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This letter is taken from Joels Trumpet:-

Dear brothers and sisters, thank you for your support and prayers. This is the pain which cannot be expressed in words. This is the pain experienced by those who stood at the Cross of the Saviour. This is the joy which cannot be expressed in words, this is the joy experienced by those who came to the empty Tomb.

O death, where is thy sting?

Fr Daniel had already foreseen his death several years before it happened. He had always wanted to be worthy of a martyr’s crown. Those who shot him wanted, as usual, to spit in the face of the Church, as once before they spat in the face of Christ. They have not achieved their goal, because it is impossible to spit in the face of the Church. Fr Daniel went up to his Golgotha in the very church which he had built, the church to which he gave up all his time and all his strength. They killed him like the prophet of old – between the temple and the altar and he was indeed found worthy of a martyr’s calling. He died for Christ, Whom he served with all his strength.

Very often he would say to me that he was frightened of not having enough time, time to do everything. He was in a hurry. Sometimes, as a human-being he exaggerated, he got things wrong, he tripped up and made mistakes, but he made no mistake about the main thing, his life was entirely dedicated to HIM.

I did not understand why he was in a hurry. The last three years he was busy serving, never taking days off or taking holidays. I moaned, just now and again I wanted simple happiness, that my husband and my children’s father would be with my children and me. But another path had been prepared for him.

He used to say that they would kill him. I would ask him who would look after us. Me and the three children. He would answer that he would put us in safe hands…

These words were forgotten too soon. He told us which vestments to bury him in. Then I joked that there was no need to speak about that, we still did not know who would bury who. He said that I would bury him. Once our conversation turned to funerals, I don’t remember the details but I did say that I had never been to a priest’s funeral. And he answered that it did not matter because I would be at his funeral.

Now I remember many words which have gained a meaning. Now my doubts have dissolved, the misunderstandings have gone.

We did not say goodbye in this life, we did not ask each other forgiveness, we did not embrace one another. It was just another day: in the morning he went to the liturgy and I did not see him again. Why didn’t I go to the church that day to meet him? I had thought of it, but I decided I had better get the evening meal ready and put the children to bed. It was because of the children that I did not go there. There was a hand that did not let me go. But the evening before I had gone to the church and met him. I had felt as if dark clouds were gathering over us. And in the last few days I had tried to spend more time with him. Over the last week I had thought only about death and about life after death. I couldn’t get my head around either the first or the second. That day my head was spinning with the words: ‘Death is standing right behind you’. The last week everything was so hard, as if a huge load had been emptied out on top of me. I am not broken. He is supporting me, I feel as if he is standing by me. Then we said so many affectionate words, which we had never said to each other in our whole life before. Only now do I understand how much we loved each other.

The memorial service for the forty days of Fr Daniel takes place on the eve of his namesday and the patronal feast of the future church, 29 December, and 30 December is the feast of the holy prophet Daniel. According to the prophecy of an elder, the church would be built but Fr Daniel would not serve in it. The second part of the prophecy has already been fulfilled.

Matushka Julia Sysoieva
Translated by Fr. Andrew Phillips

Cross post from the excellent Atheism is Dead Blog by Mariano:-

Being a well-within-the-box-atheist-group-thinker Richard Dawkins cannot expand his mind outwards to that which a finite universe implies.

He continues to looking for God in all the wrong places (and in all the wrong ways).

This became apparent again in a statement with which I agree as he had a discussion with Ben Stein in Expelled – No Intelligence Allowed (see here, here).

Ben Stein: What do you think is the possibility that Intelligent Design might turn out to be the answer to some issues in genetics or in Darwinian evolution?

Richard Dawkins: It could come about in the following way: It could be that at some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilization evolved by probably some kind of Darwinian means to a very, very high level of technology, and designed a form of life that they seeded on to, perhaps this planet. Now that is a possibility, and an intriguing possibility. And I suppose it’s possible that you might find evidence for that, if you look at the details of bio-chemistry, molecular biology, you might find a signature of some sort of designer.

Ben Stein (narrating): Wait a second! Richard Dawkins thought that Intelligent Design might be a legitimate pursuit?

Richard Dawkins: And that designer could very well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe. But that higher intelligence itself would have to had have come about by some explicable or ultimately explicable process. It couldn’t have just jumped into existence spontaneously. That’s the point.

Indeed, Richard Dawkins is quite right. If the designer is a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe it would have to have come about by some explicable or ultimately explicable, Darwinian, process.

Let us consider two issues:

1) He supposes the possibility of finding such evidence by studying “the details of bio-chemistry, molecular biology.”

He has conducted such studies, he was viewed the evidence but he then denies the evidence, urges others to do likewise and concocts tall tales in order to explain away the evidence. This was likewise done by Francis Crick who is an atheist alien intelligent design proponent.

Richard Dawkins wrote, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose” (The Blind Watchmaker, p. 1).

Francis Crick wrote, “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved” (What Mad Pursuit, p. 138).

They must keep it in mind because their particular atheistic worldview adherence will not allow them to think otherwise. Although, they both allow for intelligent design via aliens so, I just do not get it—I suppose that design is too close that God for atheist comfort.

2) He, rightly, states that aliens could not have just jumped into existence spontaneously.

Yet, his own view of life’s origin is what? That is just jumped into existence spontaneously. He actually fills the gaps in our knowledge with the luck-of-the-gaps:

It is as though, in our theory of how we came to exist, we are allowed to postulate a certain ration of luck (The Blind Watchmaker, p. 145).

Explain[ing] how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises…makes heavier demands on luck(The God Delusion, p. 121).

Is it any wonder that he concludes,

We don’t actually need a plausible theory of the origin of life (The Greatest Show on Earth, p. 421—considered here, here and here).

In any regard, he is quite right in noting the infinite regress, the answer that does not answer the question but merely pushes the question further back in time. Yet, his mind is locked within the box of the universe and he is thus looking to life in the universe to explain life in the universe since it could be that life begat life and was begotten by life, etc.

By restricting his thought to that which is within the box he is exercising adherence to absolute materialism as was done by Carl Sagan, “the cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be,” by Dan Barker, “There are no gods…There is only our natural world,” by Daniel Dennett, “We atheists don’t believe that there is any God,” Dawkins, “God is not dead. He was never alive in the first place,” and on it goes.

Yet, it is perfectly cogent to conclude that there is something outside of, beyond, the universe which created it and fine tuned it for life. I will not reiterate the argument here since it is laid out and juxtaposed with others in my essay On the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Invisible Pink Unicorns, et al.

The only retort left to personages such as Richard Dawkins is to ask “Who designed the designer?”

As Dawkins explains it (in The Blind Watchmaker), “To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer.”

As seconded by Christopher Hitchens (in God Is Not Great), “who designed the designer or created the creator? Religion and theology have consistently failed to overcome this objection.”

As Daniel Dennett (in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea) put it in referencing Richard Dawkins; he declares that it is an “unrebuttable refutation, as devastating today as when Philo used it to trounce Cleanthes in Hume’s Dialogues two centuries earlier.”

And as of course, Richard Dawkins (in The God Delusion) quotes Daniel Dennett who is quoting Richard Dawkins and proclaims that Daniel Dennett is correct in approving of Richard Dawkins!

I have dealt with this issue in the Spaghetti/Unicorns essay and will do so again in an upcoming essay on atheist circular logic.

Interesting, but would the UK government want to refuse their European masters?

Click here for previous related post.

By Hilary White

LONDON, November 25, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – British courts and the British government cannot be forced to change their regulations on discrimination in employment, “unless and until” ordered to do so by the European Union’s Court of Justice, says Neil Addison, a barrister and author of a textbook on anti-discrimination law.  This means, said Addison, that the UK is “fully entitled” to ignore the order issued last week by the European Commission demanding that the British government eliminate all protections for religious groups with regards to ”sexual orientation” regulations.

Vladimir Spidla, the EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, issued the “reasoned opinion” last week in which he said that the British government had “incorrectly” implemented the EU’s anti-discrimination directive. Spidla effectively ordered the government to expunge exemptions for religious groups with regards to hiring homosexuals. He wrote, “We call on the UK government to make the necessary changes to its anti-discrimination legislation as soon as possible so as to fully comply with the EU rules.”

In an email to LifeSiteNews.com, Addison said that the key question about the “reasoned opinion” is whether the UK is legally obliged to follow these instructions as was widely claimed in the British press.

In response he pointed to a 2004 ruling by the British High Court, in a case between a number of British unions and a coalition of Christian groups, that said the EU’s directive on discrimination had been correctly implemented in the British Employment Regulations. Addison said that since no homosexualist activist or group has appealed this 2004 ruling either to the EU’s Court of Justice or to the UK Supreme Court, that “this decision by the High Court represents the legal position.”

“In a society governed by the rule of law the courts decide what the law is and a legal opinion, however ‘reasoned’ it may be, cannot overrule or take precedence over a decision by a court,” he said.

Addison confirmed, however, what many pro-life advocates had warned about the effect of ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, that no matter what laws are passed by individual member states of the EU, or what their own courts decide, Lisbon gives the European Court of Justice the power to overrule them.

The British Government, he said, “is fully entitled” to ignore the order of the European Commission, but only “unless and until the European Court of Justice itself gives a judgement on the issue.”

“I would go further and state that the British government is legally and morally obliged to ignore the European Commission view where that view, as in this case, is in conflict with a decision of the High Court.”

Two good posts asking the same question; Why is Labour using tax payers money to fund Islamic Exremisim in the form of the revolutionary Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir?

The first from Harry’s Place:-

In today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Conservative Party Leader David Cameron challenged Prime Minister Gordon Brown on the findings of the Centre for Social Cohesion’s (CSC) latest report, Hizb ut-Tahrir: Ideology and Strategy.

Cameron, who has promised to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), asked the Prime Minister why the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation (ISF), a charity run by HT members that manages two primary schools and a nursery in London, has received over £113,000 in government grants – a fact revealed by the CSC in the Sunday Telegraph last month. Following the revelations, Haringey Council suspended ISF’s funding.

As the CSC report shows, HT is a revolutionary Islamist group that supports violent jihad and is using front groups to embed its divisive ideology into local communities. Cameron stated today that HT is a group that says “Jews should be killed wherever you find them”.

Cameron added that the Opposition has been voicing its concern over the ISF to the Prime Minister for the past month and demanded to know again why HT has still not been banned. Furthermore, since the CSC’s publication the Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Michael Gove MP, has written to Ed Balls MP, Secretary of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), asking why the ISF had received public money.

Read More

And the second from Cranmer:-

Cranmer has written about Hizb-ut-Tahrir before: here, here and here.

They are not very nice.

Not nice at all.

So it comes as something of a surprise (or perhaps not) to learn that this amoral, deficient, anti-Christian Labour government are subsidising a terrorist-supporting, kuffar-hating, strife-inducing Islamic agenda for world domination.

His Grace has been sent a very interesting letter by the Conservative Party (at last, they are trusting him with their intelligence).

It was sent from the Michael Gove MP to Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.

It concerns the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation, which runs an independent school in Slough and an independent school and nursery in Haringey. The foundation allegedly has strong links to Hizb ut-Tahrir. Mr Gove says he believes that the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation not only has very strong links to Hizb ut-Tahrir, but is in fact a front for its political activity. He says:

‘I believe that the Foundation’s schools are teaching an educational philosophy that is incompatible with Britain’s liberal democratic values. Furthermore I am greatly concerned the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation is in receipt of public money to further radical Islamist aims despite appearing not to meet basic DCSF criteria.’

Most concerningly, the headmistress of the Slough school, Farah Ahmed, is a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir and has written for its journal attacking the ‘corrupt Western concepts of materialism and freedom’.

When Mr Gove asked the DCSF what had be done to ensure the senior staff at the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation schools were suitable people to be teaching children, they responded that all school staff ‘had undergone a CRB check’.

It beggars belief that even this Labour government believes that a CRB check would ascertain whether or not a teacher or school leader is a political extremist.

Hizb ut-Tahrir, whose supporters and members run the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation and teach in its schools, defines Israel as an enemy state and sanctions the killing of Israeli Jews. The party’s ideology is therefore inherently anti-Semitic.

Read More

The following excerpt is taken from The Gates of Vienna blog

“One should be aware of the historical fact that Christians were the clear majority in many regions of the Middle East prior to Mohammed. And these majorities are now all but extinct.”

by Baron Bodissey

Our Austrian correspondent ESW has translated excerpts from an article by Andreas Unterberger about the current level of persecution suffered by Christians, especially in Muslim-majority countries. It is followed by a report about a panel discussion on the same topic hosted by Akademikerbund and the Political Academy.

Christians, Muslims, and Silence
by Andreas Unterberger

Seldom have I experienced such a heavily attended event with such crowds of people, such emotion, such dismay. The evening’s topic: contemporary Christian persecution which has reached daunting dimensions and which, according to reliable sources and studies, has reached the highest levels in history, and which is ignored to an extent that can probably be only fathomed with the help of psychiatric analysis.

Only a few dry facts first: From China to South America, 230 million Christians are currently being persecuted for politically, culturally, or religiously motivated reasons. Last year, at least 500 Christians were killed in India during religious clashes. In North Korea, Christians have no legal protection at all and can be killed on the spot.

However, the worst situation for Christians can be found in Islamic countries. More than half of the 80,000 Iraqi Christians have fled Iraq due to countless targeted terrorist attacks. Only in the Kurdish part of Iraq can they live in relative safety. In Egypt a few media reports on the swine flu were sufficient for pogroms against the pork-eating Copts. Athanasios Heinein, the head of the exiled Coptic church in Greece calls this “cultural genocide”.

Even more harrowing are the individual reports. For example, the report about an abducted priest from Mosul for whom the parish had paid ransom, and who was still beheaded and returned mutilated. Or a report about a recent case of six male members of a Christian family who have been sentenced to death. Or another report of the abduction of Christian girls who are forcefully married and converted to Islam.

Most harrowing of all is what is happening in Europe: The total and utter ignorance of these persecutions against Christians. As soon the topic is mentioned, politicians and some pastors stiffen with fear: “Please do not say anything that could provoke the Islamic Faith Community. In any case, we all believe in Abraham.”

It is difficult to remain calm. The main accusation against Islam is the following: Not a single Islamic country allows freedom of belief, with the exception of the Islamic belief. Nine countries employ the death penalty for apostasy. However, if one asks — supposedly liberal — representatives of the Islamic Faith community, whether in the 21st century one should be able to choose one’s religion, one gets many words but no answers. Nobody says, “Yes, this is a [human] right, and condemn government restrictions.” The honest ones say, “No, the Quran forbids apostasy.”

This means that we have already said all there is to say about Muslim-Christian dialogues. Islam is a religion of direct power conquest, of total combination of state and religion, of combat readiness, which does not allow for one millimeter of tolerance or freedom. All this is proven by hundreds of unvarnished citations, which in turn no Muslim denies.

Does all this mean that Christianity with all its soft values like charity will disappear in the long run? Not necessarily. History has shown that Christianity has often come back even stronger after totally hopeless positions due to outward attacks or inner squalor. The laicist and anti-religious element is probably even more endangered, which still vehemently prepares its own demise with attacks against the relatively harmless cross in classrooms or with the potentially society-destroying legality of homosexual partnerships.

Read Entire Article

Still don’t want to vote for them, I feel that in the end the two ‘main’ politcical parties are pretty much the same under the surface.

The Christian Institute

The Conservative Party has signalled that it will continue to support the institution of marriage by not giving cohabiting couples the same rights as married couples.

A source close to David Cameron distanced the Party from comments made earlier this week by Henry Bellingham, the Tories Shadow Justice Minister, who voiced his support for increasing the rights of cohabiting couples.

Reacting to Mr Bellingham’s comments, the source said: “This is not the direction we are moving in”.

He added: “Henry spoke out of turn.”

The idea of giving live-in couples the same rights as married couples sparked a backlash from traditionalists.

David Willetts MP, who is in charge of family policy for the Tories, said: “We are conducting a review of family law and no decisions have been taken.”

A shadow minister on the traditional wing of the Tory Party said: “This cuts across everything David Cameron has been saying about putting marriage back at the heart of society.”

In October the Law Commission proposed that partners who have lived together for five years should have the same legal rights as a husband or wife.

The Commission also said that those who have lived together for between two and five years should be entitled to half of the settlement that a spouse would receive in the event of a split.

Labour is expected to bring in the proposals if it wins a fourth term in office.

Last week Baroness Deech attacked the plans labelling them a “windfall for lawyers but for no one else except the gold digger”.

Speaking in her capacity as Professor of Law at Gresham College Baroness Deech said that in America there had been “a retreat from legal recognition of cohabitation as the values of marriage have become recognised once more”.

This makes for depressing reading from the Jerusalem Post:-

The educational content of the Hamas children’s Web site Al-Fateh (The Conqueror) is not a form of pedagogy, but an “indoctrination to suicide bombing,” said David Oman, the director of communications for the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE) on Tuesday at a press conference at the Regent Hotel.

Gert Weisskirchen, a former Social Democratic Party MP and chairman of the OSCE on combating anti-Semitism between 2004-2008, introduced the IMPACT-SE study, and said that “there is a chance to prevent the indoctrination of children and youngsters in Germany and all over Europe.”

The study “Al-Fateh – The Hamas Web Magazine for Children: Indoctrination to Jihad, Annihilation and Self-Destruction” took place from September 2002 to April of this year.

Oman cited the “friends of Al-Fateh” entry of the young German-Palestinian child Muhammad Warad as growing evidence of the spread of radical, anti-Western Hamas ideology.

The Hamas Web site, according to the IMPACT-SE study, serves to demonize Israel through the use of anti-Semitic cartoons and tries to strip the country of its right to exist.

The promotion of violence is a standard theme of Al-Fateh. A telling example, said Oman, is the glorification of female suicide bomber Zeynab Abu Salam, who murdered two Jerusalem police officers in 2004.

Al-Fateh claims to receive millions of visitors, according to Oman. He said the Al-Fateh server, which has been tracked to Russia and Malaysia, frequently relocates its operation to prevent closure. The United Kingdom is listed as the site’s current host.

Read Entire Article

I guess the American Humanist Association is hoping for a better run than their British Humanist cousins humiliating failure here in the UK, with their recent campaign

God has a wonderful sense of humour!

Previous posts:-

Atheist Humanist advertising campaign has unknowingly used photographs of the children of two evangelical Christians. The poster which can be seen on billboards across the UK shows two youngsters with the slogan ‘Don’t Label Me’.

Deceptive Manipulative Propagandist Activist Atheists are at it Again – Unbeknownst to them: their New Ads Compliment Christianity

By Jennifer Riley | Christian Post Reporter

The first of five U.S. cities will be hit by a new atheist holiday ad campaign this Thanksgiving weekend.

Washington, D.C., residents can expect to see ads proclaiming, “No God?…No Problem!” inside buses, rail cars and on the side or tail of buses by week’s end. The campaign, sponsored by the American Humanist Association, will then target the transit systems of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

According to AHA, the holiday ad campaign is the first by a humanist group to go nationwide.

“We’re hoping this campaign will build awareness about the humanist movement and our ethical life philosophy – particularly among the ‘nones:’ the rapidly growing percentage of people who claim no religion,” said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of AHA.

Speckhardt went on to contend that religion does not have a monopoly on morality and that people can be good without a belief in God.

“We want to change the way people think and talk about nontheists, and to pave the way for acceptance of humanism as a valid and positive philosophy of life,” he said.

The humanist ad campaign this year, which features smiling people in Santa hats, follows a similar campaign that the Association ran last year in the nation’s capital. Last Christmas season, the ads read, “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.”

In response, a Catholic-based organization in Maryland, The Center for Family Development, had countered the atheist campaign with pro-God ads. The pro-God ads read: “Why believe? Because I created you and I love you, for goodness’ sake – GOD.”

The upcoming AHA campaign in Washington, D.C., comes at the heels of a new atheist campaign in the United Kingdom. The British Humanist Association launched its latest ad on Nov. 20 that coincided with Universal Children’s Day. The slogan reads, “Please don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself.”

BHA is well known for its high profile atheist bus campaign launched earlier this year that read, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

Recently in the United States, several atheist groups have also launched transit and billboard ad campaigns. Among the campaigns include the United Coalition of Reason’s “A million New Yorkers are good without God” in New York; the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s “Beware of Dogma” in Idaho; and Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign’s “In the beginning, man created God” in Chicago.

According to the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, released in March this year, the percentage of people who claim no religion has nearly doubled since 1990. Those claiming no religion jumped from 8.2 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008.

Great post from Cranmers Curate today (as usual) that I am cross-posting:-

Cranmer’s Curate commends this guest post by Richard Symonds to the youth group:

70 years ago, Moral Philosopher Dr CEM Joad (1891-1953) pleaded with his colleagues to mend their newly-found philosophical ways, predicting that failure to do so would render philosophy increasingly irrelevant – and increasingly vulnerable to totalitarian thought.

CEMJ’s warning ‘fell on deaf ears’ in his time – and continues to do so….except for a few readers of Cambridge University’s Alumni Magazine (“Essay : In Defence Of Moral Philosophy” by Professor Simon Blackburn – Michaelmas 2009 Edition).

The totalitarianism, which George Orwell – a contemporary of Joad – was warning against in 1949, was already prevalent within many social and economic policies of the time – borne primarily from the ‘false teachers’ of philosophical Relativism (eg The Vienna Circle). Times have not changed.

CEMJ, as a Moral Philosopher, was warning against Moral Relativism 9 years earlier:

In 1940, Joad warned his profession of the dangers in rejecting its ‘Classical’ tradition (eg Plato’s ‘Forms’ of Truth, Beauty & Goodness), and pleaded for a return to that tradition (“Appeal To Philosophers”, University of London Aristotelian Society – XL 1940).

Dr. CEM Joad continued to warn – but nobody was listening….except a few debaters at Oxford University:

In June 1950, 5 months after Orwell’s death (and 3 years before his own), Cyril Joad won an Oxford Union Debate : “That This House Regrets The Influence Exercised By The U.S. As The Dominant Power Among The Democratic Nations” – resulting in Randolph Churchill accusing him of being a “Third Class Socrates”.

‘Professor’ Joad, also a celebrity wartime BBC Brains Trust panellist, was treated with ridicule, contempt and disdain by most professional philosophers at the time – especially Bertrand Russell – and his warnings were ignored and dismissed within his profession, and beyond – and remain so.

CEMJ was a Moral Realist – in direct opposition to Moral Relativists – and later developed his “Transcendence-Immanence” ideas in his last book: “Recovery of Belief – A Restatement of Christian Philosophy” (Faber & Faber 1952)

Today, we can’t say we were not warned of this ‘totalitarian’ danger – now more prevalent than ever – and we can’t say moral philosophy (& philosophers) have had nothing to say in dealing with the problems which continue to haunt us.

Joad is still ‘shouting from the rooftops’ – through his many books – but we need to understand (and deal with) the unpalatable reasons why such clear warnings are still ‘falling on deaf ears’.

A greater understanding of Moral Philosophy – especially in the work of CEM Joad – will be a critical pre-condition for Humanity’s survival in the early 21st century.

Richard W. Symonds is a member of the International Society For Philosophers ( www.isfp.co.uk) and author of “Mega Theory & The Moral Instinct”. He can be contacted by email : richardsy5@aol.com or at his website: Gatwick City of Ideas