[H]e has now revealed the reasoning behind the film's opening shot of a painting of Jesus Christ looking down at Rocky fighting in a gym.
The 60-year-old says, "It's like he was being chosen.
"If you look to God, you can overcome your past."
Women are finding it more acceptable to have an abortion than to drift into an unplanned pregnancy, the head of Britain's leading abortion agency said yesterday.
Ann Furedi, the chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), said one women in five was now childless at the age of 45 and an increasing number were making the choice not to have children at all.
Ms Furedi said there had been a shift in public opinion about parenthood. The stigma of abortion had diminished but there was now concern about being a poor parent. "Parenting is considered to be very important and is taken seriously these days," she said. "The idea of just drifting into unplanned motherhood is seen not to be a good thing and you could argue that among many groups of people in society abortion is seen as a more responsible response to being a victim of uncontrolled fertility," she said.
Abortion figures continue to rise year on year. Latest figures show that there are about 165,500 abortions for British residents a year.
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever."
From my point of view, I would ban religion completely. Organized religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into really hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate.
The Rev. Ted Haggard resigned as president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals on Thursday after being accused of paying a man for sex in monthly trysts over the past three years.
Haggard — an outspoken opponent of the drive for gay marriage — also stepped down as senior pastor at his 14,000-member New Life Church pending an investigation by a church panel, saying he could "not continue to minister under the cloud created by the accusations."
"I am voluntarily stepping aside from leadership so that the overseer process can be allowed to proceed with integrity," Haggard said in a written statement. "I hope to be able to discuss this matter in more detail at a later date. In the interim, I will seek both spiritual advice and guidance."
Haggard, a married father of five, denied the allegations in an interview with KUSA-TV late Wednesday: "Never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I'm steady with my wife, I'm faithful to my wife."
Mike Jones, 49, of Denver told the AP he decided to go public with his allegations because of the political fight.
"I just want people to step back and take a look and say, 'Look, we're all sinners, we all have faults, but if two people want to get married, just let them, and let them have a happy life,"' said Jones, who added that he isn't actively working for any political group.
Jones, who said he is gay, said he was also upset when he discovered Haggard and the New Life Church had publicly opposed same-sex marriage.
“When she snorted a line of cocaine, she put land mines in Colombia, she killed people in Colombia, she displaced people in Colombia, she helped finance kidnapping,” said [Colombian Vice-President Francisco Santos Calderón], who himself spent time as a hostage of the Medellin drug cartel. “That’s the message that we want to put out.” Then he recalled another hot-button talking point meant to arouse European, and especially British, audiences. “She destroyed the environment!” said Santos. “We have lost 2 million hectares [almost 5 million acres] of pristine rain forest to drug trafficking.”
The survey conducted by Harris Poll found that 42 percent of US adults are not "absolutely certain" there is a God compared to 34 percent who felt that way when asked the same question three years ago.
Among the various religious groups, 76 percent of Protestants, 64 percent of Catholics and 30 percent of Jews said they are "absolutely certain" there is a God while 93 percent of Christians who describe themselves as "Born Again" feel certain God exists.
When questioned on whether God is male or female, 36 percent of respondents said they think God is male, 37 percent said neither male nor female and 10 percent said "both male and female."
Only one percent think of God as a female, according to the poll.
Asked whether God has a human form, 41 percent said they think of God as "a spirit or power than can take on human form but is not inherently human."
As to whether God controls events on Earth, 29 percent believe that to be the case while 44 percent said God "observes but does not control what happens on Earth".
