Children of the Red King

Children of the Red King is a series of eight children's fantasy school and adventure novels by the British author Jenny Nimmo, first published by Egmont 2002 to 2009. It is sometimes called the "Charlie Bone series" after its main character. A series of five books was announced in advance, completed in 2006, and sometimes the books were called the "Red King Quintet" until its continuation. A prequel is in progress, Chronicles of the Red King, whose second volume was published April 2012. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database catalogues the whole as the "Charlie Bone Universe" series. Contents: Children of the Red King comprises eight novels. All were first published by Egmont Books with cover art by David Wyatt. The first two were released in trade paperback editions, the others in hardcover. - Midnight for Charlie Bone (January 2002) - The Time Twister (October 2002) - The Blue Boa (April 2004) - The Castle of Mirrors (June 2005) - Charlie Bone and the Hidden King (June 2006) - Charlie Bone and the Wilderness Wolf (June 2007) - Charlie Bone and the Shadow of Badlock (September 2008) - Charlie Bone and the Red Knight (October 2009) In the United States, the books were released with the following titles (variants shown by bold type): - Midnight for Charlie Bone (March 2003) - Charlie Bone and the Time Twister (September 2003) - Charlie Bone and the Invisible Boy (July 2004) - Charlie Bone and the Castle of Mirrors (July 2005) - Charlie Bone and the Hidden King (May 2006) - Charlie Bone and the Beast (May 2007) - Charlie Bone and the Shadow (September 2008) - Charlie Bone and the Red Knight (May 2010) Plot summaries- Midnight for Charlie Bone: In the first novel, 10-year-old Charlie Bone discovers that he has special powers. After accidentally encountering a photograph of a missing baby, Charlie begins to hear the voices of people in photographs. He discovers that he is a descendant of the Red King, an ancient magician. Many of the Red King's descendants are endowed with magical powers. His cruel and uncaring grandmother Bone and her three evil sisters send him to Bloor's Academy, where many endowed children study. With the help of a mysterious man named Mr. Onimous and his magical cats, Charlie returns the photograph of the missing baby to its rightful owner, a bookstore owner named Julia Ingledew. Julia asks Charlie to find her missing Emma, who was traded for a mysterious briefcase by her brother-in-law. Emma, now 10, is kept at Bloor's Academy and trapped under hypnosis by an endowed student, Manfred Bloor. With the help of Charlie's friend Benjamin and the loyal dog Runner Bean, as well as some of his family members, Charlie rescues Emma and discovers that his father is still alive, but also hypnotized by Manfred. The Time Twister (Charlie Bone and the Time Twister in the U.S.): In 1916, Charlie's great-great-uncle, Henry Yewbeam, is tricked into looking into the Time Twister while staying with his jealous cousin, Ezekiel Bloor. The Time Twister takes Henry from 1916 to the present day without ageing him. Charlie, at Bloor's Academy, witnesses his appearance and takes him to Mr. Pilgrim's room. However, the dog Blessed also sees this, and tells Billy Raven, an orphan who can communicate with animals and is acting as a spy for Ezekiel in return for the chance to be adopted. Ezekiel orders Billy to bring Henry to him. At midnight, Charlie goes down to the kitchens to find Cook, but comes across Henry directly. Henry says that he had met a "small lady in black", who had given him tea and sweets. It turns out the lady in black is Manfred Bloor's mother, who is cursed and can never leave the castle. Together they devise a plan: Henry will go in one of the canteen's freezers until the temperature is the same as winter in 1916, then look at the Time Twister and be transported back; Charlie will keep checking that he's still breathing. However, when they put their plan into action, the freezer door freezes shut. Hearing Charlie shout out, Cook comes running, and manages to heave the door open, revealing Henry who has turned blue and fainted of hypothermia. They take him back to Cook's top-secret quarters, where the Flames help revive him. Charlie then returns to his dormitory, with the help of a magical torch that Cook gives him which shows up details that aren't usually visible. Cook threatens Blessed not to tell Billy about her secret home or Henry. On his return to his dormitory, Charlie finds Billy, who has apparently just been bribed with cocoa. Charlie and his friends devise a plan to help Manfred's mother. She escapes through the Time Twister, while Charlie and Uncle Paton take Henry to live with his younger brother (and Paton's father), James, by the sea. The Blue Boa (Charlie Bone and the Invisible Boy in the U.S.): The group finds out about an invisible boy named Ollie Sparks, who has been put in his condition by a blue snake with feathers. They also find out that Mr. Boldova, an art teacher, is actually Ollie's brother, who is trying to save him. The group finds that a mysterious girl named Belle has come to the school. Belle is really Yolanda Yewbeam, who is a shape-shifter, and Charlie's great aunts' aunt. The Castle of Mirrors (Charlie Bone and the Castle of Mirrors in the U.S.): Billy Raven has been adopted by a mysterious and evil couple called the de Grays. The de Grays are endowed and have created a force field to trap him on the weekends to prevent him escaping. A distant relative of Billy's tries to adopt him, but ends up sacrificing himself to save Charlie's Uncle Paton. Manfred and Ezekiel brew trouble for all the endowed children. However, Ezekiel accidentally resurrects the Red King's wife Berenice, in the form of a white horse, when attempting to revive the King's evil son Borlath. Charlie Bone and the Hidden King: Charlie is going to Bloor's school on a mission, to find his dad. Unfortunately, 'the shadow' is let free, and it causes trouble everywhere. On top of that, someone bewitched Charlie's mother to forget about her life and true family. The shadow had cast a spell on her. At last, he discovers that his father is Mr.Pilgrim! Charlie Bone and the Wilderness Wolf(Charlie Bone and the Beast in the U.S.): Charlie Bone and his Uncle Paton are visiting Charlie's old house while his parents are out whale watching (on their second honeymoon). While there he finds that his whole upstairs floor area was ripped up and they find that there were people inside the house earlier. When Charlie goes to Bloor's Academy he finds a new boy is there that he has to guide around. His name is Dagbert Endless because his last names are "as endless as the seas". Dagbert's endowment is to drown other people, controlling water. Dagbert has to be around Charlie all the time, so he starts to drive his friends away by insulting them. Later Charlie finds out that his great Aunt Venetia is getting married to a man who has two young children. Meanwhile, there is a weird howling that the whole town could hear. The town decides to call it the "wilderness wolf" and thinks that it's dangerous. When Charlie goes home for the weekend his Uncle gets bitten by a creature outside their house. He claims that the things were definitely not a wolf as everyone else thought, but more of a human. When the town holds a meeting, Charlie's friend Benjamin proposes the idea that Charlie's classmate Asa Pike might be the creature since earlier he betrayed Manfred Bloor and helped Charlie get his father back. Charlie's great Aunt Venetia dropped her new children at Ingledew's bookshop. Little Eric was endowed, but Miranda was not. When Charlie goes back to Bloor's he is told by Billy Raven that the Wilderness Wolf is shouting "Help". When there is gunshots one night Billy tells Charlie that he heard it howl "Father". Later that week Charlie wakes up to his friend Naren sending the message goodbye. When he tried to talk back Dagbert sees the message and Charlie confronts him. While talking Dagbert experiences wild symptoms, such as glowing and pain, and he keeps telling Charlie to get his Sea Gold Creatures from under his pillow. When he gets better Dagbert explains how it is his birthday and how he is now more powerful than his father. When Charlie goes home for the weekend Benjamin explains his plan about Asa Pike and Charlie thinks that could be right. He decides that he has to help Asa because Asa risked everything to help him and his father. So he, Olivia, Benjamin and Runner Bean go into the forest looking for him. Instead they find Asa's mother as they realize that Asa's father was shot and was now dead. On their way across a dangerous metal bridge the water rises so high that Runner Bean was washed away. Charlie's wand (which was turned into a moth) ends up helping them from drowning and Charlie sees the Red King across the bridge. Benjamin goes off to find Runner Bean and Charlie and Olivia bring Mrs. Pike to the Pet's Cafe. There she explains her story of how she thought that Asa would be good at Bloors Academy with Manfred as his friend, but they explained how they took him away because of how he betrayed them. Charlie leaves and remembers that he has to pick up Billy's Rat from a Kettle store. When he gets there the lady gives him a strange kettle that gets warm when he was in danger. Charlie and Billy make a plan to go save Asa from under ground. When they go they see Asa in his beast form, but Charlie finds that Billy lost his endowment. They decide that he needs to change back into his human form before they can talk to him. When Billy uses his special candles and Charlie uses his wand (moth) Asa turns into his human form as they leave the area. They see the Red King and they agree that Asa should go with him. Asa thanks Charlie for helping him and leaves. Charlie Bone and the Shadow of Badlock(Charlie Bone and the Shadow in the U.S.): The enchanter Count Harken is back to take his revenge on the Red King's heirs, starting with Charlie Bone's family. Charlie's ancestors have been kidnapped and imprisoned in the dark, forbidding land of Badlock, and it's up to him to save them. Traveling through a painting to the terrifying countryside, Charlie and his best friend's dog, Runner Bean, take up the quest. However, when Runner Bean gets stuck in the painting, Charlie needs the help of his friends. Can they get past an army of trolls, rescue Runner Bean and Charlie's ancestors, and get out before it's too late, or will Count Harken finally succeed? Charlie Bone and the Red Knight: The evil Bloors are collecting even more powerful and magical allies. In the early proceedings, these allies are just sinister whispers and shadow but later on, these allies are daylight robbers and descendants of Count Harken. The cronies are taking over the city and driving everyone away. Charlie is determined to stop them. However, with the Pets Cafe closed, Billy trapped in Badlock, and Olivia "taken over," it looks like Charlie's only hope is the mysterious Red Knight. In the meantime, Charlie and his friends are searching for a will that reveals everything including who really owns Bloor's Academy. Paton believes the Raven family rightfully owns it which means Billy could inherit the academy if the will can be found. However, Charlie is in for a surprise when the will is revealed. The Red Knight is revealed to be none other than Lyell Bone himself, who wanted to watch his son near to him, but in a disguise. The will is hidden in the church where Lyell played, and the academy is owned by the Bones. Manfred and Ezekiel die in a freak accident, and Dr. Bloor moves away, (presumably to Paris, where his wife lives), along with all the evil people in the city. Bloor's becomes Bone Academy, and is proclaimed the happiest school in the city. Billy is adopted by Lyell and Amy, Paton and Julia marry, and they move together to the bookstore. The book (and series) ends when Billy whispers to Charlie at the Pet's Cafe, "Tancred and Emma are holding hands." Characters- Children of the Red King: -Charlie Bone is the protagonist of the series. Through his father, he is descended from the Red King and through his mother, from Mathonwy, a Welsh magician and friend of the Red King. Charlie can hear the voices of people in photographs and paintings. He can use his powers to talk to the people inside them, on some occasions he can take items from the paintings. -Idith and Inez Branko are telekinetic twins, distantly related to Zelda Dobinsky. Manfred Bloor is a hypnotist and is one of the main antagonists. He hypnotized Lyell Bone, causing Lyell to lose his memory. Toward the end of the series, Manfred's endowment changes and develops into that of his ancestor Borlath's, which is the production and control of fire. -Zelda Dobinski is descended from a long line of Polish magicians. Her endowment is telekinesis. She can move objects with her mind and is distantly related to Inez and Idith Branko. She leaves Bloor's Academy in the third book and goes to study Math in a university. -Dagbert Endless can control water and is a follower of the Bloors until the Eighth book. -Dorcas Loom can bewitch clothing. -Una Onimous, the niece of Orvil Onimous and Onoria Onimous, has the endowment of invisibility. -Asa Pike, a werewolf, can change his shape at dusk. He was Manfred's sidekick until book 5, when he helped Charlie and his friends by releasing the Red King. For this he was punished and later was rescued by Charlie Bone. -Naren Bloor, Bartholemew Bloor's daughter, can send shadow words over great distances. She had disappeared and Charlie Bone finds out she was on the sea when Lord Grimwald tried to drown his parents in the sea. -Billy Raven, an albino, has the ability to speak to animals. He is an orphan, and was briefly adopted in Book 4 by abusive parents. He is adopted by the Bones at the end of the final book. -Lysander Sage descended from an African wise man and can call up his spirit ancestors. Lysander is Tancred's best friend. Lysander has two sisters, Hortense and Alexandra, who are both unendowed. He inherited his ability from his mother, Jessamine Sage. Lysander's father is a powerful judge in the city. Lysander also is good friends with Charlie Bone. -Eric Shellhorn can bring any stone statue to life. He lives with his stepmother Venetia Yewbeam, because his sister (Miranda) and father (Arthur) escaped from the city. Venetia poisoned a shawl which stopped Eric's mother's heart, then made Arthur marry her. -Gabriel Silk can feel scenes and emotions through the clothing of others. He comes from a long line of psychics. Joshua Tilpin can control magnetism and descended from Lilith, the Red King's oldest daughter, and Harken, the evil enchanter who married her. -Emma Tolly can turn into birds and fly, and is an excellent artist specializing in drawing birds. She was hypnotized by Manfred Bloor for eight years and renamed Emilia Moon. Charlie and his friends rescue her in the first book. She lives with her aunt, Julia Ingledew, because her parents died and her Dad made the mistake of giving her to the Bloors. She saved Tancred from drowning and started dating Tancred at the end of the last book. -Tancred Torsson is a storm-bringer. His Scandinavian ancestor was named after the thunder god, Thor. Tancred can summon wind, thunder, snow, rain, and lightning. He is also a very dear friend of Lysander Sage. Tancred was also almost drowned by Dagbert Endless in the seventh book. -Olivia Vertigo is an illusionist, but she does not discover her endowment until the fourth book. She is constantly changing her appearance, especially her hair color. Other endowed characters: -Alice Angel is a witch and godmother to Olivia Vertigo. Her opposite is Titania Tilpin. She took care of Mr. Crowquill (Billy Raven's guardian) until he died saving Charlie's uncle Paton. -Cook (Treasure) is the 'lodestone' at Bloor's. She keeps the balance between different factions of the Red King's descendants. She is currently hiding from Lord Grimwald, who she refused to marry. Cook is endowed with tranquility. She lives in a series of underground rooms in her kitchen. -Dr. Saltweather is immune to water. He becomes headmaster to Bone Academy (renamed after the Bloors left). -Titania Tilpin, mother of Joshua Tilpin and also known as Miss Chrystal, is a witch. She eventually leaves the Academy but continues working with the Bloors. Her opposite is Alice Angel. -Mr. Torsson is a very powerful stormbringer like his son, Tancred. Señor Alvaro has the power to make people believe things with images he puts in their minds. -Eustacia Yewbeam is a clairvoyant. She is the second of Charlie's great-aunts. She grows every single plant and herb in her garden, and in the third book Charlie and his friends had to steal a special herb to heal Paton. Once, she had posed as a sitter in Benjamin Brown's house while his parents were away, and let Asa Pike in the house to attack Runner Bean. Paton Yewbeam is Charlie's great-uncle and is one of the few good Yewbeam characters. It is implied that Paton had kept his head down before Charlie was born, but since Charlie's efforts to fight against the Bloors, Paton has aided Charlie in his efforts. His endowment is electrical boosting, which causes him to blow up lightbulbs. Because of his endowment, Paton does not go out in daylight, for fear of exploding lights of intersections or in shops. Instead, Paton prefers to take walks alone at night. Uncle Paton lives in the house with Charlie's mother, Maisie (Charlie's maternal grandmother), Grandma Bone, and himself. He is Grandma Bone's brother and is 20 years younger than she is. Paton has a developing relationship with Julia Ingledew, whom he marries in the last book. Paton is also a historian. He is constantly working on a book about the children of the Red King. Venetia Yewbeam is the youngest and most cunning of the four Yewbeam sisters. She is the step-mother to Eric Shellhorn. She is a designer of magic clothes. She used to be a smart woman, known to be frequently wearing red boots, but the arson of her home changed her completely. Now, she only thinks of revenge against Charlie and Uncle Paton. Venetia has been teaching and aiding Dorcas Loom, as they share the talent of bewitching clothes. Samuel Sparks was disguised as an art teacher at Bloors Academy hoping to find his brother Ollie. Samuel can heat up rocks and make them sparkle. His brother Ollie was Invisible and after he was turned visible by Charlie Bone, he and Ollie Left Bloors academy to go to the sparkling castle. Unendowed characters: -Amy Bone is Charlie's mother. She is married to Lyell Bone, who is presumed dead for most of the series. She lives with mother, Maisie, her mother-in-law Grandma Bone, and her son Charlie. She is also descended from the Welsh magician, Mathonwy. She works at a greengrocer and is not endowed. -Lyell Bone is the husband of Amy Bone and the son of Grizelda Yewbeam and Montague Bone. Lyell disappeared after "breaking the rules"; he was looked down on for marrying Amy Bone because she wasn't endowed. Charlie was told that he was in a car accident, and that he drove into a quarry. In reality, Lyell was hypnotized by Manfred Bloor. Lyell is not endowed; however he is a very talented musician, especially in piano and the organ. In book 8, it is revealed that he is the heir to Bloor's Academy.[3] Also, he and Charlie are the only two children of the Red King that are descendants of Borlath, Amadis, and Amoret. -Benjamin Brown is one of Charlie's best friends and lives across the street from him at number 12 Filbert Street. He has no endowment. He has a dog called Runner Bean.[4] Fidelio Gunn is not endowed, but is an excellent musician. He comes from a family of musicians and owns a deaf cat. He is one of Charlie's most loyal and best friends. -Julia Ingledew is the owner of Ingledew's Bookstore and is Emma Tolly's aunt. She has a relationship with Paton Yewbeam and marries him at the end of the last book. Maisie Jones is Amy Bone's mother and descendant of Mathonwy, the Welsh magician and friend to the Red King. -Onoria Onimous, Orvil Onimous' wife and owner of the Pets Cafe, has a great love for animals. Orvil Onimous is the husband of Onoria Onimous and co-owner of the Pets Cafe. Also is an expert on the Red King and his history. He and his wife help Charlie and his friends in every way they can. Orvil was also almost killed by his doorman Norton Cross while he was cycling with his wife. -Grizelda Yewbeam is Lyell Bone's mother and Charlie Bone's grandmother. She is sister to Eustacia, Venetia, Lucretia and Paton Yewbeam. She is daughter to James Yewbeam and Solange Sourzac Yewbeam. She has no endowment. Although related to Charlie, she and her sisters, in league with the Bloors, are constantly trying to thwart him. Lucretia Yewbeam is the eldest of Charlie's great-aunts and the younger sister of Grandma Bone. She is unendowed, but is just as nasty as her sisters. When her mother died under mysterious circumstances in Yewbeam castle, Lucretia and her sisters stayed and lived with Yolanda. She is the matron of Bloor's Academy. Charlie Bone Universe: Nimmo and Egmont have completed three volumes of a prequel, Chronicles of the Red King, released in paperback April 2011, April 2012 and August 2013. The Red King rather than Charlie Bone provides the connection but the Internet Speculative Fiction Database catalogs the whole as the "Charlie Bone Universe" series. Chronicles of the Red King: - The Secret Kingdom (April 2011) - The Stones of Ravenglass (April 2012) - Leopards' Gold (August 2013)

Murder of Stephanie Crowe

The murder of 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe took place in her bedroom inside her home at Escondido, California, sometime between late night January 20, 1998 to early morning January 21, 1998. Her older brother Michael Crowe and two of his friends were initially charged with her murder, but were eventually declared to be factually innocent by a judge. Their confessions under police interrogation are regarded as classic examples of false confession. A transient who was seen in the neighborhood on the night of her murder was eventually convicted of manslaughter, but the conviction was overturned. A November 2013 retrial acquitted him of all charges. The crime: Stephanie's parents and grandmother found her body on the floor of her bedroom on the morning of January 21, 1998. She had been stabbed eight times. There was no sign of forced entry. Stephanie's window was found unlocked, but a screen was in place and there was no disturbance of accumulated grime and insect traces. A sliding glass door in her parents' bedroom was also unlocked. No knives were found at the scene that seemed consistent with the murder weapon, and no bloody clothing was found despite an exhaustive search. The investigation: All of the Crowe family members were questioned, their clothing was confiscated, and their bodies were examined for injuries. The parents were then put up in a motel, while the two surviving children were taken to the county's shelter for children, and were not allowed to see their parents for two days. During that time police interviewed both children, unbeknownst to their parents. They took Michael Crowe, Stephanie's 14-year-old brother, away to the police station for questioning on several occasions. Michael Crowe became the police's main suspect for the murder. He was singled out by Escondido police because the crime scene seemed to suggest an inside job, and because he seemed "distant and preoccupied" after Stephanie's body was discovered and the rest of the family grieved. Police interrogated him multiple times without his parents' knowledge and without an attorney present. During the interrogations police falsely informed him that they had found physical evidence implicating him, that he had failed an examination with a so-called "truth verification" device, and that his parents were convinced he had done it. After an intense 6-hour interrogation, he gave a vague confession to killing his sister, providing no details and saying that he couldn't remember doing it. The interview was videotaped by police; at times Michael is heard saying things to the effect of, "I'm only saying this because it's what you want to hear." He was arrested and charged with murdering his sister. Police from Escondido and nearby Oceanside also questioned Joshua Treadway and Aaron Houser, two 15-year-old friends of Michael Crowe. Houser had a collection of knives; one of them was reported missing by Houser's parents. It turned up at Treadway's house; he said he had taken it from Houser. Police took Treadway to police headquarters and questioned him continuously from 9 pm until 8 the following morning, telling him that they believed his knife was the murder weapon. They interrogated him again two weeks later, a 10-hour interview during which Treadway gave a detailed confession to participating in the murder with the other two boys. Treadway was then arrested. Aaron Houser was then arrested and questioned. He did not actually confess and steadfastly denied any involvement, but he did present a "hypothetical" account of how the crime might have happened, under prompting by police interrogators using the Reid technique. All three boys subsequently recanted their statements claiming coercion. The majority of Michael Crowe's confession was later ruled as coerced by a judge because Escondido investigators implied to Michael that they would talk to the district attorney and recommend leniency. Treadway actually confessed twice, the first to Oceanside detectives and a second, identical confession, to Escondido officers. The court ruled that the two confessions were redundant and ordered that the first be suppressed. The second Treadway confession remains admissible. Houser's statements to police were suppressed because police did not sufficiently advise him of his Miranda rights. On the day the body was discovered the police also interviewed Richard Raymond Tuite, a 28-year-old transient who had been seen in the Crowe's neighborhood on the night of the murder, knocking on doors and looking in windows, causing several neighbors to call police reporting a suspicious person. Tuite had a lengthy criminal record, habitually wandered the streets of Escondido, and had been diagnosed as schizophrenic. Police questioned Tuite, confiscated his clothing, and noticed scrapes on his body and a cut on his hand. However, they did not consider him a suspect, since they considered him incapable of murder and they had already focused on Michael Crowe as their prime suspect. Legal proceedings: The three teenage boys were charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder. A judge ruled that they should be tried as adults. They were incarcerated for six months as prosecutors prepared to try them. However, as Treadway's trial was about to begin in January 1999, belated DNA testing found three drops of Stephanie's blood on a shirt belonging to Tuite. Based on the new evidence, the charges against the boys were dismissed without prejudice (which would allow charges to be reinstated against the boys at a later date). Embarrassed by the reversal, the Escondido police and the San Diego County District Attorney let the case languish without charges for two years. In 2001 the District Attorney and San Diego County Sheriff's Department asked that the case be taken over by the California Department of Justice. In May 2002 the Attorney General charged Tuite with murdering Stephanie. The trial began in February 2004. On the first day of jury selection, Tuite walked away from the courtroom holding tank during the lunch hour by freeing himself from handcuffs; he left the courthouse and boarded a bus. He was caught hours later. At trial, the prosecution linked Tuite to Stephanie's killing by presenting circumstantial evidence, including evidence that Stephanie's blood was on his clothes. Tuite's defense team argued that the boys had killed Stephanie, and that Stephanie's blood was found on Tuite's clothes as a result of contamination caused by careless police work. On May 26, 2004, the jury acquitted Tuite of murder but convicted him of the lesser included offense of voluntary manslaughter. The jury also found that he used a deadly weapon, a knife. The trial court sentenced Tuite to thirteen years in prison. He subsequently had four more years added onto the sentence due to his flight attempt. The families of all three boys sued the cities of Escondido and Oceanside. The Crowes reached a settlement of $7.25 million in 2011. In 2012, Superior Court Judge Kenneth So made the rare ruling that Michael Crowe, Treadway and Houser were factually innocent of the charges, permanently dismissing the criminal case against them. Tuite appealed his conviction to the California Court of Appeal and raised several claims, including a claim that his Sixth Amendment rights were violated because he was precluded from fully cross-examining a prosecution witness. On December 14, 2006, the Court of Appeal affirmed in a lengthy unpublished opinion. The court found that the trial judge had committed constitutional error in limiting the cross-examination, but held the error to be harmless and affirmed the conviction. The Supreme Court of California denied review. The federal district court denied Tuite’s petition for habeas corpus. On September 8, 2011, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit voted 2-1 to overturn Tuite's manslaughter conviction, ruling the trial was unfair because the trial judge limited cross-examination of a prosecution witness. The panel stated in its opinion, "Given the lack of evidence tying Tuite to the crime, the problems with the DNA evidence, the jury's deadlock and compromise verdict, and the weight and strategic position of McCrary's testimony, this case is one of those 'unusual' circumstances in which we find ourselves 'in virtual equipose as to the harmlessness of the error.' O'Neil v. McAninch, 513 U.S. 432, 435 (1995). We must treat the error as affecting the verdict, and we are compelled to grant the writ." Tuite v. Martel, No. 09-56267. It was noted that during the trial the prosecution could not produce any trace evidence of the house on the defendant's clothing or person nor was any trace evidence of the defendant's person or clothing found in the house, facts that the Court of Appeals cited which led to the Court's determination of lack of evidence. Tuite was granted a retrial, which began on October 24, 2013. In closing arguments, his attorney, Brad Patton, told jurors that Tuite had never been in the Crowe house, and wouldn't have been able to find Stephanie's bedroom in the dark home. In addition, investigators did not find his fingerprints or DNA in the residence. Patton said Stephanie must have been held down under a comforter to keep her quiet, while someone else stabbed her. He also said that experts testified that the blood stains on Tuite’s shirts were not there when those shirts were originally evaluated, and got there through contamination during the crime scene analysis. The prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General Alana Butler, said during her closing argument that Tuite was in the area of the Crowe home the night Stephanie was killed. He was knocking on doors and looking for a woman named Tracy, at whom he was angry because she had turned him away a couple of years earlier. He was “obsessed and delusional". Butler said Tuite wandered into the Crowe home at about 10 p.m. through an open door. Once he got in the house, she couldn't tell exactly what happened, but he went into Stephanie's bedroom and stabbed her at least nine times, and her blood was found on two shirts that he was wearing when contacted by police the next day. On December 5, 2013, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Afterwards, a juror said there was no evidence that Tuite was ever in the Crowe residence that night, and that the jurors were concerned that the victim’s blood might have got onto his shirts through contamination, so they looked hard at that possibility. Impact: - The attempted prosecution of the three boys was partially responsible for San Diego County District Attorney Paul Pfingst's loss to Bonnie Dumanis in the 2002 election. - A TV movie called The Interrogation of Michael Crowe was made about the case in 2002. - The 2003 book Who Killed Stephanie Crowe?, written by Paul E. Tracy, a criminology professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, in collaboration with two of the original detectives, raised questions about Tuite's guilt. - The 2006 book Shattered Justice: A Savage Murder and the Death of Three Families' Innocence by John Philpin focuses on the impact of the crime and the criminal charges on the three boys and their families.

Murder of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña

The rape and murder of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña, two teenage girls from Houston, Texas, aged 14 and 16, respectively, occurred on June 24, 1993. The murder of the two girls made headlines in Texas newspapers due to the nature of the crime and the new law resulting from the murder that allows families of the victims to view the execution of the murderers. The case was also notable in that the state of Texas rejected attempts by the International Court of Justice to halt the executions of several of the perpetrators. Murder: On June 24, 1993, Jennifer Lee Ertman and Elizabeth Christine Peña, Waltrip High School students, were attending a pool party of a friend who lived in the Spring Hill Apartments. The pair realized that they were going to be late returning home and decided to leave the party. In order to meet an 11 p.m. curfew, Ertman and Peña decided to take a 10-minute shortcut to Peña's residence in Oak Forest by following the railroad tracks and then passing through T.C. Jester Park. The girls walked along the White Oak Bayou when they encountered gang members drinking beer after holding a gang initiation. The gang captured Peña, and Ertman was captured after she ran to her friend as she screamed. Six gang members raped the girls repeatedly. After realizing that the girls might identify them, Peter Anthony Cantu, a leader of the gang, ordered the members to kill the girls, so the members strangled them to death. Derrick Sean O'Brien and Raul Omar Villarreal strangled Ertman with a red nylon belt before the belt broke; then the gang members used shoelaces. Cantu, José Medellín, and Efrain Perez strangled Peña with shoelaces. The members then stomped on the girls' throats to ensure their deaths. Cantu, Medellín, Perez, and Villareal then congregated at Cantu's residence, where he lived with his brother, Joe Cantu, and sister-in-law, Christina Cantu. Christina Cantu questioned why Villareal was bleeding and Perez had a bloody shirt. This prompted Medellín to say the gang "had fun," and that details would appear on the news. He then elaborated that he had raped both girls. Peter Cantu then returned, and divided valuables that had been stolen from the girls. José Medellín got a ring with an "E", so he could give it to his girlfriend, Esther. Medellín reported that he had killed a girl, and noted that he would have found it easier with a gun. O'Brien was videotaped smiling at the scene of the crime. After the gang left, Christina Cantu convinced Joe Cantu to report the crime to police. Four days after the crime, the bodies were found in the park during hot weather conditions. They were badly decaying, and dental records were used for identification. The medical examiner corroborated that the cause of death was strangulation. All those believed responsible were ultimately arrested. Medellín gave both a written and taped confession. Sentencing, incarceration, and execution: The offenders were sentenced into the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) system. Peter Anthony Cantu, José Ernesto Medellín, Derrick Sean O'Brien, Efrain Perez, and Raul Omar Villareal received death sentences. Venancio Medellín, the brother of José Medellín, was 14 at the time of the murder, the same age as Jennifer Ertman. Venancio received a 40-year prison sentence. When the Supreme Court of the United States banned the executions of people who committed crimes while they were below 18 years of age, the sentences of Perez and Villareal were commuted to life in prison. O'Brien, the only black member of the gang, was the first to be executed, in July 2006. O'Brien was buried in the Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery in Huntsville, Texas after his execution. José Ernesto Medellín appealed his execution, saying that he had informed City of Houston and Harris County police officers that he was a Mexican citizen, and that he had been unable to confer with Mexican consular officials. The prosecutors said that Medellín never told authorities that he was a Mexican citizen. Medellín said in a sworn statement that he learned that the Mexican consulate could assist him in 1997. He petitioned the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 1998 regarding this issue; the appeal failed. Medellín's impending execution became an international controversy, since the state did not hold a hearing about whether the inability for Medellín to meet with Mexican consular officials harmed his defense. The right of a defendant to talk with his or her consulate is specified in the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations; the United States is a party to the convention, although the U.S. withdrew from compulsory jurisdiction in 1986 to accept the court's jurisdiction only on a case-by-case basis. In 2004 the International Court of Justice responded to a lawsuit filed by Mexico against the United States; the court ordered hearings to be held for inmates, including Medellín, who were denied consular rights. In 2005, George W. Bush, President of the United States, ordered hearings to be held. The State of Texas, represented by Solicitor General Ted Cruz, challenged Bush's order, and the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that only the Congress of the United States has the right to order hearings to be held. In July the World Court ordered a stay of Medellín's execution. Governor Rick Perry argued that Texas is not bound to World Court rulings. Death penalty opponents protested the impending execution. The families of both Ertman and Peña strongly favored the execution(s). Randy Ertman, father of Jennifer Ertman, wanted to have Andy Kahan, the City of Houston's crime advocate, witness the execution of Medellín. TDCJ refused to permit Kahan to witness the execution. Michelle Lyons, a TCDJ official, said that Tropical Storm Edouard would likely not be a factor preventing the execution of Medellín. José Ernesto Medellín was executed at 9:57 p.m. on August 5, 2008, after his last-minute appeals were rejected by the Supreme Court. Governor Perry rejected calls from Mexico and Washington, D.C. to delay the execution, citing the torture, rape and strangulation of two teenage girls in Houston 15 years ago as just cause for the death penalty. Peter Anthony Cantu was executed seventeen years after the crimes on August 17, 2010. The lethal injection was performed at 6:09 p.m. and at 6:17 p.m. Cantu was pronounced dead. During his lifetime Randy Ertman (1952-2014), father of Jennifer Ertman, advocated strongly against granting parole to Venancio Medellín. Aftermath: The parents of the murder victims successfully advocated for the State of Texas allowing relatives of victims to have permission to witness executions. Before the murder happened, City of Houston officials had stated that gangs were not a significant issue in the city. C.E. Anderson, a Houston Police Department officer who worked on the murder case, described the murder as "part of the impetus for the anti-gang programs in Houston." Jennifer Latson of the Houston Chronicle said that the deaths of the girls "shook" the Oak Forest neighborhood of Houston "to its foundation." Waltrip High School contains a memorial to the girls. Another memorial exists at T.C. Jester Park.

Sister Abhaya murder case

The Sister Abhaya Case is an investigation into the 1992 death of a Knanaya Catholic nun who was found dead in a water well in St Pius X convent in Kottayam, India. She was 19 years old at the time of her death and a member of St. Joseph's Congregation for women under the Syro-Malabar Catholic Archeparchy of Kottayam, Kerala in India. Initially, the local police crime branch concluded that the death was a suicide. A petition by the nuns of the congregation led to a new investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Although the CBI concluded that Abhaya was murdered, they requested closure of the case for lack of evidence; however, the request was rejected by the courts. Sixteen years later, on 19 November 2008, two priests and a nun were arrested by the CBI. On 17 July 2009, charges of murder, destruction of evidence, and defamation were filed against the three. Sequence of Events Sister Abhaya was reported missing on the morning of 27 March 1992. She had woken at 4:00am to study for exams, and was last known to have gone to the kitchen for a drink. The refrigerator door was left ajar, a bottle of water was spilled on the floor and a single slipper sat under the fridge – its pair was found beside the convent hostel’s well. After a brief search, Sister Abhaya’s body was found in the convent hostel’s well in the early hours of the same day. Kottayam West Police Station upgraded their investigation to that of an unnatural death. At 10:00am the deceased was removed from the well by the fire force and an inquest was drawn up. A post-mortem conducted on the body by Dr Radhakrishnan of Kottayam Medical College found abrasions on the right shoulder and hip and two small lacerations above the right ear. There was no sign of sexual assault. Despite the potentially significant injuries, the death was ruled a drowning. The series of inquiries by various investigating bodies that followed were lengthy, convoluted and unsatisfactory, plagued by internal conflict, bitter rivalries and allegations of corruption and bias, compounded by pressure from many quarters to bring the case to conclusion. In April 1992 the Crime Branch of the Criminal Investigation Department took up the case, and months later ruled Sister Abhaya’s death a suicide. However, the Crime Branch was alleged to have destroyed crucial material evidence potentially implicating homicide as a cause of death. In April 1995, forensic medical experts Dr S K Pathak, Dr Mahesh Verma and Dr. S R Singh conducted dummy experiments leading them to conclude that homicide could not be ruled out. Nevertheless, no arrests were made until November 2008. After years of failed investigations and internal struggles, two Knanaya priests - Thomas Kottur, Jose Puthurukkayil and a Knanaya nun - Sister Sephy - were arrested by the Crime Branch on 19 November 2008. All three suspects were granted bail in early January 2009. On 17 July 2009, the three were charged with murder, defamation and destruction of evidence. Prosecutors alleged that Sister Abhaya had stumbled upon the two priests and one nun in a “compromising position” and had subsequently been attacked with an axe and dumped in the well. Investigations Action council An Action Council was convened by Jomon Puthenpurackal in 1992 demanding prosecution of those responsible for the murder of Abhaya.[1][2] 67 nuns belonging to Abhaya's congregation petitioned the Chief Minister of the Kerala State Government to investigate the case as a homicide.[3] On 7 April 1992, the Director General of Police of Kerala directed the Crime Branch of the Kerala Police to take over the investigation from the local police. The Kerala Government, on the basis of the petition, recommended a CBI enquiry. On 29 March 1993, CBI began a new investigation.[3] Kerala Police On 27 March 1992, Kottayam West Police Station ASI V V Augustine visited the crime scene and called the fire force to search for Abhaya's body in the well in the compound. The fire force took removed the body from the well. An inquest was prepared by ASI Augustine. Photographs of the body were also taken. Clothing of Abhaya was taken into custody. Later these items of physical evidence were destroyed. The post-mortem report indicated death by drowning but also reported on the possibility of homicide based on head injuries. On 7 April 1992, the Director General of Police of Kerala directed the Crime Branch section of the Kerala police to take up the investigation. The Crime Branch submitted its report before the Revenue Divisional Officer (RDO) on 30 January 1993. The Crime Branch concluded that Abhaya had committed suicide.[citation needed] According to the post mortem report, she had died from drowning.[citation needed] Though there were allegations that the Crime Branch had procured the evidence in the case from the court and destroyed it, this was subsequently disproved by the CBI.[citation needed] CBI On 29 March 1993, the First Information Report (FIR) in the case was registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).[3] The CBI started investigating the death of Sister Abhaya under the direct supervision of its officer Varghese P. Thomas. On 29 November 1996, the CBI issued the first final report.[4] The author of the report, A.K. Ohri, stated that he could not determine whether Abhaya's death was suicide or homicide.[4] The report was not accepted by the Chief Judicial Magistrate's Court.[4] On 9 July 1999, the CBI issued a second final report authored by Surinder Paul.[5] Paul concluded that Abahya's death was a homicide, but he could not establish the identity of the perpetrators.[5] Paul's report was also not accepted by the court.[5] On 25 August 2005, the CBI issued yet another report, authored by R.R. Sahay.[6] Sahay concluded that there was no indication that anyone was involved in Abahya's death.[6] The report was again not accepted.[6] On 4 September 2008, the court turned the investigation over to the Kerala branch of the CBI.[6] Some of the initial manipulations in the case by the local police and crime branch, alleged by CBI are: -The inquest report did not indicate the homicidal injuries on the body of Abhaya. -The material evidence in the case was destroyed and the clothes were not subject to forensic examination -The photographs showing injuries on the body were removed. -The crime scene was tampered with or material physical evidence was not collected from the crime scene. During the initial inquiry, the post-mortem, chemical examination and laboratory report also had been erased and then rewritten due to other influence. On 30 December 1993, Varghese P. Thomas resigned from the service of CBI and from the investigation of Abhaya's death. He had seven more years in service to retire. He had arrived at the conclusion that Abhaya's death was a case of murder and he had recorded it as such in the Case Diary. Subsequently, on 19 January 1994, he called a special press conference in Cochin and announced that he had resigned from CBI as his conscience did not permit him to comply with a strong directive given by his superior officer, V. Thyagarajan, the then Superintendent of CBI Cochin Unit, who had asked Varghese P. Thomas to record the death of Abhaya as suicide in the Case Diary. With this press conference, the case of Sr. Abhaya caught media attention all over India and the matter was strongly debated in the parliament as well as in the Kerala state assembly on several occasions. Writ Petition to Kerala High Court: The Action Council filed another Writ petition in the Kerala High Court asking the court to remove V. Thyagarajan from Cochin Unit of the CBI as well as from the investigation. Further on 3 June 1994 all the MP's from Kerala State jointly submitted a passionate petition to K. Vijaya Rama Rao, the Director of the CBI requesting him to disallow Thyagarajan to continue in the Abhaya's murder case. As a result, M.L. Sharma, the Joint Director of the CBI, was given charge of the investigation into Abhaya's death. Cause of death: Dr C Radhakrishnan, the forensic surgeon and former Principal of Kottayam Medical College, who conducted the post-mortem on the body of the deceased Abhaya, had given the report as death by drowning. He later made a statement before the Magistrate on 1 January 2009. The crime branch did not allow him to visit the crime scene to form a definite opinion as to the cause of death. The explanation of the crime branch is that the case had been handed over to the state forensic chief Dr. Umadathan. Dr. Radhakrishnan noted six homicidal injuries on the body of the deceased. Sr. Abhaya had the following ante-mortem injuries as per the post-mortem certificate issued by Dr. Radhakrishnan: 1. Lacerated wound 1.8x0.5x0.2 cm., oblique, on the right side of the back of head, the upper end being 3 cm above end 3 cm behind the top of ear. 2. Lacerated wound 1.5x0.5x0.3 cm, oblique, on the head 2.5 cm behind injury No.1. 3. Graze abrasion 4 x 3 cm., oblique on the right side of the back of trunk, 9 cm below the lower end of shoulder blade with an upward and inward direction. 4. Abrasion 1.5x1 cm., 2 cm below injury No.3. 5. Multiple graze abrasions over an area 12 x 6 cm on the outer aspect of right buttock, the upper border being 4 cm below iliac crest. The direction of the grazes were upwards and inwards. 6. On dissection the scale tissues over an area 2 x2 cm on middle of the top of head were found contused. The scalp tissues over an area 7 x 5 cm around injuries Nos.1 and 2 were also found contused. The skull was intact. Brain showed localised sub-arachnoid haemorrhage underneath these contused regions. No sign of increased intra-cranial tension." CBI's dummy test: On 7 April 1995, using a full-sized dummy of Sister Abhaya, the CBI made some experimental tests in the well where her corpse was found. Based on the post mortem report, On 17 April 1995 Dr. S.K. Pathak, the chief of the Forensic Department of Sawai Man Singh Medical college, Jaipur and Dr. Mahesh Varma, former chairperson of Anatomy Section submitted their formal expert report to the CBI investigation team to the effect that homicide could not be ruled out. Subsequently, the CBI declared that the killers would soon be arrested. Protests: After the dummy test, no arrests were made. The Action Council staged a protest in front of the CBI office at Cochin on 27 November 1995. Later, on 18 March 1996, another big rally was organised under the leadership of former chief minister of the state, E.K. Nayanar, in front of the state secretariat at Thiruvananthapuram, the state capital. Again, on 1 July 1996, the Action Council filed a petition in the High Court challenging the inaction of the CBI. On 20 August 1996, the High Court directed the CBI to complete its investigation in three months. In the meantime, the CBI advertised an award of Rs 300,000 to anyone who could give dependable evidence in the case. On 12 October 1996, all the MPs from Kerala visited the Prime Minister and pleaded with him to expedite the CBI investigation. However, on 6 December 1996 the CBI filed a petition in the Chief Judicial Magistrate's court Ernakulam seeking to wind up its investigation in the matter for lack of evidence. The court rejected the request and directed the CBI to continue the investigation. Court criticizing CBI: The Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) directed the CBI in its order dated 20 March 1997 to re-investigate the case. The court in its order strongly criticized the CBI for its loyalty and complicity to certain vested interests to defeat the ends of justice and the court observed that the CBI had not made party some very significant persons who otherwise emerged in the facts of the case quite evidently. The court also asserted its belief that the case could have easily been established had there been an honest and proper investigation. Further the court after seeing the video cassette of an Asianet interview, mentioned K.T. Michael by name for "influencing" the course of the investigation. This remark was later expunged by the High Court, after considering the reasons for the statements made during the interview. The CJM court observed that certain "invisible hands" were still trying to scuttle the Sister Abhaya murder case observing that these forces were trying to influence the investigating agencies and the government officials. High Court’s new intervention: The Action Council, again on 30 May 1997 filed a Public Interest Litigation in the High Court of Kerala against the non-compliance of the CJM's directive for re-investigation. The High Court in its order directed the CBI to report back to the court the progress it had made in the investigation in ten days from the date of the order. Having had enough of the failure and lack of interest on the part of the CBI, the High Court directed suo moto the Director of the CBI to appoint a special team from New Delhi to investigate the matter. Thus P.D. Meena, the Superintendent of the CBI from New Delhi and his team undertook a month-long investigation and reported to the High Court. The CBI was convinced that the death of Abhaya was in fact murder. However, the CBI report said that due to lack of evidence it was not possible to go further into the matter. The High Court again on 28 September 1998 directed the CBI to file its final report of the re-investigation on or before 12 October 1998. The magistrate court later affirmed that there was clear evidence to show that some officers who took part in the investigation conducted by the local police and Crime Branch wanted to refer this case as a case of suicide. The remarks were later expunged by the High Court. Developments since 2007: A report by B. Sreejan, senior reporter with the Thiruvananthapuram bureau of The New Indian Express (12 April 2007), stated that the original chemical examination report of the vaginal swab and vaginal smear of Abhaya has been found to have been tampered with. The manuscript of the workbook report from the Chemical Examination Laboratory shows over-writing in four places. Using a whitener and a different ink, the word ‘‘not’’ has been added to the word ‘‘detected,’. The lab explained that it was quite normal to make corrections in the manuscript. Even Varghese P Thomas, the first investigating officer, said the post mortem and lab reports had ruled out rape, leaving no scope for suspicions on the veracity of the report. Narco analysis tests: As part of its investigation in August 2007, the CBI conducted Narco Analysis tests on Fr. Thomas Kottoor, Fr. Jose Poothrikkayil, Sr. Sephy and some others whom they believed had knowledge about the case. Narco Analysis test report and CD were sent to the Chief Judicial Magistrate Court and to the High Court. There were allegations that the CDs relating to the narco analysis tests were manipulated. Justice Ramkumar of the Kerala High Court sent questionnaires to Dr. Malini, Assistant Director of the Bangalore centre where the narco analysis was conducted. The lab denied any manipulation. But Justice Hema, who heard the bail petition of the accused, based on Case Diaries, mentioned that the narco analysis CDs might have been manipulated and wanted the originals to be produced in court. Dr. Malathi has since been dismissed from service on the charge of forging her birth certificates. CDAC Trivandrum, ordered by the Ernakulam CJM court to verify the Narco CDS submits that they are not equipped for the tests. CDs given to CDIT for tests. CDIT submits the finding that the CDs have been doctored more than 30 times. Court orders CBi to find out the original CDs. within 10 days. CBI questions the forensic lab officials including Dr. Malini. CBi makes a volte face and submits that the CDs were not edited. CDIT challenges the submission by CBI. Abhaya's father files contempt of court petition against CBI for not producing original CDs. 2008: On 11 January 2008, the Kerala High Court directed the CBI to produce the result of the Narco-analysis test conducted on the suspects in the case in a sealed cover before the court within two weeks. The court further directed that no third person had any right of disclosure of the content of the results till the appropriate stage, other than the High Court. In this regard, the CBI submitted it before the court on 21 January 2008. The results were submitted in a sealed cover as directed by the court. Allegations regarding community leaders trying to sabotage the case: There was speculation that an influential Christian political leader from Central Kerala tried to sabotage the case by influencing the then Congress government in the centre. Other allegations included the Catholic Church Council trying to influence the outcome of the investigations. Others also alleged that due to the constant pressure that the action council and their convener and his secret financial backers that a lot of real good leads were never followed up on or investigated. Arrests: CBI arrested two Knanaya Catholic priests, Thomas Kottur (spelled Kottoor in another publication) and Jose Puthurukkayil, and a Knanaya nun, Sister Sephy, on 19 November 2008. On 22 November 2008 Archbishop Kuriakose Kunnacherry, former head of the Archdiocese of Kottayam, was summoned for questioning. The CBI questioned Kottayam Archbishop Mathew Moolekkatt at its office in Kochi on 24 November 2008. On 25 November 2008 V.V. Augustine, the Assistant Sub Inspector who prepared the First Information Report during the initial case investigation, was found dead. Police said he committed suicide by cutting the artery on his wrist and taking poison. A suicide note cited mental torture by the CBI. The CBI had alleged that Augustine had destroyed evidence and closed the case as a suicide, but the case diary revealed it was Augustine who pointed to the possibility of homicide. He had recorded that Abhaya could have seen something objectionable in the dining room and could have been silenced. In his personal diary, Augustine wrote about how he was pressured by CBI to say that senior police officers tried to influence him. On 02 and 29 December 29, 2008, the CBI made a statement before P. D. Soman, Chief Judicial Magistrate Ernakulam. According to the CBI, their brain-mapping and narco analysis investigations revealed that Abhaya woke up on 27 March 1992, early in the morning, descended the staircase and went to the hostel kitchen to get a drink of water from the refrigerator. Sephy hit Abhaya with an axe ('kodali') thrice on the back of the head. She then collapsed. Thinking that Abhaya was dead, Kottoor and Poothrikkayil, assisted by Sephy, lifted Abhaya's body, took it out of the kitchen and dumped it in a well behind the building. On 1 January 2009, Justice Hema of the Kerala High Court granted conditional bail to the three accused. She stated that the arguments of the CBI counsel were not based on the facts as recorded in the case diary. Motives: The CBI informed the Kerala High Court in late November 2008 and early December 2008 that Sister Abhaya had accidentally intruded upon Sr. Sephy and the other two accused priests in a "compromising position". Sr Sephy panicked and, on the spur of the moment, Sephy hit Abhaya with an axe meant for chopping firewood. The three accused together dumped Abhaya's body into the well. CBI also informed the High Court about the remarkable degree of care the accused took to hide the crime. This allegedly included the bizarre claim of a hymen-restoration (hymenoplasty or hymenorrhaphy) procedure on Sr. Sephy which was discovered through gynecological tests conducted on her in late 2008. This was strongly refuted by the accused. The counsel for the accused dared CBI to prove that such an operation has ever been conducted in India. Further, the building where the crime was allegedly committed was extensively remodeled. Bail granted: On 1 January 2009, Kerala High Court Justice K. Hema granted conditional bail to Catholic priests Thomas Kootoor and Jose Puthrukakyil and Sister Seffy. The CBI had pleaded with the Chief Justice that the bail application should be moved out of Hema's court as she was "prejudiced towards the case". Hema found that the arguments of the CBI counsel were based on the stories appearing in the media rather than on the case diary. Counsel responded that the arguments had been accepted by the earlier courts. Based on the case diary, Hema found that the CBI investigation was "only a chase for the shadow rather the object in this case. This chase is only a futile exercise. Investigation means to carefully examine the facts of a situation, an event, a crime, etc., to find out the truth about it or how it happened. It is not to fix the target first, without any evidence and then make a hunt for evidence." Hema also criticised the media and the public, which pronounced the verdict knowing very little about the facts of the case, including the 24 volumes of case diary, the medical reports and the statements from the doctors. Hema also mentioned the accusations propagated by the media, public and the CBI against officers of the local police and crime branch without any incriminating evidence. Hema refuted the argument that ASI Augustine tried to suppress facts. The case diary indicates that it was Augustine, who was in charge of the case for only two days, recorded the possibility of murder. Hema also observed that nowhere in the case diary is there any mention that the church had tried to influence the investigation. Hema also made observations on the reliability of the narco analysis CDs and ordered production of the original CDs. On 18 December 2008, Kerala Kaumudi wrote an editorial criticizing Hema's conduct during the bail hearing. A Division Bench of the High Court initiated criminal contempt of court proceedings against the newspaper on the basis of the editorial. Subsequently, Kerala Kaumudi apologized, which the High Court accepted. CBI filed chargesheet: On 17 July 2009, the CBI filed a chargesheet in the Court of Chief Judicial Magistrate Ernakulam, charging Fathers Kottoor and Poothrikkayil and Sister Sephy with murder, destruction of evidence, and defamation.

Existence of God

The existence of God is a subject of debate in the philosophy of religion, popular culture, and philosophy. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God can be categorized as metaphysical, logical, empirical, or subjective. In philosophical terms, the notion of the existence of God involves the disciplines of epistemology (the nature and scope of knowledge) and ontology (study of the nature of being, existence, or reality) and the theory of value (since concepts of perfection are connected to notions of God). The Western tradition of philosophical discussion of the existence of God began with Plato and Aristotle, who made arguments that would now be categorized as cosmological. Other arguments for the existence of God have been proposed by St. Anselm, who formulated the first ontological argument; Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Aquinas, who presented their own versions of the cosmological argument (the kalam argument and the first way, respectively); René Descartes, who said that the existence of a benevolent God is logically necessary for the evidence of the senses to be meaningful; and Immanuel Kant, who argued that the existence of God can be deduced from the existence of good. Philosophers who have provided arguments against the existence of God include David Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, and Bertrand Russell. In modern culture, the question of God's existence has been discussed by scientists such as Stephen Hawking, Francis Collins, Lawrence M. Krauss, Richard Dawkins, and John Lennox, as well as philosophers including Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, Rebecca Goldstein, A. C. Grayling, Daniel Dennett, Edward Feser, David Bentley Hart and Sam Harris. The Catholic Church maintains that knowledge of the existence of God is the "natural light of human reason". Fideists acknowledge that belief in the existence of God may not be amenable to demonstration or refutation, but rests on faith alone. Atheism views arguments for the existence of God as insufficient, mistaken or weighing less in comparison to arguments against. Other religions, such as Buddhism, don't concern themselves with the existence of gods at all, while religions such as Jainism reject the possibility of a creator deity. Philosophical issues Definition of God: In classical theism, God is characterized as the metaphysically ultimate being (the first, timeless, absolutely simple, and sovereign being, who is devoid of any anthropomorphic qualities), in distinction to other conceptions such as theistic personalism, open theism, and process theism. Classical theists do not believe that God can be completely defined. They believe that this would contradict the transcendent nature of God for mere humans to define him. Robert Barron explains by analogy that it seems impossible for a two-dimensional object to conceive of three-dimensional humans. By contrast, much of Eastern religious thought (chiefly pantheism) posits God as a force contained in every imaginable phenomenon. For example, Baruch Spinoza and his followers use the term God in a particular philosophical sense to mean the essential substance/principles of nature. In modern Western societies, the concepts of God typically entail a monotheistic, supreme, ultimate, and personal being, as found in the Islamic, Christian and Jewish traditions. In monotheisms outside the Abrahamic traditions, the existence of God is discussed in similar terms. In the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism, reality is ultimately seen as a single, qualityless, changeless nirguna Brahman. Advaitin philosophy introduces the concept of saguna Brahman or Ishvara as a way of talking about Brahman to people. Ishvara, in turn, is ascribed such qualities as omniscience, omnipotence, and benevolence. Ignosticism: Ignosticism or "igtheism" is the theological position that every other theological position (including agnosticism and atheism) assumes too much about the concept of God and many other theological concepts. It can be defined as encompassing two related views about the existence of God. The view that a coherent definition of God must be presented before the question of the existence of God can be meaningfully discussed. Furthermore, if that definition is unfalsifiable, the ignostic takes the theological noncognitivist position that the question of the existence of God (per that definition) is meaningless. In this case, the concept of God is not considered meaningless; the term "God" is considered meaningless. The second view is synonymous with theological noncognitivism, and skips the step of first asking "What is meant by 'God'?" before proclaiming the original question "Does God exist?" as meaningless. Some philosophers have seen ignosticism as a variation of agnosticism or atheism, while others have considered it to be distinct. An ignostic maintains that he cannot even say whether he is a theist or an atheist until a sufficient definition of theism is put forth. The term "ignosticism" was coined in the 1960s by Sherwin Wine, a rabbi and a founding figure of Humanistic Judaism. The term "igtheism" was coined by the secular humanist Paul Kurtz in his 1992 book The New Skepticism. The problem of the supernatural: One problem posed by the question of the existence of God is that traditional beliefs usually ascribe to God various supernatural powers. Supernatural beings may be able to conceal and reveal themselves for their own purposes, as for example in the tale of Baucis and Philemon. In addition, according to concepts of God, God is not part of the natural order, but the ultimate creator of nature and of the scientific laws. Thus, in Aristotelian philosophy, God is viewed as part of the explanatory structure needed to support scientific conclusions, and any powers God possesses are, strictly speaking, of the natural order—that is, derived from God's place as originator of nature. In Karl Popper's philosophy of science, belief in a supernatural God is outside the natural domain of scientific investigation because all scientific hypotheses must be falsifiable in the natural world. The non-overlapping magisteria view proposed by Stephen Jay Gould also holds that the existence (or otherwise) of God is irrelevant to and beyond the domain of science. Logical positivists, such as Rudolf Carnap and A. J. Ayer viewed any talk of gods as literal nonsense. For the logical positivists and adherents of similar schools of thought, statements about religious or other transcendent experiences can not have a truth value, and are deemed to be without meaning, because the version of metaphysical naturalism upon which logical positivism is based automatically excludes the possibility of the supernatural a priori without proof. As the Christian biologist Scott C. Todd put it "Even if all the data pointed to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic." This argument limits the domain of science to the empirically observable and limits the domain of God to the unprovable. Nature of relevant proofs and arguments: John Polkinghorne suggests that the nearest analogy to the existence of God in physics are the ideas of quantum mechanics which are seemingly paradoxical but make sense of a great deal of disparate data. Alvin Plantinga compares the question of the existence of God to the question of the existence of other minds, claiming both are notoriously impossible to "prove" against a determined skeptic. One approach, suggested by writers such as Stephen D. Unwin, is to treat (particular versions of) theism and naturalism as though they were two hypotheses in the Bayesian sense, to list certain data (or alleged data), about the world, and to suggest that the likelihoods of these data are significantly higher under one hypothesis than the other. Most of the arguments for, or against, the existence of God can be seen as pointing to particular aspects of the universe in this way. In almost all cases it is not seriously suggested by proponents of the arguments that they are irrefutable, merely that they make one worldview seem significantly more likely than the other. However, since an assessment of the weight of evidence depends on the prior probability that is assigned to each worldview, arguments that a theist finds convincing may seem thin to an atheist and vice versa. Philosophers, such as Wittgenstein, take a view that is considered anti-realist and oppose philosophical arguments related to God's existence. For instance, Charles Taylor contends that the real is whatever will not go away. If we cannot reduce talk about God to anything else, or replace it, or prove it false, then perhaps God is as real as anything else. In George Berkeley's A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge of 1710, he argued that a "naked thought" cannot exist, and that a perception is a thought; therefore only minds can be proven to exist, since all else is merely an idea conveyed by a perception. From this Berkeley argued that the universe is based upon observation and is non-objective. However, he noted that the universe includes "ideas" not perceptible to humankind, and that there must therefore exist an omniscient superobserver, which perceives such things. Berkeley considered this proof of the existence of the Christian god. C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity and elsewhere, raised the argument from desire. He posed that all natural desires have a natural object. One thirsts, and there exists water to quench this thirst; One hungers, and there exists food to satisfy this hunger. He then argued that the human desire for perfect justice, perfect peace, perfect happiness, and other intangibles strongly implies the existence of such things, though they seem unobtainable on earth. He further posed that the unquenchable desires of this life strongly imply that we are intended for a different life, necessarily governed by a God who can provide the desired intangibles. Outside of Western thought: Existence in absolute truth is central to Vedanta epistemology. Traditional sense perception based approaches were put into question as possibly misleading due to preconceived or superimposed ideas. But though all object-cognition can be doubted, the existence of the doubter remains a fact even in nastika traditions of mayavada schools following Adi Shankara. The five eternal principles to be discussed under ontology, beginning with God or Isvara, the Ultimate Reality cannot be established by the means of logic alone, and often require superior proof. In Vaisnavism Vishnu, or his intimate ontological form of Krishna, is equated to personal absolute God of the Western traditions. Aspects of Krishna as svayam bhagavan in original Absolute Truth, sat chit ananda, are understood originating from three essential attributes of Krishna's form, i.e., "eternal existence" or sat, related to the brahman aspect; "knowledge" or chit, to the paramatman; and "bliss" or ananda in Sanskrit, to bhagavan. Arguments for the existence of God: Empirical arguments- Aquinas' Five Ways: In the first part of his Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas developed his five arguments for God's existence. These arguments are grounded in an Aristotelian ontology and make use of the infinite regression argument. Aquinas did not intend to fully prove the existence of God as he is orthodoxly conceived (with all of his traditional attributes), but proposed his Five Ways as a first stage, which he built upon later in his work. Aquinas' Five Ways argued from the unmoved mover, first cause, necessary being, argument from degree, and the teleological argument. - The unmoved mover argument asserts that, from our experience of motion in the universe (motion being the transition from potentiality to actuality) we can see that there must have been an initial mover. Aquinas argued that whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another thing, so there must be an unmoved mover. - Aquinas' argument from first cause started with the premise that it is impossible for a being to cause itself (because it would have to exist before it caused itself) and that it is impossible for there to be an infinite chain of causes, which would result in infinite regress. Therefore, there must be a first cause, itself uncaused. - The argument from necessary being asserts that all beings are contingent, meaning that it is possible for them not to exist. Aquinas argued that if everything can possibly not exist, there must have been a time when nothing existed; as things exist now, there must exist a being with necessary existence, regarded as God. - Aquinas argued from degree, considering the occurrence of degrees of goodness. He believed that things which are called good, must be called good in relation to a standard of good—a maximum. There must be a maximum goodness that which causes all goodness. - The teleological argument asserts the view that things without intelligence are ordered towards a purpose. Aquinas argued that unintelligent objects cannot be ordered unless they are done so by an intelligent being, which means that there must be an intelligent being to move objects to their ends: God. Rational warrant: Philosopher Stephen Toulmin is notable for his work in the history of ideas that features the (rational) warrant: a statement that connects the premises to a conclusion. Joseph Hinman applied Toulmin's approach in his argument for the existence of God, particularly in his book The Trace of God: A Rational Warrant for Belief. Instead of attempting to prove the existence of God, Hinman argues you can "demonstrate the rationally warranted nature of belief". Hinman uses a wide range of studies, including ones by Robert Wuthnow, Andrew Greeley, Mathes and Kathleen Nobel to establish that mystical experiences are life-transformative in a way that is significant, positive and lasting. He draws on additional work to add several additional major points to his argument. First, the people who have these experiences not only do not exhibit traditional signs of mental illness but, often, are in better mental and physical health than the general population due to the experience. Second, the experiences work. In other words, they provide a framework for navigating life that is useful and effective. All of the evidence of the positive effects of the experience upon people's lives he, adapting a term from Derrida, terms "the trace of God": the footprints left behind that point to the impact. Finally, he discusses how both religious experience and belief in God is, and has always been, normative among humans: people do not need to prove the existence of God. If there is no need to prove, Hinman argues, and the Trace of God (for instance, the impact of mystical experiences on them), belief in God is rationally warranted. Deductive arguments- Ontological argument: The ontological argument has been formulated by philosophers including St. Anselm and René Descartes. The argument proposes that God's existence is self-evident. The logic, depending on the formulation, reads roughly as follows: Whatever is contained in a clear and distinct idea of a thing must be predicated of that thing; but a clear and distinct idea of an absolutely perfect Being contains the notion of actual existence; therefore since we have the idea of an absolutely perfect Being such a Being must really exist. Thomas Aquinas criticized the argument for proposing a definition of God which, if God is transcendent, should be impossible for humans. Immanuel Kant criticized the proof from a logical standpoint: he stated that the term "God" really signifies two different terms: both idea of God, and God. Kant concluded that the proof is equivocation, based on the ambiguity of the word God. Kant also challenged the argument's assumption that existence is a predicate (of perfection) because it does not add anything to the essence of a being. If existence is not a predicate, then it is not necessarily true that the greatest possible being exists. A common rebuttal to Kant's critique is that, although "existence" does add something to both the concept and the reality of God, the concept would be vastly different if its referent is an unreal Being. Another response to Kant is attributed to Alvin Plantinga who explains that even if one were to grant Kant that "existence" is not a real predicate, "Necessary Existence", which is the correct formulation of an understanding of God, is a real predicate, thus according to Plantinga Kant's argument is refuted. Inductive arguments: Inductive arguments argue their conclusions through inductive reasoning. - Another class of philosophers asserts that the proofs for the existence of God present a fairly large probability though not absolute certainty. A number of obscure points, they say, always remain; an act of faith is required to dismiss these difficulties. This view is maintained, among others, by the Scottish statesman Arthur Balfour in his book The Foundations of Belief (1895). The opinions set forth in this work were adopted in France by Ferdinand Brunetière, the editor of the Revue des deux Mondes. Many orthodox Protestants express themselves in the same manner, as, for instance, Dr. E. Dennert, President of the Kepler Society, in his work Ist Gott tot? Other arguments: - The hypothesis of well design proposes that certain features of the universe and of living things are the product of an intelligent cause. Its proponents are mainly Christians. - Argument from belief in God being properly basic as presented by Alvin Plantinga. - Argument from the confluence of proper function and reliability and the evolutionary argument against naturalism, concluding that naturalism is incapable of providing humans with the cognitive apparatus necessary for their knowledge to have positive epistemic status. - Argument from Personal Identity. - Argument from the "divine attributes of scientific law". Subjective arguments- Arguments from historical events or personages: - The sincere seeker's argument, espoused by Muslim Sufis of the Tasawwuf tradition, posits that every individual who follows a formulaic path towards guidance, arrives at the same destination of conviction in the existence of God and specifically in the monotheistic tenets and laws of Islam. This could only be true if the formula and supplication were being answered by the same Divine entity being addressed, as claimed in Islamic revelations. This was formally organized by Imam Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali in such notable works as "Deliverance from Error" and "The Alchemy of Happiness," in Arabic "Kimiya-yi sa'adat". The path includes following the golden rule of no harm to others and treating others with compassion, silence or minimal speech, seclusion, daily fasting or minimalist diet of water and basic nourishment, honest wages, and daily supplication towards "the Creator of the Universe" for guidance. - Christianity and Judaism assert that God intervened in key specific moments in history, especially at the Exodus and the giving of the Ten Commandments in front of all the tribes of Israel, positing an argument from empirical evidence stemming from sheer number of witnesses, thus demonstrating his existence. - The argument from the Resurrection of Jesus. This asserts that there is sufficient historical evidence for Jesus's resurrection to support his claim to be the son of God and indicates, a fortiori, God's existence. This is one of several arguments known as the Christological argument. - Islam asserts that the revelation of its holy book, the Qur'an, and its unique literary attributes, vindicate its divine authorship, and thus the existence of God. - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as Mormonism, similarly asserts that the miraculous appearance of God, Jesus Christ, and angels to Joseph Smith and others and subsequent finding and translation of the Book of Mormon establishes the existence of God. The whole Latter Day Saint movement makes the same claim for example Community of Christ, Church of Christ (Temple Lot), Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite), Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite), Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite), etc. - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite), similarly asserts that the finding and translation of the Plates of Laban, also known as the Brass Plates, into the Book of the Law of the Lord and Voree plates by James Strang, One Mighty and Strong, establishes the existence of God. - Various sects that have broken from the Church of Christ (Temple Lot) (such as Church of Christ "With the Elijah Message" and Church of Christ (Assured Way)) claim that the message brought by John the Baptist, One Mighty and Strong, to Otto Fetting and W. A. Draves in The Word of the Lord Brought to Mankind by an Angel establishes the existence of God. Arguments from testimony: Arguments from testimony rely on the testimony or experience of witnesses, possibly embodying the propositions of a specific revealed religion. Swinburne argues that it is a principle of rationality that one should accept testimony unless there are strong reasons for not doing so. - The witness argument gives credibility to personal witnesses, contemporary and throughout the ages. A variation of this is the argument from miracles (also referred to as "the priest stories") which relies on testimony of supernatural events to establish the existence of God. - The majority argument argues that the theism of people throughout most of recorded history and in many different places provides prima facie demonstration of God's existence. Arguments grounded in personal experiences: - The sincere seeker's argument, espoused by Muslim Sufis of the Tasawwuf tradition, posits that every individual who follows a formulaic path towards guidance, arrives at the same destination of conviction in the existence of God and specifically in the monotheistic tenets and laws of Islam. This apparent natural law for guidance and belief could only be consistent if the formula and supplication were being answered by the same Divine entity being addressed, as claimed in Islamic revelations. This was formally organized by Imam Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali in such notable works as "Deliverance from Error" and "The Alchemy of Happiness," in Arabic "Kimiya-yi sa'ādat". The path includes following the golden rule of no harm to others and treating others with compassion, silence or minimal speech, seclusion, daily fasting or minimalist diet of water and basic nourishment, honest wages, and daily supplication towards "the Creator of the Universe" for guidance. - An argument for God is often made from an unlikely complete reversal in lifestyle by an individual towards God. Paul of Tarsus, a persecutor of the early Church, became a pillar of the Church after his conversion on the road to Damascus. Modern day examples in Evangelical Protestantism are sometimes called "Born-Again Christians". - The Scottish School of Common Sense led by Thomas Reid taught that the fact of the existence of God is accepted by people without knowledge of reasons but simply by a natural impulse. That God exists, this school said, is one of the chief metaphysical principles that people accept not because they are evident in themselves or because they can be proved, but because common sense obliges people to accept them. - The Argument from a Proper Basis argues that belief in God is "properly basic"; that it is similar to statements like "I see a chair" or "I feel pain". Such beliefs are non-falsifiable and, thus, neither provable nor disprovable; they concern perceptual beliefs or indisputable mental states. - In Germany, the School of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi taught that human reason is able to perceive the suprasensible. Jacobi distinguished three faculties: sense, reason, and understanding. Just as sense has immediate perception of the material so has reason immediate perception of the immaterial, while the understanding brings these perceptions to a person's consciousness and unites them to one another. God's existence, then, cannot be proven (Jacobi, like Immanuel Kant, rejected the absolute value of the principle of causality), it must be felt by the mind. - In Emile, Jean-Jacques Rousseau asserted that when a person's understanding ponders over the existence of God it encounters nothing but contradictions; the impulses of people's hearts, however, are of more value than the understanding, and these proclaim clearly the truths of natural religion, namely, the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. - The same theory was advocated in Germany by Friedrich Schleiermacher, who assumed an inner religious sense by means of which people feel religious truths. According to Schleiermacher, religion consists solely in this inner perception, and dogmatic doctrines are inessential. - Many modern Protestant theologians follow in Schleiermacher's footsteps, and teach that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated; certainty as to this truth is only furnished to people by inner experience, feeling, and perception.[citation needed] - Modernist Christianity also denies the demonstrability of the existence of God. According to them, one can only know something of God by means of the vital immanence, that is, under favorable circumstances the need of the divine dormant in one's subconsciousness becomes conscious and arouses that religious feeling or experience in which God reveals himself. In condemnation of this view the Oath Against Modernism formulated by Pius X, a Pope of the Catholic Church, says: "Deum ... naturali rationis lumine per ea quae facta sunt, hoc est per visibilia creationis opera, tanquam causam per effectus certo cognosci adeoque demostrari etiam posse, profiteor." ("I declare that by the natural light of reason, God can be certainly known and therefore his existence demonstrated through the things that are made, i.e., through the visible works of creation, as the cause is known through its effects.") - Brahma Kumaris religion was established in 1936, when God was said to enter the body of diamond merchant Lekhraj Kripalani (1876–1969) in Hyderabad, Sindh and started to speak through him. Hindu arguments: Most schools of Hindu philosophy accept the existence of a creator god (Brahma), while some do not. The school of Vedanta argues that one of the proofs of the existence of God is the law of karma. In a commentary to Brahma Sutras (III, 2, 38, and 41), a Vedantic text, Adi Sankara, an Indian philosopher who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta, a sub-school of Vedanta, argues that the original karmic actions themselves cannot bring about the proper results at some future time; neither can super sensuous, non-intelligent qualities like adrsta—an unseen force being the metaphysical link between work and its result—by themselves mediate the appropriate, justly deserved pleasure and pain. The fruits, according to him, then, must be administered through the action of a conscious agent, namely, a supreme being (Ishvara). A human's karmic acts result in merits and demerits. Since unconscious things generally do not move except when caused by an agent (for example, the axe moves only when swung by an agent), and since the law of karma is an unintelligent and unconscious law, Sankara argues there must be a conscious supreme Being who knows the merits and demerits which persons have earned by their actions, and who functions as an instrumental cause in helping individuals reap their appropriate fruits. Thus, God affects the person's environment, even to its atoms, and for those souls who reincarnate, produces the appropriate rebirth body, all in order that the person might have the karmically appropriate experiences. Thus, there must be a theistic administrator or supervisor for karma, i.e., God. The Nyaya school, one of six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy, states that one of the proofs of the existence of God is karma; it is seen that some people in this world are happy, some are in misery. Some are rich and some are poor. The Naiyanikas explain this by the concept of karma and reincarnation. The fruit of an individual's actions does not always lie within the reach of the individual who is the agent; there ought to be, therefore, a dispenser of the fruits of actions, and this supreme dispenser is God. This belief of Nyaya, accordingly, is the same as that of Vedanta. Arguments against the existence of God: Each of the arguments below aims to show that a particular set of gods does not exist—by demonstrating them to be inherently meaningless, contradictory, or at odds with known scientific or historical facts—or that there is insufficient proof to say that they do exist. Empirical arguments: Empirical arguments depend on knowledge acquired by means of observation or experimentation to prove their conclusions. - The argument from inconsistent revelations contests the existence of the deity called God as described in scriptures—such as the Hindu Vedas, the Jewish Tanakh, the Christian Bible, the Muslim Qur'an, the Book of Mormon or the Baha'i Aqdas—by identifying apparent contradictions between different scriptures, within a single scripture, or between scripture and known facts. - The problem of evil contests the existence of a god who is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent by arguing that such a god should not permit the existence of evil or suffering. The theist responses are called theodicies. - The destiny of the unevangelized, by which persons who have never even heard of a particular revelation might be harshly punished for not following its dictates. - The argument from poor design contests the idea that God created life on the basis that lifeforms, including humans, seem to exhibit poor design. - The argument from nonbelief contests the existence of an omnipotent God who wants humans to believe in him by arguing that such a god would do a better job of gathering believers. - The argument from parsimony (using Occam's razor) contends that since natural (non-supernatural) theories adequately explain the development of religion and belief in gods, the actual existence of such supernatural agents is superfluous and may be dismissed unless otherwise proven to be required to explain the phenomenon. - The analogy of Russell's teapot argues that the burden of proof for the existence of God lies with the theist rather than the atheist. The Russell's teapot analogy can be considered an extension of Occam's Razor. - Stephen Hawking and co-author Leonard Mlodinow state in their book The Grand Design that it is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God. Both authors claim that it is possible to answer these questions purely within the realm of science, and without invoking any divine beings. Some Christian philosophers disagree. Deductive arguments: Deductive arguments attempt to prove their conclusions by deductive reasoning from true premises. - The Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit is a counter-argument to the argument from design. The argument from design claims that a complex or ordered structure must be designed. However, a god that is responsible for the creation of a universe would be at least as complicated as the universe that it creates. Therefore, it too must require a designer. And its designer would require a designer also, ad infinitum. The argument for the existence of God is then a logical fallacy with or without the use of special pleading. The Ultimate 747 gambit states that God does not provide an origin of complexity, it simply assumes that complexity always existed. It also states that design fails to account for complexity, which natural selection can explain. - The omnipotence paradox suggests that the concept of an omnipotent entity is logically contradictory, from considering a question like: "Can God create a rock so big that He cannot move it?" or "If God is all powerful, could God create a being more powerful than Himself?" - The omniscience paradox contests further problems between omnipotence and omniscience, such as a lack of ability to create something unknown to God. - The problem of hell is the idea that eternal damnation for actions committed in a finite existence contradicts God's omnibenevolence or omnipresence. - The argument from free will contests the existence of an omniscient god who has free will—or has allotted the same freedom to his creations—by arguing that the two properties are contradictory. According to the argument, if God already knows the future, then humanity is destined to corroborate with his knowledge of the future and not have true free will to deviate from it. Therefore, our free will contradicts an omniscient god. Another argument attacks the existence of an omniscient god who has free will directly in arguing that the will of God himself would be bound to follow whatever God foreknows himself doing throughout eternity. - A counter-argument against the Cosmological argument ("chicken or the egg") takes its assumption that things cannot exist without creators and applies it to God, setting up an infinite regress. This attacks the premise that the universe is the second cause (after God, who is claimed to be the first cause). - Theological noncognitivism, as used in literature, usually seeks to disprove the god-concept by showing that it is unverifiable by scientific tests. - The anthropic argument states that if God is omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect, He would have created other morally perfect beings instead of imperfect humans. Inductive arguments: Inductive arguments argue their conclusions through inductive reasoning. - The atheist-existential argument for the non-existence of a perfect sentient being states that if existence precedes essence, it follows from the meaning of the term sentient that a sentient being cannot be complete or perfect. It is touched upon by Jean-Paul Sartre in Being and Nothingness. Sartre's phrasing is that God would be a pour-soi a being-for-itself; a consciousness who is also an en-soi a being-in-itself; a thing: which is a contradiction in terms. The argument is echoed thus in Salman Rushdie's novel Grimus: "That which is complete is also dead." - The "no reason" argument tries to show that an omnipotent and omniscient being would not have any reason to act in any way, specifically by creating the universe, because it would have no needs, wants, or desires since these very concepts are subjectively human. Since the universe exists, there is a contradiction, and therefore, an omnipotent god cannot exist. This argument is expounded upon by Scott Adams in the book God's Debris, which puts forward a form of Pandeism as its fundamental theological model. A similar argument is put forward in Ludwig von Mises's "Human Action". He referred to it as the "praxeological argument" and claimed that a perfect being would have long ago satisfied all its wants and desires and would no longer be able to take action in the present without proving that it had been unable to achieve its wants faster—showing it imperfect. - The "historical induction" argument concludes that since most theistic religions throughout history (e.g. ancient Egyptian religion, ancient Greek religion) and their gods ultimately come to be regarded as untrue or incorrect, all theistic religions, including contemporary ones, are therefore most likely untrue/incorrect by induction. It is implied as part of Stephen F. Roberts' popular quotation: I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. Subjective arguments: Similar to the subjective arguments for the existence of God, subjective arguments against the supernatural mainly rely on the testimony or experience of witnesses, or the propositions of a revealed religion in general. - The witness argument gives credibility to personal witnesses, contemporary and from the past, who disbelieve or strongly doubt the existence of God. - The conflicted religions argument notes that many religions give differing accounts as to what God is and what God wants; since all the contradictory accounts cannot be correct, many if not all religions must be incorrect. - The disappointment argument claims that if, when asked for, there is no visible help from God, there is no reason to believe that there is a God. Hindu arguments: Atheistic Hindu doctrines cite various arguments for rejecting a creator God or Ishvara. The Sāṁkhyapravacana Sūtra of the Samkhya school states that there is no philosophical place for a creator God in this system. It is also argued in this text that the existence of Ishvara (God) cannot be proved and hence cannot be admitted to exist. Classical Samkhya argues against the existence of God on metaphysical grounds. For instance, it argues that an unchanging God cannot be the source of an ever-changing world. It says God is a necessary metaphysical assumption demanded by circumstances. The Sutras of Samkhya endeavor to prove that the idea of God is inconceivable and self-contradictory, and some commentaries speak plainly on this subject. The Sankhya- tattva-kaumudi, commenting on Karika 57, argues that a perfect God can have no need to create a world, and if God's motive is kindness, Samkhya questions whether it is reasonable to call into existence beings who while non-existent had no suffering. Samkhya postulates that a benevolent deity ought to create only happy creatures, not an imperfect world like the real world. Proponents of the school of Mimamsa, which is based on rituals and orthopraxy, decided that the evidence allegedly proving the existence of God is insufficient. They argue that there is no need to postulate a maker for the world, just as there is no need for an author to compose the Vedas or a god to validate the rituals. Mimamsa argues that the gods named in the Vedas have no existence apart from the mantras that speak their names. In that regard, the power of the mantras is what is seen as the power of gods. Conclusions: Conclusions on the existence of God can be divided along numerous axes, producing a variety of orthogonal classifications. Theism and atheism are positions of belief (or lack of it), while gnosticism and agnosticism are positions of knowledge (or the lack of it). Ignosticism concerns belief regarding God's conceptual coherence. Apatheism concerns belief regarding the practical importance of whether God exists. Theism: The theistic conclusion is that there is sufficient reason to believe that God or gods exists, or that arguments do not matter as much as the "personal witness of the Holy Spirit", as argued by preeminent apologist William Lane Craig. The Catholic Church, following the teachings of Saint Paul the Apostle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and the First Vatican Council, affirms that God's existence "can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason". In Christian faith, theologians and philosophers make a distinction between: (a) preambles of faith and (b) articles of faith. The preambles include alleged truths contained in revelation which are nevertheless demonstrable by reason, e.g., the immortality of the soul, the existence of God. The articles of faith, on the other hand, contain truths that cannot be proven or reached by reason alone and presuppose the truths of the preambles, e.g., the Holy Trinity, is not demonstrable and presupposes the existence of God. The argument that the existence of God can be known to all, even prior to exposure to any divine revelation, predates Christianity. St. Paul made this argument when he said that pagans were without excuse because "since the creation of the world God's invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made". In this Paul alludes to the proofs for a creator, later enunciated by St. Thomas and others, but that had also been explored by the Greek philosophers. Another apologetical school of thought, including Dutch and American Reformed thinkers (such as Abraham Kuyper, Benjamin Warfield, Herman Dooyeweerd), emerged in the late 1920s. This school was instituted by Cornelius Van Til, and came to be popularly called Presuppositional apologetics (though Van Til himself felt "transcendental" would be a more accurate title). The main distinction between this approach and the more classical evidentialist approach is that the presuppositionalist denies any common ground between the believer and the non-believer, except that which the non-believer denies, namely, the assumption of the truth of the theistic worldview. In other words, presuppositionalists do not believe that the existence of God can be proven by appeal to raw, uninterpreted, or "brute" facts, which have the same (theoretical) meaning to people with fundamentally different worldviews, because they deny that such a condition is even possible. They claim that the only possible proof for the existence of God is that the very same belief is the necessary condition to the intelligibility of all other human experience and action. They attempt to prove the existence of God by means of appeal to the transcendental necessity of the belief—indirectly (by appeal to the unavowed presuppositions of the non-believer's worldview) rather than directly (by appeal to some form of common factuality). In practice this school utilizes what have come to be known as transcendental arguments. In these arguments they claim to demonstrate that all human experience and action (even the condition of unbelief, itself) is a proof for the existence of God, because God's existence is the necessary condition of their intelligibility. Alvin Plantinga presents an argument for the existence of God using modal logic. Others have said that the logical and philosophical arguments for and against the existence of God miss the point. The word God has a meaning in human culture and history that does not correspond to the beings whose existence is supported by such arguments, assuming they are valid. The real question is not whether a "most perfect being" or an "uncaused first cause" exist. The real question is whether Jehovah, Zeus, Ra, Krishna, or any gods of any religion exist, and if so, which gods? On the other hand, many theists equate all monotheistic or henotheistic "most perfect Beings", no matter what name is assigned to them/him, as the one monotheistic God (one example would be understanding the Muslim Allah, Christian Yhwh, and Chinese Shangdi as different names for the same Being). Most of these arguments do not resolve the issue of which of these figures is more likely to exist. These arguments fail to make the distinction between immanent gods and a Transcendent God. Some Christians note that the Christian faith teaches "salvation is by faith", and that faith is reliance upon the faithfulness of God. The most extreme example of this position is called fideism, which holds that faith is simply the will to believe, and argues that if God's existence were rationally demonstrable, faith in its existence would become superfluous. Søren Kierkegaard argued that objective knowledge, such as 1+1=2, is unimportant to existence. If God could rationally be proven, his existence would be unimportant to humans. It is because God cannot rationally be proven that his existence is important to us. In The Justification of Knowledge, the Calvinist theologian Robert L. Reymond argues that believers should not attempt to prove the existence of God. Since he believes all such proofs are fundamentally unsound, believers should not place their confidence in them, much less resort to them in discussions with non-believers; rather, they should accept the content of revelation by faith. Reymond's position is similar to that of his mentor Gordon Clark, which holds that all worldviews are based on certain unprovable first premises (or, axioms), and therefore are ultimately unprovable. The Christian theist therefore must simply choose to start with Christianity rather than anything else, by a "leap of faith". This position is also sometimes called presuppositional apologetics, but should not be confused with the Van Tillian variety. Atheism: The atheistic conclusion is that the arguments and evidence both indicate there is insufficient reason to believe that any gods exist, and that personal subjective religious experiences say something about the human experience rather than the nature of reality itself; therefore, one has no reason to believe that a god exists. Positive atheism: Positive atheism (also called "strong atheism" and "hard atheism") is a form of atheism that asserts that no deities exist. The strong atheist explicitly asserts the non-existence of gods. Some strong atheists further assert that the existence of gods is logically impossible, stating that the combination of attributes which God may be asserted to have (omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, transcendence, omnibenevolence) are logically contradictory, incomprehensible, or absurd, and therefore the existence of such a god is a priori false. Metaphysical naturalism is a common worldview associated with strong atheism. Negative atheism: Negative atheism (also called "weak atheism" and "soft atheism") is any type of atheism other than positive, wherein a person does not believe in the existence of any deities, but does not explicitly assert there to be none. Agnosticism: Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable. Agnosticism as a broad umbrella term does not define one's belief or disbelief in gods; agnostics may still identify themselves as theists or atheists. Strong agnosticism: Strong agnosticism is the belief that it is impossible for humans to know whether or not any deities exist. Weak agnosticism: Weak agnosticism is the belief that the existence or nonexistence of deities is unknown but not necessarily unknowable. Agnostic theism: Agnostic theism is the philosophical view that encompasses both theism and agnosticism. For theism, an agnostic theist believes that the proposition at least one deity exists is true, but, per agnosticism, believes that the existence of gods is unknown or inherently unknowable. The agnostic theist may also or alternatively be agnostic regarding the properties of the god(s) they believe in. Agnostic atheism: Agnostic atheism is the view of those who do not claim to know the existence of any deity but do not believe in any. The theologian Robert Flint explains: If a man have failed to find any good reason for believing that there is a God, it is perfectly natural and rational that he should not believe that there is a God; and if so, he is an atheist, although he assume no superhuman knowledge, but merely the ordinary human power of judging of evidence. If he go farther, and, after an investigation into the nature and reach of human knowledge, ending in the conclusion that the existence of God is incapable of proof, cease to believe in it on the ground that he cannot know it to be true, he is an agnostic and also an atheist, an agnostic-atheist—an atheist because an agnostic." Apatheism: An apatheist is someone who is not interested in accepting or denying any claims that gods exist or do not exist. An apatheist lives as if there are no gods and explains natural phenomena without reference to any deities. The existence of gods is not rejected, but may be designated unnecessary or useless; gods neither provide purpose to life, nor influence everyday life, according to this view. Ignosticism: The ignostic (or igtheist) usually concludes that the question of God's existence or nonexistence is usually not worth discussing because concepts like "God" are usually not sufficiently clearly defined. Some philosophers have seen ignosticism as a variation of agnosticism or atheism, while others have considered it to be distinct. Psychological aspects: Several authors have offered psychological or sociological explanations for belief in the existence of God. Psychologists observe that the majority of humans often ask existential questions such as "why we are here" and whether life has purpose. Some psychologists have posited that religious beliefs may recruit cognitive mechanisms in order to satisfy these questions. William James emphasized the inner religious struggle between melancholy and happiness, and pointed to trance as a cognitive mechanism. Sigmund Freud stressed fear and pain, the need for a powerful parental figure, the obsessional nature of ritual, and the hypnotic state a community can induce as contributing factors to the psychology of religion. Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained (2002), based in part on his anthropological field work, treats belief in God as the result of the brain's tendency towards agency detection. Boyer suggests that, because of evolutionary pressures, humans err on the side of attributing agency where there isn't any. In Boyer's view, belief in supernatural entities spreads and becomes culturally fixed because of their memorability. The concept of "minimally counterintuitive" beings that differ from the ordinary in a small number of ways (such as being invisible, able to fly, or having access to strategic and otherwise secret information) leave a lasting impression that spreads through word-of-mouth. Scott Atran's In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002) makes a similar argument and adds examination of the socially coordinating aspects of shared belief. In Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion, Todd Tremlin follows Boyer in arguing that universal human cognitive process naturally produces the concept of the supernatural. Tremlin contends that an agency detection device (ADD) and a theory of mind module (ToMM) lead humans to suspect an agent behind every event. Natural events for which there is no obvious agent may be attributed to God (c.f. Act of God).