Persecution of Christians in North Korea shows no sign of abating under the country's new leader, Kim Jong-Un, according to a report by the worldwide ministry Open Doors.
"The fanatical regime, which rules the destitute country of 24 million people with a proverbial iron fist, has a special hatred for Christians," Jerry Dykstra of the California-based Open Doors USA noted. "North Korea is in a league of its own when it comes to persecution of Christians."
Dykstra's and other reports parallel incidents in North Korea chronicled in the U.S. State Department's religious freedom assessments.
Of an estimated 200,000 prisoners in North Korea, 70,000 of them are Christians, Open Doors reported. For the 11th consecutive year, North Korea tops Open Doors' list of the worst countries for its brutal treatment of believers.
Also, North Korea recently expressed "bitter hatred" for the U.S.
Well, Richard Dawkins shows his true colors again - especially the color yellow.
On February 24, 2013, the Jewish Chronicle Onlinedeclared:
In a recent Al-Jazeerah interview, Richard Dawkins was asked his views on God. He argued that the god of "the Old Testament" is "hideous" and "a monster", and reiterated his claim from The God Delusion that the God of the Torah is the most unpleasant character "in fiction". Asked if he thought the same of the God of the Koran, Dawkins ducked the question, saying: "Well, um, the God of the Koran I don't know so much about."
How can it be that the world's most fearless atheist, celebrated for his strident opinions on the Christian and Jewish Gods, could profess to know so little about the God of the Koran? Has he not had the time? Or is Professor Dawkins simply demonstrating that most crucial trait of his species: survival instinct.
It looks like the evolution loving NIH's $31 billion budget for this year will be cut by $1.5 billion due to sequestration. It couldn't have happened to a nicer bloated bureaucracy!
Prior to 2013, it was reported that the likelihood of receiving tenure track position in biology has decreased due to decline in real NIH budget. The expected 2013 budget cuts can't be good news for jobless evolutionary biologists who already face skyhigh unemployment. See: Jobless evolutionary biologists
The UC Berkeley evolutionary biologist Michael Eisen and his fruit flies are not going to like this!
My evolutionists friends, do not despair. There is good news on the horizon - for creationists! In August of 2012, the evolution loving National Public Radio (whose budget will no doubt get cut on the horizon), reported that the teavangelicals are stronger than ever. Teavangelicals are Tea Party activists who are evangelical Christians.
Yes, my evolutionists friends, the teavangelical budget axemen cometh! And they will mercilessly cut your precious evolutionary pseudoscience funding to ribbons!
Kicking Darwinism when its down
We are currently involved in our biggest volunteer recruitment drive to date. It will be much bigger than our previous volunteer drives in both its intensity and scope.
We wish to help increase the web visitors to Creation.com so it reaches an extra 250,000 unique visitors a month within 2 years. According to Quantcast Creation.com now reaches approximately 162,000 people per month. In 2015, we want Creation.com to reach over 400,000 unique visitors a month. See: 250,000 reasons why biblical creation belief will be more prevalent in 2 years
Yes, my atheist, agnostic and evolutionist friends, 2013 will be the absolute WORST year in the history of Darwinism, atheism and agnosticism and you are powerless to stop the grassroots Question Evolution! Campaign and its 15 questions for evolutionists from considerably expanding in 2013. By the way, how are you doing on satisfactorily answering the 15 questions for evolutionists? Still no success? I knew it!
There have been unsung heroines in terms of helping Creation Ministries increase the web traffic of Creation.com. North American ladies have especially been helpful in our Question Evolution! Campaign group.
And as you can see from the graph above, their work is having
an effect. Recently, Creation.com broke an Alexa web traffic marker of
breaking past the Alexa top 70,000 websites in the world. Alexa now
ranks Creation.com among the top 69,997 websites in the world and among the top 24,306 websites in the USA.
Why has our Question Evolution! Campaign group had personable, industrious and effective ladies? One reason is that unlike atheism, agnosticism and Darwinism, belief in biblical creation activism is not disproportionately made up of socially challenged, arrogant men! See: Battle of the sexes within atheism and Sex differences in global atheism
For example, one American lady in our Question Evolution! Campaign group played a major role in helping Creation.com consistently reach more visitors per month.
There have been other ladies who have been assistance to creation.com, but time and space considerations don't allow me to expand my examples. You know who you are ladies! If I didn't mention your work, it is only because God wants to keep you humble!
Our biggest volunteer recruitment drive is commencing this weekend
In 2012 and the beginning of 2013, we have been working on some Question Evolution! projects which will be released in 2013. We want the release of these projects to have the maximum impact they can possibly have.
God willing, we want to help increase the web visitors to Creation.com so it reaches an extra 250,000 unique visitors a month within 2 years. According to Quantcast Creation.com now reaches 162,235 people per month. In 2015, we want Creation.com to reach over 400,000 unique visitors a month. See: 250,000 reasons why biblical creation belief will be more prevalent in 2 years
Yes, my atheist, agnostic and evolutionist friends, 2013 will be the WORST year in the history of Darwinism, atheism and agnosticism and you are powerless to stop the grassroots Question Evolution! Campaign and its 15 questions for evolutionists from considerably expanding in 2013. By the way, how are you doing on satisfactorily answering the 15 questions for evolutionists? Still no success? Ah, that's too bad!
Consider this December 2007 report from the Christian Post:
But proponents of creationism contend that most Swiss want creationism taught alongside evolution in biology class. A survey commissioned by the Christian organization Pro Genesis earlier this year found 80 percent of Swiss want creationism taught in schools, according to swissinfo. Meanwhile, an international survey last year found 30 percent of Swiss reject evolution – one of the highest rates in Europe.
In response to comment from a Darwinists, I wrote:
Theseus,
You didn't demonstrate that the Swiss website article gave conflicting surveys
In addition, the Swiss website Swiss.info.ch declares: "But the Swiss proponents of creationism are working on fertile ground. An international survey last year found that 30 per cent of the Swiss reject evolution, one of the highest rates in Europe."
Second, Swiss Darwinism is doomed and there is plenty of data supporting this matter.
Pope Benedict XVI resigned.There is going to be a new Roman Catholic Pope soon.
Question: Is Darwinism going to have less and less influence in Roman Catholicism?
Previously, in our article entitled Roman Catholic theistic evolutionists vs. Protestant creationists: Who will ultimately prevail? it was argued that global creationism would continue to grow and prevail against theistic Darwinism. See: Roman Catholic theistic evolutionists vs. Protestant creationists
Even though biblical creationism is growing in Europe and in some places very fast such as France, Darwinism's strongest geographic region is still Europe in terms of its hold on the public's imagination. Yet, the future of Darwinism in Europe is bleak. See: The future of European Darwinism is bleak
With that being said, Darwinism's hold on the Roman Catholic Church will significantly diminish over time.
Consider this excerpt from a February 13, 2013 article entitled Pope Benedict XVI Resigns: Church Growing in Third World, But European Cardinals Control Power:
The Catholic laity is growing outside Europe, while shrinking in the traditional strongholds of Italy, France, Spain, Poland and Germany, homeland to the resigning pope, Benedict XVI.
In fact, according to Pew, the number of European Catholics has shrunk by more than half over the past century.
"The church in the developing world, like South America, like Africa, is of great joy and momentum and of numbers," said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. "Therefore, attentiveness to the developing churches is going to be, I'm sure, on the docket of the cardinals as we meet for the conclave."'
Given that Pope Benedict XVIstackednew appointments within the College of Cardinals
with Europeans (mainly Italians), it seems likely that the new pope will be a European, but there is no guarantee. Yet, it is only a matter of time before a non-European is elected Pope. And given that Darwinism is strongest in Europe that cannot be a good thing for Darwinism.
European Darwinism in Roman Catholicism is showing cracks
Even European Roman Catholicism is showing cracks in terms of holding to a strict adherence to Darwinism.
On December 19, 2009 the pro-evolution website Panda's Thumb reported in an article entitled Creationism at Italian Science Agency:
According to Science, the National Research Council (CNR) of Italy helped to fund and promote a creationist book that was edited by a vice-president of CNR.
So we know that recently creationist thought was present at a top level of the Italian scientific community. And Italians still have a significant influence on Roman Catholicism.
"Bible-based criticism of evolution, once limited to Protestant fundamentalists in the United States, has become an issue in France now that Pope Benedict and some leading Catholic theologians have criticized the neo-Darwinist view of creation...
These American concerns caught notice in Europe after Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, a confidant of Pope Benedict, attacked neo-Darwinist theories in 2005 in what seemed to be a move to ally the Catholic Church with "intelligent design."...
Herve Le Guyader, a University of Paris biology professor who advised the Education Ministry on the Atlas, said high school biology teachers needed more training now to respond to the increasingly open challenges to the theory of evolution.
Growing influence of evangelicalism in Europe
It seems probable that the reason why European Darwinism within Catholicism is showing is cracks is due due to the growth of biblical creationism in Europe and elsewhere in the world.
Professor Eric Kaufman wrote concerning European Christianity:
What of European Christianity? The conventional wisdom holds it to be in free fall, especially in Western Europe. (Bruce 2002) This is undoubtedly correct for Catholic Europe, while Protestant Europe already has low levels of religious practice. Yet closer scrutiny reveals an increasingly lively and demographically growing Christian remnant. Several studies have examined the connection between religiosity - whether defined as attendance, belief or affiliation - and fertility in Europe. Most find a statistically significant effect even when controlling for age, education, income, marital status and other factors...
Moving to the wider spectrum of European Christianity, we find that fertility is indeed much higher among European women who are religious...
Today, most of those who remain religious in Europe wear their beliefs lightly, but conservative Christianity is hardly a spent force. Data on conservative Christians is difficult to come by since many new churches keep few official records. Reports from the World Christian Database, which meticulously tracks reports from church bodies, indicates that 4.1 percent of Europeans (including Russians) were evangelical Christians in 2005. This figure rises to 4.9 percent in northern, western and southern Europe. Most religious conservatives are charismatics, working within mainstream denominations like Catholicism or Lutheranism to ‘renew’ the faith along more conservative lines. There is also an important minority of Pentecostals, who account for .5% of Europe’s population. Together, charismatics and Pentecostals account for close to 5 % of Europe’s population. The proportion of conservative Christians has been rising, however: some estimate that the trajectory of conservative Christian growth has outpaced that of Islam in Europe. (Jenkins 2007: 75).
In many European countries, the proportion of conservative Christians is close to the number who are recorded as attending church weekly. This would suggest an
increasingly devout Christian remnant is emerging in western Europe which is more resistant to secularization. This shows up in France, Britain and Scandinavia (less
Finland), the most secular countries where we have 1981, 1990 and 2000 EVS and 2004 ESS data on religiosity...
Currently there are more evangelical Christians than Muslims in Europe. (Jenkins 2007: 75) In Eastern Europe, as outside the western world, Pentecostalism is a sociological and not a demographic phenomenon. In Western Europe, by contrast, demography is central to evangelicalism’s growth, especially in urban areas. Alas, immigration brings two foreign imports, Islam and Christianity, to secular Europe.
We have performed these unprecedented analyses on several cases. Austria offers us a window into what the future holds. Its census question on religious affiliation permits us to perform cohort component projections, which show the secular population plateauing by 2050, or as early as 2021 if secularism fails to attract lapsed Christians and new Muslim immigrants at the same rate as it has in the past. (Goujon, Skirbekk et al. 2006).
This task will arguably become far more difficult as the supply of nominal Christians dries up while more secularisation-resistant Muslims and committed rump Christians comprise an increasing share of the population.
Creationism is growing in Latin America and its potential effect on Latin American Catholicism
Biblical creationism is seeing a significant rise in Latin America and the trend appears to be favoring a continued expansion. In fact, current conditions in Mexico and recent events in Central and South America suggest that creationism could see a dramatic rise in Mexico and Brazil.
Of course, should a new Pope come from Latin America in order to shore up Latin American Catholicism this is not good news for Darwinism as a new pope from Latin could easily be influenced by creationist material and thought.
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