Thursday, June 4, 2015

Raised to Run - Ravi Zacharias


Sarajevo: Francis in the footsteps of the Slav Pope

Sarajevo: Francis in the footsteps of the Slav Pope
Serbia (Listeni/ˈsɜrbiə/), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: Republika Srbija, Република Србија, pronounced [repǔblika sř̩bija]), is a sovereign state situated at the crossroads between Central[6][7][8] and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and the central Balkans. Serbia is landlocked and borders Hungary to the north; Romania and Bulgaria to the east; Macedonia to the south; and Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro to the west; it also claims a border with Albania through the disputed territory of Kosovo. The capital of Serbia, Belgrade, is one of the largest cities in Southeast Europe. As of a 2011 census, Serbia (excluding Kosovo) had a total population of 7.2 million.
Following the Slavic migrations to the Balkans from the 6th century onwards, Serbs established several states in the early Middle Ages. The Serbian Kingdom obtained recognition by Rome and Constantinople in 1217; it reached its peak in 1346 as a relatively short-lived Serbian Empire. By the mid-16th century, the entire territory of modern-day Serbia was annexed by the Ottoman Empire, at times interrupted by the Habsburgs. In the early 19th century, the Serbian Revolution established the nation-state as the region's first constitutional monarchy, which subsequently expanded its territory.[9] Following disastrous casualties in World War I, and subsequent unification of Habsburg crownland of Vojvodina with Serbia, the country co-founded Yugoslavia with other South Slavic peoples, which would exist in various formations until the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, which had devastating effects for the region. As a result, Serbia formed a union with Montenegro in 1992, which broke apart in 2006, when Serbia again became an independent country. In 2008 the parliament of Kosovo, Serbia's southern province with an Albanian ethnic majority, declared independence, with mixed responses from the international community.
Serbia is a member of the UN, CoE, OSCE, PfP, BSEC, and CEFTA. It is also an official candidate for membership in the European Union,[10] which is negotiating its EU accession,[11][12] acceding country to the WTO[13] and is a militarily neutral state. Serbia is an upper-middle income economy[8] with dominant service sector, followed by the industrial sector 

NASA's Journey to Mars | NASA

NASA's Journey to Mars | NASA

What happened to Red Cross donations for Haiti?

What happened to Red Cross donations for Haiti?

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: Human Knowlege

The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: Human Knowlege: Human Knowledge Connection. Life is a dynamic movement. Each human being is carried by time towards … What? Where did I come from? Wh...

Are Humans the Center of the Universe? | Reasonable Faith

Are Humans the Center of the Universe? |                                     


Reasonable FaithWilliam Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University. He and his wife Jan have two grown children.At the age of sixteen as a junior in high school, he first heard the message of the Christian gospel and yielded his life to Christ. Dr. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. 1971) and graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984). From 1980-86 he taught Philosophy of Religion at Trinity, during which time he and Jan started their family. In 1987 they moved to Brussels, Belgium, where Dr. Craig pursued research at the University of Louvain until assuming his position at Talbot in 1994.
He has authored or edited over thirty books, including The Kalam Cosmological ArgumentAssessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of JesusDivine Foreknowledge and Human FreedomTheism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology; and God, Time and Eternity, as well as over a hundred articles in professional journals of philosophy and theology, including The Journal of PhilosophyNew Testament StudiesJournal for the Study of the New TestamentAmerican Philosophical QuarterlyPhilosophical StudiesPhilosophy, and British Journal for Philosophy of Science. [My Google Profile+]


Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/william-lane-craig#ixzz3c10Sf1hU

NATURAL DISASTERS | Comets & Asteroids | NATURE DOCUMENTARY


Do Not Be Afraid of Silence

Do Not Be Afraid   of Silence     “A person whose mind is caught in thought is distant from Jesus; a person with a silent mind is with him.”   St. Hesychius of Jerusalem

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Tolstoy Pt. 1 - FULL AudioBook |...


Published on Apr 1, 2013
The Kingdom of God Is Within You Leo Tolstoy - FULL Audio Book | Greatest Audio Books - The Kingdom of God Is Within You (Russian: Царство Божие внутри вас [Tsarstvo Bozhiye vnutri vas]) is the non-fiction magnum opus of Leo Tolstoy. The book was first published in Germany in 1894 after being banned in his home country of Russia. It is the culmination of thirty years of Tolstoy's Christian anarchist thinking, and lays out a new organization for society based on a literal Christian interpretation. The title of the book is taken from Luke 17:21. In the book Tolstoy speaks of the principle of non-violent resistance when confronted by violence, as taught by Jesus Christ. In reading Jesus' words in the Gospels, Tolstoy notes that the modern church is a heretical creation: "Nowhere nor in anything, except in the assertion of the Church, can we find that God or Christ founded anything like what churchmen understand by the Church."
Tolstoy presented excerpts from magazines and newspapers relating various personal experiences, and gave keen insight into the history of non-resistance from the very foundation of Christianity, as being professed by a minority of believers. In particular, he confronts those who seek to maintain status quo: "That this social order with its pauperism, famines, prisons, gallows, armies, and wars is necessary to society; that still greater disaster would ensue if this organization were destroyed; all this is said only by those who profit by this organization, while those who suffer from it -- and they are ten times as numerous -- think and say quite the contrary." (Summary from Wikipedia.org)
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The Miracle of Morality: Atheism's (Other) Achilles Heel

The Miracle of Morality: Atheism's (Other) Achilles Heel

Why Believe That Jesus Is The Only Way?

Why Believe That Jesus Is The Only Way?

The Big Questions - Is It Time For All Religions To Accept Evolution


Pope Francis Resurrects Liberation Theology -- Without Marx




POPE MANILA CHILDREN


Weekend Roundup: Pope Francis Resurrects Liberation Theology -- Without Marx

Posted: Updated: 

If communism is "The God That Failed," liberation theology is the gospel that has succeeded. Marx may be dead, but the cause of the poor and oppressed has been resurrected.
This is the message the Argentine pope, Francis, sent by beatifying Oscar Romero, reversing decades of conservative opposition in the church hierarchy and setting the El Salvadoran archbishop on the road to sainthood. Romero was gunned down at the altar in 1980 by a right-wing death squad that regarded him as a dangerous Marxist because of his activism on behalf of the poor.
As Paul Vallely writes, Romero is an exemplar for Francis. Both are "orthodox and yet utterly radical." Romero is "a priest whose life stands in testament to the kind of Catholicism preferred by a pope who declared within days of his election that he wanted 'a poor Church for the poor.'"
In our Fusion series this week, illustrated with striking street murals, a gang leader says El Salvador still has lots to learn from the example of the martyred archbishop.
Refugees fleeing across the Mediterranean to Europe or from the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, especially Christians, have also been a focus of the pope's concerns. This week, Asia became the focal point of the asylum crisis, where thousands of Muslim Rohingya who have fled persecution in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar are desperately seeking refuge. Writing from Sydney, Elliott Brennan sees a parallel with the "boat people" crisis after the end of the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s, and calls on the ASEAN nations to embrace an emergency response similar to the EU's for the Mediterranean. Mehdi Hasan says that the silence of Aung San Suu Kyi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for championing human right in Myanmar, is inexcusable, a sentiment echoed by one of the great spiritual leaders of the East, the Dalai Lama. World editor Charlotte Alfred also reports that the Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina unleashed a heartless tirade against the migrants, calling them "mentally sick."
In Africa, the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy worries that the escalating conflict in Burundi could be another Rwanda-type genocide in the making. World editor Nick Robins-Early talks to Middle East expert Emile Hokayem about the resentment among many Shia in Iraq who feel their militias are being used as "cannon fodder" in the fight against ISIS.
Europe is also entering an unsettling summer. Writing from Athens, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis continues to insist that "austerity is a deal-breaker" in any agreement with its creditors. As HuffPost Spain editor Montserrat Dominguez writes from Madrid, austerity policies there have also fractured the body politic, casting the two main parties from their dominant position in key municipal elections. Meanwhile,Alan Posener writes from Berlin that Germany's political class is "willing to ride the tiger of German anger toward the Americans" for partisan advantage as new revelations implicate its own intelligence services in spying. In our "Forgotten Fact"this week, we examine how public opinion pressure to recognize same sex marriages is growing in Italy now that predominantly Catholic Ireland has done so. Columbia law professor Georges Ugeux asks whether the recent U.K. election will prompt Europe to re-examine some key elements of its union -- including immigrant quotas and the power of national parliaments.
Ahead of Turkey's own election, WorldPost Middle East Correspondent Sophia Jonesreports from Istanbul on why the upcoming vote could determine Erdogan's political destiny.
Writing from New Delhi, Shashi Tharoor scores Prime Minister Narendra Modi's first year in office, saying he has yet to distance himself from the "bigotry" of his Hindu fundamentalist party toward non-Hindu minorities. In another assessment, Aditya Karkera calls Modi "a flawed messiah" but "a great capitalist." Writing from Mumbai,Pavan Lall describes how the Foundation for Ecological Security is restoring denuded hillsides to grow sustainable crops in impoverished areas.
One of China's leading foreign policy voices, Fu Ying, asks whether her country's choice is either "to submit to the U.S. or challenge it" and calls on American and Chinese youth of the "post-90s" generation to be "more open and more ready to understand each other." WorldPost China Correspondent Matt Sheehan reports that, in a new poll, 78 percent of American students who studied in China "left with a more positive impression than when they arrived."
In an essay this week, I sum up the new state of mind in California, where Gov. Jerry Brown's frugal "era of limits" philosophy is restraining the budget, water usage and climate-altering carbon gases, convergent technologies are being cultivated and Latinos and Asians are coming to dominate the state's population.
Our Singularity University series this week looks at how the urge to play is behind the drive to innovate in Silicon Valley. Finally, our photo essays this week portraycelebrations in Ireland over the same sex marriage victory, the searing heat wave in India and the majestic scenery in Bolivia.EDITORS: Nathan Gardels, Senior Advisor to the Berggruen Institute on Governance and the long-time editor of NPQ and the Global Viewpoint Network of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate/Tribune Media, is the Editor-in-Chief of The WorldPost. Farah Mohamed is the Managing Editor of The WorldPost.Kathleen Miles is the Senior Editor of the WorldPost. Alex Gardels andPeter Mellgard are the Associate Editors of The WorldPost. Katie Nelson is the National Editor at the Huffington Post, overseeing The WorldPost and HuffPost's editorial coverage. Eline Gordts is HuffPost's Senior World Editor.Charlotte Alfred and Nick Robins-Early are Associate World Editors.
CORRESPONDENTS: Sophia Jones in Istanbul; Matt Sheehan in Beijing.
EDITORIAL BOARD: Nicolas BerggruenNathan GardelsArianna HuffingtonEric Schmidt (Google Inc.), Pierre Omidyar (First Look MediaJuan Luis Cebrian (El Pais/PRISA), Walter Isaacson (Aspen Institute/TIME-CNN), John Elkann (Corriere della Sera, La Stampa),Wadah Khanfar (Al Jazeera)Dileep Padgaonkar (Times of India) andYoichi Funabashi (Asahi Shimbun).
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Moises Naim (former editor of Foreign Policy),Nayan Chanda (Yale/Global; Far Eastern Economic Review) and Katherine Keating (One-On-One)Sergio Munoz Bata and Parag Khanna are Contributing Editors-At-Large.
The Asia Society and its ChinaFile, edited by Orville Schell, is our primary partner on Asia coverage. Eric X. Li and the Chunqiu Institute/Fudan University in Shanghai and Guancha.cn also provide first person voices from China. We also draw on the content of China Digital TimesSeung-yoon Leeis The WorldPost link in South Korea.
Jared Cohen of Google Ideas provides regular commentary from young thinkers, leaders and activists around the globe. Bruce Mau provides regular columns from MassiveChangeNetwork.com on the "whole mind" way of thinking.Patrick Soon-Shiong is Contributing Editor for Health and Medicine.
ADVISORY COUNCIL: Members of the Berggruen Institute's 21st Century Council and Council for the Future of Europe serve as the Advisory Council -- as well as regular contributors -- to the site. These include, Jacques Attali, Shaukat AzizGordon BrownFernando Henrique CardosoJuan Luis CebrianJack DorseyMohamed El-ErianFrancis FukuyamaFelipe GonzalezJohn GrayReid HoffmanFred HuMo IbrahimAlexei KudrinPascal LamyKishore MahbubaniAlain MincDambisa MoyoLaura TysonElon MuskPierre OmidyarRaghuram Rajan,Nouriel RoubiniNicolas SarkozyEric SchmidtGerhard Schroeder,Peter SchwartzAmartya SenJeff SkollMichael SpenceJoe Stiglitz,Larry Summers, Wu JianminGeorge YeoFareed ZakariaErnesto ZedilloAhmed Zewail, and Zheng Bijian.
From the Europe group, these include: Marek BelkaTony BlairJacques DelorsNiall FergusonAnthony GiddensOtmar IssingMario Monti,Robert MundellPeter Sutherland and Guy Verhofstadt.

Is there any EVIDENCE for God [THE BIG QUESTIONS BBC 12 Jan]


Pope on Science:Must Be at Service of Man

Vatican City State,  (ZENIT.org) Deborah Castellano Lubov | 867 hits


A civilization’s progress is measured by its ability to protect life, says Pope Francis, not by its technological advances.
 
Speaking to participants in a meeting organized by the Science and Life Association on Saturday, the Holy Father underscored, “The degree of progress of a civilization is measured by its ability to protect life, especially in its most fragile stages, rather than by the spread of technological means.”
 
The Association for Science and Life is an Italian volunteer association dedicated to protecting life and human rights, and promoting science at the service of man. It is marking its 10-year anniversary.
 
Their efforts, Francis said, “represent a critical task, especially in a society marked by the negative logic of discarding."
 
After praising their efforts to sustain life, the Argentine Pontiff reminded them that to protect the person, two actions are essential: going out to meet and meeting to give support.
“The love of Christ urges us (cfr 2 Cor. 5,14) to become servants of the small ones and the elderly, of every man and every woman, through which the primordial right to life is recognized and protected,” he said. “The existence of the human person, to which you dedicate your care is also your constitutive principle, it is life in its unfathomable depth that originates and accompanies the whole scientific path; it is the miracle of life that undermines any form of scientific presumption, restoring primacy to wonder and beauty."
"Christ," Francis highlighted, “illuminates the path so that science may always be a service of life.”
He encouraged them to stay focused on the fact that every human person is sacred, "so that science may truly be at the service of man, and not man at the service of science.”
The Pontiff undercored to those present that attacks on the sacredness of life -- in all their various manifestations -- must not be forgotten.
“The scourge of abortion is an attack on life. Leaving our brothers on the boats in the Sicilian channel is an attack on life. Death in the workplace because the minimal security conditions are not respected, is an attack on life. Death by malnutrition is an attack on life. Terrorism, war, violence and also euthanasia are an attack on life.”
Before concluding with a blessing and asking for prayers, Pope Francis encouraged the participants to re-launch a renewed culture of life, and to not be afraid “to embark on a fruitful dialogue with the whole world of science, even with those who, while not professing themselves as believers, remain open to the mystery of human life.”
***

10 Guide to Polish Literature | Article | Culture.pl

10 Writers You Didn’t Know Wrote in Polish | Article | Culture.pl

A Foreigner's Guide to Polish Literature | Article | Culture.pl

A Foreigner's Guide to Polish Literature | Article | Culture.pl