St. Augustine Godless Billboard Damaged

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. -- A billboard on U.S. 1 in St. Augustine bearing the message, "Don't Believe in God? You Are Not Alone," has suffered major damage.

The billboard, located about 6 miles north of State Road 16 and visible to southbound traffic, raised controversy when it first appeared March 29. Now those behind that message believe vandalism may have been involved.

"We can't say for sure, but it looks like somebody with a truck could have pulled at the billboard structure from behind in an effort to bring it down," said Stephen Peek, coordinator of the Northeast Florida Coalition of Reason, the sponsor of the billboard, in a news release Tuesday. "Then again, perhaps some heavy object flying off a passing train could have struck it in front, although we don't see any such object nearby and the billboard vinyl isn't torn."

The owner of the billboard structure, CBS Outdoor, was notified of the damage Tuesday morning by the United Coalition of Reason, which is the national organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., that contracted for the billboard on the local coalition's behalf.

"We wanted to first get photo verification of the situation before making our report," said Fred Edwords, national director of the United Coalition of Reason, in the news release. "And from the photos, the damage appears significant, too great to be weather related, especially given recent good weather and the good condition of the surrounding trees. On the other hand, the remote location of this billboard adds to the probability of vandalism. But only an on-site investigation by the billboard owner has any chance of solving the mystery."

A few billboards and bus advertisements paid for by the national organization have been vandalized in the recent past, specifically, three billboards in Sacramento, Calif., and three bus ads in Detroit, Mich.

"But these are only rare instances during a national campaign that has spanned 26 cities in 14 months," Edwords said.

The St. Augustine billboard was put up around the same time as an identical one in Orange Park near Jacksonville, also sponsored by the Northeast Florida Coalition of Reason. The two together cost $2,300, paid by the United Coalition of Reason.

"Our goal has been to reach out to those who already agree with us so they don't feel isolated," Peek said. "So if this damage turns out to be vandalism, it will only increase our conviction as to how necessary our message is."

Holy Ghost Hokey Pokey

The Hokey Pokey.

...Really people, this is what it has come to.

Philosopher: Why We Should Ditch Religion

(CNN) -- For the world to tackle truly important problems, people have to stop looking to religion to guide their moral compasses, the philosopher Sam Harris told CNN.

"We should be talking about real problems, like nuclear proliferation and genocide and poverty and the crisis in education," Harris said in a recent interview at the TED Conference in Long Beach, California. TED is a nonprofit group dedicated to "ideas worth spreading."

"These are issues which tremendous swings in human well-being depend on. And it's not at the center of our moral concern."

Religion causes people to fixate on issues of less moral importance, said Harris, a well-known secularist, philosopher and neuroscientist who is the author of the books "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation."

"Religion has convinced us that there's something else entirely other than concerns about suffering. There's concerns about what God wants, there's concerns about what's going to happen in the afterlife," he said.

"And, therefore, we talk about things like gay marriage as if it's the greatest problem of the 21st century. We even have a liberal president who ostensibly is against gay marriage because his faith tells him it's an abomination.

"It's completely insane."

Harris also said people should not be afraid to declare that certain acts are right and others are wrong. A person who would spill battery acid on a girl for trying to learn to read, for instance, he said, is objectively wrong by scientific standards.

"It's not our job to not judge it and say, 'Well, to each his own. Everyone has to work out their own strategy for human fulfillment.' That's just not true," he said.

"There's people who are wrong about human fulfillment."

Harris placed no faith in the idea that Muslims and Christians will be able to put their differences aside and cooperate on global issues.

"There's no way to reconcile Islam with Christianity," he said. "This difference of opinion admits of compromise as much as a coin toss does."

Iran Uses 'Enemies Of God' Charge On Protesters

(CNN) -- Iran hanged two men at the end of January -- the first political prisoners known to be executed in Iran since the demonstrations protesting the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to Amnesty International.

It's still not entirely clear what Arash Rahmanipour and Mohammad Reza Ali-Zamani's crime was. Rahmanipour's lawyer said he was already in jail on election day in June 2009, so he couldn't have been involved in the post-election uprising, she said.

But whatever their earthly crimes were, the two men executed last month were also accused of another offense far more serious than simply protesting against a government.

They were convicted of being "mohareb," enemies of God.

That is the worst possible crime in Shiite Muslim law, according to Abbas Milani, the director of Iranian studies at Stanford University.

The legal implications are clear, he said.

"A mohareb, according to Shiite law, is executed," he said.

That the regime is labeling its opponents enemies of God is a sign of how rattled it is by the protests, he said.

"They were completely caught off guard by the ferocity and extent of the opposition and they pulled out all the stops," he said.

Traditional accusations did not succeed in intimidating the protesters, he said.

"They accused them of working in cahoots with the United States and Israel. When it didn't work, they said you are mohareb," he said.

Legally, there's nowhere for the government to escalate from here, he added.

"I can't imagine them upping the legal ante," he said. "What you can do is increase the number of people they are executing in an in-your-face manner to bring terror to the people."

In fact, at least one other person is on death row for being a mohareb, according to the Tehran Judiciary as quoted by the semi-official Iran Students News Agency.

Labeling opponents of the government "enemies of God" is a relatively new tactic, said Iranian journalist Amir Taheri, who argued that religious tolerance was more traditionally Iranian.

"It was not like that the beginning of the revolution. The revolution was an Islamic revolution but they did not try to give a religious aspect," he told CNN's Hala Gorani.

"Now unfortunately they are giving a very dangerous and arguably un-Iranian religious aspect to it by hating the Jews, hating the Baha'is, [using] anti-Christian propaganda, executing or even murdering some Sunni Muslim preachers," said Taheri, who fled Iran after the revolution.

The religious intolerance "is really completely new and this is one of the ugliest aspects" of the current regime, he said.

Milani said that even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic regime, did not accuse his opponents of being enemies of God.

"In the early days of the revolution, Khomeini threatened to declare these people as mohareb, but I don't remember them ever passing a law that says if you go out and demonstrate, you are a mohareb," Milani said.

Khomeini leveled a different charge at his opponents, calling them "mofsed fel-Arz," or he who brings corruption, Milani said.

The charge was "introduced by Khomeini, and they killed thousands of people, but at that time even Khomeini was averse" to describing his opponents as mohareb, he said.

Using it now implicitly "beatifies Khomeini," Milani said. "They are making him a god."

It also could be a sign of panic on the part of the authorities, he said.

"It takes a lot of ... political insecurity to say if you don't do something I tell you to do, you are an enemy of God," he said.

Pat Robertson Says Haiti Paying For 'Pact To The Devil'

(CNN) -- Pat Robertson, the evangelical Christian who once suggested God was punishing Americans with Hurricane Katrina, says a "pact to the devil" brought on the devastating earthquake in Haiti.

Officials fear more than 100,000 people have died as a result of Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti.

Robertson, the host of the "700 Club," blamed the tragedy on something that "happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it."

The Haitians "were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever," Robertson said on his broadcast Wednesday. "And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.' True story. And so, the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' "

Native Haitians defeated French colonists in 1804 and declared independence.

"You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other." Robertson has previously linked natural disasters and terrorist attacks to legalized abortion in the United States. Soon after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, killing more than 1,800 and wreaking unprecedented devastation on New Orleans, Louisiana, Robertson weighed in with his own theory.

"We have killed over 40 million unborn babies in America," Robertson said on his September 12, 2005, broadcast of "700 Club."

"I was reading, yesterday, a book that was very interesting about what God has to say in the Old Testament about those who shed innocent blood. And he [the author] used the term that those who do this, 'the land will vomit you out.' ... But have we found we are unable somehow to defend ourselves against some of the attacks that are coming against us, either by terrorists or now by natural disaster? Could they be connected in some way?"

4-Year-Old Hit By Bullet At Church Dies

DECATUR, Ga. -- A 4-year-old boy who was struck by a stray bullet while at church died Friday.

The incident happened around midnight Friday during a New Year’s Eve watch service at the Covington Drive Church Of God of Prophecy in Decatur.

It was not immediately clear who fired the shot that came through the roof of the church and struck the child, who was identified as Marquel Peters.

"It's hard. He was my only child. He was only 4. He was a smart little boy, he was so sweet," said his mother, Nathalee Peters.

She said Friday night that she still can’t believe it happened.

“I heard a little sound like a ‘pink.’ I heard him scream a little bit, so I looked around to hand him the game and that's when I saw the blood,” she said. "I tried to pick him up and then, he was losing consciousness and he was just breaking and going down. It was so hard."

DeKalb County police said they thought at first that debris from the roof fell and hit Marquel.

But the medical examiner found the bullet in the boy’s head when he performed the autopsy.

Nathalee Peters wants the person who fired the gun to turn himself in.

"I want to say to the person responsible for this please come forward or whoever out there know something about who did this to my son, please come forward and say something. We need justice," she said.

Religious Hatred Simmers In Terror Suspect's Homeland

(CNN) -- Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab wouldn't have to go to an al Qaeda training camp in Yemen to learn how to hate.

He had plenty of examples in his own country.

AbdulMutallab is the 23-year-old Nigerian being held for allegedly trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day. While much attention has focused on his privileged background, less has been said about the religious conflict in his homeland.

Christians and Muslims have been killing each other in Nigeria for much of AbdulMutallab's lifetime. At least 10,000 Nigerians have died during Christian-Muslim riots and ethnic violence during the past decade.

The most populous country in Africa, Nigeria is almost evenly divided between Muslims and Christians. It has become the focal point of Christian and Muslim groups -- in Nigeria and abroad, says Eliza Griswold, who has spent the last five years traveling to Nigeria to examine the causes of religious violence.

"Nigeria has become a battleground state for Christians and Muslims around the world who see themselves involved in a numbers game," says Griswold, author of "The Tenth Parallel," an upcoming book that explores the tension between Christians and Muslims just north of the equator in Africa and Asia.

"Any Christian or Muslim who has the point of view that numbers matter has a stake in Nigeria," she says.

The divisions between Christianity and Islam are more than symbolic in Nigeria. There's a geographic boundary: Nigerian Muslims tend to live in north, while Christians live in the south, Griswold says.

Many Nigerian Muslims see themselves as standing at the southern tip of the Islamic world, Griswold says. To the immediate south lie many African nations that tend to embrace Christianity.

"There is this attitude that Islam is under siege by the Christian West and, by proxy, Nigerian Christians," Griswold says. "There is this sense among some devoted Muslims in the north that we need to be part of the larger Islamic community, and we need to prove that we belong."

Nigeria's bloody religious history

That tension can cut both ways. Talk to some Nigerian Christians and one can hear the same concern as Nigerian Muslims: We are under attack; we have to preserve our autonomy.

Gbenga Akinbola, rector of the Mount Zion Anglican Church in Chicago, Illinois, has experienced religious tension in Nigeria. He led a congregation there only four years ago as a priest in the Nigerian Anglican Church.

He says Nigerian Muslims once tried to officially declare Nigeria a Muslim state and force some Christians in the north to adopt Islamic customs.

Both Christians and Muslims feel that they represent the one true God and are obligated to convert others, Akinbola says.

"They are doing what the leaders of both of these groups tell them to," he says. "Christians preach to Muslims, and Muslims try to do the same. For Christians, Jesus Christ has told us to go out and preach."

Sometimes, people don't want to be converted. And at a time when many young Nigerians are unemployed and looking for scapegoats, violence can easily follow, some Nigerians say.

In November 2008, at least 700 Nigerians died in Christian-Muslim riots that followed a disputed local election, Human Rights Watch reported. Two years earlier, the Nigerian army was mobilized to halt similar rioting after a Danish newspaper published a cartoon that depicted Mohammed, the founder of Islam, in a caricature, according to CNN reports.

The event that arguably attracted the most attention in the West took place in 2002 when the Miss World Pageant was relocated from Nigeria after Christian-Muslim riots killed 200 people.

Violence begets more violence, Akinbola says.

"When they kill Christians in the north, Christians in the south will retaliate against Muslims," he says.

He adds that the tensions between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria date back to British colonial rule. He says the British traditionally awarded political leadership positions to members of the Muslim majority in the north.

British colonial rule ended with Nigeria's independence in 1960. But some Nigerian Muslims still feel as if they are entitled to rule Nigeria, he says.

"If you see a license plate in one of the northern states, you'll often see an inscription that reads 'Born to rule,' '' Akinbola says.

Another side of Nigeria's religious story

The ferocity of religious disagreement is also fanned by unscrupulous political leaders, says Mohammed Ladan, a Nigerian Muslim who now works as a pharmacist in Atlanta, Georgia.

"Some of the politicians engineer this violence for their own political end," Ladan says. "If they can play Christians against Muslims, it can take attention away from the real problems of society."

Ladan says he never felt persecuted by Christians while growing up in northern Nigeria. Like several other Nigerians interviewed, he says it would be simplistic to say most Nigerian Christians and Muslims are engaged in a permanent civil war.

Several Nigerians told stories of having friends and even siblings of another faith.

"My wife is a Christian. Some of my best friends are Christians," he says. "I can sing Christian hymns because I've been to church with my wife and friends, and they come to my Muslim celebrations."

Other Muslims say the religious violence is a symptom of a deeper problem in Nigeria: widespread poverty and corruption.

Saratu Abiola is a Nigerian who shares some of the same background with AbdulMutallab, the suspected terrorist. She is also 23 and a Muslim who left Nigeria to attend an international boarding school.

Abiola, a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says many Nigerians turn to religion because they don't think they can rely on the state. Though the country is rich with oil wealth, the cities are full of beggars and prostitutes -- it's common to see police officers brazenly demanding money at checkpoints, she says.

"People here get shocked by scandal," Abiola says of America. In Nigeria, "we just shrug our shoulders and drink our coffee. We expect the worst conduct from our high officials."

The corruption and poverty are so embedded that it even disturbs those few Nigerians who can avoid the problems, Abiola says.

"There's a real sense of despair, even among the ones who are better off," Abiola says. "They see what is going on, and they wonder: What on earth can you do to fix this?"

Faith becomes the fix for many Nigerians, she says.

"They feel wronged," says Abiola, who now lives in Washington. "They feel like the country has passed them by. When people don't have much, religion becomes more important."

Despite the country's history of religious violence, Abiola says she's still surprised that a young Nigerian Muslim would be accused of trying to commit mass murder against American citizens.

Many Nigerian youths love pop culture in America and adopt Western ways and watch Western movies, she says.

"We have MTV in Africa," she says. "Every year, we get at least five to 15 U.S. pop stars who come to Nigeria."

She says many young Nigerians learn to blend their Nigerian identity and their religious values with their love of pop culture in the West.

"For a lot of us, it doesn't present a burden -- we don't feel as if we have to choose between the West and the East," she says.

Griswold, the author who just spent five years in Nigeria, says events in Nigeria prove how small the world has become.

"When we, a thousand miles away, debate over whether we should be in Afghanistan or draw a cartoon, the people in Nigeria take up arms and fight it out," she says.

"They end up bearing the brunt of our religious debates in a very visceral way."