=== Falun Gong
1. China says Taiwan leader colluding with falungong
2. Falun Gong members speak out

=== Falun Gong - China's Government-Controlled Media
3. Reports from China's government-controlled media

=== Scientology
4. Scientology guilty of libel and enjoined in Germany
5. Protecting sources
6. Razzies Scorch the ''Earth''

=== Unification Church
7. News And Notes

=== Raelians
8. House Sets the Stage for Debate on the Cloning of Humans

=== Buddhism
9. Sect 'planned mass suicide'
10. Sri Lanka to 'build' Bamiyan Buddhas

=== Catholicism
11. Faith or folly?
12. Former believer turns his efforts toward exposure
13. More Catholics turning to Mary
14. Pope Makes Appeal for Catholic Zeal

=== Mormonism
15. Mormons in charm offensive

=== Paganism / Witchcraft
16. Battle brewing over Nessie hunt
17. Wizard curse? I've had spell of good luck, says Whelan

=== Hate Groups
18. Man Gets Life for Calif. Hate Crime
19. Saudi Arabia bans Pokemon

=== Rebirthing
20. Video a key piece in abuse trial

=== Other News
21. Teen-age monk confesses to killing nun, police say
22. 'This is the place for a village,' decides a rich sect (Bruderhof)
23. Procter & Gamble Suit Over Satan Rumor Resurrected
24. Southern Baptists ending talks with Catholic Church

=== Science
25. Enlisting Science to Find the Fingerprints of a Creator

=== Death Penalty & Other Human Rights Violations
26. Court will hear second mentally retarded case

=== Media
27. Why do we think Christ was white?
28. Purging Flame

=== The Investors Around The Corner
29. Four-year-old beats City expert


=== Science

25. Enlisting Science to Find the Fingerprints of a Creator
Los Angeles Times, Mar. 25, 2001
http://www.latimes.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
BRLINGTON, Wash.--In this rural farming community, a high school biology teacher named Roger DeHart set out to question Darwin's theories of evolution. He never mentioned God.

He dissected such scientific topics as bacterial flagella, fossil records and embryonic development. Examine the evidence, he told the students, and ponder the Big Question: Is life the result of random, meaningless events? Or was it designed by an intelligent force?

Over nine years, DeHart would introduce ideas about this theory of ''intelligent design.'' Then a student protested that DeHart was pushing religion. Then the ACLU filed a complaint. In 1999, school authorities ordered DeHart to drop references to design and stick to the textbook.

Last week, DeHart was told he could not even introduce materials questioning Darwin's theories. Now DeHart is being portrayed as a martyr in the movement promoting intelligent design, the newest twist in the timeless debate over the origin of life.

The idea that an intelligent force guided creation is as old as Plato. But it is sparking modern battles as a new breed of mostly Christian scholars redefines the old evolution-versus-creationism debate and fashions a movement with more intellectual firepower, mainstream appeal and academic respectability.

The scientific establishment generally rejects the theory. But design advocates aim to reshape modern intellectual culture by marshaling scientific evidence that life was created by a transcendent mind, rather than by impersonal, random natural forces.

''Our work will alert people to the possibility that God is real rather than a projection of the mind,'' declared Phillip Johnson, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus of law whose 1991 book, ''Darwin on Trial,'' laid the foundation for the emerging movement.

Arguments about the theory's use have arisen in public schools from Washington to Minnesota.
(...)

Some proponents are doing theoretical work: seeking systematic ways to detect intelligence in life, for instance, or evidence to argue that intelligent design is a better explanation than Darwinism for such events as the abrupt appearance of advanced organisms during the ''Cambrian explosion'' 500 million years ago. Others are more experimental, analyzing DNA thought to be useless junk for actual functions as a way to show that an intelligent agent designed it that way for a purpose.

The scientific applications of the work are less important than their cultural ramifications, Johnson says. Huston Smith, renowned religion scholar and intelligent-design supporter, argues in a recent book, ''Why Religion Matters,'' that ''narrow scientism'' has suffocated the human spirit and debased the culture.

One 1999 national survey by Scientific American magazine showed that fewer than 10% of National Academy of Sciences members believe in God. By contrast, 90% of Americans not only believe in God but say God played at least some role in creation, according to the Gallup Organization.

''We are taking an intuition most people have and making it a scientific and academic enterprise,'' Johnson said. In challenging Darwinism with a God-friendly alternative theory, the professor, who is a Presbyterian, added, ''We are removing the most important cultural roadblock to accepting the role of God as creator.''

Most design scientists are more circumspect about identifying the designer as God. But the work's clear religious implications have propelled the issue beyond science into passionate arguments about the separation between church and state, academic freedom and societal values.
(...)

To push intelligent design into the public square, Johnson, the movement's strategic mastermind, has fashioned a two-pronged ''wedge strategy.''

The first step is to open academic debate by pressing scientists to explain whether evolutionary claims are based on ''impartially evaluated evidence or philosophical dogma.''

The second tactic is to unify the religious world--Christians, Jews, Muslims and others who believe in a creator--to produce a constituency that would insist that intelligent design be considered an option for debate.

To support those efforts, advocates of intelligent design have acquired significant research funding. In 1996, the Discovery Institute in Seattle launched a science and culture program that is emerging as the intelligent-design movement's national think tank.

Primarily funded by evangelical Christians--particularly the wealthy Ahmanson family of Irvine--the institute's $1-million annual program has produced 25 books, a stream of conferences and more than 100 fellowships for doctoral and postdoctoral research. Fieldstead & Co., which is owned by Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, has pledged $2.8 million through 2003 to support the intelligent-design program.
(...)

In public schools, combatants have clashed over classroom curricula and school library selections, often over the issue of whether advocates of intelligent design earnestly separate science from theology. In Burlington, a small community nestled among salmon-rich rivers and snow-dusted peaks, public opinion has been vehemently divided over DeHart.

Authorities initially allowed DeHart to teach intelligent design during one day of his two-week unit on evolution, but have now changed their minds. Even though DeHart never overtly discussed religion in the class, Beth Vander Veen, Burlington-Edison High School principal, said she has grown wary of DeHart's real motivations.

''I don't think it's about showing holes in evolutionary theory anymore,'' she said. ''I think it's about getting religion into the schools.''

Ken Atkins, a parent, reached a similar conclusion. ''He taught my kid religion for two weeks, receiving public money in the schools, and didn't ask. I was outraged.''

But Jerry Benson, a community leader who supports DeHart, said the science teacher was only doing what educators should be doing: stimulating students to think critically.

''The [intelligent-design] debate is exciting,'' Benson said. ''I so want that excitement to be presented to our students and cause them to stop and say: 'Well, what do I think?' ''

For his part, DeHart insisted he has always stayed within the law by never discussing the designer's identity or other theological questions. Despite the school's recent ruling against him, he said he intends to keep looking for ways to bring the ideas forward until the evidence ultimately proves him right or wrong.

''Some things are worth fighting for,'' DeHart said, ''and this is one of them.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Death Penalty & Other Human Rights Violations

26. Court will hear second mentally retarded case
CNN, Mar. 26, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
WSHINGTON (washington.d.c.html) (CNN) -- The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to reconsider whether executing the mentally retarded violates the Eighth Amendment protection against ''cruel and unusual punishment.''

The justices said that in the fall term they will hear an appeal by North Carolina death row inmate Ernest McCarver, whose execution the justices halted this month just hours before he was to be put to death.

On Tuesday, the court is scheduled to hear arguments in a similar case involving a Texas death-row inmate whose lawyers say is mentally retarded and has the mind of a 7-year-old.

The justices will consider whether a Texas jury should have been given clearer instructions to consider mental retardation as a mitigating factor when it sentenced Johnny Paul Penry to die.

IQ test scores for Penry have ranged between 51 and 63 -- mild to moderate retardation.

Penry's case came before the Supreme Court once before, in 1989. The court ruled at the time that it may be cruel and unusual to execute the insane and retarded, but that Penry did not meet that standard.

In the meantime Penry, who is now 44, has been retried and re-sentenced to death.
(...)

At the time only two states with a death penalty prohibited executions for the retarded. Now 13 states bar such executions. Another 12 states do not have capital punishment.

In granting a hearing in McCarver's case the court said it would consider the question of ''whether significant objective evidence demonstrates that national standards have evolved such that executing a mentally retarded man would violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Media

27. Why do we think Christ was white?
BBC, Mar. 27, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Everyone is familiar with the features of Jesus Christ. But a new BBC programme questions this image of the Son of God.

If the bulk of Western art is to be believed, the harsh sun of the Middle East did nothing to colour the skin of Jesus Christ.

But the delicate, perhaps even equine, porcelain features of the Christ imagined by the likes of Caravaggio, El Greco and Rembrandt have little in common with the latest impression of what Jesus really looked like.

The makers of BBC One's upcoming Son of God series have employed modern forensic techniques to create a model of Christ's face based on the skull of a 1st century Jewish man.

The model's somewhat muscular features have a heartening ''bloke down the pub'' feel. Full cheeks and a sturdy nose are in marked opposition to the decidedly feminine bone structure of Jesus as depicted since before the Renaissance.

And the skin colour of this ''new'' Christ? Experts have decided Jesus would have been anything by pearly white. The model has a dark colouring, more realistically suited to desert climes.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


28. Purging Flame
ABCNews, Mar. 26, 2001
http://abcnews.go.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
March 26 - The congregation of a church in suburban Pittsburgh gathered around a bonfire Sunday night to burn Harry Potter books, Disney videos, rock CDs and literature from other religions, purging their lives of things they felt stood between them and their faith.

''Our purpose comes out of the Bible,'' the Rev. George Bender of the Harvest Assembly of God Church in Butler County. ''We read in the Bible how people, after they received Jesus Christ as their savior, took things out of their homes and burned them. They [the members of the congregation] received Christ and they willingly did this.''

The church has a regular Sunday evening service, which does not include a bonfire. But this week the congregation wanted to do a little more, and 35 people brought books, CDs and tapes that they felt were not in keeping with their faith.

''We did it in the open so that people would ask why,'' Bender said, adding that the church has not asked that any of the material they burned be banned from bookstores or libraries, and that even among the congregation there was no pressure to participate.

He pointed out that just one-third of the congregation brought things to burn.

He said those who participated included a mix of new and longtime members of the church.

''There's no such thing as a crusade to deal with other people's things. That's their business,'' he said. ''We believe in the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, and the First Commandment and Second Commandment.''

Animated videos such as Pinnochio and Hercules were also among the items thrown in the fire, which also included Pearl Jam and Black Sabbath CDs, and pamphlets from Jehovah's Witnesses.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== The Investors Around The Corner

29. Four-year-old beats City expert
BBC, Mar. 23, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Four-year-old Tia Laverne Roberts has beaten an experienced private investor and a financial astrologer in a week-long contest to see who could make the most (or lose the least) money on the London Stock Exchange.

The youngster was consistently ahead in the National Science week experiment where the three were each given a fictional £5,000 to invest on the markets for a week.

At 11am on Friday, when the competition closed, the four-year-old had lost £231, as against £498 for the financial astrologer and £360 for the investor.

''Everyone's starting off with the same sum of money, they can only invest in the FTSE 100, so it's a kind of level playing field... we're looking at short-term predictions here,'' said Dr Wiseman, the psychologist behind the experiment.
''My prediction is that all three of them will actually make a small loss,'' he said before the contest began.
(...)

Christeen Skinner, the astrologer, uses the movement of the heavens to predict the market, by looking at the 'birthdate' when companies were formed and then drawing up an astrological chart.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


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