Business Owners, Customers Upset Over Controversial Billboard

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — It looked harmless enough, but the words on a billboard un-nerved so many people that a popular restaurant nearby actually lost business.

The billboard was on Colonial Drive near the Old Cheney Highway. Although the popular Straub’s Seafood restaurant often advertises on it, this wasn’t their billboard.

The sign was taken down after Channel 9 started asking questions.

The billboard came down around 4:00 Friday afternoon and nearby business owners are relieved. Straub’s restaurant can replace the sign with the night’s specials.

At first glance the sign looked like a children’s cartoon, but the message next to the fairy princess stirred emotions.

“When you condemn all religions and say they are a fairytale that is wrong,” said Rich Stormes, a nearby business owner.

The billboard went up a week before Easter and business at the restaurant went down.”Easter Sunday is usually a busy good day,” said John Russel, an employee at Straub’s. “Easter Sunday business was down by two thirds.

“Since it’s so close, John Russel’s customers thought the restaurant paid for the billboard. To clear any confusion up, Russel put up a sign of his own and called MediaNet, the company who owns the billboard.

“It’s been causing us some problem. I think it’s causing a bit of controversy city wide. People have been contacting the media,” Russel added.

MediaNet said it had no idea the sign was there and someone put it up illegally in the middle of the night.

Nearby business owners said they weren’t buying it.

“They should have known what was going up on the billboard. He should proof it. He had to proof it,” Stormes stated.

The billboard rents for $1,400 a month. If an anti-religious group paid to rent it legitimately there is not telling how long it would have been up.

Orange County does not regulate messages on billboards. They are protected by free speech.

Religion shows it’s true colors and Iraqi youth wake up to reality. Maybe there’s hope for the Middle East?

Violence Leaves Young Iraqis Doubting Clerics

BAGHDAD — After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.

In two months of interviews with 40 young people in five Iraqi cities, a pattern of disenchantment emerged, in which young Iraqis, both poor and middle class, blamed clerics for the violence and the restrictions that have narrowed their lives.

“I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us,” said Sara, a high school student in Basra. “Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.”

Atheer, a 19-year-old from a poor, heavily Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad, said: “The religion men are liars. Young people don’t believe them. Guys my age are not interested in religion anymore.”

The shift in Iraq runs counter to trends of rising religious practice among young people across much of the Middle East, where religion has replaced nationalism as a unifying ideology.

Best news I’ve read this week.

Over half of Britons claim no religion

Freedom from religion in Britain is becoming as important as freedom of religion, according to a United Nations investigation into religion in the UK.

In a 23-page report published this evening, a UN rapporteur claims the 2001 Census findings that nearly 72 per cent of the population is Christian can no longer be regarded as accurate. The report claims that two-thirds of British people now do not admit to any religious adherence.

The report also calls for the disestablishment of the Church of England. The role and privileges of the established Church are challenged because they do not reflect “the religious demography of the country and the rising proportion of other Christian denominations.”

The report also warns that measures to combat terrorism in Britain could be undermined because of discrimination against Muslims.

According to the report into the freedom of religion and belief in the UK, there is an “overall respect for human rights and their value.” But the report warns that Muslims in particular face screening, searches, interrogation and arrest.

Citing research that showed that 80 per cent of Muslims in Britain feel they have been discriminated against, the report singles out the Terrorism Act 200 for particular criticism.

Under the act, police in some areas can stop and search people without having to show reasonable suspicion.

Unfortunately I don’t have a source on this image, but this is just crazy. I love how characters from the old testament live hundreds of years, shame we can’t do that in this day and age..

Looks like someone’s been doing some Google bombing.. not that they don’t deserve to be there, I think most major religions should be up there, but Scientology is such a farce, I find it fun to see this happen. :D

Google Bomb: “Dangerous Cult“

Aww, what a shame, it would be terrible if they’d go under, wouldn’t it?

Creation Museum Selling Mastodon Skull

DALLAS (AP) — A Texas museum that teaches creationism is counting on the auction of a prehistoric mastodon skull to stave off extinction. The founder and curator of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum, which rejects evolution and claims that man and dinosaurs coexisted, said it will close unless the Volkswagen-sized skull finds a generous bidder.

“If it sells, well, then we can come another day,” Joe Taylor said. “This is very important to our continuing.”

Heritage Auction Galleries says the skull is estimated to be 40,000 years old, and projects it will fetch upward of $160,000. The artifact discovered in La Grange in 2004 is believed to be the largest of its kind, Heritage spokesman David Herskowitz said.

The auction will be held Sunday in Dallas, with bids accepted on the Internet until Saturday night.

“We’re trying to reach out to someone who would buy it, then reach out to a museum in Texas,” Herskowitz said.

Taylor said he would love to keep the skull of the elephant-like mammal as the centerpiece of his tiny museum just outside Lubbock, which includes creationist exhibits.

Claims on the museum’s Web site include that Noah took dinosaurs aboard his ark. The prevailing scientific wisdom is that humans and dinosaurs missed each other by tens of millions of years.

Taylor said he’s been financially crippled by about $136,000 he’s been ordered to pay in a legal dispute over finder’s rights to an Allosaurus skeleton unearthed in Colorado. About $141,000 has also been put into the mastodon skull’s restoration, he said.

If the mastodon auction doesn’t cover the judgment, Taylor said local authorities will seize his 10-year-old museum and sell off its contents in February.

“We’ve struggled so long here just to keep this thing going,” Taylor said. “We’re kind of losing interest. You can just tread water for so long.”

100% of me finds them annoying too, we have so much in common..

Survey: Non-attendees find faith outside church

A new survey of U.S. adults who don’t go to church, even on holidays, finds 72% say “God, a higher or supreme being, actually exists.” But just as many (72%) also say the church is “full of hypocrites.”

Indeed, 44% agree with the statement “Christians get on my nerves.”

LifeWay Research, the research arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, based in Nashville, conducted the survey of 1,402 “unchurched” adults last spring and summer. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

The survey defines “unchurched” as people who had not attended a religious service in a church, synagogue or mosque at any time in the past six months.More than one in five (22%) of Americans say they never go to church, the highest ever recorded by the General Social Survey, conducted every two years by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. In 2004, the percentage was 17%.

Many of the unchurched are shaky on Christian basics, says LifeWay Research director Ed Stetzer.

Just 52% agree on the essential Christian belief that “Jesus died and came back to life.”

And 61% say the God of the Bible is “no different from the gods or spiritual beings depicted by world religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.,” although Buddhist philosophy has no god and Hindus worship many.

Belief in ‘a generic god’

Non-churchgoers “lean to a generic god that fits into every imaginable religious system, even when (systems) contradict one another,” Stetzer says. “If you went back 100 years in North America, there would have been a consensus that God is the God in the Bible. We can’t assume this any longer.

“We no longer have a home-field advantage as Christians in this culture.”

 Aww, I guess this means Tom Cruise can’t go to Germany anymore.. sniff sniff.

Germany Prepares to Ban Scientology

Germany’s interior ministers announced Friday that they consider Scientology to be unconstitutional. They have asked the country’s domestic intelligence agency to prepare a dossier on the organization’s activities with a view to ban it next year.

Germany’s interior ministers announced on Friday that they considered Scientology to be unconstitutional and said they would seek to ban the organization.

Berlin Interior Minister Ehrhart Körting told reporters that the interior ministers of Germany’s 16 federal states and the federal Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble “consider Scientology to be an organization that is not compatible with the constitution.” The ministers, who are meeting for a two-day conference in Berlin, now plan to charge the country’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, with preparing a dossier to pave the way for a possible ban next year.

The agency has had the organization under observation for over a decade. Germany does not consider Scientology to be a religion but a money-making cult.

 Now this is some good news. ‘Bout time schools treat myth as such.

University to Teach ‘Intelligent Design’ as Myth

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Creationism and intelligent design are going to be studied at the University of Kansas, but not in the way advocated by opponents of the theory of evolution.

A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled “Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies.”

“The KU faculty has had enough,” said Paul Mirecki, department chairman.

“Creationism is mythology,” Mirecki said. “Intelligent design is mythology. It’s not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not.”

Earlier this month, the state Board of Education adopted new science teaching standards that treat evolution as a flawed theory, defying the view of science groups.