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Creationist Theme Park Gets $43 Million in Tax Rebates

By Lauri Lebo

Kentucky made it official Thursday to give a planned Noah’s Ark theme park $43 million in tourism tax rebates. The Kentucky Tourism Development Finance Authority voted unanimously to grant the tax incentives for the $172.5 million project. Answers in Genesis, which built Kentucky’s Creation Museum, is behind the theme park. Gov. Steve Beshear defended the tax incentives because plans say it will create 600 to 700 jobs, almost assuredly just for C…

Student Says He’s Ostracized for Objecting to Graduation Prayer

By Lauri Lebo

…t. This story in itself isn’t a big deal. Each spring, incidents of school officials grumbling over the fact that they can’t pray publicly — and with a loud speaker — over the heads of graduating seniors are as common as wild honeysuckle vines. But what really irritates me is the public statement by a school official that kids who don’t wish to have religious views forced on them by their educators should just sit there and shut up. From the Bastr…

Bin Laden’s Death Does Not Prove that Torture Works

By Sarah Sentilles

…Laden’s death proves torture works. John Yoo, a former Justice Department official who authored some of the “torture memos,” wrote Monday in the National Review that “President Obama can take credit, rightfully, for the success today, but he owes it to the tough decisions taken by the Bush administration.” Yoo made the same argument in the Wall Street Journal, claiming that it was the Bush administration’s “intelligence architecture” that “marked…

Can a Pig Heart be Kosher?

By Ari Stillman

…ders pigs to be unfit for consumption (haram) and, like Judaism, it has no official ruling on xenotransplantation. While fatwas are generally derived from the Qur’an and Hadith, in the absence of both explicit and implicit rulings, scholars resort to Qiyas or jurisprudential deductive analogy to come to a reasonable conclusion on issues not found in the sacred texts. A.R. Chao, a former Imam in Texas and graduate of Vanderbilt Divinity School, su…

Mitt Out-Mans Trump by Rejecting Birther Nonsense

By Joanna Brooks

…h for recovering progressive-rock long-hair, Jon Huntsman, Jr., to make it official and to make it a truly Big Mo-Publican Primary, but Huntsman’s fledgling campaign may have experienced another minor setback this week when two letters from Huntsman buttering up Presidents Clinton and Obama were leaked to the press.) Last week, Romney declared, “I believe the president was born in the United States,” winning high praise from MSNBC’s Chris Matthews…

Debating God: Atheist and Evangelical Face Off at Notre Dame

By Nathan Schneider

…e debates. As is usual, long lines of mostly young men formed at each microphone. One guy presented Harris with detailed scientific evidence for Our Lady of Fatima’s miracles. Another told Craig that God had recently told him that homosexuality is okay; Craig refused to dignify such “feigned sincerity” with an answer. Craig said later that the audience questions had disappointed him, but he suspects it was mainly the fault of the local atheist gro…

Catholic Church Targets Proponent of Women’s Ordination; Feminist Theologian

By Mary E. Hunt

As a senior official for Pope John Paul II, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger envisioned a leaner, meaner church, with conservative doctrine and compliant faithful. Now that he is Pope Benedict XVI, his dream is coming true. Other senior churchmen, apparently unaware of the scandal that pedophilia and episcopal cover-ups have wrought, go blithely about their business of disciplining priests, nuns, and theologians. What used to be a large tent of a church…

Crisis Pregnancy Centers and Obama’s Faith-Based Initiative

By Sarah Posner

…oney continue to operate under Bush-era rules. In other words, there is no official monitoring function in place to ensure that organizations operating with federal grants do not proselytize, or that they do provide beneficiaries with secular alternatives. Under the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Fatherhood Initiative gives out “capacity building” grants which are intended to “develop these organizations’ cap…

Crisis in Philly: Trial Date Nears for Priests Indicted in Sex Abuse Scandal

By Anthea Butler

…is that it is the first time in the American Catholic Church that a church official has been arrested and brought to trial. Church officials have never been legally prosecuted for the mismanagement of priests and the countless shuffling of molesters and pedophiles from one parish to another until now. That blow was dealt by Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams (dubbed “the avenging altar boy” by columnist Maureen Dowd) who is spearheading…

A Catholic Turnabout on Abortion or More Sympathy for the Bishops?

By Daniel C. Maguire

…of the Church, to urge positions at variance with those that are presently official. Dennis O’Brien is “at variance” with the Second Vatican Council’s view that every abortion is an “unspeakable crime.” And so are most Catholics. In this they are joined by authorities in all the world’s religions. O’Brien notes that in 2006, the Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls “strongly” supported HB 1215 permitting abortion, “to prevent the death of a pregnant mo…