At empirical truth we believe all religions are just evolutions of our schools of thoughts of the era when the religions were created. Here is a comic view of Christianity. The quotes from the bible are real, and so are the facts. Enjoy!
It takes guts to say what this man (Sam Harris) is saying. It is so important to hear this man out and wake up from the delusion we have been born into. “Think for yourself” is what we preach and all we ask when you hear this man is to keep an open mind. The truth about the real god lies behind the concocted words of many a religions.
Here is a good article about evolution in Christianity. To think they did not believe in evolution in the first place. 
New Vatican plan lets Anglicans convert easier
By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer Nicole Winfield, Associated Press Writer –
VATICAN CITY – The Vatican announced a stunning decision Tuesday to make it easier for Anglicans to convert, reaching out to those who are disaffected by the election of women and gay bishops to join the Catholic Church’s conservative ranks.
Pope Benedict XVI approved a new church provision that will allow Anglicans to join the Catholic Church while maintaining many of their distinctive spiritual and liturgical traditions, including having married priests.
Cardinal William Levada, the Vatican’s chief doctrinal official, announced the new provision at a new conference.
In the past, such exemptions had only been granted in a few cases in certain countries. The new church provision is designed to allow Anglicans around the world to access a new church entity if they want to convert.
The decision immediately raised questions about how the new provision would be received within the 77-million strong Anglican Communion, the global Anglican church, which has been on the verge of a schism over divisions within its membership about women bishops, an openly gay bishop and the blessing of same-sex unions.
The Anglican’s spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, downplayed the significance of the new provision and said it wasn’t a Vatican commentary on Anglican problems.
“It has no negative impact on the relations of the communion as a whole to the Roman Catholic church as a whole,” he said in London.
Conservative Party lawmaker Ann Widdecombe, who left the Church of England because of its policies for the Catholic Church, welcomed the Vatican’s decision.
“I’m delighted if it does become easier, because when we had the last big exodus in 1992 over the ordination of women, the Catholic Church was not ready,” she said in London. “There were enormous discrepancies up and down the country, and the direction from the Vatican came late in the day.”
The new Catholic church entities, called personal ordinariates, will be units of faithful established within local Catholic Churches, headed by former Anglican prelates who will provide spiritual care for Anglicans who wish to be Catholic.
They would most closely resemble Catholic military ordinariates, special units of the church established in most countries to provide spiritual care for the members of the armed forces and their dependents.
“(This will) facilitate a kind of corporate reunion of Anglican groups” into the Catholic Church, Levada said.
Anglicans split with Rome in 1534 when English King Henry VIII was refused a marriage annulment.
The new canonical provision is a response to the many requests from Anglo-Catholics who want to come back, increasingly disillusioned with the progressive bent of the Anglican Communion. Many have already left and consider themselves Catholic but have not found an official home in the 1.1-billion strong Catholic Church.
By welcoming them in with their own special provision, Benedict has confirmed the increasingly conservative bent of his church. The decision follows his recent move to rehabilitate four excommunicated ultra-conservative bishops, including one who denied the full extent of the Holocaust, in a bid to bring their faithful back under the Vatican’s wing.
Levada declined to give figures on the number of requests that have come to the Vatican, or on the anticipated number of Anglicans who might take advantage of the new structure.
One group, known as the Traditional Anglican Communion, has made its bid to join the Catholic Church known. The fellowship, which split from the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1990, says it has spread to 41 countries and has 400,000 members, although only about half are regular churchgoers.
The new canonical provision allows married Anglican priests and even seminarians to become ordained Catholic priests — much the same way that Eastern rite priests who are in communion with Rome are allowed to be married. However, married Anglicans couldn’t become Catholic bishops.
The Vatican announcement immediately raised questions about how the Vatican’s long-standing dialogue with the Archbishop of Canterbury could continue. Noticeably, no one from the Vatican’s ecumenical office on relations with Anglicans attended the news conference; Levada said he had invited representatives to attend but they said they were all away from Rome.
Just last week, the Vatican’s top ecumenical official, Cardinal Walter Kasper, told reporters: “We are not fishing in the Anglican pond,” when asked about the Vatican’s negotiations with would-be converts.
Levada stressed that ecumenical dialogue with the global Anglican church would remain a priority. But he said the goal of that dialogue for 40 years had been to achieve “full visible unity.”
To downplay suggestions of poaching, the Catholic archbishop of Westminster and Williams, the Anglican leader, issued a joint statement saying the decision “brings an end to a period of uncertainty” for Anglicans wishing to join the Catholic Church.
And at a press conference in London, Williams tried to put the best face on the decision.
“It has no negative impact on the relations of the communion as a whole to the Roman Catholic church as a whole,” he said.
But Williams’ representative in Rome, the Very Rev. David Richardson, called the Vatican’s decision “surprising,” given that the Catholic Church in the past had welcomed individual Anglicans in without creating what he called “parallel structures” for entire groups of converts.
“The two questions I would want to ask are ‘why this and why now,’” he told The Associated Press. “Why the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has decided to embrace that particular method remains unclear to me.”
Also unclear, he said, was the Vatican’s target audience: those Anglicans who have already left the Anglican Communion, or current members. Levada said it covered both.
“If it’s for former Anglicans, then it’s not about our present difficulties, then it’s people who have already left,” Richardson said. If it’s current Anglicans, “There is in my mind an uncertainty for whom it is intended.”
The Anglican Communion has been roiled for years over disagreement on the role of women. But the long-standing divisions over how Anglicans should interpret the Bible erupted in 2003 when the Episcopal Church consecrated the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.
Williams has struggled ever since to keep the church from splitting, frustrated by moves by churches in the United States, Canada and elsewhere to bless gay relationships.
At least four conservative U.S. dioceses and dozens of individual Episcopal parishes have voted to leave the national denomination since 2003, with many affiliating themselves instead with like-minded Anglican leaders in African and elsewhere.
The Vatican announcement was kept under wraps until the last moment: The Vatican only announced Levada’s briefing Monday night, and Levada only flew back to Rome at midnight after briefing Catholic bishops and Williams about the decision.
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Associated Press reporters Bob Barr and Gregory Katz in London and Rachel Zoll in New York contributed to this report.
The below happens too many times around us. Blind faith by the religious illiterate. Bottom line is that rarely miracles happen and people must take matters in their own hands instead of relying on a higher force to solve their life’s problems
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Madeline Kara Neumann, of Weston, Wis., is shown in a July 2007 photo during downtown Wausau’s Chalk Fest. Neumann died March 23, 2008, after her parents prayed for healing rather than getting medical help for a treatable form of diabetes.
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WAUSAU, Wis. - A central Wisconsin man accused of killing his 11-year-old daughter by praying instead of seeking medical care was found guilty Saturday of second-degree reckless homicide.
Dale Neumann, 47, was convicted in the March 23, 2008, death of his daughter, Madeline, from undiagnosed diabetes. Prosecutors contended he should have rushed the girl to a hospital because she couldn’t walk, talk, eat or drink. Instead, Madeline died on the floor of the family’s rural Weston home as people surrounded her and prayed. Someone called 911 when she stopped breathing.
Sitting straight in his chair, Neumann stared at the jury as the verdict in a nearly empty courtroom was read. He declined comment as he left the courthouse.
Defense attorney Jay Kronenwetter said the verdict would be appealed. He declined further comment.
Prosecutors also declined comment, citing a gag order.
Mother convicted in spring
Leilani Neumann, 41, was convicted on the same charge in the spring. Marathon County Circuit Judge Vincent Howard set Oct. 6 for sentencing for both parents, who face up to 25 years in prison.
Their case is believed to be the first in Wisconsin involving faith healing in which someone died and another person was charged with a homicide.
Last month, an Oregon jury convicted a man of misdemeanor criminal mistreatment for relying on prayer instead of seeking medical care for his 15-month-old daughter who died of pneumonia and a blood infection in March 2008. Both of the girl’s parents were acquitted of a more serious manslaughter charge.
Neumann’s jury — six men and six women — deliberated about 15 hours over two days before convicting him. At one point, jurors asked the judge whether Neumann’s belief in faith healing made him “not liable” for not taking his daughter to the hospital even if he knew she wasn’t feeling well.
Neumann, who once studied to be a Pentecostal minister, testified Thursday that he believed God would heal his daughter and he never expected her to die. God promises in the Bible to heal, he said.
“If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God,” Neumann testified. “I am not believing what he said he would do.”
‘Overwhelmed by pride’
The father testified that he thought Madeline had the flu or a fever, and several relatives and family friends said they also did not realize how sick she was.
Assistant District Attorney LaMont Jacobson told jurors in closing arguments Friday that Neumann was “overwhelmed by pride” in his interpretation of the Bible and selfishly let Madeline die as a test of faith.
Neumann knew he should have taken his daughter to a doctor and minimized her illness when speaking with investigators, Jacobson said, calling Neumann no different than a drunken driver who remarks he only had a couple of beers.
Doctors testified that Madeline would have had a good chance of survival if she had received medical care, including insulin and fluids, before she stopped breathing.
Kronenwetter told the jury that Neumann sincerely believed praying would heal his daughter and he did nothing criminally wrong.
“Dale Neumann was doing what he thought would work for his daughter,” Kronenwetter said. “He was administering faith healing. He thought it was working.”
With religions being referenced in how the way the world works, there is a growing problem between different religious belief systems with conflicting ideologies trying to run our world. We need to be able to accept the fact that our religions are wrong, and should not be afraid to call out extremists or idiots who do bad things in the name of serving his or her god. Doing nothing about it will only create a bigger problem. See this amazing eye opener by Sam Harris at Idea City ‘05.
© 2008 EmpiricalTruth.com