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About Religion News Blog
More articles on this topic: Uncategorized» About Religion News Blog (RNB)
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Who Uses RNB?
In short: RNB is a service that alerts Christian apologetics- and counter-cult professionals – as well as other academic and professional communities – to relevant religion-, apologetics-, human rights-, and ethics news from around the world.
This non-profit service is provided as a research resource, and is intended for educational purposes only.
About Media Reports
Sociologist Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, in an essay critical of such ‘collaborationism,’ writes:
Media reporting in general is quite limited, but investigative reporting by major media, when time and effort are put in, and wire-service reports, are worth at least taking seriously. There are sometimes real errors in the media, but this happens in academic works too.
Reading the scholarly literature, with a few notable and commendable exceptions, does not result in a better understanding of what the Branch Davidians at Waco were all about. The most basic human questions are left unanswered. Newsweek reported quite accurately on who David Koresh really was, and at the same time was severely critical of U.S. government authorities and their outrageous mishandling of the case.
If you were just to rely on Newsweek to understand what happened at Waco, you would reach the conclusion that a group of deranged victims, led by a manipulative madman, was being decimated by superior federal firepower in a senseless and tragic confrontation ignited by the illegal acts of some group members.
Would you miss out on some fine points of scholarly analysis? Not if such analysis consisted of a scholarly defence of indefensible behavior. One way of looking at the Mt. Carmel tragedy is by comparing it to the many tragic confrontations between deranged individuals and insensitive or unaware members of police forces around the world.
The only acceptable defence for David Koresh may be the insanity defence, and this is something you will gather soon enough from the media, which have proven themselves just as accurate in the cases of Krishna Venta, Benjamin Purnell, Aum Shinrikyo, the People’s Temple, the Solar Temple, and Heaven’s Gate.
As we have demonstrated in the case of the Branch Davidians and Aum Shinrikyo, sensational media reports never die, they don’t even fade away. They just come back as scholarly data, to be interpreted or euphemized.
Disclaimer
In other words, we hope this comes as no surprise but RNB, its publishers, associates, and web hosts are not responsible for the content of the news items quoted. Don’t shoot the messenger, and all that…
Opinions expressed by the publisher fall under the headings of privileged comment and free speech.
In order to facilitate research, RNB adds links to relevant research resources.
To aid researchers, headlines on this site are preceeded by a short subject header [bracketed like this]. Subjects headers are added by RNB, and are considered statements of opinion.
Religion News Blog is a service operated by Apologetics Index. The extended disclaimer posted at Apologetics Index also applies to Religion News Blog.
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We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any such (and all) material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information see: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.
If you wish to use any copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Copyright owners who object to having their material included in this archive may request, in writing, that it be removed. [Contact Form]
• Note: We always provide hyperlinks to the homepages of our sources. In this way we not only help build their link popularity, but we also encourage our readers to check into additional resources offered by these publications and authors.
Note that in some cases, only excerpts are quoted. In those cases, if you want to read the full stories, try searching the original publication’s archives – or contact the news source directly. The publication in question may also have additional material on the same subject.
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Religion News Blog (RNB), published by Apologetics Index, is provided free of charge as a research resource, intended for educational purposes only.
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About Religion News Blog
Religion News Blog (RNB), published by Apologetics Index, highlights news items and other resources on world religions, cults, religious sects, alternative religions and related issues. RNB's non-profit news clipping service is used by - among others - Christian apologists, countercult professionals, anticult organizations, cult experts, teachers, religion professionals, reporters and other researchers.
