=== Aum Shinrikyo
1. Aum vacates 2 buildings in Saitama
2. AUM vacates 2 buildings in Saitama village

=== Catholic God's Spirit
3. Arresting cops didn't know slain cult leader was cuckoo

=== Falun Gong
4. Stop harassing sect, Downer tells China

=== Zhong Gong
5. Chinese president targets meditation group -report

=== Unification Church
6. Subject: Trade, peace needed to stem immigration
7. Unification Church finds a home in the United States

=== Cult Apologists
8. Book series looks at world's different faiths

=== Hate Groups
9. Supremacist 'religion' in prison rejected

=== Other News
10. Santa Fe Reincarnation Effort Fails
11. Chinese religious leaders leave for UN summit; attack ''cults'', separatism

=== Science 12. Stepping toward human cloning (Raelian Religion)
13. Analysis: Pain after death puts sense into cloning research
14. Library explores frontier between religion and science (Templeton)

=== Polls / Trends
15. Coloradans believe truth is out there, poll shows

=== Noted
16. Agency reviews development of Protestantism in China


=== Aum Shinrikyo

1. Aum vacates 2 buildings in Saitama
Daily Yomiuri (Japan), Aug. 21, 2000
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
URAWA -- The Aum Supreme Truth cult on Sunday morning vacated two buildings it owned in Tokigawamura, Saitama Prefecture.

Nine former members of the cult, including the 6-year-old twin daughters of jailed former senior member Hisako Ishii, vacated a house and a sanatorium the cult owned in the village was relinquished the same day.

Cult spokesman Hiroshi Araki handed the properties over to Aum's bankruptcy administrator Saburo Abe in the presence of the village mayor, Takashi Osawa.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


2. AUM vacates 2 buildings in Saitama village
Kyodo News Service/Associated Press, Aug. 20, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
URAWA, Japan, Aug. 20 (Kyodo) -- Members of the AUM Shinrikyo cult on Sunday morning vacated two buildings in the village of Tokigawa in Saitama Prefecture.

Nine people -- including the twin daughters of a 39-year-old former senior AUM female member -- had been living in one of the buildings since 1998.

The village has decided to purchase the facility from AUM for 45 million yen.

The group members agreed with village officials earlier this year to decamp from the facility by Aug. 20 as a condition for allowing the 6-year-old twins to attend an elementary school in the municipality for one semester from April.
(...)

Cult spokesman Hiroshi Araki said during Sunday's pullout, ''The children are innocent. This current situation is due entirely to problems caused by the religious group in the past. We are sorry to have caused such a nuisance'' to the village.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Catholic God's Spirit

3. Arresting cops didn't know slain cult leader was cuckoo
The Manila Times (Philippines), Aug. 20, 2000
http://www.manilatimes.net/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Police lacked one vital piece of information that may have saved lives during the botched operation to arrest Tadtad cult leader Roberto Madrina Jr. last Aug. 11.

Lawmen apparently did not know that Madrina had been diagnosed as psychotic in April 1999 by the Happy Home Center for Mental Health in Maramag, Bukidnon.

The knowledge would have helped cops and military men in finding an alternative way of taking in Madrina, who was facing an arrest warrant for a murder case dating to 11 years back.

''Madrina was admitted April 7, 1999 and diagnosed by our psychiatrist as having a brief psychotic disorder secondary to general medical condition,'' Marvin Cabanilla, a nurse at the Happy Home Center, told an ABS-CBN broadcast crew.

Upon admission, the nurse said Madrina exhibited symptoms of paranoia. He was overly anxious and seemed afraid.

He claimed he was hearing voices, Cabanilla said, adding that Madrina also had visual hallucinations.

Doctors released Madrina on April 13, after he responded to medication.

Cabanilla, however, said his release did not mean a cure.
(...)

Local officials had earlier enlisted the aid of Madrina's parents to convince him to surrender peacefully last Aug. 10, but no mention was made to the PNP of Madrina's mental state.

''If we'd only known about his sickness, then perhaps we could have avoided the needless deaths of the other 19 persons killed in the encounter,'' he added.

Irate neighbors
As national officials in Manila exchanged barbs on command responsibility for the operation that killed 16 cultists and four CAFGU men, the Municipal Peace and Order Council (MPOC) of Pangantucan, Bukidnon met to resolve the debate over the ejection or retention of the Catholic God Spirit cult from Barangay Kimanait.
(...)

Residents of Bgy. Kimanait were earlier contemplating to file a petition for the ejection of the cult members from the area. There are around 70 houses inside the one-hectare area occupied by some 200 members of the CGS.

Last Monday, Aug. 14, some 19 families left for Malaybalay City and Valencia, vowing to leave the cult for good.

Feelings against the cult members remain high, mainly due to three previous incidents where they disturbed the peace in the barangay.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Falun Gong

4. Stop harassing sect, Downer tells China
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), Aug. 18, 2000
http://www.smh.com.au/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Downer, has ignored the advice of his senior officials and publicly warned China that harassment of Falun Gong sect devotees in Australia would be unacceptable.

Mr Downer said yesterday that officials had again raised the suspected harassment of Falun Gong followers in Australia in private talks this week with a Chinese human rights delegation visiting Canberra.

This was the second time the treatment of the sect in Australia had been raised with China.

The Chinese Embassy in Canberra has angrily denied complaints that it has been attempting to curb the activities of the sect that has been banned and suppressed under a sweeping crackdown in China.

It claims Falun Gong has been interfering in the activities of Chinese diplomatic missions through protests and demonstrations.

The Herald has learned that Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials earlier this week advised Mr Downer to avoid public comment on the harassment complaints in a bid to avoid friction with Beijing.

However, it is understood that Mr Downer decided it was appropriate to speak out.
(...)

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the Australian Federal Police have been monitoring the activities of Chinese diplomats and others linked with the Chinese Embassy in what appears to be a campaign aimed at countering the activities of Falun Gong in Australia and the movement's links with its fellow devotees in China.

There are an estimated 2,000 followers in Australia and many have complained that they have been pressured by Chinese diplomats, followed, their property damaged and phones tapped.

The Herald has confirmed that Chinese diplomats have contacted local government offices and urged officials to deny the sect the use of community facilities. It is understood that Chinese diplomats have also urged local government libraries to avoid holding the movement's literature.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Zhong Gong

5. Chinese president targets meditation group -report
Reuters, Aug. 20, 2000
http://live.altavista.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
BEIJING, Aug 20 (Reuters) - A human rights group said on Sunday that Chinese President Jiang Zemin had called for strict surveillance of members of the banned Zhong Gong meditation group in an internal memo.
(...)

The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy did not say how it had come by the contents of the memo, but has in the past been a reliable source of information on human rights in China.
(...)

The group's leader, Zhang Hongbao, fled in February to the U.S.-administered island of Guam and is seeking political asylum in the United States.

The issue is a sore point in Sino-U.S. ties, with Beijing saying Zhang is a criminal who must not be granted asylum. The U.S. government has maintained a low profile on the issue, and Zhang's asylum hearing has been postponed repeatedly.

Zhong Gong bears similarities to the Falun Gong spiritual movement which China publicly banned and declared an ``evil cult'' after its members staged a bold protest in April 1999 in Beijing.
(...)

A 1997 notice from police in Zhejiang province said Zhong Gong was ``using feudal superstition to deceive the masses'' -- one of the many offences of which Falun Gong has been accused.

Some disciples who have broken with the group have also accused Zhang of having illicit sex with followers -- an offence that can carry the death sentence in China.

In the memo, Jiang also called for clampdown on Falun Gong to be stepped up, the rights group said.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Unification Church

6. Subject: Trade, peace needed to stem immigration
UPI, Aug. 18, 2000
*** Note: UPI is owned by the Unification Church cult
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
(...) Some 330 national leaders, parliamentarians, religious notables and scholars from more than 100 countries met for a two-day conference at U.N. headquarters in New York. Sponsored by a group of developing nations, ''Assembly 2000'' was organized by the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace (IIFWP).
(...)

Another conference theme was ''religion as the missing dimension of statecraft.''
(...)

A proposal to create a bicameral United Nations was put forward at the conference by Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church, one of several dozen religious leaders in attendance. One house would be the representatives of the member states and would function like an international congress of nations, as it does at present. The second chamber, or upper house, would be an assembly of leaders of religion, culture and education whose terms of reference would be to transcend the limited interests of their individual nations and be able ''to speak for the concerns of the entire world and humanity at large.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

The Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace is a
front group of the Unification Church cult.

7. Unification Church finds a home in the United States
Newhouse News Service, Aug. 8, 2000
*** Adds some info to a largely similar item reported here
http://www.newhousenews.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
(...) Followers of the 80-year-old Rev. Sun Myung Moon -- properly described as Unificationists, but popularly called ''Moonies,'' a name they consider derogatory -- say their once-radical movement, based on a belief that Moon was anointed by God to save mankind after Jesus Christ failed to finish the job, has changed.

It has, they say, matured and established an economic, political and spiritual foothold that will allow it to take its place as one of the world's major religions.

As evidence of the change, they point to claims of a growing worldwide membership in the millions, church members elected to state legislatures, images of Moon sharing podiums with two U.S. presidents and a global network of businesses including hotels, newspapers, radio and TV stations, car plants, restaurants and magazines such as Golf Digest.

And one of the first examples of the church's new place in the world is in Bayou La Batre, which in 1995 a worldwide church publication described as ''a model community, centered on True Parents tradition, to inspire our movement and restore America.''

Unificationists run several of the town's largest and most successful businesses; their shipbuilding company does repair work for the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy. And they spearheaded a successful effort to get the government to dredge and deepen the bayou, bringing increased shipbuilding and repair work to the area.

They even started the town's soccer league.

''They've been good for Bayou La Batre,'' Mayor Warren Seaman said. ''They've really cleaned this place up. They came in and fixed up their businesses, painted them, cleaned up the land. Everybody else had to do the same so they didn't look worse than the Moonies.''

George Callahan, the Republican state senator for south Mobile County, said he, too, believes the Unificationists have been good for the Bayou.

''Their family values are probably the thing most Southern families remember,'' he said. ''That's what turned things around in the Bayou.''

Nothing to fear
Unificationists say they have been accepted in the Bayou because the locals realized they had nothing to fear. And church officials predict that the rest of the country will feel the same way about Moon's followers, as soon as they meet the new, friendlier face of the Unification Church.
(...)

The Rev. Philip Schanker is one of the top officials in the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Unification Church. Schanker said Unificationists are buying houses all over the country.

''The movement has changed a lot, organizationally. For example, we've moved from communal-based living to single-family living. The movement has grown up,'' Schanker said. ''In the '70s, most who joined were young. They didn't have bank accounts or families. ... Now, over 98 percent of our members live in their own houses and drive to church on Sunday. Just getting that info out would do a lot to dispel people's notions of our group.''

Despite popularity gains made by the Unificationists in the past 25 years, they have a lot of bad publicity to overcome. Moon spent a year in a U.S. federal prison for tax evasion. His organization was investigated by Congress, caught trying to illegally buy a controlling interest in a major Washington, D.C., bank and accused of trying to manipulate the American government on behalf of South Korea. It also owns several gun-making companies in the United States and Korea.

The ex-wife of his eldest son, a lifelong Unificationist who said she was hand-picked by Moon and forced to marry the would-be Messiah's son when she was 15, has written a tell-all book about the Moon family. She calls the church a cult and accuses Rev. Moon of adultery, domestic violence, child abuse, gambling and being a mean person. The book also states that the elder Moon held an elaborate ceremony during which he declared himself ''Emperor of the Universe.''

Few hard-core members
Sociologists who study the church say there are probably fewer than 3,000 hard-core members left in America. Church officials say there are more, but their visibility is down because the church is making so much money these days that the infamous roadside flower peddling of the '70s is pretty much over.

The Unification Church is not guilty of brainwashing, according to David Bromley, a sociologist at Virginia Commonwealth University. ''I don't approve of the Moonies, but I don't think they are harmful,'' he said. ''I mean, this isn't like they are Aum Shinriyko making sarin gas down in the Bayou. Moon preaches love.''
(...)

Schanker said the plan for the future calls for increasing church membership and getting more members into political office.
(...)

The church businesses, even after taking a major financial hit during the Asian market crisis, are loaded. They proved that recently with the multimillion-dollar purchase of United Press International, adding it to a stable of 20 newspapers and radio and TV stations around the world.

Ginseng-Up, a popular soda, and various other ginseng products produced by church-owned Il-Hwa Enterprises are for sale in most U.S. cities. And cult-awareness groups say church holding companies control the Christian Bernard jewelry store chain, car dealerships, the Nostalgia Network cable TV channel, car manufacturers, computer shops, import/export companies, hotels, marinas and hundreds of other businesses.

The church is particularly big in the seafood industry.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Cult Apologists

8. Book series looks at world's different faiths
Deseret News, Aug. 19, 2000
http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,195007720,00.html
If you're one who believes knowledge is power, you'll be interested in a powerful series of 30 new volumes Signature Books is producing on the world's religions.

''Studies in Contemporary Religion,'' under the direction of Massimo Introvigne of Italy, offers a ''digest'' look at faiths ranging from the Baha'is to the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon.

''When the Pope spoke in Latin America, Massimo advised him on the new religions that had evolved in the area, so he knows the field,'' says Ron Priddis of Signature Books. ''He tries to be objective, though that's probably not possible. If you type in his name on the Internet you'll see that nobody is happy. Some want him to endorse these religions, others want him to condemn them.''

The first volume in the series, an 80-page look at Scientology by J. Gordon Melton, will be out next week.

A volume on the ''Unification Church'' by Massimo himself will soon follow.

The series is published in association with the Center for Studies on New Religions in Milan. Different scholars and writers have been recruited to write each booklet. Small and portable, the books - Priddis hopes - will be read on buses and trains by people who want to know just enough about other faiths without having to slog through thick tomes of theology.

''We'll also be marketing them to religion professors for use in classes,'' he says. ''There will be a new one every six months.''

Things may even get a bit dicey in the future. One religion is already balking at being profiled and may take legal action.
[...entire item...]

Massimo Introvige and J. Gordon Melton are cult apologists:
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/c10.html
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/m06.htm

They operate the cult apologist organization CESNUR (Center for Studies
of New Religions).

CESNUR is not known for its alleged objectivity.

Signature Books, Inc. is considered a somewhat liberal LDS publisher

=== Hate Groups

9. Supremacist 'religion' in prison rejected
The Muskegon Chronicle/AP, Aug. 18, 2000
http://mu.mlive.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
A federal judge has ruled that a prisoner cannot practice his white supremacist religion in an organized group while behind bars.

District Judge Gordon Quist in Grand Rapids ruled Tuesday that Scott Marquart cannot hold group worship of his Christian Identity religion because it would pose a security threat to the prison.

The Church of Jesus Christ Christian, of which Marquart is a member, teaches that Anglo-Saxons are God's chosen race and others are subhuman.

Marquart, of Madison Heights, is serving up to five years at the Brooks Correctional Facility in Muskegon for a home invasion in 1995. His prison term ends in March.

He sued the state in 1998, arguing that his First Amendment rights were being limited and that he was being harassed because of his beliefs.

The decision ''upholds the department's commitment to rooting out those organizations that would try to use religion as a guise for illicit or dangerous behavior,'' Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman Matt Davis said.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Other News

10. Santa Fe Reincarnation Effort Fails
Albaquerque Journal/AP, Aug. 18, 2000
http://www.abqjournal.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
SANTA FE -- The sister and friends of a woman who died last week kept her body in an apartment room for four days, hoping for reincarnation, police said.

''They all believe in spiritual healing, and they were all waiting for that healing to occur through reincarnation,'' Deputy Police Chief Beverly Lennen said Thursday.

''They believed that their religion rather than medication would heal them,'' Lennen said. ''Upon the one female's death, they gave her a period for reincarnation to occur, and when that did not occur, they notified us.''

Linda Washburn, 50, is believed to have died of natural causes last week, but Santa Fe police were awaiting the results of an autopsy.
(...)

Investigators collected items that could indicate some type of ''religious activity'' took place, Lennen said. She would not disclose the items.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


11. Chinese religious leaders leave for UN summit; attack ''cults'', separatism
BBC Monitoring, Aug. 21, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Text of report in English by official Chinese news agency Xinhua (New China News Agency)

Beijing, 21st August: The Chinese delegations of top religious leaders left here today for the United States for a goodwill visit before attending the Millennium World Peace Summit of religious leaders to be held in the United Nations on 28th August.

The delegation, consisting of seven top leaders of Buddhism, Taoism, Islamism, Catholicism and Christianity in China [terminology as received]. has been the first overseas trip since the founding of new China in 1949.

They were at the invitation of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation of the United States and the organizational committee of the summit.
(...)

According to Fu Tieshan, the Chinese religious gurus will conduct extensive contact and exchanges with the US religious circles and other social aspects with a view to enhancing mutual understandings. They would put forward to the summit the principles of ''tolerance, exchanges, dialogue, coexistence and progress'' in handling international religious issues.

The delegation will also voice their strong concern over the pursuit of power politics and hegemonism, the instigating of national splittism and the creation of social conflict, under the camouflage of religion, while advocating for crackdowns upon cults that smear the image of legitimate religions and threaten social stability.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Science

12. Stepping toward human cloning
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Aug. 13, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
(...) One scientist who acknowledged his desire to clone humans is a prominent Italian fertility specialist, Severino Antinori. Antinori heads the International Associated Research Institute for Human Reproduction in Rome.

Antinori says he has an application pending with the Italian National Committee on Bioethics -- a 40-member advisory group that includes a Roman Catholic cardinal -- seeking permission to start working on the technique as a fertility treatment.

''In Italy it's not easy because the church is very influential, but we are going to try,'' he says.

The Catholic Church opposes cloning and in vitro fertilization as an artificial interference with the creation of life.
(...)

Biologist Brigitte Boisselier, the Montreal-based scientific director of Clonaid, a company set up the month after Dolly's birth was heralded with banner headlines worldwide, says her lab is trying to perfect cloning in humans.

''The goal is to produce a human clone as soon as possible,'' Boisselier says. ''We have a list of about 100 people wanting to be cloned.''

But experts do not consider Clonaid a front-runner in the quest to produce a cloned baby.

And it has a potential credibility problem: It was founded by Rael, the leader of a religious organization called the Raelian Movement, which argues that all life on Earth was created in laboratories by scientists.

Eric Schon, a molecular biologist at New York's Columbia University, believes the creation of cloned babies could be two to five years away.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


13. Analysis: Pain after death puts sense into cloning research
The Telegraph (England), Aug. 20, 2000
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Can the dead feel pain? Religious people who believe in Hell have never doubted it - but it has been a minority view, at least within the medical profession. Scientists have taken the view that when life ends, so does the capacity for sensation of any kind.

Now concerns aired in Anaesthesia, the journal of the Royal College of Anaesthetists, have raised the possibility that the dead whose organs are removed may be able to feel the surgeon's knife. According to the author of the letter, their bodies wriggle and their blood pressure shoots up.

Chillingly graphic though that evidence is, it is not proof that the dead feel pain, or indeed sensation of any kind. Those who have their vital organs removed must first be certified as ''brain dead'': their brains have to have ceased, and ceased irreversibly, to function - even though, with the help of a life-support system, much of the rest of the body's organs, such as the heart and lungs, can keep going.

No sane person thinks that, because hearts are still beating and lungs still removing oxygen from the air, the brain-dead can feel their hearts beating or hear themselves breathing. Obviously, they cannot - and for a very simple reason: the brain, the organ which makes sensation possible, is defunct.

That is why the bodily twitches and heightened blood pressure do not mean that the brain-dead are in pain. While the heart is still beating, the body can continue to react automatically, even though there is no activity in the brain and therefore no sensation. Still, those twitches and increases in blood pressure are enough to worry anyone - including surgeons, some of whom use anaesthetics when they perform transplant operations on the brain-dead.

Their precaution is surely justified, despite guidelines issued by the Intensive Care Society that insist it is not, if only to steady the surgeons' hands. More importantly, no scientific argument that demonstrates that the brain-dead cannot feel pain will be sufficient to counter many people's perception that pain is possible for the brain-dead. A larger slice of the public will share that perception after the extensive publicity given to the letter in Anaesthesia.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]



14. Library explores frontier between religion and science
The Tennessean, Aug. 20, 2000
http://www.tennessean.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
The search for scientific knowledge of God will one day find its way to Franklin County, Tenn.

A tall, pillared library, rising out of the mountainous wilderness between Winchester and Sewanee, will house books and research inspired by famed financier John Templeton and his quest for answers about the universe.

''A huge amount of information is accumulating,'' Templeton said. ''But it will take a century or two to bear fruit. No one in history has comprehended even 1% of the totality of God. Even after centuries of research, to be modest about it, it will barely be 1%.''
(...)

The Templeton Library is not a functioning library yet, and it won't be for the indefinite future.

It is designed to be the repository for Templeton's own books but only after his death.
(...)

A pioneer in mutual funds and other investments for decades, Templeton has turned his attention in recent years to the study of spirituality, especially the frontier between science and religion.

For 10 years, he has overseen research that might add to the world's knowledge about the power of prayer, the laws of spirituality, the nature of God.

His Templeton Foundation awards some $30 million a year in research grants to study connections between the physical and metaphysical worlds.

''We offer grants to people who think they have found some scientific way of understanding divinity,'' he said.

The library will store these accumulations of research.
(...)

Raised Presbyterian in Winchester, Templeton funds research on religion as an extension of his common-sense view that spirituality is an applied science that can be learned and studied.

He believes God's fingerprints are waiting to be discovered in the far reaches of astrophysics and subatomic particles -- and in basic moral laws that run the world -- if people have the humility and persistence to look.

''It's surprising how few people look at it that way,'' he said.

''Almost without exception, the religions think they already have the truth and don't need to spend money to find out any more. Ancient Scripture has been absolutely beneficial, but if you stop there, you'll be obsolete.''

He has promoted research on the possible health effects of prayer and worship attendance. He is funding research on the health effects of forgiveness.

In 1972 he established the annual Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion to honor individuals who have made religion ''an active moral force.'' The winner gets more than $1 million, said to be the world's richest cash prize. Templeton makes sure it always pays more than the Nobel to make the point that religion is at least as important as the arts and sciences.

Templeton also sponsors essays on character and spirituality among teen-agers, and his foundation publishes books on the nature of God and the future of spirituality -- all part of a campaign to raise the quality of spiritual life in this country.

His book Worldwide Laws of Life summarizes 200 spiritual principles boiled down from the world's store of faith and folk wisdom. He has used it to promote workplace study groups with the hope of improving quality of life and productivity.
(...)

He once said: ''The book of the Bible is very helpful, but God also created the Book of Nature, and we should look there, too, for spiritual laws. I don't disagree with anything in the Bible, but it needs to be supplemented by what science can tell us about God. But that means being open to new ideas.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Polls / Trends

15. Coloradans believe truth is out there, poll shows
Denver Rocky Mountain News, Aug. 21, 2000
http://www.insidedenver.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
[Trends]
Are aliens from other planets living among us? One in eight Coloradans believe they are.

Almost half of Coloradans believe in ghosts; a quarter believe that our souls are reincarnated after we die; more than a third believe it's possible for one person to read the mind of another.

When it comes to the occult, the extraterrestrial and the paranormal, Coloradans believe, believe and believe - more so than they did eight years ago.

A Colorado News Poll asked 607 Coloradans last month about their beliefs. The survey conducted for the Denver Rocky Mountain News and News4 by Talmey-Drake Research & Strategy Inc. has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.
(...)

Younger Coloradans and the less educated are the most likely to believe in the occult, extraterrestrials and mystical powers.

For example, 10 percent of college-educated Coloradans believe space aliens live among us, but 14 percent of non-college educated residents do. And while 15 percent of those under 35 suspect their neighbors might be from another solar system, just 8 percent of those 50 and older do.

The fact that there is no scientific proof of those beliefs doesn't seem to matter, said Robert Baker, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Kentucky.
(...)

Baker, a skeptic and member of the Scientific Committee for Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, blames newspapers, books, television and movies.
(...)

Coloradans aren't alone.
In a poll of 1,015 Americans in October, 48 percent of Americans said ghosts may exist, and more than a quarter suspect modern-day witches may have mystical powers.
(...)

''People believe in ghosts because of our desire to be immortal,'' Baker said. ''We all want to live forever. If ghosts really exist, that's proof that some spirit form of the human body does continue to exist. And that's much to be desired.''

People like to believe that the universe isn't random, that there is a universal sense of justice, Baker said. Hence, the popularity of movies such as Ghost, Sixth Sense and What Lies Beneath, in which the dead come back to right wrongs.

Fewer people will believe in the paranormal when more people get a good scientific education, learning how nature works and about winds, the ocean, birds, bees and evolution, Baker said.

''The more we understand the natural world, the more we realize there is definitely a reason behind all this,'' Baker said.

Michael Preston, an English professor at the University of Colorado, points to a strong desire today to believe in a greater power.
(...)

Recent surveys say 91 percent of Americans believe in God. Believers say God isn't something that can be seen, measured, weighed or captured in a test tube. Rather, God exists outside the laws of physics.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


16. Agency reviews development of Protestantism in China
BBC Monitoring, Aug. 20, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Text of report entitled: ''Backgrounder: China's protestantism''; carried by official Chinese news agency Xinhua (New China News Agency)

Beijing, 20th August: Protestantism was introduced into the Chinese mainland in the early 19th century. In the following 100 years and following the Opium War in the early 1840s, Western missionaries set up churches and preached the religion in the interior areas of the country.
(...)

In 1950, Chinese Protestants initiated the Three-Self (self- administration, self-support and self-propagation) Patriotic Movement and began to run their religious affairs independently.

After the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), a political movement that brought disaster to Chinese religious affairs, the Chinese government again enforced the policy of freedom of religion. The practice of Protestantism was thus restored and again flourished in China.

At present, there are ten million Protestants, of which 18,000 are missionaries and staff.
(...)

China has two Protestant national organizations: The China Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of Protestant Churches, and the China Christian Council. Leaders of the two organizations are elected every five years.

These two organizations emphasize the publication of religious books.
(...)

Chinese Protestants have formed the China Peace Committee of Religious Believers with people from other religions in the country and attended peace conferences sponsored by churches in Asia and conferences sponsored by churches all over the world in an effort to promote peace for all mankind.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]