyone else seems joyful, I often feel depressed around the holidays. Could you suggest some ways to cope with the holiday blues?
RESPONSE: By William McKenna, M.S., clinical extern at the IPS Center for Psychological Services
We so often hear Christmas songs with lines such as, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” and “Christmas time is here. Happiness and cheer!”
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Ridley Scott’s new film Exodus: Gods and Kings features Moses, the Pharaoh, hundreds of thousands of slaves making their way across the floor of the Red Sea, all 10 plagues, the burning bush, and even the angel of Yahweh in the form of a petulant 11-year-old boy with a British accent.
And yet, the movie is spiritually flat, as though its makers had read the biblical story but understood precious little of its theological poetry.
A few weeks ago I learned that my lung cancer had crept into my bones and is likely to take my life within six months. That’s the bad news.
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It might seem that everything that could be said, has been said, about the shepherds, the wise men, and the Christ Child.
But that’s one of the marvels of Scripture: the unfolding history of the Church draws out of the inspired Word of God allegories and images previously unrecognized.
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The great British physicist Stephen Hawking has emerged in recent years as a poster boy for atheism, and his heroic struggles against the ravages of Lou Gehrig’s disease have made him something of a secular saint.
The new bio-pic A Theory of Everything does indeed engage in a fair amount of Hawking-hagiography, but it is also, curiously, a God-haunted movie.
In an opening scene, the young Hawking meets Jane, his future wife, in a bar and tells her that he is a cosmologist. “What’s cosmology?” she asks, and he responds, “Religion for intelligent atheists.”
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It is very difficult indeed to watch the documentary Bully without experiencing both an intense sadness and a feeling of helplessness.
The film opens with the heartbreaking ruminations of a father whose son committed suicide after being brutally bullied by his classmates.
We hear similar stories throughout the film, and we also watch and listen as kids are pestered, belittled, mocked, and in some cases, physically assaulted, just because they are different.
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Every time a baby is born, there is new hope for the human race. I learned this as a high school sophomore when my baby brother was born.
What a miracle of grace! As I studied his perfectly formed hands and feet, I was filled with awe and hope. I wondered who he would grow up to be.
I hoped that he would be bigger, stronger, more athletic, and more intelligent than I was. My sister hoped that he would grow up to be a gentleman.
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Q This may have been asked before, but I need some advice on how to manage holiday gatherings with someone who has dementia.
My mother lives with my sister. Mom has Alzheimer’s disease and my sister wants the entire family, all 25 of us, to gather at her home for Christmas.
I think it will be too hard for mom to be around all of us at the same time. My sister thinks we might not have another Christmas with mom so I don’t know how far to push.
(From a son in Sun Prairie).
