Submitted by lee, from se US

COMMENT: and in the *are you frickin kidding me* category:

http://www.cbn.com/communitypublic/shake.asp

If you don't want to bother visiting the site, here's the gist of it:

Pat Robertson's Age-Defying Shake
Did you know that Pat Robertson, through rigorous training, leg-pressed 2,000 pounds! How did he do it?

Where does Pat find the time and energy to host a daily, national TV show, head a world-wide ministry, develop visionary scholars, while traveling the globe as a statesman?

One of Pat's secrets to keeping his energy high and his vitality soaring is his age-defying protein shake. Pat developed a delicious, refreshing shake, filled with energy-producing nutrients.

Yes, this is the same Pat Robertson who is one of the most popular religious figures in the USA.

SAN FRANCISCO May 24, 2006 (AP)— A woman accused of killing her three young sons by tossing them into frigid San Francisco Bay believed God summoned her to sacrifice her children, her lawyer told a judge. "The voice of God called upon her to sacrifice her three children," Teresa Caffese said Tuesday at the woman's preliminary hearing in San Francisco Superior Court... Lashaun Harris, 23, was arrested last October, shortly after authorities said she dropped her children, one by one, over a rail and into the bay... Harris, who faces three counts of murder, has pleaded not guilty. She was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with delusional thought disorder, Caffese said, and was hospitalized once because she said God was telling her to jump out a window... She told the investigators God "said I need to kill my kids," and she took them to the pier for that purpose.

How do we know that she's not telling the truth? Maybe God did tell her, for reasons we may not know. It's not out of character based on many stories in the Bible. Pat Roberston claims God talks to him and he's not in a mental facility. Talking about Iraq Bush claimed to get advice from a "higher father" and the result are tens of thousands of people dead and maimed, and he's not in a mental institution. So if God talks to those men, why wouldn't he talk to a poor woman? What if she's telling the truth? Who's to say she's not?

From an opinion piece in USA Today:

From the furor over The Da Vinci Code, you'd think World War III was about to erupt. Dan Brown's blockbuster - first the book, now the movie opening today - has ignited a fight among many Christians over whether it should be shunned as blasphemy or used as a starting point to win converts... The bare-bones story, for anyone still in the dark, is that a professor of religious symbolism unravels clues to "discover" that Christianity is built on a falsehood: Jesus was not divine. He married Mary Magdalene and left descendants. This has been covered up for centuries by the Roman Catholic church and assorted men of history... The Da Vinci Code is entertainment, not theology. If it arouses intellectual curiosity, so much the better. As author Brown has suggested, if Christianity has withstood heretical ideas and fierce attacks through the centuries, it needn't have to worry about a thriller writer from New Hampshire.

That this book is a work of fiction -- let me repeat that: A WORK OF FICTION -- and it's causing so much controversy among certain people just makes me wonder how insecure those people are about their own religion.

Excerpt from an article by Bill Tammeus, The Kansas City Star

In the last few months, as the national debate on immigration reform has moved from legislative chambers to the streets, religion has played an important role.

Encouraged by such leaders as Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, some protesters have relied on religious motives for wanting a kinder and gentler immigration system. They have spoken of justice, of hospitality, of meeting the needs of people in trouble.

All of these are worthy motives rooted in religious values common to many faiths.
But there’s a deeper lesson religion should be teaching in the immigration issue. It should do that by raising these more fundamental questions: What does it mean to be human? Are we not human first and American or Mexican or Honduran second (or third or sixth)?

...

As long as nation-states are a reality of life (and they will be for a long time, even though in some ways they already are breaking down), it will be necessary for each one to defend its borders and create rational ways for people to move across those borders, whether temporarily or permanently. To make sure those rules are fair and just, people of faith should continue to offer their views.

But as that happens, religion should not lose sight of its broader vision of humanity, one that transcends artificial lines drawn on maps.

After reading this article I came to understand why president Bush's popularity has suffered on this issue. He continues to advocate vague positions and make statement s that offer none of the "broader vision of humanity" you'd expect from a self-proclaimed Christian.