Religion Place

Science VS Religion

2009-03-05T04:47:00.000-08:00

Science Flies You to the moon
Religion Flies you Into Buildings

5 Truly Bizarre (and Discredited) Historical Theories

2009-03-04T02:33:00.000-08:00

From subterranean Martians to female hysteria, people have been known to believe some pretty bizarre things. What does it take to make a believable scientific hypothesis out of a strange idea like Hollow Earth theory, what suspension of believe is needed to agree with the Intelligent Design nutjobs? Apparently, not much. Here are five of the strangest examples and who knows what people will find hilariously untrue from our era in 50 years? Everyone will no doubt have other ideas for what the world’s weirdest theories are so give it a shot in the comments below!

1. Trepanation

Ouch. In one of the oldest known medical interventions, a hole is drilled in the skull of a patient who is suffering from defects such as seizures or migraine headaches. The idea was to relieve pressure in the head which was believed to be causing the ailment. Today, trepanation is used on a very limited basis as a mechanism to access the brain for necessary surgery. Some people practice recreational or spiritual trepanation, presumably because they need modern medicine like they need a hole in the head.

2. Female hysteria

Women in the Victorian age were said to be suffering from female hysteria when they were moody or a little more “difficult” than usual. Fortunately for them, the treatment was something called pelvic massage. We can’t laugh too hard at this one, though. Many years later, it directly caused vibrating devices to be widely available for, um, home treatment.

3. Expanding Earth

As bizarre theories go, this one doesn’t sound that far-fetched. Expanding Earth is the idea that the planet was once a lot smaller and completely covered in one continent. If you mentally shrink the globe and try to fit the continents together like a puzzle, you could almost start to believe this theory – after all, the galaxy is said to be expanding, right? However, the Expanding Earth theory has been discredited by nearly all of Earth’s scientists.

4. Phrenology

Would you believe me if I told you that I could tell you how likely you are to commit a crime in the future without talking to you? What if I could do it just by rubbing my grubby hands all over your noggin? Phrenology was on the cutting edge of Victorian-era medical science. Practitioners claimed to be able to determine your personality, propensity for crime, and intelligence from the size and shape of your skull. Although it’s been discredited by modern medicine, there is a small but dedicated community of people who still believe that phrenology is a useful science. Yes, seriously.

5. The Island of California

The idea that California was an island separated from North America by the Gulf of California was actually a cartographic error that was blown way out of proportion. In the 16th century, Spanish explorers mistook what we now know as California for a legendary Atlantis-like paradise island. Despite being disproved by subsequent explorers, many people continued to believe in the Californian island paradise. Something tells me that even without accurate maps, you wouldn’t get many people to believe that legend these days. Other theories like Quantum Evolution may explain everything or might equally well be just as funny as these five in fifty years.

Amazing Egyptian Discoveries

2009-03-03T07:21:00.000-08:00

King Tut Red

The discovery of jars of wine in King Tuts tomb prompted a team of Spanish scientists to try and determine if the boy king preferred red or white wine. An analysis of residues in 2005 revealed that the jars contained syringic acid, which implied that the wine was made with red grapes.

Big Toe

Archeologists explored a tomb near Thebes in 2005 and discovered an artificial big toe attached to the foot of a mummy. The fake body part could prove to be the earliest working prosthetic body part to date.

Child Mummy

The mummified remains of an Egyptian 6-year-old sat in the attic of its owners before being donated to the St. Louis Science Center in 1985. Researchers at the center have used CT scan technology to help unravel the mystery of its origins.

Queen Mummy

Authorities in Cairo announced in July of 2007 that the remains of a mummy discovered in the Valley of the Kings, was that of Queen Hatshpsut, a female pharaoh that ruled in the 15th century. DNA analysis was used to identify the first royal Egyptian mummy since King Tut in 1922.

Dwarf Statue

This statue was erected in honor of Seneb, an Egyptian dwarf who served under King Pepi II during the 6th Dynasty. A study published in December of 2005 concluded that dwarves, such as Seneb, were respected and even attained high positions in society

Preserved Ship

Archeologists announced in March of 2006 that an excavation near the Red Sea had unearthed a shipyard containing the world's oldest sea-faring ships. The artifacts, such as wooden planks and cargo boxes, suggest that Egyptians had set sail 4,000 years ago.

Lost City

Satellites have located and zoomed in on a 1,600-year-old Egyptian city. Snapshots of the site taken from space as part of a project to map as much of ancient Egypt's archaeological sites, or "tells," as possible were released in July of 2007.

Sand Sea

The Great Sand Sea in the Eastern Sahara is currently nothing more than 45,000 square miles of desert land. But a climate study published in July of 2006, suggests that monsoon rains that occurred around over 10 millennia ago made it very hospitable for humans and wildlife

Ancient Frolicking

Ancient artistic depictions of swimming activities discovered inside a cave is evidence that people living in southwest Egypt once frolicked in rain pools 8,000 years ago. This was before monsoon rains ended and left the Sahara uninhabitable.

Best Mummies?

Archeologists exploring a 2,500 year old Egyptian tomb in 2005 found three intricate coffins, with one containing an amazingly well-preserved mummy. One of the archeologists called it perhaps "one of the best mummies ever preserved."

Gimme!

Claiming that many of their artifacts were taken from Egypt illegally, Egyptian officials announced in April of 2007 that it would ask museums abroad to temporarily send back some of its most precious artifacts including the Rosetta Stone and bust of Nefertiti.

Pyramid Secrets Revealed

Evidence has been offered to suggest that some of the stone blocks used to construct the Great Pyramids of Giza were cast—not carved and then quarried, as some had thought. An examination of the stones revealed that the outer and inner casing stones were unlikely to have been chiseled from natural limestone.

King Tut

Forensic scientists and artists completed in 2005 the first ever facial reconstructions of King Tut using CT scans of his mummified remains. The pharaoh's reconstructed facial composition turned out to be strikingly similar to ancient portraits of Tut.

Weird Religious Practices

2009-02-28T07:45:00.000-08:00

Mormom Temple Garments

In some denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement, the temple garment (or the Garment of the Holy Priesthood, or informally, the garment or garments) is a set of sacred underclothing worn by adult adherents who have taken part in a ritual ceremony known as washing and anointing ordinance, usually in a temple as part of the Endowment ceremony. Adherents consider them to be sacred and may be offended by public discussion of the garments. Anti-Mormon activists have publicly displayed or defaced temple garments to show their opposition to the LDS Church.

According to generally-accepted Mormon doctrine, the marks in the garments are sacred symbols (Buerger 2002, p. 58). One proposed element of the symbolism, according to early Mormon leaders, was a link to the “Compass and the Square”, the symbols of freemasonry (Morgan 1827, pp. 22-23), to which Joseph Smith (creator of Mormonism) had been initiated about seven weeks prior to his introduction of the Endowment ceremony.

Scientology E-Meter

An E-meter is an electronic device manufactured by the Church of Scientology at their Gold Base production facility. It is used as an aid by Dianetics and Scientology counselors and counselors-in-training in some forms of auditing, the application of the techniques of Dianetics and Scientology to another or to oneself for the express purpose of addressing spiritual issues.

E-meter sessions are conducted by church employees known as auditors. Scientology materials traditionally refer to the subject as the “preclear,” although auditors continue to use the meter well beyond the clear level. The preclear holds a pair of cylindrical electrodes (”cans”) connected to the meter while the auditor asks the preclear a series of questions and notes both the verbal response and the activity of the meter. Auditor training describes many types of needle movements, with each having their own special significance.

A 1971 ruling of the United States District Court, District of Columbia (333 F. Supp. 357), specifically stated, “The E-meter has no proven usefulness in the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of any disease, nor is it medically or scientifically capable of improving any bodily function.”

Exorcism

Exorcism is the practice of evicting demons or other evil spiritual entities from a person or place which they are believed to have possessed (taken control of). The practice is quite ancient and still part of the belief system of many religions, though it is seen mostly in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.

Solemn exorcisms, according to the Canon law of the church, can only be exercised by an ordained priest (or higher prelate), with the express permission of the local bishop, and only after a careful medical examination to exclude the possibility of mental illness. The Catholic Encyclopaedia (1908) enjoined: “Superstition ought not to be confounded with religion, however much their history may be interwoven, nor magic, however white it may be, with a legitimate religious rite”.

To listen to two authentic recordings of exorcisms, visit the Top 10 Incredible Recordings.

Jewish Kaparot

Kaparot is a traditional Jewish religious ritual that takes place around the time of the High Holidays. Classically, it is performed by grasping a live chicken by the sholder blades and moving around one’s head three times, symbolically transferring one’s sins to the chicken. The chicken is then slaughtered and donated to the poor, preferably eaten at the pre-Yom Kippur feast. In modern times, Kapparos is performed in the traditional form mostly in Haredi communities. The ritual is preceded by the reading of Psalms 107:17-20 and Job 33:23-24.

On the eve of Yom Kippur 2005, more than 200 caged chickens were abandoned in rainy weather as part of a Kaparot operation in Brooklyn, NY; some of these starving and dehydrated chickens were subsequently rescued by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Jacob Kalish, an Orthodox Jew from Williamsburg, was charged with animal cruelty for the drowning deaths of 35 of these chickens. In response to such reports of the mistreatment of chickens, animal rights organizations have begun to picket public observances of kaparot, particularly in Israel.

Shamanism Wikipedia

Shamanism refers to a range of traditional beliefs and practices concerned with communication with the spirit world. There are many variations in shamanism throughout the world, though there are some beliefs that are shared by all forms of shamanism. Its practitioners claim the ability to diagnose and cure human suffering and, in some societies, the ability to cause suffering. This is believed to be accomplished by traversing the axis mundi and forming a special relationship with, or gaining control over, spirits.

Shamans have been credited with the ability to control the weather, divination, the interpretation of dreams, astral projection, and traveling to upper and lower worlds. Shamans were used in Tibetan Buddhism as a form of divination by which the Dalai Lama was given prophesies of the future and advice.

Dowry

This is a cultural practice rather than a religious one. The practice of dowry exists across India. Despite laws against it, the practice continues. The girl child’s dowry and wedding expenses often sends her family into a huge debt trap. As consumerism and wealth increase in India, dowry demands are growing. In rural areas, families sell their land holdings, while the urban poor sell their houses.

To curb the practice of dowry, the government of India made several laws detailing severe punishment to anyone demanding dowry and a law in Indian Penal Code (Section 498A) has been introduced. While it gives boost to a woman and her family, it in the same time also put a man and his family in a great disadvantage. Misuse of this law by women in urban India and many incidents of extortion of money from the husband done by the wife and her family (this is called sowry) have come to light.

Mormon Baptism of the Dead

Baptism for the dead, vicarious baptism or proxy baptism is a religious practice of baptising a living person on behalf of an individual who is dead; the living person is acting as the deceased person’s proxy. It has been practiced since 1840 in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints where it is also called temple baptism because it is performed only in dedicated temples.

In the practice of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a living person, acting as proxy, is baptized by immersion on behalf of a deceased person of the same gender. The baptism ritual is as follows: after calling the living proxy by name, the person performing the baptism says, “Having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you for and in behalf of [full name of deceased person], who is dead, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” The proxy is then immersed briefly in the water. Baptism for the dead is a distinctive ordinance of the church and is based on the belief that baptism is a required ordinance for entry into the Kingdom of God.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints vicariously baptizes people regardless of race, sex, or creed. This includes both victims and perpetrators of genocide. Some Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and their supporters have objected to this practice.

Jainist Digambaras

Digambar also spelled Digambara is one of the two main sects of Jainism. Senior Digambar monks wear no clothes, following the practice of Lord Mahavira. They do not consider themselves to be nude — they are wearing the environment. Digambaras believe that this practice represents a refusal to give in to the body’s demands for comfort and private property — only Digambara ascetics are required to forsake clothing. Digambara ascetics have only two possessions: a peacock feather broom and a water gourd.

The native Jain communities of Maharashta, Bundelkhand (MP/UP), Karnataka, Tamil Nadu are all Digambaras. In north India, the Saravagis and the Agrawals are also Digambaras. In Gujarat and Southern Rajasthan, the majority of Jains follow the Svetambara tradition, although some Jain communities of these regions like the Humad are also Digambaras.

Islamic Niqab

A niqab is a veil which covers the face, worn by some Muslim women as a part of sartorial hijab. It is popular in the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf but it can also be found in North Africa, Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

The niqab is regarded differently by the various schools of Islamic jurisprudence known as madhahab. Some see it as obligatory, or fard , while others see it as recommended, or mustahab, and a few see it as forbidden. The majority of scholars believe hijab is required, but only a few see niqab as required, although this is not the common perception among the general population.

Jehovah’s Witnesses Refusal of Blood Transfusions Wikipedia

A fundamental doctrine of the Jehovah’s Witnesses teaches that the Bible prohibits consumption, storage and transfusion of blood, including in cases of emergency. This doctrine was introduced in 1945, and has been elaborated upon since then. Although accepted by a majority of Jehovah’s Witnesses, evidence indicates a minority does not wholly endorse this doctrine. Facets of the doctrine have drawn praise and criticism from both members of the medical community and Jehovah’s Witnesses alike.

In 1964, Jehovah’s Witnesses were prohibited from obtaining transfusions for pets, from using fertilizer containing blood, and were even encouraged to write to dog food manufacturers to verify that their products were blood-free. Later that year, Jehovah’s Witnesses doctors and nurses were instructed to withhold blood transfusions from fellow Jehovah’s Witnesses. As to administering transfusions to non-members, The Watchtower stated that such a decision is “left to the Christian doctor’s own conscience.”

VIA

The Mummy X-posed: The face of an Ancient Egyptian priestess revealed after 3,000 years

2009-02-25T10:25:00.000-08:00

She has lain undisturbed for nearly 3,000 years, sealed in a decorated coffin ready for her voyage to the underworld.

Now the face of Meresamun, a priestess who sang in the temples of Ancient Egypt hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, has been revealed to the world for the first time.

Using a hospital scanner, scientists were able to peer inside her closed casket, and see through the layers of linen that protected her mummified features.

The first level scan reveals the surface of the coffin, left, while a deeper scan shows clear details of the body sealed inside

The astonishing three-dimensional pictures reveal her skeleton and her face, apparently with stones placed on the eyes.

Egyptologist Dr Emily Teeter, from the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute museum, where a new exhibition featuring the images opens this week, said: ‘It is so exciting to be able to see this.

The decorative coffin enters the scanner

‘The mummy is still in the coffin. It is like having X-ray eyes to see the relationship between the coffin, the wrappings and amount of linen used.’

A close-up of the mummy's face

Meresamun is thought to have worked and lived in the temple of Thebes around 800BC. Her name, shown in an inscription on the casket, means ‘She Lives for Amun’ – an Egyptian god.

According to the inscription she was a priestess-musician who served as a ‘Singer in the Interior of the Temple of Amun’. The scans suggest she was about 5ft 5in and in her late 20s or early 30s when she died.

The cause of Meresamun’s death is unknown and all the more mysterious since she
appears to have been in good health.

The state of her bones shows she had a nutritious diet and an active lifestyle.

Although she bore no signs of dental decay, her teeth were worn down by the grit in Egyptian bread, which was made from stone-ground flour.

The sealed casket was bought in Egypt in 1920 by James Henry Breasted, founder of the Oriental Institute.

Creationism

2009-02-20T15:23:00.004-08:00

God created the Earth in seven days, literally and exactly seven 24-hour days. And if you don't like it, you can go to hell. That is, you can literally go to hell.

In all the world's rich panoply of religious and spiritual pursuits, there's nothing quite so inspiring as watching people desperately tie their entire view of the moral universe to an idea that's obviously wrong. Creationism is a particularly entertaining variant on an age-old theme. (Remember when Galileo was excommunicated for the ludicrous idea that the Earth goes 'round the sun and not the other way around?)

Creationism is pretty much summed up in the first sentence of this article. Creationists like to call their belief system "creation science" and would like to have it taught in school alongside the theory of evolution.

Now, it's certainly possible that some God or other created the world in seven 24-hour days. Any sentence that contains the word "God" is pretty much wide open to debate. But is it science?

Oh, wait, that sounded like a rhetorical question. It actually has an answer. No, it's not science. It's religion. Nothing wrong with religion, lots of people have it. Often very smart and well-educated people.

But beliefs based solely on the text of the Bible aren't science. Science is the "systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation." There is no scientific test which will show that Adam and Eve existed. At least, not according to the commonly accepted definition of science. However, if creationism is about anything, it's about language.

Western civilization has believed the seven-day theory for about 6,000 years longer than it's believed in evolution. The weight of that history is great indeed. Although Genesis was originally a Jewish scripture, the Christians were responsible for institutionalizing its contents as the undisputed truth about the world's origins.

The original notion of evolution dates back to the ancient Greeks, but early thinking on the subject was crushed by the Church of Rome. By the 17th century, however, the Protestant revolution and the whole Galileo fiasco had given the public reason to think that the Vatican was not necessarily the best source for scientific information.

Nevertheless, the idea that people had somehow evolved from a lower life form was abhorrent to most people, right up through the Victorian era. "Man" (and specifically the white male) was considered the highest possible form of life on earth, elevated above all others.

When Charles Darwin came along in the middle of the 19th century, all hell broke loose. Although Darwin outlined a progression of primitive man through modern man, the average joe looked at his chart and made the immediate mental leap that men essentially came from monkeys. The Victorians were not amused.

A violent religious backlash arose in response to the theory. Nearly 150 years later, depressingly, the backlash continues.

The theory of evolution quickly gained traction in scientific circles, but the common man held out for a lot longer. As it does with virtually all issues of any importance in the world, the United States responded to the controversy with litigation.

The state of Tennessee passed a law in 1925 banning schools from teaching any theory of human origin that conflicted with the Biblical account. A biology teacher named John Scopes defied the ban and was brought up on charges. A legal battle of historic proportions resulted, as Clarence Darrow stepped up as attorney for the defense; William Jennings Bryan came to the assistance of the state.

The "Scopes monkey trial" wrapped up with Darrow calling Bryan and staging a virtual debate over the issue of evolution vs. creation under the guise of cross-examination. It would have been great television, had there been television at the time.

DARROW: I will read it to you from the Bible: "And the Lord God said unto the serpent, because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." Do you think that is why the serpent is compelled to crawl upon its belly?
BRYAN: I believe that.
DARROW: Have you any idea how the snake went before that time?
BRYAN: No, sir.
DARROW: Do you know whether he walked on his tail or not?
BRYAN: No, sir. I have no way to know. (Laughter in audience).
DARROW: Now, you refer to the cloud that was put in heaven after the flood, the rainbow. Do you believe in that?
BRYAN: Read it.
DARROW: All right, Mr. Bryan, I will read it for you.
BRYAN: Your Honor, I think I can shorten this testimony. The only purpose Mr. Darrow has is to slur at the Bible, but I will answer his question. I will answer it all at once, and I have no objection in the world, I want the world to know that this man, who does not believe in a God, is trying to use a court in Tennessee...
DARROW: I object to that.
BRYAN: (...) to slur at it, and while it will require time, I am willing to take it.
DARROW: I object to your statement. I am exempting you on your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes.

In his closing remarks, Darrow conceded that his client was guilty and that he couldn't in good conscience plead otherwise, but that a higher court would have to decide the issue. These inspirational remarks led to the expected guilty verdict, which was later overturned on appeal for a technicality. Aside from the high drama, the trial accomplished pretty much nothing, since the technicality superseded the constitutional issue. The law remained on the books until 1967.

The bad publicity that came out of the trial left other states unenthusiastic about mandating creationism in the schools, but that didn't stop Protestant fundamentalists from rallying around the issue for the next 80 years.

Weirdly, although the whole issue had stemmed from an overly literal intepretation of the Bible, the second wave of creationists began madly embellishing the Biblical accounts of early man in an effort to get around some of the more undeniable evidence, such as dinosaur fossils.

The dwindling pool of modern creationists now tries to paint a picture of a Fred Flintstone-style Garden of Eden in which cheerful velociraptors traipse around with Adam and Eve like oversized puppies. According to these revisionist-literalists, pretty much any reference to a generic animal in the Bible is inclusive of dinosaurs.

The modern crop of creationists is often perceived as a bunch of harmless cranks, like Jerry Falwell and the Attorney General of the United States. Sure, harmless! They run wacky organizations like the "Institute for Creation Research" and the "Center for Scientific Creation," which contain arguments like "Evolutionists raise several objections. Some say, 'Even though evidence may imply a sudden creation, creation is supernatural, not natural, and cannot be entertained as a scientific explanation'" and "Teaching scientific evidence for creation has always been legal in public schools. Nevertheless, many teachers wonder how to do this."

If you're thinking that you don't know a lot of evolutionists who say evidence implies a sudden creation, or teachers who are wondering how to teach said evidence, welcome to the club. But then, it takes a special kind of thinking to keep ancient anachronisms alive and kicking.

A special kind of thinking of the sort perpetuated by the aforementioned Attorney General John Ashcroft, who launched a Justice Department investigation of a Texas professor for demanding that future medical students truthfully tell their opinions about the origins of human life before he would agree to write recommendation letters for them. But hey, who wouldn't want a doctor that believes women can be extracted from your ribs?

Secret Societies

2009-02-20T15:23:00.003-08:00

For centuries, humans have been trying to keep information from other humans. Paradoxically, many have come to the conclusion that the best way to keep a secret is to tell it to a bunch of other people and then swear them all to secrecy.

When this effort is unsuccessful, we call the result a "secret society." When the effort is successful, we don't call the result anything, because we plebians never hear about the effort to begin with.

In short, the society part is easy. The secret part is hard.

Nevertheless, secret societies have become deeply embedded in the zeitgeist. In some cases, their secrets are so poorly kept that a quick run through Google will yield nearly anything you could possibly want to know. In other cases, the society manages to keep some of its secrets secret, but the group itself becomes known to a greater or lesser extent.

There are many different ways to structure a secret society, but there are a few specific models which recur fairly often. In order to qualify as a secret society, a group generally has to be based around initiation rituals, degrees of authority and dramatic oaths of silence.

Most groups can arguably be included in more than one of the categories which follow, and probably all of them can be included under the final heading:

* Political
* Religious
* Fraternal
* Fictional
* Insane

Political

Many people look at the state of the world and come to the understandable conclusion that they must be missing something. After all, no rational person would make the decisions some world leaders make... unless, of course, they have a hidden agenda that we don't know about.

So whose agenda is it, anyway? Some favorite contenders include:

* Freemasonry
* Skull and Bones
* Trilateral Commission
* Bilderberg Group
* Council on Foreign Relations
* Muslim Brotherhood

Some of the aforementioned examples are pretty dicey, others are very well documented. Throughout history, small groups of intelligentsia have banded together for the sake of instigating political change.

The Carbonari in Italy, a derivative of the Masons, helped forment revolution in the 19th century. Edelweiss, a European group, advanced a pro-Nordic racial agenda and produced such illustrious members as Herman Groerning. Thule Gelleschaft, an occultish group of the day, reputedly inspired Hitler to adopt the swastika as the Nazi emblem.

A Russian group, Land and Liberty, used terrorism and assatination to lay the groundwork for revolution. Formally known as the Fists of Righteous Harmony, the Boxers began as a small Chinese nationalist society toward the end of the 19th century before swelling to incredible size, embarking on a reign of terror against foreigners and subsequently getting slaughtered by the U.S. Navy.

There's plenty of evidence to show that secret societies have formed to accomplish specific political goals, but those groups that don't get killed in the process tend to fade away after the immediate political crisis is resolved.

The idea that a secret society might be running the world can be appealing. It offers the possibility that every stupid, pointless thing done by world leaders might actually be smart and pointful, part of some sort of plan. However, it doesn't take much live experience to realize that individual people are generally stupid and pointless, and Occam's Razor tells us the simplest explanation is most often correct.

Nevertheless, people will talk. If all the above secret societies aren't enough to satisfy your paranoid tendencies, you can always look into "The Octopus" -- an uber-secret society which purportedly links all of the other secret societies in one vast conspiracy to control the world.

The Octopus was first tenatively identified by a freelance investigative reporter named Danny Casolaro, who believed it linked such conspiracies as Iran-Contra, BCCI,INSLAW to such government agencies as the CIA, FBI and the NSA.

Casolaro turned up dead due to an extremely suspicious "Suicide" in 1991. His story (or rather, a wildly imaginative telling of his story) has made him a martyr to the conspiracy crowd.

Some political secret societies eventually metamorphose into criminal organizations, such as the Mafia, the Japanese Yakuza and the Chinese Triads. You can also make a case that race-based hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan were also working from a political mindset, at least in their formative years.

Religious

Many secret societies have a religious or occult component, but some are very explicitly devoted to advancing one form of religion or another. Religious secret societies are very real, and they have often had a tremendous impact on history, which explains why you've probably heard of a few:

# Knights Templar
# al Qaeda
# Al Takfir Wal Hijra
# The Assassins
# Sufism
# Knights of Malta
# Ordo Templi Orientis
# Scientology
# Cathars
# The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

The Knights Templar were perhaps the ultimate Christian secret order, and to this day, no one is quite sure exactly what secrets they were keeping. Many Heterical beliefs have been forced underground during the history of the Christian church, which may account for the strong strain of Ghosticism hat runs through many secret societies. The Templars were rumored to have Gnostic tendencies, but it's difficult to prove that 1,000 years later.

In order to counter heretical groups, the Catolic Chruch has created its own secret orders from time to time, under auspices of the pope. The Templars originated as such an officially sanctioned group, but they fell out of favor when their wealth and power challenged the political status quo.

Envy and fear led to charges of witccraft and other wrongdoing, and the Church eventually exterminated the order... or did they? These days, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting some group that claims to be a continuation or an offshoot of the Templars.

The history of Islam is also riddled with secretive groups which have had an incalcuable effect on history, from the Assassins of the 11th Century to al Qaeda in the present day. One reason these groups are so effective is their embrace of violence, paired with a complete disregard for the personal safety of their members. The Assassins and the Templars were rumored to have shared trade secrets and engaged in other covert alliances.

The list of religious secret societies goes on and on. Buddichist got into the act, with organizations like the White Lotus Groups (of which the Boxers were technically a part), and variations sprouted among Hindus and Jews as well.

Africa has been rife with secret societies of all sorts, many of which are based in the rituals of scamanistic tribal religions. An outgrowth of African spiritual beliefs, Voudoun was intimately linked with Hatian secret societies, many of which are political in nature. An American variation on the theme, Santeria, is practically a secret society in itself.

You will be the hit of the cocktail party when you hold forth on the origins of the word "Mumbo Jumbo," which is a botched transliteration of the name of a Mandingo secret society. The account originated with the 18th century explorer of Africa Francis Moore, who wrote that the all-male society, bound by terrible oaths, existed primarily to adjudicate disputes between men and women... in favor of men. So how did Moore find out about this "secret" group?

About the year 1727, the king of Jagra having a very inquisitive woman to his wife, was so weak as to disclose to her this secret; and she being a gossip, revealed it to some other women of her acquaintance. This at last coming to the ears of some who were no friends to the king, they, dreading lest if the affair took vent, it should put a period to the subjection of their wives, took the coat, put a man into it, and going to the king's town, sent for him out, and taxed him with it: when he not denying it, they sent for his wife, and killed them both on the spot. Thus the poor king died for his complaisance to his wife, and she for her curiosity.

The first rule of Mumbo Jumbo is DON'T TALK ABOUT MUMBO JUMBO!

Fraternal

Some people are attracted to the bizarre rituals and self-important playtime of a secret organization without necessarily wanting the responsibility of ruling the world or protecting the arcane keys of occult power. For those who just want to play at global conspiracy, there are a number of options ranging from the ridiculous to the... well, also ridiculous.

* Elks
* Lions
* Moose
* Shriners
* Oddfellows
* College fraternities
* Beavers
* The Knights of Columbus

All of these groups are basically clubs for silly boys, to a greater or lesser extent.

They are based around "lodges," a word nicked from Masonic practice which means, in this context, a place you go to get drunk in the company of men. Most of these groups feature some sort of thinly veiled homoerotic bondage play as a form of initiation.

Generally, these groups are all male, all the time, though some have women's auxiliary groups and others have been forced by American law to open their doors to all comers. Most fraternal organizations require you to pay dues, which entitles you to use of the bar.

Fraternal clubs often perform charity work in a vain effort to justify their existence. They can also provide business networking opportunities for those who are insufficiently ambitious to hook up with the Masons, or even better, the Trilateral Commission.

Fictional

Most secret societies have a fictional history, concocted to make them look important. Some groups are more fictional than others, however.

* Illuminati
* Stonecutters
* The Invisibles

Many authors have discovered that once you create a secret society with a sufficiently intriguing premise, people will automatically assume it's based on something real. If the author tries to deny it later, well, that just means someone got to them.

The Illuminati are technically not fictional, but so many fictional things have been written about them that they might as well be. In addition to many earnest flights of fancy composed by the slightly deranged, the Illuminati got the most ink in the famous Illuminatus! trilogy written by Robert Anton Wilson. Illuminatus! was so successful that many of its yarns are now taken as gospel truth by such illustrious conspiratorial minds as David Icke.

H.P. Lovecraft created a fictional cult known as Cthulhu, which he shared with several other horror writers of the day. The cult was based around a series of shapeless, nameless, writhing monstrosities and an entirely mythical grimoire known as the Necronomicon. Lovecraft tried to explain that he had made the whole thing up, but people are frequently found to be stupid or insane, and you don't have to look very far to find some idiot trying to conjure up a Shoggoth.

There was an 18th century Italian secret society called The Invisibles, but the name was adopted by comic book auteur Grant Morrison for a 1994-2000 comic book series which set out with the goal of making The Invisibles real. If someone hands you a blank badge, you'll know Morrison's quest succeeded.

Other notable fictional secret societies include the Talamasca (a vampire-hunting group of scholars in Anne Rice's books), the Clandestine Watchers Council (a vampire-hunting group of scholars in Buffy the Vampire Slayer), the E-Branch (a vampire-hunting group of secret agents in Brian Lumley's Necroscope books), and the Millennium Group (an Apocaliptic organization inexplicably unconcerned with vampire hunting, and the brainchild of X-Files creator Chris Carter).

Insane

Between the paddling and the dreams of world domination, any given secret society is going to attract a certain element of the deranged. Some groups are way out there... even relative to other secret societies.

The Ku Klux Klanoriginated as a politcal white supremacy group in 1886. At the time, it was not that far out of the political mainsteam. Racism was rampant after the Civil War, and many people resented the North's exploitation of the South.

Nevertheless, the Klan was rooted in bizarre behavior. The original group dressed in white hoods and pretended to be ghosts in order to frighten freed slaves. Subsequent iterations were not much more sophisticated and today the Klan is populated with fringe personalities with too much time on their hands.

The Klan also had its sworn enemies, such as the memorably named Order of Anti-Poke-Noses, which formed to oppose "any organization that attends to everyone's business but their own." The bad guys outlived these intrepid crusaders, however.

Strange behavior hardly begins and ends with the Klan. A quick browse through the pages of The International Encyclopedia of Secret Societies and Fraternal Orders by Alan Axelrod yields up a smorgasbord of strangeness.

Fils d'Adam is an au courant French secret society devoted to the joys of similating necrophilia and performing actual bestiality on some extremely loosely contrived premise having to do with Original Sin.

The Abecadarians, also French, formed to battle the insidious evil of the printing press during the 15th century. The theory was that ignorance is divinely mandated and that everyone should strive to the pinnacle of ignorance of everything, including the letters of the alphabet -- thus their name comes from A-B-C-D... Clever, you might think, until you realize that anyone who knows the group's name now knows the first four letters of the alphabet and therefore can no longer be saved. (The doctrine was later supposedly adopted by the Illuminati.) (The real ones.)

The Society of Goats in 18th century Germany wore goat masks in order to frighten the local peasantry and accomplish various acts of crime. (And people think Batman is implausible.) Their initiation involved riding a wooden goat rigged up approximately in the manner of a mechanical bull. The goat itself may also have been a Baphomet-Style symbol of Satan. They were eventually exterminated by the local authorities, and bore no relation to the even stranger Order of Pink Goats, which arose in the 20th century.

The Hermanos Penitentes were originally a European order which enjoyed self-flagellation. They celebrated Good Friday each year by crysifuing one of the sect's members, though the lucky victim was removed from the cross before dying. Despite being the recipient of a papal censure, the group not only survived, but continues its tradition of crucifixion, much to the bemusement of the occasional newspaper feature writer who stumbles across the event.

The Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoo... well, OK, the Hoo-Hoos were largely just kidding around. The members were lumberjacks and people whose jobs related in some vague manner related to lumber. Many of their titles and rituals were based on Lewiss Caroll's Jabberwocky. Amazingly, the organization continues to day under a different name, despite what Darwin's theories would suggest.

Pentagram

2009-02-20T15:23:00.001-08:00

Lately it's been besmirched as a sigil of Satanism, but the pentagram is a versatile totem, and it's been around since long before anyone got around to inventing Satan.

The design is an equidistant five-pointed star drawn with a single continuous motion of the pen. Sometimes the design is enclosed in a circle. The symbol goes back to 4,000 B.C. at least, where it surfaced in the earliest form of writing, pictographic languages used in ancient Mesopotamia, whose alphabet consisted of little pictures that represented whole words.

No one knows what the pentagram meant to the Sumerians (despite what you might hear to the contrary), but most of the stone tablets of this period consist of really simple, pragmatic lists -- such as tax records, inventories and gene

The odds are quite good that the original meaning of the pentagram was something extremely boring, like "cow". It might have meant "person", since the shape famously corresponds to a head, two outstretched arms, and two legs, or it might have meant "hand", with its five points representing five fingers. But all this is sheer guesswork.

Whatever its original context, it didn't take long for the shape to absorb a more elevated status. Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher who basically invented formal geometry, believed that the world was made of math and that everything in life could be numerically quantified and represented.

His premise isn't too far from what a physicist would tell you today, but some of his direct conclusions were naive (in a manner appropriate to the time). Pythagoras was fascinated with the pentagram, as well as the six-pointed hexagram, and spent a lot of energy analyzing its properties, as well as its relation to other shapes.

Pythagoras made several observations about the pentagram, such as that there's a pentagon inside it, and that if you draw a pentagon from the points of the star, it's inverted compared to the inside one, and that you can draw a pentagram with one continuous stroke. In other words, Pythagoras had little interesting to say about the topic, but he considered the design important enough that his followers used it as their insignia. They believed it symbolized health or perfection.

Pentagrams were also used by Jewish mystical artists dating back to an unknown period of antiquity. The oldest documented examples were in synagogues with a few centuries of the start of the Christian era, but later legend has it that the pentagram was also associated with King Solomon, as part of his seal and as a symbol prominently featured in his Temple.

Pentagrams were frequently used in pagan, Jewish, Eastern and even Christian mystical contexts as a symbol of just about anything that came in fives. Frequently, it was taken as a symbol of the four alchemical elements -- earth, air, fire and water -- plus a fifth point that meant different things to different people, most often either divine power or the human soul.

Because humans all over the world have five fingers, the number five carries significance in virtually every culture, and the pentagram was a convenient carrier of that number. There are examples of the pentagram being used in Taoism and other Chinese systems as a symbol of the five elements used in Eastern cosmology -- wood, metal, earth, fire and water. In some early Christian traditions, including Gnosticism, the five points of the star represented the five wounds of Christ. Eventually other traditions used pentagram-derived stars as a representation of a star from the sky, likely an effort to artistically represent the twinkling effect caused by atmospheric distortion.

During the middle ages, however, the pentagram underwent an major transformation, which would permanently shape its image for centuries to come. Probably the most important document in pentagramology is the Seal of Solomon, perhaps the most influential of the many medieval grimoires that offered believers a chance to grab the brass ring of cosmic superpowers.

The Seal of Solomon inspired a lot of derivative magickal texts, which spread the pentagram far and wide. The status of the symbol took a giant leap forward when it was adopted by the occult-influenced Freemasonry movement, and related sects like the Eastern Star, the Golden Dawn, and the O.T.O. The Masons may have taken their cue from the Knights Templar, who are perhaps posthumously the sect most responsible for the pentagram's association with Satanic beliefs.

When the Templars were destroyed in the early 1300s, they were accused of many Satanic atrocities, including the worship of an unspecified object that resembled a cat or a head, known as Baphomet.

While some have theorized that the object in question may have been the Shroud of Turin folded to display the head of the Christ figure on the cloth, the popular conception of the Baphomet was later influenced by occultist Eliphas Levi, and subsequently by Aleister Crowley and some of his cronies.

Levi put forward a Baphomet design that featured an image of a goat's head inside an inverted pentagram, with the horns extending up into the points of the star. The goat symbolizes Satan, and the symbol was later adopted by Satanists of the Anton LaVey school. The symbol was then retroactively "discovered" to have an extensive occultist history by revisionist New Age and occult historians, who claimed it was an ancient symbol in virtually every magic tradition, including traditional and Wiccan witchcraft, pseudo-Egyptian occultist, etc., etc.

By the time this association had been firmly established, the pentagram or its filled-in variant had been institutionalized all over the world in a whole lot of different contexts -- including religions, secret societies and many others -- for instance, in the flag of the United States and the crescent and star symbol of Islam.

The retroactive -- and largely inaccurate -- association of the pentagram with all things devilish has provided ample fodder for those loonies whose lives are devoted to seeking to chart the dark influence of Satan all over the world.

The pentagram has also become a mainstay of the New World Order conspiracy craze, where it is seen as a link between the lords of the military-industrial complex and the Masonic-Illuminati-whatever plot to rule the world. As if they needed more encouragement.

Wicked Sufferings of Hell

2009-02-20T15:21:00.000-08:00

Hell, according to many religious beliefs, is an afterlife of suffering where the wicked or unrighteous dead are punished. Hell is almost always depicted as underground. Hell is traditionally depicted as fiery within Christianity and Islam. Some other traditions, however, portray hell as cold and gloomy.

Some theologies of hell offer graphic and gruesome detail (for example, Hindu Naraka). Religions with a linear divine history often depict Hell as endless (for example, see Hell in Christian beliefs). Religions with a cyclic history often depict hell as an intermediary period between incarnations. Punishment in hell typically corresponds to sins committed in life. Sometimes these distinctions are specific, with damned souls suffering for each wrong committed (see for example Plato's myth of Er), and sometimes they are general, with sinners being relegated to one or more chamber of hell or level of suffering (for example, Augustine of Hippo asserting that unbaptized infants, whom he believed to be deprived of Heaven, suffer less in hell than unbaptized adults).

In Islam and Christianity, however, faith and repentance play a larger role than actions in determining a soul's afterlife destiny.

Hell is often portrayed populated with demons, who torment the damned. Many are ruled by a death god, such as Nergal, the Hindu Yama, or some other dreadful supernatural figure (e.g. Satan).

In contrast to hell, other general types of afterlives are abodes of the dead and paradises. Abodes of the dead are neutral places for all the dead, rather than prisons of punishment for sinners. A paradise is a happy afterlife for some or all the dead.

Modern understandings of hell often depict it abstractly, as a state of loss rather than as fiery torture literally under the ground.

The term Hell is derived from Old English Hel and ultimately from Proto-Germanic Xaljo. The English term is related to Old Norse Hel. In relation, surviving representations of Germanic polytheism in the form of Norse mythology feature Hel, the daughter of Loki and Angrboda. Hel rules over Niflheim.

Hell appears in several mythologies and religions. It is commonly inhabited by demons and the souls of dead people.

Hell is often depicted in art and literature, perhaps most famously in Dante's Divine Comedy.

Baha'i Faith

The Baha'i Faith regards the conventional description of hell (and heaven) as a specific place as symbolic. Instead the Baha'i writings describe Hell as a "spiritual condition" where remoteness from God is defined as hell; conversely heaven is seen as a state of closeness to God. Baha'u'llah, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, has stated that the nature of the life of the soul in the afterlife is beyond comprehension in the physical plane, but has stated that the soul will retain its consciousness and individuality and remember its physical life; the soul will be able to recognize other souls and communicate with them.

Baha'u'llah likened death to the process of birth. He explains: "The world beyond is as different from this world as this world is different from that of the child while still in the womb of its mother."

The analogy to the womb in many ways summarizes the Baha'i view of earthly existence: just as the womb constitutes an important place for a person's initial physical development, the physical world provides for the development of the individual soul. Accordingly, Baha'i's view life as a preparatory stage, where one can develop and perfect those qualities which will be needed in the next life.

The key to spiritual progress is to follow the path outlined by the current Manifestations of God, which Bahá'i's believe is currently Baha'u'llah. The Baha'i teachings state that there exists a hierarchy of souls in the afterlife, where the merits of each soul determines their place in the hierarchy, and that souls lower in the hierarchy cannot completely understand the station of those above. Each soul can continue to progress in the afterlife, but the soul's development is not dependent on its own conscious efforts, but instead on the grace of God, the prayers of others, and good deeds performed by others on Earth in the name of the person.

Buddhism

As diverse as other religions, there are many beliefs about Hell in Buddhism.

Most of the schools of thought, Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana would acknowledge several hells, which are places of great suffering for those who commit evil actions, such as cold Hells and hot hells. Like all the different realms within cyclic existence, an existence in hell is temporary for its inhabitants. Those with sufficiently negative karma are reborn there, where they stay until their specific negative karma has been used up, at which point they are reborn in another realm, such as that of humans, of hungry ghosts, of animals, of asuras, of devas, or of Naraka (Hell) all according to the individual's karma.

There are a number of modern Buddhists, especially among Western schools, who believe that hell is but a state of mind. In a sense, a bad day at work could be hell, and a great day at work could be heaven. This has been supported by some modern scholars who advocate the interpretation of such metaphysical portions of the Scriptures symbolically rather than literally.

China

In Chinese mythology, the name of hell does not carry a negative connotation. The hell they refer to is Di Yu . Diyu is a maze of underground levels and chambers where souls are taken to atone for their earthly sins.

The popular story is that the word Hell was introduced to China by Christian missionaries, who preached that all non-Christian Chinese people would "go to hell" when they died. As such, it was believed that the word "Hell" was the proper English term for the Chinese afterlife, and hence the word was adopted.

The Chinese view Hell as similar to a present day passport or immigration control station. In a Chinese funeral, they burn many Hell Bank Notes for the dead. With this Hell money, the dead person can bribe the ruler of Hell, and spend the rest of the money either in Hell or in Heaven. There is a belief that once the dead person runs out of Hell money, and if he does not receive more, he will be eternally poor...

Christianity

Luke 12:5 records Jesus speaking about God's Judgment: "But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear Him, which after He hath killed hath Power to cast into Hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear Him." In Paul's letter to the Thessalonian church he describes a separation taking place: "The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven with His mighty angels, In flaming fire taking Vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the Presence of the Lord, and from the Glory of his Power" (2 Thessalonians 1:7-9)

Most modern Christians see Hell as the eternal punishment for unrepentant sinners, as well as for the Devil and his demons. Unbelievers are said to deserve Hell on account of original sin according to many conservative denominations. Sometimes exceptions are understood for those who have had extenuating circumstances (youth, mental illness, invincible error, etc.). As opposed to the concept of Purgatory, damnation to Hell is considered final and irreversible.

However, the foundation of the Christian faith is that it is the death of Jesus Christ, and acceptance of his love for us, that allows repentant sinners to avoid the torments of Hell and enjoy eternity with God. Various interpretations of the torments of Hell exist, ranging from fiery pits of wailing sinners to lonely isolation from God's presence. However, the descriptions of Hell found in the Bible are quite vague.

The books of Matthew, Mark, and Jude tell of a place of fire, while the books of Luke and Revelation report it as an abyss. Also, Revelation 20:10 (NIV) illustrates Hell as a "lake with burning sulfur". Our modern, more graphic, images of Hell have developed from writings that are not found in the Bible. Dante's The Divine Comedy is a classic inspiration for modern images of Hell.

Other early Christian writings also illustrate the anguish of Hell. These texts include the Apocalypse of Peter and the Coptic Apocalypse of Paul. Both these pieces of literature tell of the author being taken on a personal tour of Heaven and Hell. These writings tell of what the authors witnessed during their journeys.

Most Christians believe that damnation occurs immediately upon death (particular judgment), and others that it occurs after Judgment Day, which is written about in the book of Revelation. Attitudes by many Christians toward Hell and damnation have changed over the centuries, and most Restorationist groups reject the traditional concept of Hell altogether. These latter theologies allege the mutual exclusivity of barbaric portrayals of Hell with the benevolent nature of God.

Russian Orthodox Church mystic Daniil Andreev (1906-1959) described hell in his opus magnum Roza Mira (Rose of the World). His vision significantly departed from the Christian tradition, depicting an entire hierarchy of multiple Sheols different in appearances, purposes and relationships to human cultures and to 'diabolic' worlds co-existing with the visible Universe.

Hinduism

In Hinduism, there are contradictions as to whether or not there is a hell (referred to as 'Narak' in Hindi). For some it is a metaphor for a conscience. But in Mahabharata there is a mention of the Pandavas and the Kauravas going to hell. Hells are also described in various Puranas and other scriptures. Garuda Purana gives a detailed account on Hell, its features and enlists amount of punishment for most of the crimes like modern day penal code.

It is believed that people who commit 'paap' (sin) go to hell and have to go through the punishments in accordance to the sins they committed. The god Yama, who is also the god of death, is the king of hell. The detailed accounts of all the sins committed by an individual are supposed to be kept by Chitragupta who is the record keeper in Yama's court. Chitragupta reads out the sins committed and Yama orders the appropriate punishments to be given to the individuals. These punishments include dipping in boiling oil, burning in fire, torture using various weapons etc. in various hells. Individuals who finish their quota of the punishments are reborn according to their karma. All of the created are imperfect and thus have at least one sin to their record, but if one has led a generally pious life, one ascends to Heaven, or Swarga after a brief period of expiation in Hell.

Islam

Muslims believe in jahannam (which comes from the Hebrew word gehennim and resembles the versions of hell in Christianity). In the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, there are literal descriptions of the condemned in a fiery Hell, as contrasted to the garden-like Paradise (jannah) enjoyed by righteous believers.

In addition, Heaven and Hell are split into many different levels depending on the actions perpetrated in life, where punishment is given depending on the level of evil done in life, and good is separated into other levels depending on how well one followed God while alive.

There is an equal number of mentions of both Hell and paradise in the Qur'an, which is considered by believers to be among the numeric miracles in the Qur'an.

The Islamic concept of Hell is similar to the medieval Christian view of Dante. However, Satan is not viewed as Hell's ruler, merely one of its sufferers. The gate of hell is guarded by Maalik also known as Zabaaniyah. The Quran states that the fuel of hellfire is rocks/stones (idols) and human beings.

Names of hell according to Islamic Tradition based on the Quranic ayah and Hadith:

Jahim
Hutamah
Jahannam
Ladza
Hawiah
Saqor
Sae'er
Sijjin
Zamhareer

Although generally hell is often portrayed as a hot steaming and tormenting place for sinners there is one hell pit which is characterized differently from the other Hell in Islamic tradition. Zamhareer is seen as the coldest and the most freezing hell of all, yet its coldness is not seen as a pleasure or a relief to the sinners who committed crimes against God. The state of the Hell of Zamhareer is a suffering of extreme coldness of blizzards ice and snow which no one on this earth can bear.

The lowest pit of all existing hells is the Hawiyah which is meant for the Hypocrites and two-faced people who claimed to believe in Allah and His messenger by the tongue but denounced both in their hearts. Hypocrisy is considered to be the most dangerous sin of all despite the fact that Shirk (association of God with His creation) is the greatest sin viewed by Allah.

The lightest torture given by God in the hereafter to the unbeliever has been said to be given to Abu Talib. He was the father of Ali bin Abi Talib the fourth Caliph and the uncle of Muhammad. He helped Muhammad in his mission but failed to denounce his ancestral worship of pagan idols. He was said according the prophet to have suffered from the burning under his feet which makes his brain boiled.

The Qur'an also says that some of those who are damned to hell are not damned forever, but instead for an indefinite period of time. In any case, there is good reason to believe that punishment in Hell is not meant to actually last eternally, but instead serves as a basis for spiritual rectification.

Even though in Islam, the devil, or shaytan, is created from fire, he suffers in hell because hellfire is 70 times hotter than the fire of this world. It was also said that Shaytan is derived from shata, (literally `burned'), because it was created from a smokless fire.

Japanese Religions Note: The following viewpoint does not specify which Chinese-based religion it is referring to. The structure of Hell is remarkably complex in many Chinese and Japanese religions. The ruler of Hell has to deal with politics, just as human rulers do. Hell is the subject of many folk stories and manga. In many such stories, people in hell are able to die again.

Judaism

Judaism does not have a specific doctrine about the afterlife, but it does have a tradition of describing Gehenna. Gehenna is not hell, but rather a sort of Purgatory where one is judged based on his or her life's deeds. The Kabbalah describes it as a "waiting room" (commonly translated as an "entry way") for all souls (not just the wicked). The overwhelming majority of rabbinic thought maintains that people are not in Gehenna forever; the longest that one can be there is said to be 11 months, however there has been the occasional noted exception. Some consider it a spiritual forge where the soul is purified for its eventual ascent to Olam Habah (heb. "The world to come", often viewed as analogous to Heaven). This is also mentioned in the Kabbalah, where the soul is described as breaking, like the flame of a candle lighting another: the part of the soul that ascends being pure and the "unfinished" piece being reborn.

When one has so deviated from the will of god, one is said to be in gehinom. This is not meant to refer to some point in the future, but to the very present moment. The gates of teshuva (return) are said to be always open, and so one can align his will with that of god at any moment. Being out of alignment with god's will is itself a punishment according to the Torah.

Maya Faith

In Maya mythology Xibalba is the dangerous underworld in nine levels ruled by the demons Vucub Caquix and Hun Came. The road into and out of it is said to be steep, thorny and very forbidding. Metnal is the lowest and most horrible of the nine hells of the underworld. It is ruled by Ah Puch. Ritual healers would intone healing prayers banishing diseases to Metnal. Much of the Popol Vuh describes the adventures of the Maya Hero Twins in their cunning struggle with the evil lords of Xibalba.

Taoism

Ancient Taoism had no concept of Hell, as morality was seen to be a man-made distinction and there was no concept of an immaterial soul. In its home country China, where Taoism adopted tenets of other religions, popular belief endows Taoist Hell with many deities and spirits who punish sin in a variety of horrible ways. This is also considered Karma for Taoism.

Unification Church

The Unification Church teaches that hell is the condition of being separated from God's love. Hell can be said to exist in this world as well as in the afterlife. Those in the state of hell can repent by paying a condition of indemity and change their condition, both before and after death (Although, the process is done differently). The Divine Principle, the main textbook of church teachings, says:

It is not God who decides whether a person's spirit enters heaven or Hell upon his death; it is decided by the spirit himself. Humans are created so that once they reach perfection they will fully breathe the love of God. Those who committed sinful deeds while on earth become crippled spirits who are incapable of fully breathing in the love of God. They find it agonizing to stand before God, the center of true love. Of their own will, they choose to dwell in hell, far removed from the love of God.

If You Hate A Person....

2009-02-20T15:20:00.000-08:00

Hermann Hesse:

"Ah, but it is hard to find this track of the divine in the midst of this life we lead, in this besotted humdrum age of spiritual blindness, with its architecture, its business, its politics, its men! How could I fail to be a lone wolf, an uncouth hermit, as I did not share one of its aims nor understand one of its pleasures...I cannot understand what pleasures and joys they are that drive people to overcrowded railways and hotels, into the packed cafes with the suffocating and oppressive music...I cannot understand nor share these joys, though they are within my reach, for which thousands of others strive. On the other hand, what happens to me in my rare hours of joy, what for me is bliss and life and ecstasy and exaltation, the world in general seeks at most in imagination; in life it finds absurd. and in fact, if the world is right, if this music of the cafes, these mass enjoyments of these Americanized men who are pleased with so little are right, then I am wrong, I am crazy. I am the Steppenwolf who I often call myself; the beast astray who find neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that is strange and incomprehensible to him."

10 Inspirational Quotes by The Buddha

2009-02-20T15:19:00.000-08:00

Buddha means "Awakened One", someone who has awakened and sees things as they really are. According to AboutBuddha.org , a Buddha is a person who is completely free from all faults and mental obstructions. Because he has awakened from the sleep of ignorance and has removed all obstructions from his mind, he knows everything of the past, present, and future, directly and simultaneously. Moreover, Buddha has great compassion which is completely impartial, embracing all living beings without discrimination.

The person who is generally referred to by the name Buddha was Siddhārtha Gautama , a spiritual teacher from ancient India and the founder of Buddhism who lived at around 500 BCE. Forty-nine days after Buddha attained enlightenment he was requested to teach. As a result of this request, Buddha rose from meditation and taught the first Wheel of Dharma.

Those teachings of The Buddha such as The Four Noble Truths or the Noble Eightfold Path are timeless and reflect personal and spiritual development.

Many quotes that are handed down until today are both inspirational as well as reflecting deeper truth of reality. What can we learn, where can we be inspired from The Buddha today for everyday life and our own development?

I selected following quotations as both inspirational and helpful, regardless of where we are in personal development …

1. "All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become."

You become what you think about or in other words: what you focus on grows in your life and from what you take your focus away from diminishes. This is also the message of the law of attraction, recently very popular by the movie and book "The Secret ".

It means that the mind is directing our life in that way that we manifest the life around us by the thoughts and directions we take with our mind. Since everything we created around us is first created in the mind, it is the tool or the interface between our self and the material world.

Another quote of Buddha with a similar message here is "He is able who thinks he is able". This also shows the creative power of the mind and if we are able to consciously use it in that way – avoiding negative thoughts and utilizing empowering thoughts – we use it in a supportive manner.

2. "All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?"

This is the core of personal development. It points towards the need to train and develop the mind and to free it from limits and negativity.

The other quote "The mind is the source of happiness and unhappiness." makes the same point with the special notion of happiness. The mind used correctly – i.e. constructive, empowering, solution- and action-oriented, positive, truth-seeking - can create happiness. But used poorly – i.e. blaming, egocentric, negative, blinded by ambition or separation - it will create unhappiness for us. Training the mind is the key here.

The quote may also point to a transformation by awakening directly, where the mind becomes the servant of the self and not the creator of a self-image (the concept of the ego) as a replacement for the true self.

3. "Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."

This points to the abundant nature of reality. The abundance mentality says there is enough for everyone, we only have to realize and live by it. It is the opposite of a scarcity mentality, where you have the belief that you always have to fight for your part in a limited world.

4. "Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment."

The essence of living in the present moment, the Now, is focusing the mind here and take attention away from thinking about past or future. The present moment is all there ever is to experience life directly. Past and future are only concepts of our mind and therefore are good for learning from the past or conceptual planning when it is useful, but after this there is no need for them. Especially not to dwell in them and get stuck there in the mind by constant thinking loops.

I wrote more about this in "What is The Present Moment " and in "Clock Time vs. Psychological Time ". The present moment is the entry point to the spiritual dimension and to life itself.

5. "However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you If you do not act on upon them?"

Action is what counts. It means to be action-oriented and to actually do what we think, to prove what we believe by applying it in reality. Only if we "walk our talk" we are authentic and truthful to ourselves.

To apply yourself and your ideas in reality is like a proof-test for what we think is right and will work. If there is no action and therefore no testing in reality, the words or ideas themselves are of no real sustainable value.

Another quote for this message is "A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker."

6. "Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely."

This is the essence of Carpe diem – To seize the day fully means living wisely. It means to live to the highest truth we know and to rise to our highest values and capabilities.

Living wisely also means not to believe every thought that comes, but to live more from the space between thoughts, from our essence.

7. "Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without."

The so-called Inside-Out approach means to look within oneself to find the inspiration and power to act from this place. It means not to look to the outside world for liberation or happiness, but to take the responsibility for oneself and become that what we are seeking.

His second quote here "No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path." talks directly about this responsibility, response-ability we have inside.

8. "In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true."

Any perspective we have on anything is only a relative truth. There are always both (or more) sides of any story. An objective perspective or an absolute truth is very hard or maybe impossible to see. But to be aware of this and to be interested to see another perspective from another person can be very mind-opening and valuable.

The matter of perspective (also described in the 7 habits of highly effective people ) is a very powerful one and it is the core of most (if not all?) conflicts between people. One things one is right as long one stays in one’s own single perspective – needless to say, the other person has the same reality.

There is a similar quote by The Buddha that fits in here: "In seperateness lies the world’s great misery, in compassion lies the world’s true strength" which shows that if we become able to dissolve the separate perspective to a perspective of oneness with all other, we hold the key to end conflicts and to find solution and agreements suitable for everybody.

9. "If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change."

This quote is perhaps the most difficult one to really understand. In the first place, it is not about the beautiful nature of the flower or beauty itself. What Buddha is talking about – in my humble opinion – is to see and get in touch with the life in a flower directly, without any interference by our mind by mental concepts and thoughts of the flower.

Eckhart Tolle in "A New Earth" talks about the flowering of human consciousness, maybe you want to take a look …

10. "The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows."

If we are not authentic and truthful to ourselves, we build a wall around us that eventually we have to tear down again. It is then literally a resistance to the reality and our own nature where we can hide some time, but life has a way to show us our own faults in the end.

To be true to the best one knows means to come from our own best knowledge and not buy into something outside ourselves blindly, always asking: is this really true to what I know?

In resonance with this quote also is the final one by The Buddha:

"There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting."

The Problem of Evil

2009-02-20T15:18:00.003-08:00

The problem of evil (or argument from evil) is the problem of reconciling the existence of the evil in the world with the existence of an omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful) and perfectly good God. The argument from evil is the atheistic argument that the existence of such evil cannot be reconciled with, and so disproves, the existence of such a God.

Christianity claims both that God created the world and that he sustains it. Christianity claims that God knows all things and is capable of all feats. Christianity claims that God is perfectly good, and wants only the best for his Creation. If each of these claims is true, though, then it is difficult to see why God allows the evil in the world to persist. The evil in the world thus appears to be at least strong and perhaps even conclusive evidence that at least one of these central claims of Christianity is false.

This discussion will distinguish between four different forms of the argument from evil: the argument from imperfection, the argument from natural evil, the argument from moral evil, and the argument from unbelief. Though each of these arguments presents a different problem for the theist to explain, a different reason for believing that atheism is true, each shares a common form. The four arguments are, of course, mutually consistent, and so can be and often are proposed together.

Each of the four arguments from evil begins with the claim that if God existed then the world would reach a certain standard. The standard anticipated differs between the different forms of the argument, each argument claiming that the evil named in its title—imperfection, natural evil, moral evil and unbelief respectively—would not exist in a world created and sustained by God.

In each of the arguments this claim is supported by an appeal to God’s nature. If God exists, it is said, then he is omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent. As such, it is suggested, God would know how to bring it about that the world met the anticipated standard, would be able to bring it about that that the universe met the anticipated standard, and would want to bring it about that the universe met the anticipated standard. If God knew how to, were able to, and wanted to do a thing, though, then surely he would do that thing. If God existed, then, it seems that he would bring it about that the world met the standard anticipated by the proponent of the argument from evil.

The next step in each of the arguments from evil is the claim that the world does indeed contain the evil named, that the world does not reach the standard that it would reach if God existed. The four arguments thus claim respectively that the universe is imperfect, that it contains natural evil, that it contains moral evil, and that it contains unbelief. Each argument concludes from its respective claim that God does not exist. The argument from evil can, then, be represented as having the following structure:
The Argument from Evil

(1) If God exists then he is omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good.
(2) If God were omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good then the world would not contain evil.
(3) The world contains evil.
Therefore:
(4) It is not the case that God exists.

Some attempts to solve the problem of evil are general, applying equally to all of its forms. It is sometimes argued, for instance, that God is not morally good, and so that the first premise of the argument from evil is false. The third premise has also been questioned; there are some that deny that evil exists. If either of these solutions is successful, then all forms of the argument from evil fail.

Most attempts to solve the problem of evil, however, question the second premise of a specific form of the argument. A discussion of each of the four forms of the argument—the argument from imperfection, the argument from natural evil, the argument from moral evil, and the argument from unbelief—can be found by following the appropriate link.

Aztec Religion

2009-02-20T15:18:00.001-08:00

Religion was a very important part of the daily lives of the Aztec people and it was fiercely guarded. Their beliefs that their actions could either please or displease the Aztec gods, led them to capture and offer people as human sacrifices . They offered human sacrifices all year long and even killed their slaves On God's Feast Day in honor of the sun and to sway the gods to provide them with sustenance.

Aztec Religious Beliefs

The Aztec beliefs were varied and vast. They believed in heaven and hell. In fact, they believed in multiple heavens and hells, believing there to be 9 hells and 13 heavens. They also believed that the sun wrestled with darkness each night. The Aztec religion also drove them to create beautiful temples to appease their many gods. Ceremonial temples were called Teocalli. They included pools created for ceremonial cleansing, places for the temple priests to live, gardens and storage areas to hold skulls.

Aztec Gods

The Aztecs named and worshipped nearly 1000 Aztec gods. However, the most prominent god to the Aztecs was the sun god. One of the most celebrated religious days was the O'Nothing Days. During this time, priests would get dressed up like gods and go to an extinct volcano to perform human sacrifices. These sacrifices would occur when the evening star rose high in the sky. The captive would be placed over either a stone chosen just for this purpose or an altar. The victims' hearts would be set on fire and torn out of their chests. Once removed from their bodies, it would be lifted toward the sun and placed in a dish that was believed to be sacred. The bodies of the sacrificed would be pushed down the stairs of the temple. It may be surprising to learn that many of the sacrificed were happy to give up their bodies, as they believed that it was their instant ticket to heaven.

Aztec Religion - Afterlife

In the Aztec culture, the belief in an afterlife was strong. However, unlike in many Western religions where ones' afterlife depends on how they lived, the Aztecs believed that how you died determined where you would end up. Individuals would immediately go to the sun god after death if they died fighting in a war. Women who died while giving birth to a child also enjoyed this privilege. Individuals who died for any other reason, had to travel through the underworld before reaching the resting place of the dead.

Aztec God - Huizilopochtlid

The main god of the Aztecs was Huizilopochtlid. This was the sun and war god. Huizilopochtlid told the Aztecs to settle at the place where the saw an eagle on a cactus with a snake it it's mouth. And that is exactly what they did. Another important god was named Tlaloc. Tlaloc was the rain god and farmers were careful to praise this god so that could grow good crops and not experience drought, which was a common occurrence in the area.

Aztec And Religion

The Aztec people were a very religious people who had many different beliefs and a great number of gods. Appeasing their gods was of great importance and it appeared that their gods were blood thirsty, as tens of thousands of people were sacrificed each year to appease them.

Top 10 Religion Debates of All Time

2009-02-20T15:17:00.001-08:00

Ever since mankind has been roaming the Earth, people have been philosophizing on the role of religion in their existence and wondering if there was an “intelligent being” that put them here on this Earth. Whether it was the Christian God, the Muslim Allah, the Supreme Being of Scientology, the Flying Spaghetti Monster of Pastafarianism, or the evolution of the Atheists, people will argue until they’re blue in the face about their religion. To me, only one thing is for sure, nobody really knows what happened because none of us were there. But don’t let that get you down, there are plenty of arguments for and against all sorts of different religious beliefs. From the highly believable to the “you can’t seriously believe that, can you?” and everywhere in between, CreateDebate presents to you the top 10 Religious Debates of All Time.

10. Was Ra, the Egyptian Sun God, the father of all the Pharaohs?

Ancient Egyptians believed that Ra was the Sun God, commander of the sky, earth, and underworld. He is the most central god of the Egyptian pantheon. Most Egyptians believed that Pharaohs were the sons of Ra and erected solar temples and obelisks in his honor. However, some Egyptians did not believe that Ra created the Earth but didn’t have an appropriate outlet to vent their frustrations (especially if they preferred their heads to remain attached to their body).

9. Was Haile Sellasie I, the former Emperor of Ethiopa God incarnate?

Rastafarians believe that Haile Sellasie I is the living God incarnate, or the Messiah, who will lead the people of Africa and African diaspora to freedom. Rastafarians believe that exiled Africans will one day return to Ethiopa with the help of the Messiah to escape the oppression caused by Babylon. The Rastafarians movement was started primarily in Jamaica, although the ranks of Rastafarians throughout the world is estimated to be near 1 million strong.

8. Is Scientology a cult?

The Church of Scientology, originally founded by L. Ron Hubbard, believes “that Man is basically good, that he is seeking to survive, [and] that his survival depends on himself and upon his fellows and his attainment of brotherhood with the universe” (from Church of Scientology’s statement of beliefs). However, many people believe that this Church is a cult that was set up as a tax shelter for Hubbard’s Dianetics book profits and that is primarily intended to extract large sums of money from their celebrity cult members.

7. Was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene?

This debate was popularized by the highly successful (and highly controversial) book “The DaVinci Code” by Dan Brown. The book claims that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, had a child, and the Church covered it up through the years for self-serving reasons. While Brown has stated that the book is fiction, it has caused much debate and controversy, especially within the Roman Catholic Church.

6. Are Mormons Christians?

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was founded by Joseph Smith, Jr. in the Spring of 1820 after publishing the Book of Mormon, one of the faith’s scriptures, which Joseph Smith said he translated from plates of gold that were buried near his home in a place shown to him by the angel Moroni. Many traditional Christians reject Mormonism as a Christian religion, claiming that the story of Joseph Smith and the Golden Plates is fiction and that he was not a prophet.

5. Was the Flying Spaghetti Monster responsible for intelligent design?

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (CoFSM) was founded in 2005 by Bobby Henderson to protest the teaching of intelligent design in school. Bobby parodies the theory of an intelligent designer by professing belief in a supreme creator made of spaghetti and meatballs. The CoFSM has gained a huge following, primarily on the Internet in response to the Christian movement to teach intelligent design in classrooms.

4. Is Islam a religion of violence or a religion of peace?

This debate has received much attention, not only on CreateDebate but throughout much of the mainstream media since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. While Islam’s central tenets preach, several extremists have taken passages from the Qur’an such as, “Make war on them until idolatry shall cease and God’s religion shall reign supreme.” (8:39)” to mean that Muslims are called to kill any non-Muslim to ensure Islam is the supreme religion of the land.

3. Jesus Christ: Fact or Fiction?

Christianity claims that Jesus Christ was the Son of God who was sacrificed to absolve believer’s sins so that Christians could receive eternal life. The Christian Bible teaches of many miracles performed by Jesus of Nazareth and of his resurrection from the dead. However, many people dispute that he was the Son of God and that the writings of the Bible are embellished stories chosen by the Church to further their mission.

2. Was Mohammed a pedophile?

The Qur’an (Mohammed’s testimonies) and Hadiths (other’s reports on the life of Mohmmed) depict Mohammed marrying a 6 year old girl for his third marriage. Many people believe that this practice (uncommon in present day) should be viewed as pedophilia. What do you think?

1. Do you believe in God?

This debate still reigns as the Most Popular debate on CreateDebate thus far. Many people define themselves by their religious beliefs (or lack thereof), which is why it deserves the spot as the number one religious debate of all time. It seems to me that everyone, no matter what gender, nationality, ethnicity, or age has an opinion on this topic, and they love to share it.

Do you make these 10 mistakes in a conversation?

2009-02-20T15:16:00.002-08:00

Can you improve your conversation skills? Certainly.

It might take a while to change the conversation habits that’s been ingrained throughout your life, but it is very possible.

To not make this article longer than necessary let’s just skip right to some common mistakes many of us have made in conversations. And a couple of solutions.

Not listening
Ernest Hemingway once said:

“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.”

Don’t be like most people. Don’t just wait eagerly for your turn to talk. Put your own ego on hold. Learn to really listen to what people actually are saying.

When you start to really listen, you’ll pick up on loads of potential paths in the conversation. But avoid yes or no type of questions as they will not give you much information. If someone mentions that they went fishing with a couple of friends last weekend you can for instance ask:

* Where did you go fishing?
* What do you like most about fishing?
* What did you do there besides fishing?

The person will delve deeper into the subject giving you more information to work with and more paths for you choose from.

If they say something like: “Oh, I don’t know” at first, don’t give up. Prod a little further. Ask again. They do know, they just have to think about a bit more. And as they start to open up the conversation becomes more interesting because it’s not on auto-pilot anymore.

Asking too many questions
If you ask too many questions the conversation can feel like a bit of an interrogation. Or like you don’t have that much too contribute. One alternative is to mix questions with statements. Continuing the conversation above you could skip the question and say:

* Yeah, it’s great to just get out with your friends and relax over the weekend. We like to take a six-pack out to the park and play some Frisbee golf.
* Nice. We went out in my friend’s boat last month and I tried these new lures from Sakamura. The blue ones were really great.

And then the conversation can flow on from there. And you can discuss Frisbee golf, the advantages/disadvantages of different lures or your favourite beer.

Tightening up
When in conversation with someone you just meet or when the usual few topics are exhausted an awkward silence or mood might appear. Or you might just become nervous not knowing exactly why.

* Leil Lowndes once said: “Never leave home without reading the newspaper.” If you’re running out of things to say, you can always start talking about the current news. It’s also good to stay updated on current water cooler-topics. Like what happened on the latest episode of Lost.
* Comment on the aquarium at the party, or that one girl’s cool Halloween-costume or the host’s mp3-playlist. You can always start new conversations about something in your surroundings.
* Assume rapport. If you feel nervous or weird when meeting someone for the first time assume rapport. What that means is that you imagine how you feel when you meet one of your best friends. And pretend that this new acquaintance is one of your best friends. Don’t overdo it though, you might not want to hug and kiss right away. But if you imagine this you’ll go into a positive emotional state. And you’ll greet and start talking to this new person with a smile and a friendly and relaxed attitude. Because that’s how you talk to your friends. It might sound a bit loopy or too simple. But it really works.

Poor delivery
One of the most important things in a conversation is not what you say, but how you say it. A change in these habits can make a big difference since your voice and body language is a vital part of communication. Some things to think about:

* Slowing down. When you get excited about something it’s easy to start talking faster and faster. Try and slow down. It will make it much easier for people to listen and for you actually get what you are saying across to them.
* Speaking up. Don’t be afraid to talk as loud as you need to for people to hear you.
* Speaking clearly. Don’t mumble.
* Speak with emotion. No one listens for that long if you speak with a monotone voice. Let your feelings be reflected in your voice.
* Using pauses. Slowing down your talking plus adding a small pause between thoughts or sentences creates a bit of tension and anticipation. People will start to listen more attentively to what you’re saying. Listen to one of Brian Tracys cds or Steve Pavlina’s podcasts. Listen to how using small pauses makes what they are saying seem even more interesting.
* Learn a bit about improving your body language as it can make your delivery a lot more effective. Read about laughter, posture and how to hold your drink in 18 ways to improve your body language.

Hogging the spot-light
I’ve been guilty of this one on more occasions than I wish to remember. :) Everyone involved in a conversation should get their time in the spotlight. Don’t interrupt someone when they are telling some anecdote or their view on what you are discussing to divert the attention back to yourself. Don’t hijack their story about skiing before it’s finished to share your best skiing-anecdote. Find a balance between listening and talking.

Having to be right
Avoid arguing and having to being right about every topic. Often a conversation is not really a discussion. It’s a more of a way to keep a good mood going. No one will be that impressed if you “win” every conversation. Instead just sit back, relax and help keep the good feelings going.

Talking about a weird or negative topic
If you’re at a party or somewhere were you are just getting to know some people you might want to avoid some topics. Talking about your bad health or relationships, your crappy job or boss, serial killers, technical lingo that only you and some other guy understands or anything that sucks the positive energy out of the conversation are topics to steer clear from. You might also want to save religion and politics for conversations with your friends.

Being boring
Don’t prattle on about your new car for 10 minutes oblivious to your surroundings. Always be prepared to drop a subject when you start to bore people. Or when everyone is getting bored and the topic is starting to run out of steam.

One good way to have something interesting to say is simply to lead an interesting life. And to focus on the positive stuff. Don’t start to whine about your boss or your job, people don’t want to hear that. Instead, talk about your last trip somewhere, some funny anecdote that happened while you where buying clothes, your plans for New Years Eve or something funny or exciting.

Another way is just to be genuinely interested. As Dale Carnegie said:

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming really interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Which is just another way of saying that the way to make a friend is to be one.”

Knowing a little about many things or at least being open to talk about them instead of trying to steer the conversation back to your favourite subject is a nice quality.

Meaning: talking for what seems like hours about one topic. Topics may include work, favourite rock-band, TV-show and more work.

Opening up a bit and not clinging desperately to one topic will make the conversation feel more relaxed and open. You will come across like a person who can talk about many things with ease. As you’ve probably experienced with other people; this quality is something you appreciate in a conversation and makes you feel like you can connect to that person easily.

Not reciprocating
Open up and say what you think, share how you feel. If someone shares an experience, open up too and share one of your experiences. Don’t just stand there nodding and answer with short sentences. If someone is investing in the conversation they’d like you to invest too.

Like in so many areas in life, you can’t always wait for the other party to make the first move. When needed, be proactive and be the first one to open up and invest in the conversation. One way is by replacing some questions with statements. It makes you less passive and makes take a sort of stand.

Not contributing much
You might feel that you don’t have much to contribute to a conversation. But try anyway. Really listen and be interested in what the others are saying. Ask questions. Make relating statements.

Open your eyes too. Develop your observational skills to pick up interesting stuff in your surroundings to talk about. Develop your personal knowledge-bank by expanding your view of interesting things in the world. Read the newspapers and keep an eye on new water cooler-topics.

Work on your body language, how you talk and try assuming rapport to improve your communication skills.

But take it easy. Don’t do it all at once. You’ll just feel confused and overwhelmed. Instead, pick out the three most important things that you feel needs improving. Work on them every day for 3-4 weeks. Notice the difference and keep at it. Soon your new habits will start to pop up spontaneously when you are in a conversation.

7 Ways Religion is Detrimental to Science

2009-02-20T15:16:00.001-08:00

In the past, science has been limited to the boundaries religion places on it. As long as science did not conflict with the ideas of the regional religion, then all was good. However, science is going to conflict with religion. Scientific facts will grow further and further away from religion. Religion isn’t going out without a fight though. Here are 7 ways religions are trying to fight back against science.

1. Faith and the Scientific Method are Opposites

Faith is a belief in an idea regardless of the evidence for or against it. The Scientific Method is constantly changing scientific ideas because of evidence. It is a slippery slope when people begin to believe in an idea despite evidence against it. It is the foundation of logic that allows us to change our ideas when mounting evidence convinces us that we are wrong. An idea that by definition must be correct not only implies circular logic, but is a condition in which logic breaks down entirely. Science has no place for logical fallacies.

2. People Vote Based on Religious Ideas

Stem Cells weren’t the first time a body of research didn’t get proper funding because some religious wack-jobs. If a group of fundamentalists uses their religion as a basis for morality, they may lose sight of the big picture. This creates a gray area in opinion for moderates as they struggle to find their place somewhere between the fundamentalist and the scientist.

This manifests itself on election day when moderates either stay home or give in to larger social pressures to vote for representatives of a religion rather than someone who is willing to make decisions based on evidence even if it goes against their faith. This has a very real impact in funding that certain research is subject to if it crosses a line determined by faith. This effects everybody who could benefit from the research. When the research is of a medical nature, policy based on religion literally kills.

3. Religion Removes the Need For Science

When people are content to believe in something that explains why they are here, even if it is wrong, they may become less interested in other ideas. Religion often leads people to believe that they have all the answers. Science is self-correcting in that nobody assumes they are absolutely correct. It is naive to think that such a simple idea could explain all the complexity around us.

4. People Lean on Religion, When They Could Benefit From Science

How many times have you seen a news story where a child dies of a curable disease while his/her parents pray? Obviously this is an extreme case, but the idea is the same for everyone in a religious group. The difference between an extremist and a moderate is that a moderate will eventually resort to common sense, while the extremist will try to justify their actions.

5. The Church Takes Up Natural Resources

The land that churches take up around the world could be used to build schools, homes, recreational buildings and commercial operations. Religion is terrible for the economy because it takes up precious resources for an often worthless cause.

The religious centers require electricity to heat and cool. They use water, sewage resources, building materials and repair materials. Is the small comfort that religion gives us worth it’s human cost? Religion is not practical on a benefit to cost scale.

6. The Church Takes Up Monetary Resources

If people donated to scientific advancement like they did to the church, imagine where we would be today. The economy can only support so much, and science should have the priority because it is helpful to mankind on a fundamental level. Religion may comfort the sick and dying, but science can prevent them from getting sick. Eventually science may be able to stop them from dying in the first place.

7. Religion is A Strong Meme

A meme (term first coined by Richard Dawkins) is any idea that is replicated. Memes can evolve in much the same way that genes do. If we look at both religion and science as memes, religion has had a much longer time to evolve than the modern scientific method. This does not mean that either is more correct than the other, it just means that religion is a much harder idea to destroy because it has “adapted” to thrive in it’s human container.

To continue the analogy between organisms and memes, I think that the science and religion memes are competing. They are both trying to fill the same niche in their environment: the need to explain the unknown (includes the how and why). This may be a rather bountiful niche, but that doesn’t mean that there is room for the both of them. The problem with this argument is that to you have to admit that neither science or religion have a very good understanding of the world.

Top 50 Saints for Sickness

2009-02-20T15:14:00.004-08:00

Bess writes: Roman Catholics believe that the saints – holy men and women declared by the Church to be exceptional for their virtuous lives and a model for mortals to follow – can help those who request their intercession on earth. So there are saints for hairdressers and for hospital workers, journalists, gardeners, hotel-keepers and just about any profession going. And as our list below shows, there are patron saints for virtually every kind of illness too. This is the Faith Central list of the top 50 saints for the sick.

1. For abdomen pains pray to St Charles Borromeo , a nephew of Pope Pius V and key figure in the 16th century Catholic counter-reformation who improved the morals of the clergy and allegedly attempted to feed 60,000 – 70,000 people a day during the 1576 famine and plague.

2. To alleviate chest pain try St Bernadine of Siena who, by the age of 20, was running his local hospital. When other hospital workers succumbed to plague, St Bernardine ended up in sole charge. He needed two years to recover from exhaustion afterwards. Then he became a preacher allegedly attracting audiences of up to 30,000 to hear his sermons. He's also the patron saint of gamblers and those with lung complaints.

3. For Inflammatory diseases and kidney troubles pray to St Benedict. The founder of Western monasticism, and patron saint of Europe, St Benedict is famous for his “rule” on how to live in a religious community. Written in the 6th century specifically for life in a religious community, the "rule" has been adapted as a guide to family life and how to run a modern business. St Benedict's medal is said to offer protection against the Devil.

4. Stiff necked? Pray to St Urscinius of Saint Ursannne, a 7th century missionary in Switzerland who detested wine and those who tried to serve it to him.

5. Got an uncontrollabe twitch? Pray to St Bartholomew. He's also the patron saint of bookbinders, butchers, cobblers, leather workers, nervous diseases, neurological diseases, plasterers, shoemakers, tanners and trappers. Bartholomew, one of Christ’s 12 apostles, is said to have preached in India and Armenia before his beheading.

6. St Aloysius Gonzaga is the patron saint of Aids sufferers. A Jesuit who caught the plague while tending victims in a hospital in Rome, Gonzaga died aged 23 in 1591.

7. Struggling with drink? St John of God is the patron saint of those with alcohol problems.
Committed to a mental hospital for beating himself in public in repentance for sin,
St John was visited by a preacher, Blessed John of Avila, who advised him to care for others in need rather than inflict hardships upon himself. Until his death in 1550, John of God worked among the poor.

8. Another patron saint for alcoholics is St Martin of Tours. A reluctant soldier in the 4th century who refused prize booty from the Roman emperor, St Martin became a monk and was tricked into becoming a bishop, at the demand of the people of Tours, who lured him into the city saying he was needed to help a sick person. Famous for allegedly slashing his cloak in half to give one half to a beggar whom he later saw in a dream as Christ, St Martin is also the patron saint of horses.

9. And a third holy helper for alcoholics is St Monica, the Christian mother of St Augustine who prayed relentlessly for his conversion in the 4th century while he enjoyed the pagan high life.

10. Angina sufferers can pray to St Swithbert, the 7th century Northumbrian who took part in a evangelising trip to Holland with St Willibrod and later founded a monastery on an island on the Rhine.

11. And for apoplexy (strokes) try St Wolfgang. According to legend, this 10th century German bishop forced the devil to help him build a church. Sometimes he is painted holding an axe, a reference to a story that seeking a solitary spot to worship God, he threw his axe into a thicket in a wood, and regarded the place where it landed as divine indication of the spot he should build his hermit’s cell.

12. Those stricken with arthritis might try St Alphonsus of Ligouri. The founder of the Redemptorists, he wrote a famous work on moral theology in the 18th century, and tried to resist being made a bishop. In old age, Alphonsus apparently suffered poor sight and terrible rheumatism and was tricked by his followers into signing a document changing their rule.

13. For bowel problems try St Bonaventure. This 13th century theologian was allegedly healed from a childhood sickness by praying to St Francis of Assisi.

14. Women with Breast cancer might want to pray to St Agatha, a Sicilian imprisoned in a brothel for a month in the 3rd century by a wealthy admirer frustrated that Agatha had resisted him. According to legend, she was subsequently tortured and her breasts were cut off and placed on a plate. She is also prayed to for protection against fire: her intercession is said to have prevented, at one stage, the eruptions of Mount Etna.

15. If you have broken bones try St Drogo. A Flemish saint who lived in the 12th century, Drogo was so deformed by an illness that local people were said to be terrified by him. So he lived out of sight in a tiny cell attached to a church.

16. While for burns turn to St John the Apostle. The “beloved disciple” of Christ, John was famed for purifying water, allegedly driving out demons and for surviving when the Roman Emperor Dometian had him beaten, poisoned, and thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil. Afterwards, he went to live on Patmos.

17. For cancer pray to St Peregrine Laziosi a priest who in the 13th century imposed a penance on himself of standing whenever it was not necessary to sit. Eventually he got cancer of the foot, when medical treatment failed, he was told his foot would need to be amputated. The night before the operation, Peregrine prayed before a crucifix and, while asleep, allegedly had a vision of Jesus leaving the cross and touching his cancerous leg. When he awoke his leg was cured and he is said to have lived for another 20 years.

18. The patron saint of colic is St Erasmus or Elmo who had hot iron hooks stuck in his stomach on the orders of the Roman emperor Diocletian, but miraculously endured them. Blue lights seen at mastheads prior to and after a storm are called “St Elmo’s Fire” and traditionally seen as a sign of his protection.

19. The patron saints of deafness is St Francis de Sales. Bishop of Geneva and a prolific 16th century writer, Francis was famed for his gentle approach to evangelising. He said “a spoonful of honey attracts more flies than a barrelful of vinegar.”

20. The patron saint for depression is St Benedict Joseph Labre. An 18th century mendicant known as the “Beggar of Rome” Benedict dressed in rags, and lived in the Colosseum sharing his food with the poor. Also patron of the homeless.

21. St Lucy, whose eyes were removed on the orders of the Roman emperor Diocletian, is patron of the blind.

22. And St Clare, a lifelong friend of St Francis of Assisi, is the patron saint of those with eye problems. She is also patron saint of television due to a legend that unable to attend Mass with St Francis of Assisi in the 13th century she miraculously observed the liturgy on her cell wall.

23. For dizzy spells turn to St Ulric a 10th century German saint, who is also patron of pregnant women. Those who drank from his chalice were said to be guaranteed easy deliveries, while his cross was said to cure those bitten by rabid dogs.

24. Drug addicts can ask for the help of St Maxmilian Kolbe a Franciscan who volunteered to take the place of Jewish husband and father selected for the gas chambers of Auschwitz in 1941. He is also patron saint of journalists.

25. Eczema sufferers and those with skin problems in general can ask for the help of St Antony the Abbot. Also known as Anthony the Eygptian, he founded desert monasticism in the 3rd century and is often depicted with a pig, as pork was occasionally used to reduce inflammation or itching of the skin.

26. St Willibrod is the patron saint for epileptics. An 8th century bishop, Willibrod died in Luxemburg where he is remembered in an annual procession in which participants hold hands and hop on one leg to the basilica which contains his remains.

27. For earache pray to St Polycarp of Smyrna. A second century martyr, Polycarp is said to have predicted he would be burned to death, after dreaming of a pillow in flames. When cast into the fire, the 86-year-old bishop was said to have glowed golden like baking bread.

28. Feverish? Try St Genevieve, a 5th century saint who told Parisians they could avert slaughter by the surging hordes of Attila the Hun by prayer and fasting. Often depicted with a loaf of bread to symbolise her generosity to the hungry.

29. Suffering from gallstones? Pray to St Liborius, the 4th century bishop of Le Mans, who is patron of Paderborn. He is often shown either with a peacock or carrying a book with small stones on it.

30.For hangovers, pray to St Bibiana, a 4th century Roman scourged to death. In the garden of the church built over her grave, a herb grew which was reputed to cure headaches and epilepsy.

31.Headache sufferers can pray to the 16th century Spaniard, St Teresa of Avila. She founded convents of Reformed Carmelites and wrote three spiritual bestsellers, but initially struggled as a nun to resist temptations to gossip in the convent parlour. A paralysing sickness for which she prayed to St Joseph for a cure, is said to have radically transformed her spiritual journey.

32. The patron saint for hernias is St Alban of Mainz, a 5th century missionary beheaded while praying. A church was built at his graveside.

33. Feeling hopeless? Ask for help from St Jude, one of the 12 apostles who is associated with desperate cases because the Epistle he wrote to the Churches in the East, ( it is in the New Testament) speaks of the need to preserve in faith in difficult circumstances.

34. Another alternative for the desperate is St Rita of Cascia the 16th century Italian housewife who is also patron saints of parents and those who are infertile. She was pressured into marrying a cruel man eventually murdered in a brawl. Afterwards she became a nun famous for tending the sick.

35. Jaundice sufferers may pray to St Odilo an 11th century abbot of Cluny whose relics were burned “on the alter of the fatherland” in the French Revolution

36. Bad knees? St Roch is your man. Born in 1295 with a birthmark on his chest in the shape of a red cross, St Roch was said to be able to cure plague victims by making the sign of the cross. In the 15th century, public processions were held in his honour in Constance during an outbreak of plague, which according to legend, subsequently ceased.

37. St Giles is the patron saint of the disabled. Giles, who died in the 8th century, was shot in the leg with an arrow by huntsman who misaimed while chasing a deer. Hugely popular in England where many hospitals and churches were devoted to him, Giles was one of the '14 holy helpers’ a group of saints prayed to for recovery from illness and spiritual strength at the hour of death.

38.The patron of mental illness is St Dympna, the daughter of a 7th century Irish chieftain maddened by grief when his wife died. He decided to marry the teenage Dympna who ran away from home, and beheaded 15 of the friends she sought refuge with before killing her too.

39. The patron saint of migraine sufferers is St Gereon known as the “Golden Saint”. He was a soldier who was beheaded in 4th century Cologne for refusing to sacrifice to pagan Gods to ensure victory in battle.

40. The patron saint of neuralgia is St Ubald Baldassini an Italian bishop who died in 1168 and was said to have great power over evil spirits

41. The patron saint of polio sufferers is St Margaret Mary Alacoque, a French nun who had visions in the 17th century of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. They inspired her to pray lying face down on the floor for an hour on the first Friday of every month in memory of Christ’s agony when abandoned by his apostles in the garden of Gethsemene.

42. The patron saint of those with rheumatism is St Coloman. An 11th century monk accused of being a spy while on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Coloman was captured and killed near Vienna during conflicts between Austria and Moravia. Speaking no German he could not defend himself, and was hanged alongside robbers, but the scaffold on which he died is said to have taken root in the ground and grown branches.

43. The patron saint of childbirth is St Gerard Majella, an 18th century Italian falsely accused of impregnating a woman. He said nothing, she retracted the claim.

44. For a stomach upset pray to St Timothy, the apostle who worked with St Paul, and was appointed by him to represent the Church in Ephesus. One of Paul’s most frequently quoted lines was addressed to him: “Stop drinking only water, but have a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent illnesses” (1 Timothy 5:23).

45. Bad toothache? Pray to St Apollonia. The patron saint of dentists, victim of a 2nd century anti-Christian mob in Alexandria who knocked out her teeth.

46. Bad throat? Ask for the help of St Blaize. A 3rd century bishop in Armenia, St Blaize is said to have miraculously commanded a child with a fish bone stuck in his throat to cough up the bone. Also patron of English wool combers, as he was suspended from a tree and his flesh torn with iron combs for his refusal to worship pagan Gods.

47. St Thérèse of Lisieux is the patron saint of tuberculosis sufferers. Known as “the little Flower,” and also patron of the Missions, St Therese said “to pick up a pin for love can convert a soul". She died aged 24 of tuberculosis

48. St Adalard is the patron saint for those afflicted with typhus and typhoid. A cousin of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne he became a monk and served as prime minister to Charlemagne’s son Pepin in Italy. Involved in the political struggles of the royal family, he spent seven years in exile, and is also the patron of French churches and towns.

49. The patron saint of VD sufferers is St Fiacre. He's also patron saint for those sick with
haemorrhoids, as well as gardeners and French cab drivers. An Irish priest, Fiacre lived as a hermit in France where he was said have cured many diseases.

50. St Lazarus, the patron saint of lepers, appears in the New Testament parable told by Christ of a begger excluded from a rich man’s feast, who is given the place of honour in a banquet in heaven after his death, while the rich man is excluded. The 12th century order of St Lazarus was manned by knights with leprosy who cared for the sick but had military duties. They founded a leper’s hospital in Jersualem.

Of Wine, Haste and Religion

2009-02-20T15:14:00.003-08:00

I was dining the other night with a colleague, enjoying a respectable Russian River Pinot Noir, when he said with a steely firmness: “We’ll pour our own wine, thank you.”

This declaration of independence was prompted by that quintessential New York restaurant phenomenon: a server reducing a bottle of wine to a seven-minute, four-glass experience through overfilling and topping-up of a fanaticism found rarely outside the Middle East.

I know I’m being elitist here, a terrible thing in this political season, and quite possibly nobody in small-town Pennsylvania gives a damn how wine is poured. But I don’t care and, come to think of it, last time I was in small-town Pennsylvania — at Gettysburg — I drank rather well.

Acceptable cappuccino was also available throughout the commonwealth at Dunkin’ Donuts outlets, which makes one wonder if liberal elitism really begins and ends in Cambridge, Hyde Park and Berkeley these days. I even saw a Volvo somewhere west of Harrisburg.

But that’s another story, albeit important, of seeping American sophistication-cum-Europeanization.

The liberation I felt at my colleague’s I’ll-pour boldness was intoxicating. That’s right, I thought, we need to take our lives back. Drinking at your own pace is the best revenge.

It’s humiliating to pay through the nose and suffer at affronts to good taste. Wine should glide, not glug, from a tilted, not tipped, bottle. The time that goes into the making of it should be reflected in the time it takes to drink.

That’s so obvious that I got to wondering why wine glasses, even at fine New York tables, get filled almost to the brim, and refilled to that unseemly level, every time you’re distracted from Second Amendment-authorized armed guard of your receptacle.

As with many things, there’s a generous view and a mean one.

The kind interpretation would be that, through a gross misunderstanding of the nature of pleasure, servers and the restaurant managers behind them are convinced that solicitude is measured by the regularity with which a glass is topped up.

The uncharitable view would be that, guided by an acute understanding of the nature of commerce, servers are told by restaurant managers to hustle clients through a meal and as many bottles of wine as possible.

After long reflection, of at least 12 seconds, as measured on my elitist Rolex, I’ve decided the second theory is more convincing.

It’s more plausible partly because it tracks with another unhappy New York dining phenomenon at some remove from the languorous pleasures of Manet’s “Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe.” I refer to the vacuuming away of your plate, at about the speed of light, the second you are deemed to have consumed the last mouthful.

Just as you prepare to dab bread into the unctuous leftover sauce from those slide-from-the-bone short ribs, the plate vanishes. The fact that others around the table may still be eating — and to be without a plate is to feel naked in such circumstances — does not trouble the stealthy masters of this Houdini routine.

As usual, in such matters, the French have it right. If you deconstruct the leftover, you find something that’s yours, a little messy, even mucky, but yours. No wonder there’s pleasure in poking around in it a little. Manet’s revelers are surrounded by their picnic leftovers. Nobody’s whisked them away.

In the same way, that mix of soil, hearth and tradition the French call “terroir” is personal. You poke around in it and discover that some ineffable mix of the land, its particular characteristics, and a unique human bond has found expression in a wine – not a “Cabernet” or a “Pinot” or a “Merlot” but, say, a Chambolle-Musigny Derrière La Grange.

That’s because “derriere la grange” — behind the barn — a small parcel of land produces a Burgundy distinct from another 50 yards away. Discovering this takes time, just as it takes time after bottling — perhaps a decade — for fruit, tannin and acidity to attain their full harmony.

American wine is rushed onto the table, as well as into the glass. Most is drunk five to ten years too early. But, hey, this is a country in a hurry: Google’s founders made a couple of billion dollars overnight last week, an un-French achievement. This is a great nation.

Perhaps it’s so great I should wear an American flag lapel pin. Perhaps it’s so great I should put myself in a duck blind this weekend. Perhaps it’s so great I should join the great U.S. blood sport of anti-intellectualism. Perhaps it’s so great I should go bowling more often. Perhaps it’s so great I should stop praising France and conceal the fact I speak French.

But I don’t want to grow bitter. Maybe I’ll just cling — yes, cling — to my glass and the religion that’s in it.

Ah, Life?

2009-02-20T15:14:00.001-08:00

When asked by pastor Rick Warren at what point does a human being get full human rights, McCain immediately answered “At the moment of conception.”

Sounds like a clear answer, but as Time Magazine points out, this quickly gets you into very murky water. About half of all embryos (fertilized eggs) miscarry naturally before they are able to implant, before the mother is even aware that she might be pregnant.

Even if the egg is successfully implanted, if it has full human rights, does this mean that an embryo will need a passport to travel to other countries? Or do embryos only get certain human rights? Breast feeding can interfere with implantation of fertilized eggs — does this mean that breast feeding should be illegal since it can kill an embryo? And drinking coffee can increase the chance of miscarriage, as can exercise in general, often even before a woman knows she is pregnant. But if an embryo has full human rights, shouldn’t such harmful activities be outlawed? What restrictions are we willing to place upon women in order to give embryos full human rights?

Even with life, some things can be as clear as mud.

source: politicalirony.com

My belief

2009-02-20T15:13:00.003-08:00

I often wonder about religious people. Those who go to their churches or temples or mosques every week to pray to God. How good are they as a person I wonder? I have encounter many such people who follow the rules and thoughts set out by the various religions, such as going vegetarian on certain days, pigs and dogs are 'unclean', no beef diet, attend Sunday Schools, saying prayers before each meals. These acts doesn't neccesarily make them a better person, or even a good person to begin with, if they intentionally do things such as:
- see a snail passing by and deliberately crushes it with their foot
- throw stones at stray dogs for no reason, in which case they deserve to be bitten and infected with rabies.
- engages in animal hunting
- molesting children entrusted to them for their religious position (totally sick)

These people are just a bunch of pathetic hypocrites, thinking they are a good person by being religious. Religion and God, doesn't matter which one, tells us only 1 thing - to be a good person. What good is going to mosques, churches and temples 365 (or 366) days a year if you don't have compassion?

I do have a religion but I don't frequent temples, churches or mosques like an addiction. For me, there is no definite 'can' or 'can-nots'. It is all in my heart. I know that I am a good person and I don't need to attend religious insitutes to proof that. I watch my step so that I wouldn't kill the harmless snail that was in my way. I can't not eat meat totally but I do try to reduce meat consumption. I do feel bad for the pigs with each piece of pork I stuff into my mouth. I have compassion, especially on animals every day of the year.

In a lot of ways, if there are more people like myself, this world will be a better place.

The Atheist Blogger 101 Atheist Quotes

2009-02-20T15:13:00.001-08:00

The following 101 quotes are some that I have stumbled upon on the web, or seen in books / popular culture. Each quote was either written by an atheist, or is about atheism / religion in general.

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality. - George Bernard Shaw
Faith means not wanting to know what is true. - Friedrich Nietzsche
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. - Frank Lloyd Wright
We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes. - Gene Roddenberry
To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. - Isaac Asimov
A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. - Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. - Seneca the Younger
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. - Anonymous
Not only is there no god, but try getting a plumber on weekends. - Woody Allen
If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul. - Isaac Asimov
Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination. - Edward Abbey
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg
I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence. - Doug McLeod
The world holds two classes of men - intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence. - Abu’l‐Ala al Ma’arri
Since the Bible and the church are obviously mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust them to tell us where we are going? - Anonymous
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. - Susan B. Anthony
The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike. - Delos B. McKown
Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer. - Anonymous
Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. - Francis Bacon
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. - Richard Dawkins
A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect. he becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all‐knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified. - Karen Armstrong
It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his own image. But, on the contrary, man created God in his own image. - Ludwig Feuerbach
People ask me what I think about that woman priest thing. What, a woman priest? Women priests. Great, great. Now there’s priests of both sexes I don’t listen to. - Bill Hicks
All the biblical miracles will at last disappear with the progress of science. - Matthew Arnold
Blind faith is an ironic gift to return to the Creator of human intelligence. - Anonymous
Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one. - Richard Dawkins
What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof. - Christopher Hitchens
In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point. - Friedrich Nietzsche
It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible. - George W. Foote
On the first day, man created God. - Anonymous
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. - Stephen Roberts
You do not need the Bible to justify love, but no better tool has been invented to justify hate. - Richard A. Weatherwax
What’s “God”? Well, you know, when you want something really bad and you close your eyes and you wish for it? God’s the guy that ignores you. - Steve Buscemi (From the movie “The Island”)
As far as I can tell from studying the scriptures, all you do in heaven is pretty much just sit around all day and praise the Lord. I don’t know about you, but I think that after the first, oh, I don’t know, 50,000,000 years of that I’d start to get a little bored. - Rick Reynolds
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish. - Anonymous
Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color. - Don Hirschberg
God should be executed for crimes against humanity. - Bryan Emmanuel Gutierrez
To say that atheism requires faith is as dim-witted as saying that disbelief in pixies or leprechauns takes faith. Even if Einstein himself told me there was an elf on my shoulder, I would still ask for proof and I wouldn’t be wrong to ask. - Geoff Mather
I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. - Mark Twain
Of all religions the Christian is without doubt the one which should inspire tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men. - Voltaire
And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence. - Bertrand Russell
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? - Epicurus
I’m a polyatheist - there are many gods I don’t believe in. - Dan Fouts
If it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever. - Woody Allen
A lie is a lie even if everyone believes it. The truth is the truth even if nobody believes it. - David Stevens
Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a God superior to themselves. Most Gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. - Robert A Heinlein
I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing. - Douglas Adams
It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand. - Mark Twain
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave. - William Drummond
Remember, Jesus would rather constantly shame gays than let orphans have a family. - Steven Colbert
Which is it, is man one of God’s blunders or is God one of man’s? - Friedrich Nietzsche
Religion does three things quite effectively: Divides people, Controls people, Deludes people. - Carlespie Mary Alice McKinney
Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every stage of human history than any other single idea. - Anonymous
When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life. - Sigmund Freud
They felt that science would be corrosive to religious belief and they were worried about it. Damn it, I think they were right. It is corrosive to religious belief and it’s a good thing. - Steven Weinberg
Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains. - Robert G. Ingersoll
History teaches us that no other cause has brought more death than the word of god. - Giulian Buzila
Atheism is a non-prophet organization. - George Carlin
We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins
A believer states everything must have a creator but fail to say how he was created. - Anonymous
“There are no atheists in foxholes” isn’t an argument against atheism, it’s an argument against foxholes. - James Morrow
People will then often say, ‘But surely it’s better to remain an Agnostic just in case?’ This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I’ve been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would choose not to worship him anyway.) - Douglas Adams
Properly read, the bible is the most potent force for Atheism ever conceived. - Isaac Asimov
If all the Christians who have called other Christians “not really a Christian” were to vanish, there’d be no Christians left. - Anonymous
An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support. - John Buchan
Gods dont kill people. People with Gods kill people. - David Viaene
If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself. - Alexandre Dumas
Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. - Sam Harris
I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose - Clarence Darrow
No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism. - Annie Wood Besant
I refuse to believe in a god who is the primary cause of conflict in the world, preaches racism, sexism, homophobia, and ignorance, and then sends me to hell if I’m ‘bad’. - Mike Fuhrman
Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions. - Frater Ravus
Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o, and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have. - Penn Jillette
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power but absolute power is corrupt only in the hands of the absolutely faithful. - Anonymous
Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. - Chapman Cohen
The inspiration of the bible depends on the ignorance of the person who reads it. - Robert G. Ingersoll
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion. - Robert Pirsig
I wonder who got the shit job of scouring the planet for the 15000 species of butterfly or the 8800 species of ant they eventually took on board Noah’s Ark. But at least we got that magical rainbow for all their trouble. - Azura Skye
I have no need for religion, I have a conscience. - Anonymous
Man has always required an explanation for all of those things in the world he did not understand. If an explanation was not available, he created one. - Jim Crawford
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins
What has been Christianity’s fruits? Superstition, Bigotry and Persecution. - James Madison
The characters and events depicted in the damn bible are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. - Penn and Teller
If god is the alpha and the omega. The begining and the end, knows what has passed and what is to come, like it states in the bible, why do people pray and think it will make any difference. - Mark Fairclough
The finality of death is the coldest truth one must face. Religion makes the perfect distraction. - Anonymous
Religion is the opiate of the masses. - Karl Marx
If God created the world, then who created god? and who created whoever created god? So somewhere along the line something had to just be there. So why can’t we just skip the idea of god and go straight to earth? - Ryan Hanson
If we expect God to subscribe to one religion at the exclusion of all the others, then we should expect damnation as a matter of chance. This should give Christians pause when expounding their religious beliefs, but it does not. - Sam Harris
Atheists will celebrate life, while you’re in church celebrating death. - Anonymous
Animals do not have gods, they are smarter than that. - Ronnie Snow
I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever. - Daniel Boorstin
I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake… Religion is all bunk. - Thomas Edison
Fundamentalism, of any type, due to its prerequisite lack of intelligent thought, could prove to be the worst weapon of mass destruction, of all. - David J. Constable
To really be free, You need to be free in the mind. - Alexander Loutsis
Most religions prophecy the end of the world and then consistently work together to ensure that these prophecies come true. - Anonymous
Jesus hardly made the greatest sacrifice. He knew he would be resurrected anyway. - Anonymous
Religion is like a virus that affects the behaviour of its host in such a way as to propagate itself further. - Jack Pritchard
Religions are like pills, which must be swallowed whole without chewing. - Anonymous
Today’s religion will be the future’s mythology. Both believed at one time by many; but proved wrong by the clever. - Steven Crocker
The Bible - A Fairytale book of rules brainwashing millions. Obliviously used to help create war, kill, hate, judge and discriminate. - Anonymous
Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? - Douglas Adams

Please feel free to comment on these quotes, and inform me of the authors of any I have misquoted or marked as “Anonymous”. There are so many sources for these quotes it’s hard to keep track of who really said what!

Buddhism

2009-02-20T15:11:00.005-08:00

Founded in India 2,500 years ago, Buddhism remains the dominant religion of the Far East and is increasingly popular in the West. Over its long history Buddhist has developed into a wide variety of forms, ranging from an emphasis on religious rituals and worship of deities to a complete rejection of both rituals and deities in favor of pure meditation. But all share in common a great respect for the teachings of the Buddha, "The Enlightened One."

Buddhism was founded by an Indian prince named Siddharta Gautama around the year 500 BCE. According to tradition, the young prince lived an affluent and sheltered life until a journey during which he saw an old man, a sick man, a poor man, and a corpse. Shocked and distressed at the suffering in the world, Gautama left his family to seek enlightenment through asceticism. But even the most extreme asceticism failed to bring enlightenment.

Finally, Gautama sat beneath a tree and vowed not to move until he had attained enlightenment. Days later, he arose as the Buddha - the "enlightened one." He spent the remaining 45 years of his life teaching the path to liberation from suffering (the dharma) and establishing a community of monks (the sangha).

Today, there are over 360 million followers of Buddhism. Although virtually extinct in its birthplace of India, it is prevalent throughout China, Japan and Southeast Asia. In the 20th century, Buddhism expanded its influence to the West and even to western religions. There are now over one million American Buddhists and even a significant number of "Jewish Buddhists." Buddhist concepts have also been influential on western society in general, primarily in the areas of meditation and nonviolence.

Buddhist beliefs vary significantly across various sects and schools, but all share an admiration for the figure of the Buddha and the goal of ending suffering and the cycle of rebirth. Theravada Buddhism, prominent in Southeast Asia, is atheistic and philosophical in nature and focuses on the monastic life and meditation as means to liberation.

Mahayana Buddhism, prominent in China and Japan, incorporates several deities, celestial beings, and other traditional religious elements. In Mahayana, the path to liberation may include religious ritual, devotion, meditation, or a combination of these elements. Zen, Nichiren, Tendai, and Pure Land are the major forms of Mahayana Buddhism.

Chinese Religion: Beliefs, Tao, Yin and Yang...

2009-02-20T15:11:00.003-08:00

Chinese religion is not an organized, unified system of beliefs and practices. It has no leadership, no headquarters, no founder, and no denominations. Instead, "Chinese religion" is a general term used to describe the complex interaction of different religious and philosophical traditions that have been especially influential in China.

Although other religious traditions have been influential in China, Chinese religion is primarily composed of four main traditions: Chinese folk religion, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. The religious outlook of most Chinese people consists of some combination of beliefs and practices from these four traditions. It is very rare for only one to be practiced to the exclusion of the others.

Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, each of which is a significant part of Chinese religion, are treated in their own sections on ReligionFacts. This section focuses especially on Chinese folk or indigenous religion, but reference is also made to the other traditions.

Chinese religious beliefs are wide-ranging and eclectic, deriving from several religious traditions (Chinese folk religion, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism). But several religious concepts are characteristic of general Chinese religious thought.

Chinese religion is generally dualistic, emphasizing the two opposed and complimentary principles of the universe: yin and yang. But the yin and yang are the double manifestation of the single, eternal cosmic principal: the Tao. Also important is the concept of heaven (T'ien), which is sometimes described in terms of an impersonal power or fate, other times as a personal deity, and can also be equated with the Tao.

In Chinese thinking, everything that exists flows out of the Tao, and human beings are simply a tiny component of the Tao.

The ancient Chinese believed in a dual soul. The lower soul of the senses disappears with death, but the rational soul (hun) survives death and is the object of ancestor worship.

Perhaps the most important Chinese concept related to the body and soul is the idea of ch'i. At its simplest, ch'i means breath, air or vapor, but in Chinese religious belief it is life energy or life-force.

It is believed that every person is allotted a specified amount of ch'i and he or she must strengthen, control and increase it in order to live a long life. Many Taoist exercises focus on regulation and increase of one's ch'i. In the west, the most well-known example of such a practice is T'ai chi.

The Tao is the central principle of Taoism and is highly influential throughout Chinese thought. It is the ultimate reality and the eternal principle. It has no characteristics, but contains within it all potentiality and all opposites. Thus yin and yang, yu and wu (being and not-being), and all other dual realities exist within the Tao.

In Chinese and other Eastern thought, yin and yang are the two opposing and complementary forces that make up all phenomena of life. Both proceed from the Supreme Ultimate and together they represent the process of the universe and all that is in it.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "The significance of yin-yang through the centuries has permeated every aspect of Chinese thought, influencing astrology, divination, medicine, art, and government."

Yin has the following characteristics, representations and symbols:

* earth
* female
* dark
* passive
* absorbing
* even numbers
* valleys and streams
* the tiger
* the color orange
* a broken line

Yang has the following opposite characteristics, representations and symbols:

* heaven
* male
* light
* active
* penetrating
* odd numbers
* mountains
* the dragon
* the color azure
* an unbroken line

The concept of the yin-yang is very ancient, and its precise origins are unknown. In the third century BCE, it formed the basis for an entire school of cosmology, the Yin Yang School.

Aladura

2009-02-20T15:11:00.001-08:00

Aladura ("Prayer People") is a Yoruba term for various prophet-healing churches that have developed in west Africa since about 1918.

Date founded: c.1922-1930
Place founded: West Nigeria
Founder: various founders
Adherents: approx. 1 million

Anglican communities had flourished among the Yoruba between 1895 and 1920, after the arrival of missionaries. The Aladura movement began about 1918 among the younger elite in the well-established Christian community based on dissatisfaction with Western religious forms, European control of the churches, and lack of spiritual power. The were also influenced by literature from the small U.S. divine-healing Faith Tabernacle Church of Philadelphia.

The 1918 world influenza epidemic precipitated the formation of a prayer group of Anglican laymen at Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria; the group emphasized divine healing, prayer protection, and a puritanical moral code. By 1922 divergences from Anglican practice forced the separation of a group that became known as the Faith Tabernacle, with several small congregations.

The main expansion occurred when a prophet-healer, Joseph Babalola (1906–59), became the center of a mass divine-healing movement in 1930. Yoruba religion was rejected, and Pentecostal features that had been suppressed under U.S. influence were restored. Opposition from traditional rulers, government, and mission churches led the movement to request help from the pentecostal Apostolic Church in Britain. Missionaries arrived in 1932, and the Aladura movement spread and consolidated as the Apostolic Church.

But problems arose over the missionaries' use of Western medicines—clearly contrary to doctrines of divine healing—their exclusion of polygamists, and their assertion of full control over the movement. So in 1938–41 the Babalola and (later Sir) Isaac Akinyele formed the Christ Apostolic Church, which by the 1960s had 100,000 members and its own schools and had spread to Ghana. The Apostolic Church continued its connection with its British counterpart; other secessions produced further "apostolic" churches.

The Cherubim and Seraphim society was founded by Moses Orimolade Tunolase, a Yoruba prophet, and Christiana Abiodun Akinsowon, an Anglican woman who had experienced visions and trances. In 1925–26 they formed the society with doctrines of revelation and divine healing replacing traditional charms and medicine. They separated from the Anglican and other churches in 1928. In the same year the founders parted, and further divisions produced more than 10 major and many minor sections, which spread widely in Nigeria and to Benin (formerly Dahomey), Togo, and Ghana.

A smaller movement, the self-help Aiyetoro ("happy city"), was built on piles on a lagoon mudbank east of Lago by a group of persecuted Cherubim and Seraphim in 1947. Men and women lived separately, strict morals were enforced, a radical economic communism and diverse sophisticated business activities resulted in great prosperity for more than 2,000 members, and death was believed to have been conquered. But by the 1970s internal dissension had appeared and the original utopian impetus had faded.

The Church of the Lord (Aladura) is the largest Aladura movement. It was founded by Josiah Olunowo Oshitelu, an Anglican catechist and schoolteacher, whose unusual visions, fastings, and devotions led to his dismissal in 1926. By 1929 he was preaching judgment on idolatry and native charms and medicines, uttering prophecies, and healing through prayer, fasting, and holy water. The Church of the Lord (Aladura), which he founded at Ogere in 1930, spread to north and east Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and beyond Africa—New York City and London—where several other Aladura congregations also meet.

Developments since the 1970s have been replacing the Aladura form with Pentecostal Revivalist movements influenced by American models, such as the Church of God Mission in Benin City, and with "spiritual science" movements. The latter meet similar needs as the Aladura by offering semi-secret knowledge of how to acquire spiritual power, and are modeled on examples outside of Christianity such as Subud and the Rosicrucians, which have been long present in Nigeria.

The Aladura movement continues to grow and includes many small secessions, ephemeral groups, prophets with one or two congregations, and healing practitioners in west Africa, Britain, and the United States.

Aladura practices are a mix of Anglican and African rituals. In the Church of the Lord (Aladura), for example, ministers are given an iron rod about two and a half feet long, looped in a handle at one end, as part of their insignia of office. It symbolizes the powers of the prophet. A prophet touches the objects he consecrates brought by people who come for prayers and healing sessions. Rosaries are used to consecrate water or to pray the psalms. Vestments and gowns are widely used.

Asatru (Heathenry, Germanic Paganism)

2009-02-20T15:10:00.003-08:00

Ásatrú (Icelandic, "Æsir faith") is a modern revival of the pre-Christian Nordic religion as described in the Norse epic Eddas.
Terminology

Ásatrú is an Old Norse word consisting of Ása, referring to the Norse gods, and trú, "troth" or "faith". Thus, Ásatrú means "religion of the Æsir." The term was coined by Edvard Grieg in his 1870 opera Olaf Trygvason, in the context of 19th century romantic nationalism.

Generally synonymous terms for Asatru include Germanic Neopaganism, Germanic Heathenism, Forn Sed, Odinism, Heithni or Heathenry.

The original, ancient form of Norse religion is usually referred to as Germanic paganism, Germanic religion, or Norse mythology.
History

The ancient origins of Germanic religion date from prehistoric times and are thus unknown. Most of what is known about Germanic religion is derived from descriptions by Latin writers such as Julius Caesar (1st cent. BC) and Tacitus (1st cent. AD), descriptions of early Christian missionaries, and archaeological evidence including cult objects, amulets, grave goods, and place names.

Anglo-Saxon England was converted from Norse paganism to Christianity in the 7th century, Scandinavia in the 10th century. The Germanic/Norse religion gradually disappeared after this, although Christianity absorbed some of its external features, such as the name and popular customs of Easter.

Asatru, the modern attempt to revive the old Norse faith, was founded by the Icelandic farmer Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson (1924–1993). Beinteinsson was a sheep farmer and a priest in the religion, who published a book of rímur (Icelandic rhymed epic poetry) in 1945. In 1972 he petitioned the Icelandic government to recognize the Íslenska Ásatrúarfélagið ("Icelandic fellowship of Æsir faith") as a religious body. It did so in 1973, and Denmark and Norway have since followed.

According to one Asatru website, similar communities were formed in the USA and UK at the same time as those in Iceland, each unaware of the existence of the others. This is a sign that "Odin, the wanderer, is once again seeking worshippers." (Irminsul Ættir)

Today, there are small groups of Asatru adherents throughout Scandinavia and North America. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, in the 1990s the approximately 300 Icelandic adherents hoped to dechristianize Iceland by the year 2000, the 1000th anniversary of the island's christianization.
Texts

Neither ancient Norse religion nor modern Asatru is predominantly text-based, but Norse myths are beautifully preserved in two Icelandic epics called the Eddas.

The first Edda dates from the 12th century AD, when Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241), an Icelandic poet, historian and politician, retold many Norse myths with quotations from poems and explanations of mythological imagery. His goal was to provide a handbook for poets so the ancient lore would not be lost. It was called Edda, which means "great-grandmother" but may also be derived from Oddi, Sturluson's hometown. It is now known as Snorri's Edda or the Prose Edda.

In 1643, a 13th-cent. manuscript book known as the Codex regius was found in an Icelandic farmhous, containing poems on gods and heroes. This collection, together with a few poems from other manuscripts, is called the Elder Edda, Poetic Edda, or Saemund's Edda (after an 11th-cent. scholar). The poems may date from as early as 800 AD and appear to have been composed in pre-Christian times in Norway. They recount the exploits of the gods Freyr, Loki, Odin, and Thor and include riddle contests between gods and giants, and much about the creation and destruction of the worlds of gods and humans.
Beliefs

Ancient Norse paganism and modern Asatru are polytheistic. In the Viking Age (9th-11th cents.), there were four main deities (see below), with earlier gods remembered as minor deities and other supernatural beings of varying importance. Most of these gods are worshipped by modern followers of Asatru.

The Norse gods are of three different types:

* Aesir - the gods of the tribe or clan, representing kingship, order, craft, etc. (incl. Odin and Thor)
* Vanir - gods of the fertility of the earth and forces of nature (incl. Freyr and Freyja)
* Jotnar - giant-gods who are in a constant state of war with the Aesir, representing chaos and destruction

The four main deities in Germanic religion and Asatru are:

* Odin (Germanic Woden) - god of magic, poetry, riches and the dead; ruler of Valhalla (gave his name to Wednesday)
* Thor - sky god who wields a hammer, controls the weather, and protects the law and the community (gave his name to Thursday)
* Freyr - fertility god represented with a phallic statue and seen as the founder of the Swedish royal dynasty
* Freyja - fertility goddess of love and beauty, sister of Freyr, known by many names (including Frigg, Odin's wife and patron of families, who gave her name to Friday)

Other deities:

* Njord - father of Freyr and Freyja, god of ships, sea and lakes
* Tyr (Germanic Tiu) - god of battle, sacrifice, and justice (gave his name to Tuesday)
* Ullr - god of death, winter, and hunting
* Loki - the trickster

The original Germanic religion did not have a unified conception of the afterlife. Some may have believed that fallen warriors would go to Valhalla to live happily with Odin until the Ragnarök, but it seems unlikely this belief was widespread. Others seemed to believe that there was no afterlife. According to the "Hávamál," any misfortune was better than to be burnt on a funeral pyre, for a corpse was a useless object.

More often people believed that life went on for a time after death but was inseparable from the body. If men had been evil in life, they could persecute the living when dead; they might have to be killed a second time or even a third before they were finished. Some records imply that the dead needed company; a wife, mistress, or servant would be placed in the grave with them. On the whole, beliefs in afterlife seem rather gloomy. The dead pass, perhaps by slow stages, to a dark, misty world called Niflheim (Niflheimr).

Modern Asatru beliefs about the afterlife also vary. One Asatru website states:

We believe that there is an afterlife, and that those who have lived virtuous lives will go on to experience greater fulfillment, pleasure, and challenge. Those who have led lives characterized more by vice than by virtue will be separated from kin, doomed to an existence of dullness and gloom. The precise nature of the afterlife - what it will look like and feel like - is beyond our understanding and is dealt with symbolically in the myths. There is also a tradition in Asatru of rebirth within the family line. Perhaps the individual is able to choose whether or not he or she is re-manifested in this world, or there may be natural laws which govern this. In a sense, of course, we all live on in our descendants quite apart from an afterlife as such. To be honest, we of Asatru do not overly concern ourselves with the next world. We live here and now, in this existence. If we do this and do it well, the next life will take care of itself.

Practices

Old Norse/Germanic Religion

In the old Germanic religion, the central practice was animal and human sacrifice, conducted in the open or in groves and forests. Roman authors repeatedly mention the sacrifice of prisoners of war to the gods of victory.

One detailed description of a sacrificial feast is given in a saga about a king of Norway, in which cattle were slaughtered, blood was sprinkled inside and out, the meat was consumed and toasts were drunk to Odin, Njörd, and Freyr. Sacrifices of a more private kind might include the sacrifice of an ox to a god or smearing an elf mound with bull's blood.

Women known as Volva had prophetic gifts. They visited homes, practiced divination and foretold children's destinies. They were probably linked with the Vanir (fertility deities).

Temples were rare but wooden temples seem to have been built in later periods. A major religious center was at Upsala, in NE Sweden.

Asatru (Modern Neopaganism)

Communities of Asatru are called Kindreds, Hearths, or Garths. Priests are called Gothi; priestesses Gythia.

A central Asatru ritual is blot, which means sacrifice and may be connected with the word "blood." In place of traditional animal sacrifice, followers of Asatru offer mead (honey-wine), beer or cider to the gods. The liquid is consecrated to a god or goddess, then the worshippers drink a portion of it and pour the rest as a libation.

Another major practice is sumbel, a ritual toast in three rounds. The first round is to the gods, starting with Odin, who won the mead of poetry from the Giant Suttung. A few drops are poured to Loki to ward off his tricks. The second round is to ancestors and other honorable dead, and the third round is open.

Math + religion = Trouble

2009-02-20T15:10:00.001-08:00

Actually, since Pythagoras the relationship between men of numbers and the Deity has been more along the lines of love-hate, but it's a rich vein

Ron Csillag
Special to the Star

Which math-phobic among us has not beseeched God for help with another colon-clenching algebra or calculus exam? Had we heeded the words of the German mathematician Leopold Kronecker, perhaps we would have realized we've been talking to the wrong person: "God made the integers; all else is the work of man."

Pythagoras, who gave us his eponymous theorem on right-angled triangles, headed a cult of number worshippers who believed God was a mathematician. "All is number," they would intone.

The 17th-century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza echoed the Platonic idea that mathematical law and the harmony of nature are aspects of the divine. Spinoza, too, posited that God's activities in the universe were simply a description of mathematical and physical laws. For that and other heretical views, he was excommunicated by Amsterdam's Jewish community.

German mathematician Georg Cantor's work on infinity and numbers beyond infinity (the mystical "transfinite") was denounced by theologians who saw it as a challenge to God's infiniteness. Cantor's obsession with mathematical infinity and God's transcendence eventually landed him in an insane asylum.

For the Hindu math genius Ramanujan, an uneducated clerk from Madras who wowed early 20th-century Cambridge, an equation "had no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God." Though an agnostic, the prolific Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos imagined a heavenly book in which God has inscribed the most elegant and yet unknown mathematical proofs.

And famously, Albert Einstein said God "does not play dice" with the universe.

What is it with God and mathematics? Even as science and religion have quarrelled for centuries and are only recently exploring ways to kiss and make up, mathematicians have been saying for millennia that no truer expression of the divine can be found than in an ethereally beautiful equation, formula or proof.

Witness, for example, such transcendent numbers as phi (not to be confused with pi), often called the Divine Proportion or the Golden Ratio. At 1.618, it describes the spirals of seashells, pine cones and symmetries found throughout nature. Other mysterious constants like alpha (one-137th) and gamma (0.5772...) pop up in enough odd places to suggest to some that they are an expression of the underlying beauty of mathematics, and to others that someone or something planned it that way.

But does that translate into actual belief?

The New York Times reported recently that mathematicians believe in God at a rate 2 1/2 times that of biologists, quoting a survey of the National Academy of Sciences. Admittedly, that's not saying much: Only 14.6 per cent of mathematicians embraced the God hypothesis, versus 5.5 per cent of biologists (versus some 80 per cent of Canadians who believe in a supreme being).

Count John Allen Paulos among the non-believers. A mathematician who teaches at Temple University in Philadelphia and who has popularized his subject in bestselling books such as Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, Paulos's latest offering is a slim but explosive volume whose title is self-explanatory: Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up (Hill & Wang).

This newest addition to the neo-atheist field crowded by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and others emboldened by the recent transformation of non-belief from a 97-pound weakling into a he-man, Paulos thankfully employs little math, preferring to see things, as he tells us, in the stark light of "logic and probability."

Deploying "a lightly heretical touch," he dissects a playlist of "golden oldies" that includes the first-cause argument (sometimes tweaked as the cosmological argument, which hinges on the Big Bang), the argument for intelligent design, the ontological argument (crudely, that if we can conceive of God, then God exists), the argument from the anthropic principle (that the universe is "fine-tuned" to allow us to exist), the moral universality argument, and others.

The famous Pascal's wager – that it's in our self-interest to believe in God because we lose nothing in case He does exist – is upended as logically flawed, based on what statisticians call Type I and Type II errors.

Lord knows Paulos isn't the first mathematician to proclaim his lack of religious faith. Cambridge's famous wunderkind G.H. Hardy loudly and proudly adjudged God to be his enemy. To Erdos, God, if He existed, was "the supreme fascist."

Even as Paulos works to refute the classical arguments for God's existence, he does something too few of his mindset do: Chide non-believers for unsportsmanlike conduct.

"It's repellent for atheists or agnostics," he admonishes, "to personally and aggressively question others' faith or pejoratively label it as benighted flapdoodle or something worse. Those who do are rightfully seen as arrogant and overbearing."

That doesn't prevent him from doffing the gloves. The ontological argument is "logical abracadabra.'' The design, or teleological argument, is a "creationist Ponzi scheme'' that "quickly leads to metaphysical bankruptcy.''

Much of theology is "a kind of verbal magic show.'' A claim that a holy book is inerrant because the book itself says so is another logical black hole.

However, math, specifically something called Ramsey theory, which studies the conditions under which order must appear, can account for the illusion of divine order arising from chaos.

Paulos provides a nice counterpoint to theoretical physicist Stephen Unwin's 2003 book The Probability of God, which calculated the likelihood of God's existence at 67 per cent, and to Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne's use of a probability formula known as Bayes' theorem to put the odds of Christ's resurrection at 97 per cent.

Those and other efforts remind one of the story, perhaps apocryphal, of Catherine the Great's request of the German mathematical giant Leonhard Euler to confront atheist French philosopher Denis Diderot with evidence of God. The visiting Euler agreed, and at the meeting, strode forward to proclaim to the innumerate Frenchman: "Sir, (a+bn)/n = x, hence God exists. Reply!"

Diderot was said to be so dumbfounded, he immediately returned to Paris.

To Paulos, the tale is a great example of "how easily nonsense proffered in an earnest and profound manner can browbeat someone into acquiescence."

His arguments notwithstanding, Paulos concedes that there's "no way to conclusively disprove the existence of God."

The reason, he notes, is a consequence of basic logic, but not one "from which theists can take much heart."

As for the problem of good and evil, he defers to fellow atheist, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg: "With or without religion, good people will do good, and evil people will do evil. But for good people to do evil, that takes religion."

Or as Paulos might say, no mathematician has ever deliberately flown planes into buildings.

The wrong religion

2009-02-20T15:09:00.002-08:00

When atheists criticise the more risible aspects of religion or the actions of believers, the faithful often respond with something along the lines of “your point is worthless because that’s not real religion”. Do they have a point? Or are they indulging in a peculiar form of bigotry?

This raises an important question. Who gets to decide what is real religion? More importantly, perhaps, how do we discern which is the real Christianity, which the real Islam?

Islam, of course, has only a handful of variants. The miscellaneous flavours of Christianity, on the other hand, are many and various. Each one of them believes it has exclusive access to the truth.

At this point, one is reminded of the response to Christians usually attributed to Richard Dawkins but espoused by many atheists: that we are all atheists. Christians do not believe in many thousands of gods. Atheists just go one god further. This is rather well presented in this table of Christian and atheist beliefs.

It’s all about definitions. Every faith sets its own terms. Religions are self-defining. They are not constrained by evidence, by the historical record, not even by the physical laws of the universe or common sense. Every sect gets to define what it regards as ‘Christian’ behaviour.

The Digger mentioned above - who evidently defines himself as a Christian - had a very simple rule for determining what constitutes acceptable Christian behaviour. Give people a Bible and let them point to the section that validates their actions.

Alas, this is simple to the point of being simple-minded. First, which Bible? Various translations have been used at different times to support widely varying behaviour. Second, the Bible, as we all know, is infuriatingly vague and frequently self-contradicting. It is not an homogeneous work but a rather slipshod cobbling together of texts with inconsistent and incompatible philosophies, ethics and narratives. Even the three synoptic gospels can’t get their story straight. So each Christian sect tends to pick carefully those sections most amenable to it.

Third, many Christian faiths insist that the Bible is not to be read literally. Only those fundamentalist sects whose appeal is mainly to the more knuckle-dragging sections of society ask us to take every word as literal truth. The majority of Christians accept some, if not all, sections of the Bible as allegorical or metaphorical. Everything, then, depends on interpretation. And if you want to behave in a certain way, if you want to invoke divine approval for your actions, you are likely to be able to find something in the Bible that you can interpret as supporting your actions. This is why the frequently made assertion that the Bible (and only the Bible) is the bedrock of ethics and morality is so laughable. The Bible can be made to endorse anything (including slavery and genocide).

So let’s look again at where we came in. Some self-defined Christians commit a particular act, in conformance - as they see it - with their beliefs. But it’s an act that those of us in the real world consider heinous or ludicrous, and we say so. Then some other Christian comes along and says, “hey, those guys aren’t real Christians. You’re just using their behaviour as a way of having a cheap shot at all Christians.”

What this person is doing is using their own, necessarily narrow definition of Christianity to condemn the others as “not really Christians”. They are saying, “only my definition is valid” and “these people are not entitled to call themselves Christian”. That’s bigotry.

It is also a cheap trick. Christians can simply keep moving the goalposts, claiming that any action or belief criticised as secularists isn’t ‘Christian’ anyway, so the criticism is obviously an egregious attack on ‘true’ Christians.

I’m not tarring every Christian with this particular brush. There are many who state their beliefs plainly and have the courage to stick to them and take responsibility for them. When someone’s faith leads them into actions that cause harm to others, we have a perfect right to criticise not just the people themselves but the faith that coerced them into irresponsible behaviour. For other Christians simply to wash their hands of this issue by brushing off the miscreants as ‘not really Christian’ is cowardly and dishonest.

Miracles

2009-02-20T15:09:00.001-08:00

The first problem with the notion of miracles is definition. So here's the only meaningful definition of the word "miracle" as it's used today:

mir-a-cle; n., sing. - any sort of mostly spontaneous occurrence that can be interpreted by a sufficiently motivated person as proof of some specific metaphysical belief

You may already have grasped the problem. The definition sucks. Just about anything qualifies as a miracle to someone, and there is no rigorous test for the concept.

Miracles are events in which a higher power decides to intervene in human events, usually to some beneficient purpose, as opposed to magic or witchcraft, in which a human exploits presumed loopholes in the laws of nature to create change according to their own will.

Miracles can occur spontaneously, or they can be urgently requested by groveling for favors from unseen powers, a process sometimes referred to as "prayer." To qualify as a miracle, an event must be either physically impossible, freakishly improbable or extraordinarily convenient. This can include:

* Spontaneous healing of illness or grave injury
* Spontaneous generation of illness or grave injury
* Extreme weather or geological phenomena which have an unusually beneficial or detrimental effect on people's lives
* Apparitions by major deities or their minions
* Resurrection of the dead (not to be confused with reanimation of the undead
* The creation of miraculous pictures or images
* Particularly colorful or accurate prophecies
* Speaking in languages you don't know, or speaking to multitudes, all of whom hear the words in their own language

In addition to the above miracles, which are pretty widely agreed on, you can find plenty of people who believe in somewhat less impressive miracles. These miracles can easily be explained by simple science, medicine or human error, but people believe in them anyway.

* Speaking in tongues is sometimes considered a miracle. Although anyone can spout gibberish, "tongues" are thought to have special characteristics.
* Unusual lights in the skies can be arbitrarily designated miraculous. In the past, comets and meteors were automatically deemed miraculous, but most people know better these days. Some lights which were once considered miraculous are now considered extraterrestrial or otherwise freaky without the need for divine intervention.
* Sometimes, people will use the word "miracle" to refer to events with religious overtones that are just plain weird, such as weeping statues or bleeding communion hosts.

As you may have noticed, most of these miracles can be explained by science, faked without too much trouble, or dismissed as coincidence. It takes a special kind of mindset to distinguish between a "lucky break," a "freak occurrence" and a "miracle."

You have to want to believe in a miracle, with its necessary implication that God (or whomever) has taken a personal interest in your life. Theologically speaking, miracles can:

* Prove God exists.
* Prove not only that God exists, but that one particular religion is the "correct" religion.
* Prove that God has favored a particular individual, such as a saint or a bodhisattva.
* Indicate a God-endorsed course of action.
* Call the recipient of the miracle back to God's straight path.
* Inspire non-believers to become believers (usually denomination-specific).

Miracles play a particularly important role in Christianity, relative to Eastern and indigenous religions. While many other religions encourage believers to develop their own transcendent powers, Christian theology insists that supernatural events can only occur through direct intervention from God himself. This intervention can be encouraged by prayer but it can't be initiated by a human.

(This precept directly contravenes the teaching of Jesus as recorded in the Bible. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus said "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you." And in John, Jesus says "You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it." Of course, if you've ever tried either of these techniques, you already know they don't work, which is probably why miracles are now considered strictly deus ex machina.)

In the Roman Catholic church, miracles are codified much more stringently than in Protestant denominations. The Vatican has to sign off on all supernatural events before they can be considered miracles.

Miracles are also used as part of a bonus point system for officially determining whether someone is a saint or just a nice guy.

The whole concept of sainthood has troubled many Christians over the years. According to Catholic doctrine, certain men and women are so damn good that they attain a special status with God after death. From this exalted position, the saints are able to petition God for favors on behalf of those of us remaining on earth. Many Protestants find this idea uncomfortably reminiscent of pagan practices which gave semi-divine status to prominent heros and leaders of yore.

The relationship between miracles and sainthood is arguably even more pagan than the concept itself. Generally speaking, in order to become a saint you have to have at least two accredited miracles attributed to your afterlife intercessions with God (sometimes more, depending on a number of variables).

These miracles must be the result of a tit-for-tat arrangement with a decidedly pagan flavor. Living people must pray for a miracle in the name of the would-be saint, then the miracles themselves must be vetted and certified by the Vatican in a lengthy and mostly impenetrable process that is more exhausting than exacting.

As a result, proponents of a would-be saint have to spend much of their time praying for supernatural events in the name of their candidate. Sometimes these efforts are organized in extraordinarily mercenary efforts, such as Catholic schools forcing students into prayer gangs to continually intercede for something or other on behalf of their not-yet-sainted namesakes.

Outside of the shadow of Rome, miracles have enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years, thanks to a witch's brew of cultural influences, including millennial anxiety, a new wave of religious wars, the resurgence of fundamentalist Christianity in America and a broad societal abdication of personal responsibility.

The resulting "miracle fever" has crossed denominational lines and fueled a cottage industry in New Age-Christian hybrid books and movies, such as A Course in Miracles, The Miracle Detective, Miracles: The Series, Miracle Food Cures From the Bible, Miracles Do Happen, The Fifty Miracle Principles of 'A Course in Miracles' (bonus points for using the word "miracle" twice in the same title), Be Careful What You Pray For, You Just Might Get It and something like 200 movies with some form of the word "miracle" in the title. Although, to be fair, Miracle on 69th Street probably shouldn't count.

Catholicism

2009-02-20T15:07:00.000-08:00

aka the Holy Roman Catholic Church

The Roman Catholic Church claims to be the official keeper of the teachings and traditions of Jesus Christ.

This in itself is not surprising. Virtually every religion claims it has exclusive access to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. What's really impressive is the massively complicated structure of beliefs piled on top of this simple claim, many of which have next to nothing to do with anything Jesus taught.

Catholics believe their religion is directly descended from Christ, via St. Peter, the apostle Jesus allegedly called "the rock (on which) I shall build my church."

Early Christianity was a mishmash of different beliefs, espoused by various charismatic figures. Although records are sparse, we know the names of a few influential early Christian teachers — including the apostles Peter, Paul and James, and other figures who were later dismissed as heretics, including gospel writers using the names of the Apostle Thomas and Jesus's pal Mary Magdalene.

From what little evidence survives, we can infer that there were several distinctly different sects of Christianity during the first decades after Christ's death. The two most powerful, as best anyone can determine, were the Jerusalem Church and the Roman Church.

After the death of Christ, the 11 surviving apostles had set up shop in Jerusalem, an entirely natural home base for what was an essentially Jewish sect. The Jerusalem church was led by James, sometimes described as the brother of Jesus, and to some extent by Peter.

But Christianity quickly spread beyond the confines of Judaism, in large part because of Paul, a Jew and a Roman citizen who had converted to Christianity after Christ's death.

Paul (who never heard Jesus preach in life) made significant changes and additions to the teachings of Jesus to make them more palatable to non-Jewish audiences. He successfully converted many Romans to his version of Christianity, which eventually became the dominant strain. Paul had to write many letters to the early Christians in order to make sure they kept to his vision.

Peter and Paul eventually traveled to Rome, where an underground church had established itself. Both were martyred during the mid 60s C.E. At some point in all this, the official story goes, Peter formally became leader of the church. Before his death, Peter allegedly passed the torch to Linus, who is believed to be the second pope despite a dearth of historical documentation.

James and the Jerusalem Church saw their influence dwindle in the decades that followed Christ's death. When Peter left for Rome, it reflected a power shift that had already been underway for some time. The final blow came when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 C.E. The carnage scattered the Jewish Christians and removed their power base. In the ensuing void, Paul's Gentile converts easily took control.

Bust even among Paul's followers, the first several decades of Christianity were fractious and inconsistent. Making religion is like making sausage; you're probably happier not knowing.

The early church was a haphazard collection of disparate sects with often wildly divergent beliefs that all centered around the figure of Jesus to a greater or lesser extent. Early Christian theologians desperately tried to create a single orthodox base for Christianity, but none of these efforts succeeded until the fourth century.

Christianity had been outlawed in the Roman Empire for its entire history. Then, in 313 C.E., a woman named Helena converted to Christianity. Helena just happened to be the mother of Roman Emperor Constantine, and she prevailed on him to legalize the religion. Constantine did her one better, not only legitimizing Christianity for the first time but exerting his political might to force the divergent Christian sects into an uneasy unity.

Constantine was motivated by a desire for political stability. He was not a Christian and wasn't baptized until he lay on his deathbed. Nevertheless, he was a force to be reckoned with.

Although he didn't directly shape the theological content of Christianity, Constantine convened the Council of Nicea in 325, bringing together the scattered bishops of Christian communities around the ancient world. Basically, he locked them in a room and told them not to come out until they had agreed on a definition for orthodox Christianity. The resulting "Nicene Creed" defines Roman Catholicism today. Everything else was designated as heresy and targeted for extermination.

The Beliefs of the Catholic Church

Drafted at the first synod and formally ratified toward the end of the 4th century, the Nicene creed outlines the basic beliefs of the Roman Catholic faith and has been recited with minor variations by believers ever since:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, and born of the Father before all ages, light of light, true God of true God. Begotten not made, consubstantial to the Father, by whom all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven. And was incarnate of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary and was made man; was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried; and the third day rose again according to the Scriptures. And ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, and shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, of whose Kingdom there shall be no end. And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who together with the Father and the Son is to be adored and glorified, who spoke by the Prophets. And one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. We confess one baptism for the remission of sins. And we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.

The creed unified various strains of thought about Jesus and his teachings, including a few items that were nowhere to be found in the four gospels which were finally identified as "canonical."

The Council of Nicea The final Nicene draft included the relatively new concept of the Holy Trinity — the idea that God is actually made up of three separate but equal branches — as well as the Virgin Birth, the Holy Spirit and the Resurrection of the Dead.

Over the centuries, other important doctrinal points arose. Many of these concepts dated back to the first century in some form or another, but most of them were not fully fleshed out by the time of the Nicene Council. The most important of these include:

* The Mass: This is the central ritual of the Catholic church. The exact form of the Mass has mutated considerably over the years, but its centerpiece is the re-enactment of the Last Supper of Christ, in which Jesus supposedly transformed bread and wine into his body and blood, which he then fed to his apostles.
* The Eucharist: Catholics believe that during this re-enactment, a Catholic priest literally transforms bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Because the bread and wine don't look like flesh and blood, this presumed miracle is explained by a doctrine called transubstantiation, which means the bread and wine really truly become flesh and blood, but that they are nevertheless indistinguishable from bread and wine for all intents and purposes. If this sounds like a scam, bear in mind that the doctrine didn't really develop until nearly 1,000 years after the death of Christ.
* Confession: According to Catholic doctrine, duly ordained priests are permitted to forgive the sins of Catholics who receive the "sacrament of Penance," which involves going to a priest and confessing your sins with genuine repentance. Although presumably based on a line from the New Testament attributed to Jesus, the practice of confession as it is understood in the modern world appears to be much more recent, perhaps originating in the seventh or eighth century, and formally codified in the 15th century, at the Council of Trent.
* The Papacy: The leader of the Catholic Church is the Bishop of Rome, now referred to as the Pope or the Supreme Pontiff. This position is said to trace its lineage in an unbroken succession from St. Peter, who is believed to have been the first Bishop of Rome. The concept of the papacy is fraught with difficulty, however, as we shall see below.

In addition to these main points, there are a host of beliefs which are today considered uniquely Catholic, including a prohibition on women as priests and an insistence that priests may not marry. These precepts were not necessarily part of Christian practice in the first century after Christ.

Even more recently, the Catholic Church has

chosen to identify itself powerfully with doctrines that are even more recent in derivation, particularly a total ban on contraception and the idea that life begins at the moment of conception (thus making abortion a grave sin).

Other major Catholic beliefs include:

* The reality of Satan and Angels.
* Heaven and Hell.
* The immortality of the Soul.
* The impending Apocalypse.
* The eventual Second Coming of Jesus, and the roughly simultaneous arrival of the Antichrist, who will duke it out in the battle of Armageddon.
* Martyrdom is good.
* Miracles are real, and often associated with saints, a group of especially good Catholics who are empowered in the afterlife to ask God for favors on our behalf. One way to honor these saints is collecting souvenirs from their bodies, such as a big toe.
* Heresy means a one-way ticket to hell, and the Church is occasionally justified in speeding that process along by any means necessary.

The Papacy

The one point that irrevocably sets the Catholic Church apart from all other versions of Christianity is the issue of the papacy. Catholics believe that the pope is the direct successor to Peter, a concept known as the apostolic succession, which invests the papacy with a mandate to lead Catholicism which supposedly dates back to Jesus himself.

In its modern form, the most meaningful part of this mandate is known as infallibility. The doctrine of papal infallibility teaches that the pope is incapable of making an error when it comes to matters of religious teaching. In recent years, this concept has been sharply limited in its application and includes only specific kinds of papal proclamations.

The need for such a limitation became clear pretty early in Church history. By the close of Christianity's first millennium, the papacy had been occupied by some truly mindblowing hedonists and degenerates.

The phrase "died while committing adultery" appears surprisingly often when you review the annals of the Vatican. The list of popes includes such distinguished figures as John XII, who had sex with his mother and sisters; John VIII, who may have been a female transvestite masquerading as a man; Clement V, who unleashed the terrors of the Inquisition against the Knights Templar in a naked grab for the society's valuable real estate; and Sergius III, who reportedly fathered an illegitimate child through incest and then installed that child as Pope John XI.

Many non-Catholics have trouble understanding how this extremely uneven track record can possibly reflect the divine mandate implied by the doctrine of the apostolic succession. The confusion deepens when you see just how spotty the actual succession can be.

For the first 100 years after the birth of Christ, there exists only a bare approximation of a historical record to vindicate the notion that the papacy goes all the way back to Peter. If you can get past that rather significant point, you then find that there is no particular indication that the early Christians gave any special or universal rank to the pope, who was then known simply as the bishop of Rome.

The most powerful early Christian bishoprics included Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, but many other bishops were well-represented and politically powerful.

When Constantine wanted to unify the church, he didn't rely on Sylvester, the Bishop of Rome at that time. He called in all 250-plus bishops from around Christendom, all of whom had their own special ideas of what constituted a Church. Pope Sylvester I was barely a footnote to the proceedings.

Then there's the "unbroken succession" issue. For most of the Catholic Church's history, the selection of popes has been a haphazard affair. Sometimes popes were elected, at other times they were appointed. Some popes chose their own successors. On several occasions, popes were installed or deposed by the military might of Roman emperors and Italian kings.

Sometimes there were two claimants to the papacy at once, or even three. Such "antipopes" began to appear with alarming regularity as early as the third century of the Church. There were at least 30 before the election of popes was standardized in the 16th century.

The leading status of the Bishop of Rome was, at first, a secular political consideration. Rome was the heart of the Roman Empire, which became Christian in the wake of Constantine I. Naturally, the Bishop of Rome was in a position to represent himself effectively.

Up until the fourth century, the word "pope" wasn't even specific to Rome and applied to any bishop. Etymologically speaking, the beginning of the papacy can be traced to Pope Siricus — the 38th bishop of Rome installed at the end of the fourth century, according to the list used by the church, who ruled on various doctrinal matters as if his opinion was the one that mattered. The actual stated doctrine of infallibility evolved slowly over the centuries that followed, but it wasn't precisely codified until the end of the 19th century.

The nature of the papacy has also varied wildly throughout the years. From the eighth century through medieval times, popes frequently took an active role in global politics, even going so far as to launch wars from time to time. In contrast, the 21st century papacy is politically impotent, ruling a few square miles of Vatican City.

The Future of the Catholic Church

The Catholic Church is still the largest single denomination in the world, with more than a billion believers who identify themselves as members. But time has wrought ravages on Rome's status, power and future outlook.

Although the entire history of Christianity is rife with schisms, heresies and breakaways, the watershed moment for Catholicism came with the Protestant Reformation, the first Christian movement to successfully break with Rome (without being exterminated) since Constantine originally consolidated the Church in Nicea.

Every year, there are fewer and fewer Catholics, as a percentage of the world's population. The fastest growing religion in the world, Sunni Islam has close to a billion adherents and will almost certainly surpass Catholicism within the next several years.

Even more foreboding, the numbers game here doesn't reflect the depth of involvement with the Catholic Church and its core issues. For most of the billion people who self-identify as Muslims, religion is an overpowering consideration in every aspect of their daily lives. Those who identify themselves as Catholics don't necessarily share that sense of urgency, especially American Catholics, who are notorious for missing Sunday mass and for disagreeing with some of the pope's quaint but still infallible notions about birth control.

Few young Catholics are inspired to take up the priesthood these days. One study suggests that by 2020, about half of all priests will be older than 70, and that survey was conducted before the American church was rocked by reports that dozens of priests had been molesting young boys for decades while church authorities covered up their offenses.

Over the long history of the church, there have occasionally been a few who prophesied its end. None of these prophecies speak of death by attrition. Religions are not expected to go out with a whimper; true believers demand a bang.

But if Armageddon is on the wing, it's hard to see how the Catholic Church ends up being the major player. Granted, the world is currently consumed with a Holy War, and there are plenty of people who are happy to cast Osama bin Laden in the role of Antichrist. But Pope John Paul II wasn't exactly a robust leader likely to call Catholic troops to the final war. His successor, Pope Benedict XVI, had just turned 78 years young when he was made Pope on 18 April 2005, and openly admits his tenure will be short-lived (literally). Not very encouraging.

According to a Catholic church legend, St. Malachy presented Pope Innocent II with a list of all the future popes, in what was said to be a divinely inspired prophecy. There are 13 popes remaining on the list, now that J.P. II had made his final farewell. According to the final prophecy of St. Malachy:

In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church there will reign Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock amid many tribulations, after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people. The End.

No pope has ever taken the name Peter, and it's hard to imagine anyone would, after a prophecy like that. Of course, Peter could be the future pope's birth name, or it could be one of those tricky metaphorical deals to which prophets are so often prone. Papal reigns have ranged from days to decades, so 13 popes is a pretty indefinite amount of time. On the bright side, it leaves open the possibility that a bang might break out before the inevitable triumph of the whimper. Check back with us in 80 years or so for an update.

Pagan cult mosaic found under cathedral

2009-02-20T15:04:00.000-08:00

A Roman mosaic floor filled with scenes depicting pagan rites and oriental gods has emerged from the ground of a Catholic church in Italy, archaeologists announced.

The mosaic pavement, which measures 140 square feet and dates to the fourth century A.D., was unearthed at a depth of about 13 feet below the the ground's surface during archaeological investigations in the crypt of the Cathedral of Reggio Emilia, in central-northern Italy.

"The size and design of the mosaic pavement suggest that it formed the floor of a huge room. We believe this was the residence of a wealthy Roman," Renata Curina, the archaeologist in charge of the dig, told Discovery News.

The fact that depictions of pagan gods had lain for hundreds of years just a few meters under the cathedral doesn't come too much as a surprise, according to the archaeologist.

"The church was built on top of preexisting building structures. This is rather normal in Reggio Emilia. We can see that little care was taken of the mosaic floor, since pillars are built on top of it," Curina said.

Made up of small tesserae — tiny tiles — of different materials, which include colored stones, glass cameos and golden leaves, the intricate mosaic floor features geometric designs of circles and squares with little figures of dancers, flowers and birds such as magpies and peacocks.

What makes the mosaic unique, however, are three large mythological scenes.

"So far all scenes show naked figures. We are still trying to figure out their meaning. I believe that more clues might come to light as we continue to dig," Curina said.

The scenes are rather unusual. One shows a naked man falling into someone's arms, another displays two naked figures — a man and a woman — wearing jewels. The woman holds a just caught fish, while the man holds two live ducks.

Another extraordinary scene shows a naked man wearing an ivy crown and holding a lotus flower in his right hand.

In his left hand, the mysterious character holds a lituus. This is a crooked cane which in ancient Rome was used by the augurs as a cult instrument. The cane was regarded as a symbol of a priestly group.

The augurs were religious officials who observed natural signs, such as the flight of birds, in order to interpret them as indications of divine approval or disapproval.

"Symbols such as the lotus flower and the ivy crown might hint that this was a private room dedicated to the cult of oriental gods," Curina said.

According to Luigi Malnati, superintendent of archaeological heritage in Emilia Romagna, such pagan scenes must have been pieced together before 380 A.D., the year when the emperor Theodosius proclaimed Christianity the state religion. Indeed, a series of decrees in 391-392 A.D. banned and punished pagan cult practices within the empire.

"This is one of the most important and interesting mosaics in northern Italy. It stands out for its size, design and refined technique," Malnati said.

Roger Ling, a professor of classical art and archaeology at the University of Manchester, U.K., and the author of "Ancient Mosaics," agreed. "It's a sensational discovery," Ling told Doscovery News.

Once fully detached and restored, the mosaic will be put on display at a local museum.

101 Ways to Live More Spiritually and Purposefully, Everyday

2009-02-02T17:49:00.001-08:00

By Holly McCarthy

If you value your ability to multitask more than your weekends, or if you look forward to getting sick because it’s the one time you can justify turning off your BlackBerry, you should probably take a moment to examine your goals. Re-prioritizing your life so that you enjoy a more holistically healthy existence doesn’t meant that you have to give up your professional life or goals. In this list, we’ll show you how to live your life more spiritually and sanely, without sacrificing productivity or purpose.

Tips

Make it a point to try out these simple tips each day so that you’re consistently working towards a more balanced life.

Meditate or Pray: No matter what your religion is, or even if you aren’t particularly religious, your mind and mood can benefit from a few minutes of reflection each day.
Set up a regular sleep schedule: You’ll be ready to wake up earlier and will get the most out of your sleeping hours if you do so.
Stop your bad habits: Besides the fact that breaking dangerous or unhealthy habits is good for your health, practicing discipline will help you be more purposeful with your other duties.
Talk about what’s bothering you: Visit a counselor, pastor or friend to talk out your problems, ease anxiety and fell less alone.
Take on responsibility: Whether it’s a plant, a pet, or just owning up to any mistakes you make at work, taking responsibility is good for your integrity and forces you to be there for someone or something else.
Seek out other spiritually-minded people: Surround yourself with moral company who share the same goals as you and can be a good influence on your spiritual journey.
Eat for Energy: Remember to refuel with healthy snacks and meals for a more energetic and productive day.
Tune into your body: Whether it’s through yoga, regular doctor’s visits or going through a detox, take a moment each day to connect your mind and body for a holistic spiritual experience.
Pace yourself: Set small goals for yourself and understand what you’re capable of to avoid getting overwhelmed or sidetracked during your new journey.
Understand that there will be tough times: If you think that just making the decision to be more spiritual and purposeful means that your life is going to be perfect everyday, it’ll be too easy for you to get frustrated. Understand that your new outlook on life will help you get through the tough times, not prevent them.

Blogs to Read

Add these blogs to your RSS so that you can find inspiration and wisdom in your inbox or Google Reader each day.

Beyond Blue: Therese J. Borchard blogs for BeliefNet on the subject of mental health and depression.
Zen Habits: Get all kinds of life hacks, ideas for organization, and inspiring habits to start from this blog.
My Out Spirit: My Out Spirit is a spirituality blog for the gay community and covers topics like lifestyle choices, identity and more.
Psychology Today Blogs: Visit a specific blog or just click on a category to see all relevant posts. Categories range from addiction to relationships to self-help.
Self Help Daily: Learn how to love yourself and do everything better when you read this blog, from relationships to health to fitness.
For God’s Sake, Shut Up!: Brian Kaylor is an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies and aims to help Christians learn how to communicate better.
Text Messages: Patton Dodd writes about Christianity and culture here.
Life is a Journal: This "self help for lazy people" blog is written by Allen Galbraith, a contributer to BBC TV and radio programs. Find tips for getting inspired and making progress in your life.
Slacker Manager: Here you can find tips for being a better partner and manager, in the business world and beyond.
Self-Help Happiness Blog: From lists of motivational songs and TV shows to tips for managing your life more effectively, this blog is a great resource for finding a balance.

Finance and Wealth

Learn how to balance your budget without becoming too consumed with money. These tips and resources will help you keep everything organized and in perspective.

Money Tips from Zen Achievers: Savvy Sugar shares tips for "keeping it simple" in terms of finances and stress.
The Prioritizer: CNN Money’s calculator can help you track your financial goals.
The Correct Way to Pay off Personal Debt: This guide has tips for avoiding the "debt avalanche" and taking responsibility for your debt.
10 Tips to Make Sure Your Financial Budget Will Succeed: Tips like "put your budget in writing" and "review your budget each month" will help you stay on track.

Work-Life Balance

Achieving a work-life balance is a great struggle for some, but it’s absolutely necessary if you want to have a meaningful life.

Are you a workaholic?: This article can help you stop bad work habits before they spiral out of control.
5 Tips for Better Work-Life Balance: WebMD helps you figure out a 5-step plan for a mentally and physically healthy work-life balance.
11 Tips for Nuking Laziness without Becoming a Workaholic: This guide can show you a balance between overachieving and underachieving.
Stop Being a Workaholic: 5 Ways to Keep it in Check: PreventDisease.com explains how being a workaholic can turn into a "futile cycle."
Work-life balance: Ways to restore harmony and reduce stress: The Mayo Clinic’s guide explains why a work-life balance is important and how to achieve it.
20 Work-Life Balance Tips for the Overworked Entrepreneur: Wendy Piersall can help you re-prioritize your life so that you balance work life and your personal life.

Community Involvement

Life isn’t just about work, school and home. Branch out to meet new friends and give back to the community by following these tips.

Volunteer: Volunteering can help you feel like you’re spending your free time in a purposeful way, and it’s a way to meet new friends.
Take an interest in your children’s activities: Besides being a way to make sure your children are making healthy, safe decisions in their social lives, getting to know their coaches and friends is good for you, too.
Join a spiritual community: Join a church or other spiritual group for social interaction and inspiration to continue your journey.
Idealist.org: Log on to this website to research volunteer and mission projects in your area and around the world.

Charitable Giving

Charitable giving offers lots of fulfilling benefits, including the opportunity to learn about a new culture or community, feel good about doing something for others, and even getting a tax break.

Charity Navigator: Research over 5,300 American charities with this tool.
Share your services: Offer to tutor or donate your company’s free services for a needy organization or individual.
Charity Guide: Search charities by state or country with this tool.
Network for Good: Find charities to donate to or volunteer with through this organization.
JustGive.org: Find charities and in-need organizations by topic here.
Tax Deduction for Charitable Donations: There is nothing wrong with filing a charitable donation with your taxes. Learn more about it here.

Social Guides and Relationships

For tips on finding more meaning in your social life and relationships, turn to this list.

Four Keys to a Spiritual Marriage: This article has tips for couples who want to support each other and connect with each other on a deeper level.
Spiritual Tools for Couples: This article lists benefits of couples who go to church together, including having more friends, enjoying a lower divorce rate, and even having better sex.
7 Tips for Better Family Communication: Learn how to pay attention to your family members all over again when you read this guide.
The Positive Side of Divorce: Becoming More Spiritual: If you’ve gone through a divorce and are having trouble getting on with your life, read this article for inspiration.
Have friends: It’s easy for even naturally outgoing people to get stuck in a rut and spend too much time working or watching TV. Expand your social network by joining a fitness club or just visiting a neighbor a few times a week.
Helping Kids Cope With Stress: If you’ve been having a stressful week or day, remember that your kids might have been too. Read this article to learn how to tune in to your kids’ stress and help them feel less anxious.
Get a roommate: Living alone is a dream for some, but if you’re getting depressed, consider getting a roommate.
Top 10 Ways to Connect With Your Spouse: This Christian article recommends praying together, leaving love notes, going on dates and sharing common interests.
Why You Should Learn Tantric Sex: Tantric sex can provide a deeper, more intimate connection spiritually and physically.
Spend more time at home: If you’re too busy with social activities, work and errands, make a point to spend more weekends or evenings at home with your family or to pay more attention to yourself.

Spiritual Development

Here are guides and tips devoted to helping you grow spiritually.

6 Essential Keys to Spiritual Development: Care2’s article offers daily goals to achieve inner harmony, connect with others and more.
The Center for Spiritual Development: This website has lots of resources for anyone curious about religion, psychology and spirituality.
Online Bible: If you’re interested in Christianity, visit this online Bible site for a searchable directory and information about marriage, finance, devotion and more.
Search God’s Word: This website is another resource for learning about the Bible.
Meditation for Beginners: Here you’ll find 20 tips "for quieting the mind."
How to Meditate: 10 Important Tips: Learn how to focus and relax your breathing, eyes, posture, thoughts and more.
Listen to a podcast: Subscribe to or download a podcast about religion and spirituality to add more meaning and inspiration to your day.
Bible.org: Study the Bible with this online tool as a reference guide.
Go to a lecture: Visit a special lecture series at a university or religious center to learn more about a particular ideology, religious group or lifestyle.
Go on a retreat: Sign up for an organized retreat through a church or temple, or send yourself on an individual retreat to focus on your spiritual development.

Goal Trackers

Use these goal trackers to monitor your progress and stay inspired each day.

Joe’s Goals: Use this tool to track anything from exercise progress to how frequently you meditate.
Goalmigo: This fun but basic site makes it easy to set up goals, track your progress, receive reminders and alerts, and even join groups of people with the same goals as you.
We Endure: If your goal is to run a marathon or enter a bike race, then this tracker will keep you on point.
HealtheHuman: Set up your own health profile, keep an online diary and access a calendar and goal tracking tool.
eLIFELIST: This nifty network helps you create a list of goals and share them with a community of committed friends and groups.
Don’t Break the Chain: Don’t Break the Chain is a very simple online calendar that lets you mark off days you took steps to achieving your goal.
SuperViva: Make a life list with SuperViva, which lets you record goals, to-do lists and more.
The Daily Plate: This popular and well-organized site helps those on a mission to lose weight and be more active. You’ll get access to a food journal, fitness log and more.
Mint: Mint is a free finance and budget tracker that helps you find out where all your money goes.
traineo: Use traineo to track health and fitness goals, find motivation and hold yourself accountable.

Social Media

Reach out to others with similar struggles, goals or points of view through these social media sites. You’ll find a sense of community and new groups of friends that will keep you on point.

WebMD Community: This community is for more than just health questions. Find inspiration, information and camaraderie from people going through similar health situations as you.
3 fat chicks on a diet: Check out this social media site for diet and fitness tips, as well as member blogs that track members’ weight loss journeys.
Care2: Join this group to find out how you can make a difference by petitioning, joining an environmentalist group, donating to a charity and more.
D*I*Y Planner: Join this community to come up with plans to be more healthy, organize your finances, achieve goals and pursue hobbies.
Join a religious social media site: Sites like My Praize are family-friendly networks with chat, web mail, forums, video and more.
Accomplish Life: This self-help community site has channels for relationships, personal growth, spirituality, depression, goal setting, and even financial help.
Join a business networking site: Especially if you’re in charge of your personal brand or company, join a site like LinkedIn to expand your presence online.
SparkPeople: SparkPeople is a weight-loss and healthy lifestyle network that will make you get serious about your plans to be healthy.
Join a Christian dating site: Christian Cafe is just one dating and singles sites for Christians. You’ll meet others who share your morals and beliefs, even in the cutthroat dating world.
Get on Digg: Social bookmarking sites like Digg are a great way for you to quickly find the news stories and lifestyle articles that you’re curious about. You can also make friends with people who are interested in the same things as you and who want to share meaningful stories.

Nature and Environment

Another way to feel more spiritual and connected to the world around you is to spend more time with nature and protect the environment. Through volunteer projects, living an organic lifestyle and understanding how your life impacts nature and other people, you can enjoy a stronger sense of yourself and your purpose.

Grow your own food: Start an organic garden to grow your own vegetables.
Live an organic lifestyle: Go beyond your diet and live an entirely organic lifestyle that infiltrates your beauty regime and home life too.
Recycle: Recycling has been a hot topic for decades, and it’s still vital to preserving the earth and even saving money.
TreeHugger: Start visiting this website to learn about eco-friendly fashion, car and transportation alternatives, technology developments, and more.
Calculate your carbon footprint: Better understand how your life affects the planet when you calculate your carbon footprint.
Make your own cleaning supplies: Make non-toxic cleaning supplies a staple in your home to protect the environment and your family’s health.
Join a community garden: Community gardens provide excellent ways to meet conscientious neighbors, grow your own food and give back to the environment and community.
Things You Should Always Buy Green: If it’s hard for you to adopt a wholly green lifestyle right away, start easy by shopping for eco-friendly versions of light bulbs, paper, paint and other simple items.
Be green at work: Encourage your office mates to go green by sharing these tips for office and eco-friendly living.
Opt for paperless billing: Online billing is good for the environment, cuts down on excess mail, and makes your bill paying routine more efficient.

Health and Well being

Pay attention to your mental health and physical health in order to feel more energized, productive and peaceful.

Feng Shui to Alleviate Anxiety: Consider designing your home or rooms according to feng shui principles in order to ease anxiety and promote good energy.
Schedule regular check ups: Visit the doctor and dentist at least once a year for preventative tests and check ups.
Monitor your weight: Exercise and a good diet keep your weight down and boost your mood, and being overweight can be a risk factor for diseases like diabetes.
Get sunlight: Spend a few minutes a day out in the sun for an instant mood booster and to get Vitamin D. If you’re out longer than 15 or 20 minutes when there’s a high UV index, put on sunscreen.

Tips to be More Efficient

These efficiency tips and tools will help you get more meaning and purpose out of every day.

Make lists: Set up a long-term calendar and short to-do lists for each day to make sure you stay on track.
Limit cell phone and Internet time: BlackBerries and the Internet can be major time savers in one regard, but they’re also a huge drain to your productivity if you let your addiction get out of control.
E-mail smarter: This article has 99 tips for being more efficient and safe with your e-mail habits.
Know which tools help and which ones don’t: This article has suggestions for the most productive Firefox extensions, so don’t waste your time with useless extras.
Business Productivity: This guide has tips for being more productive at work, so that you get the most out of your work day and don’t have to worry about overtime as much.
De-clutter your life: Remove clutter from your home, your mind and your to-do lists for a more positive, relaxed outlook on life.
Avoid multitasking too much: Too much multitasking can leave you feeling unfocused and overwhelmed, and you won’t be able to give 100% to your projects.

By Holly McCarthy from

Railway Car Churches

2009-02-02T13:50:00.000-08:00

It can look bit crazy, but it seems that there is a widespread train in Russia to organize Orthodox-Christian churches in old railway cars.

It could seem like it’s a modern phenomena but bit retrospective digging reveals that some of them already appeared when the railroad itself appeared in Russia.

Church, atheists agree on blasphemy

2009-01-29T09:52:00.000-08:00

The Anglican Church of Australia and atheists agree on one thing - that blasphemy should no longer be a criminal offence.

The church and the Atheist Foundation of Australia (AFA) are among more than 150 organisations and individuals to make submissions to a freedom of religion and belief project, being run jointly with the Australian Multicultural Foundation, RMIT University and Monash University.

Released in September, the Australian Human Rights Commission discussion paper sets out to examine the extent to which the right of freedom of religion and belief can be enjoyed in Australia.

The church's six-page submission said blasphemy should be made lawful.

Blasphemy is not a common law offence at a national level but a few federal laws, such as the Broadcasting and Television Act, still include it as an "objectionable item".

The law is uneven across states and territories.

"We look for a society where religious discourse is conducted in safety and security, and people are free to disagree without danger or social exclusion or harm to person or property," the church said in its submission.

"These conditions will entail the freedom to engage in robust debate and disagreement about religious beliefs and practices.

"We support the abolition of the common law offence of blasphemy and the repeal of any laws creating the offence of blasphemy."

The AFA said in its submission it backed an end to blasphemy laws, adding there were sufficient laws in place to prevent vilification.

"There is no reason to treat religion as a special case, any more than there should be special laws to prevent people vilifying gun clubs or conservationist societies, or bridge clubs," it said.

The AHRC on Wednesday extended the deadline for submissions to its discussion paper to February 28.

Race Discrimination Commissioner Tom Calma said the discussion paper had already generated a lot of interest, but more comment was being sought.

by: news.theage.com.au

How to spot an atheist at a wedding

2009-01-26T08:35:00.000-08:00

How do you know he isn't keeping an eye out for athiests? Or maybe he prays with his eyes open?

click on image to enlarge

Sikh paintings

2009-01-25T05:39:00.000-08:00

The panels are in the form of embossed brass - made by the craftsmen of Kucha Fakirkhana, Amritsar in the mid 19th century - they are perhaps some of the finest examples of their kind. The panels are arranged in groups of 3 above each of the 4 doors - 12 in total.
The themes of the panels can be divided into 4 distinct categories - depictions of the Guru Sahiban , The children of the Guru Sahiban, The Bhagats and Scenes from the Puranas.
There are 3 panels that depict the Guru Sahiban - in this panel Guru Nanak Sahib is shown with Saints ,Sants and Sages.

Kaputsinskogo Monastery Exhibited About 8000 Bodies Dead Museum

2009-01-22T07:34:00.001-08:00

Kaputsinskogo Monastery Exhibited About 8000 Bodies Dead Museum

Lost Forever - Ancient Wonders

2009-01-02T09:22:00.000-08:00

THE HANGING GARDENS OF BABYLON

A magnificent garden paradise said to have been built in the 7th century B.C. in the middle of the arid Mesopotamian desert, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were testimony to one man's ability to, against all the laws of nature, create a botanical oasis of beauty amid a bleak desert landscape. King Nebuchadnezzar II created the gardens as a sign of love for his wife homesick Amyitis, who, according to legend, longed for the forests and roses of her homeland. Amyitis, daughter of the king of the Medes, was married to Nebuchadnezzar to create an alliance between the nations. The land she came from, though, was green, rugged and mountainous,and she found the flat, sun-baked terrain of the Mesopotamia depressing. The king decided to recreate her homeland by building an artificial mountain with rooftop gardens.

The Hanging Gardens probably did not really "hang" in the sense of being suspended from cables or ropes. The name comes from an inexact translation of the Greek word kremastos or the Latin word pensilis, which means not just "hanging" but "overhanging," as in the case of a terrace or balcony. The gardens were terraced and surrounded by the city walls, with a moat of water outside the walls to repel invading armies.

When Alexander's soldiers reached the fertile land of Mesopotamia and saw Babylon, they were impressed. When they later returned to their rugged homeland, they had stories to tell about the amazing gardens and palm trees at Mesopotamia.

It wasn't until the twentieth century that some of the mysteries surrounding the Hanging Gardens were revealed. Archaeologists are still struggling to gather enough evidence before reaching the final conclusions about the location of the Gardens, their irrigation system, and their true appearance.

THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES

Originally, Colossus stood over 2,000 years ago at the Islands of Rhodes. It is located off of the southwestern tip is Asia Minor, where the Agean Sea meets the Mediterranean Sea. The capitol city, Rhodes, was built in 408 B.C.
In 357 B.C the island which was conquered by Mausolus of Halicarnassus (one of the other seven wonders) fell to the Persians in 340 B.C. and was finally captured by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. When Alexander died at an early age people could not decide who would reign. Three people: Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Antigous divided the kingdom between themselves. Antigous sent his son Semetrious to capture and punish Rhodes. The war was very long and painful. The city was protected by a strong wall. The attackers were forced to use siege towers and try to climb over it. Diameters had a second tower built. The second tower stood 150 feet high and 70 feet square at the base. It carried water tanks that were used to fight fires. The tower was mounted on iron wheels, and could be rolled. When Demetrious attacked the city, defenders stopped the machine by flooding a ditch outside the wall and moving the heavy machine in the mud.
To celebrate their freedom, the Rhodians built a giant statue of their patriot God Helious. Colossus was a Latin word, meaning any statue that is larger than life size.

Salvador Dali's painting of Colossus

Colossus was built in 304 B.C. and it took twelve years to build it. The statue was 110 feet high and stood on the pedestal. Colossus was posed in a traditional Greek manner: nude, wearing a spiky crown, with his eyes shaded from the bright sun with his right hand while holding a cloak over his left hand.

Out of all of the wonders, Colossus was the one that stood the least amount of time. It stood for only 56 years, but in brief time won fame throughout the entire civilized world.
The statue stood for only 56 years until Rhodes was hit by an earthquake in 224 BC. The statue snapped at the knees and fell over onto the land. Ptolemy III offered to pay for the reconstruction of the statue, but an oracle made the Rhodians afraid that they offended Helios, and they declined to rebuild it. The remains lay on the ground for over 800 years, and even broken, they were so impressive that many travelled to see them.

In the 7th century (A.D.) the Arabs conquered Rhodes and broke up Colossus, and sold it as scrap metal. It took 900 camels to take away the statue. It was a sad ending for what was a majestic work of art.

THE STATUE OF ZEUS

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia was carved by the famed Classical sculptor Phidias (5th century BC) circa 435 BC in Olympia, Greece.
They built the temple to house the statue of Zeus, made of ivory and gold over wooden frame. The statue was 22 feet by 40 feet tall. Zeus, placed on a throne, almost touched the ceiling. "It seems that if Zeus were to stand up," the geographer Strabo noted early in the 1st century BC, "he would unroof the temple."

Zeus was carved from ivory (technically the ivory was soaked in a liquid that made it softer, so it was probably both carved and shaped as necessary) then covered with gold plating (thus chryselephantine) and was seated on a magnificent throne of cedarwood, inlaid with ivory, gold, ebony, and precious stones.

In Zeus' right hand there was a small statue of Nike, the goddess of victory, and in his left hand, a shining sceptre on which an eagle perched. Visitors like the Roman general Aemilius Paulus, the victor over Macedon, were moved to awe by the godlike majesty and splendor that Phidias had captured.

The circumstances of its eventual destruction are a source of debate: some scholars argue that it perished with the temple in the 5th century AD, others argue that it was carried off to Constantinople, where it was destroyed in the great fire of the Lauseion.

THE TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS

The Temple of Artemis (Diana) was the largest temple of ancient times and was the first building made entirely of marble except for its tile covered wooden roof. It was built about 550 B.C., although the foundation of the building dates back to the 7th century B.C. Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo, the god of truth and love.
It took 120 years to make the temple. It stood in the Greek city of Aphasias, on the west coast which we all know as Turkey.

The temple was decorated with bronze statues sculpted only by the most skilled artists of their time: Phidias, Polycleitus, Kresilas, and Phradmon. Built on a platform measuring 430 feet by 259 feet, the rectangular temple was larger than the Parthenon in Athens that measured 366 by 170 feet. The huge roof was supported by over 120 elaborately carved columns. Each column consisted of about 12 cylindrical blocks of marble that were raised into place with pulleys and placed on top of one another to form a column. There was also a room that sheltered a magnificent statue of Artemis. She was the goddess of the forest and the goddess of fertility.

On the night of 21 July, 356 B.C. , a man named Herostratus burned the temple to the ground in order to have his name immortalized in history. The Ephesians, outraged, announced that Herostratus' name never be recorded. That same night Alexander the Great was born. Eventually the temple was rebuilt by Alexander the Great who conquered Ephesus. The reconstructed temple lasted for many years but was looted by Goths and then flooded. By A.D. 262 the temple was destroyed beyond repair. If you go to the site today you will find that one column is still standing and traces of the foundation and road can still be seen.

THE LIGHTHOUSE OF ALEXANDRIA

Alexander the Great had seventeen cities named after him. Most of them are no longer around except for Alexandria, Egypt. This city is where the Lighthouse of Alexandria stood. Alexander died in 323 B. C. The city was completed by Ptolemy Soter, the new ruler of Egypt.
Ptolemy I, started building the lighthouse in 290 B.C. It was completed 20 years later and was the first lighthouse of the world. It was also the tallest building with the exception of the Great Pyramid.
It was built on island of Pharos in Alexandria.

Constructed from large blocks of light-colored stone, the tower was made up of three stages: a lower square section with a central core, a middle octagonal section, and, at the top, a circular section.

At its apex was positioned a mirror which reflected sunlight during the day; a fire was lit at night. Extant Roman coins struck by the Alexandrian mint show that a statue of a Triton was positioned on each of the building's 4 corners. A statue of Poseidon stood atop the tower during the Roman period.

Legends tell of the light from the Pharos being used to burn enemy ships before they could reach shore, however this is highly unlikely due to the relatively poor quality of optics and reflective technology in the time period in which the building existed.

Only slightly less impressive - and probably more accurate - is the claim that the light from the lighthouse could be seen up to 35 miles (56 km) from shore.

Pharos later became the etymological origin of the word 'lighthouse' in many Romance languages, such as French (phare), Italian (faro), Portuguese (farol), Spanish (faro) and Romanian (far).

The Pharos guided sailors into the city harbor for 1,500 years and was the last of the six lost wonders to disappear. Earthquakes toppled it in the 14th century A.D.

A reconstruction of the Lighthouse of Alexandria in the "Window of the World" Cultural Park in Changsha, China.

Top 5 Incredible Science Discoveries of 2008

2009-01-01T04:46:00.000-08:00

Science is mostly an incremental process, a slow peeling of the onion to offer small glimpses of understanding. But over time, scientists remove enough layers to expose stunning truths about nature.

This year offered some intriguing revelations along these lines. Below are the top 5.

5. Stronger link between birds and dinosaurs

Paleontologists have long known that modern birds are the closest living relatives of the long-gone dinosaurs. But just how the transition between dino and Big Bird happened has not been fully understood.

This year, scientists uncovered more fascinating new links between ancient dinosaurs and their living feathered friends, which emerged some 150 million years ago during the Jurassic Period.

In November, scientists announced the discovery of a fossilized dinosaur nest that proves dinosaurs were forming bird-like nests and laying eggs long before birds evolved.

Another link was established in October, when paleontologists announced the discovery of a fossilized dinosaur that apparently sported tail feathers thought to have helped the creature balance on tree branches.Though the creature couldn't fly, it may represent a step in the direction of feathers for flight.

And a third analysis of fossils revealed that a huge carnivorous dinosaur called Aerosteon had a breathing system much like that of today's birds, with hollow bones that filled with air and possible air sacs that would have pumped air through its lungs.

4. Memory's limit found

Common knowledge — and phone number conventions — have held that people can fit about seven things in short-term memory. But research announced this April found that the true fundamental limit, when all memory aids are taken out of the equation, is actually about three or four.

Psychologists presented subjects with an array of colored squares, then showed a single colored square and asked people to recall if it was the same color as the original square in its position. The scientists used a mathematical model that assumed people could only remember three or four squares, and found that it accurately predicted the spread of results on the test.

The research doesn't mean we should reduce phone numbers to four digits, though. In most real-life situations, we can use memory tricks, such as grouping items together (i.e. breaking phone numbers into a chunk of three digits plus a group of four) to improve on our brain's minimal capacity.

3. Huge new population of gorillas discovered

The critically endangered western lowland gorilla has been nearing extinction due to disease, hunting and deforestation. Until recently, scientists had put the number living in the wild at about 50,000.

But this August, the Wildlife Conservation Society announced its scientists had uncovered a previously unknown population of about 125,000 gorillas living in the Republic of Congo. The discovery was a welcome bit of good news for the beleaguered apes, and conservationists say it means their efforts have been working.

But gorillas aren’t out of the woods yet. They still face imminent threats, especially from the deadly Ebola virus, which has decimated many gorilla populations.

2. Electron filmed for the first time

In a motion-picture first, scientists caught the movement of a single electron on film.

The discovery, announced in February, was made possible with a new technology that generates extremely short pulses of intense laser light to illuminate the particle. The resulting movie shows an electron leaving an atom after being excited by ultraviolet light. Since this actually happened in much less time than a second, the sequence was slowed down for human eyes to last a full three seconds.

The groundbreaking achievement should open up doors for new study into the workings of atoms, not to mention a new genre of film: subatomic cinema.

1. The Arctic melts

A piece of the year's most sobering news is also some of its most significant. In September, Arctic sea ice reached the second-lowest level recorded since the beginning of the satellite era, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado. When stacked next to 2007's ultimate record low, the picture is grim: Global warming's effects are before us.

The news also spelled disaster for polar bears, whose primary habitat is sea ice. In May the Interior Department officially listed the polar bear as a threatened species. Officials said the decline of Arctic sea ice off Alaska and Canada could result in two-thirds of polar bears disappearing by 2050.

Mystery of the screaming mummy

2008-12-17T09:04:00.000-08:00

It was a blood-curdling discovery. The mummy of a young man with his hands and feed bound, his face contorted in an eternal scream of pain. But who was he and how did he die?

On a scorching hot day at the end of June 1886, Gaston Maspero, head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, was unwrapping the mummies of the 40 kings and queens found a few years earlier in an astonishing hidden cache near the Valley of the Kings.

The 1881 discovery of the tombs, in the Deir El Bahri valley, 300 miles south of Cairo, had been astonishing and plentiful. Hidden from the world for centuries were some of the great Egyptian pharaohs - Rameses the Great, Seti I and Tuthmosis III. Yet this body, buried alongside them, was different, entombed inside a plain, undecorated coffin that offered no clues to the deceased's identity.

It was an unexpected puzzle and, once the coffin was opened, Maspero found himself even more shocked.

There, wrapped in a sheep or goatskin - a ritually unclean object for ancient Egyptians - lay the body of a young man, his face locked in an eternal blood-curdling scream. It was a spine-tingling sight, and one that posed even more troubling questions: here was a mummy, carefully preserved, yet caught in the moment of death in apparently excrutiating pain.

He had been buried in exalted company, yet been left without an inscription, ensuring he would be consigned to eternal damnation, as the ancient Egyptians believed identity was the key to entering the afterlife. Moreover, his hands and feet had been so tightly bound that marks still remained on the bones.

Who could he be, this screaming man, assigned the anonymous label 'Man E' in the absence of a proper name?

An autopsy, performed by physicians in 1886 in the presence of Maspero, did little to shed any light on the subject.

One of the physicians, Daniel Fouquet, believed the contracted shape of his stomach cavity showed he had been poisoned, writing in his report that 'the last convulsions of horrid agony can, after thousands of years, still be seen' - yet his science was unable to help him ascertain why.

Even marrying these findings with historical documents only allowed experts to speculate. Some believed 'Man E' was the traitor son of Rameses III, who'd been involved in a coup to remove him from the throne, others that he was an Egyptian governor who had died abroad and been returned to his homeland for burial. Some believed the unconventional manner of his mummification showed that he was not Egyptian at all, but a member of a rival Hittite dynasty, who had died on Egyptian soil.

All explanations were possible, yet Man E's true identity seemed destined to remain a mystery.

As Dr Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, puts it, 'We'd never seen a mummy like this, suffering. It's not normal, and it tells us something happened, but we did not know exactly what.'

Until now. Today, nearly 130 years after his body was first uncovered, a team of scientists has brought the wonders of modern forensic techniques to bear on the enigma.

Using sophisticated-technology, including CT scanning, Xrays and facial reconstruction, to examine the mummy, they uncovered tantalising new clues that could reveal his identity, all under the watchful eye of Five's TV crew, who are making a series of documentaries hoping to unravel some of Egypt's great secrets.

Their findings suggest that Man E is indeed Prince Pentewere, elder son of Rameses III, who, with his mother, Tiy, had evolved a plan to assassinate the pharaoh and ascend to the throne.

Certainly, the theory has a number of supporters. Among them is Dr Susan Redford, an Egyptologist from Pennsylvania State University, who points out that an ancient papyrus scroll details a plot by Tiy to dethrone Rameses III in favour of their son, even though he was not the nominated heir.

The plot was apparently supported by a number of high level courtiers, suggesting that they felt Pentewere had a legitimate claim, even though the accession was usually thought to be divinely ordained.

'The scroll tells us that the coup was very quickly discovered and the plotters brought to trial,' she explained. 'They were sentenced to death, but the papyrus also tells us that Pentewere was spared this fate. Perhaps because of his royal status he was allowed to commit suicide.'

He would almost certainly have done so, she says, by drinking poison.

Yet other findings from the 1886 postmortem seemed to dispute the body might be that of Pentewere. It suggested that Man E had been buried with his internal organs intact, which was extraordinarily unusual, even for a traitor, and a boost to theories that the body had been mummified elsewhere at the time - or had not even been Egyptian at all.

Some academics believed that the body may have been that of a rival Hittite prince, basing their theory on a letter written by Tutankhamun's widow Ankhesenamun.

The pharaoh died without leaving an heir and, in her letter, his wife had appealed to the then King of the Hittites that he allow her to marry one of his sons, who would become king and ensure her own continuing power.

Man E, some academics believed, was just such a prince, one who had travelled to Egypt to meet with his new bride and befallen a cruel and murderous fate.

Yet today's forensic findings seemed to dispute this theory: a modern 3D scan showed the mummy had been completely eviscerated, as was customary for important Egyptians.

Moreover, new analysis of the condition of his joints and teeth also appeared to overturn earlier theories as to the mummy's age at the time of death: Fouquet had believed him to be in his early 20s, too young for Pentewere. Now, it seemed, he could have been anywhere up to the age of 40, consistent again with Rameses' son.

Equally revealing was a full facial reconstruction. Using modern forensic techniques, a 3D image of Man E's skull was created, revealing what would have been a strong and handsome face, with a prominent nose and long jaw - features which do not correlate with a Hittite background.

Egyptians had a long lower face and an extended cranium from the forehead to the back of the head, as did Man E, suggesting he's a ancient Egyptian.

There are, of course, still anomalies - the sheepskin covering, the unorthodox way the body was preserved without a name.

The passing of the centuries has ensured that some of the Screaming Man's secrets are destined to remain unsolved, and as Dylan Bickerstaffe, an eminent Egyptologist, puts it, 'With some questions we found the answers to be more ordinary than we thought,' he says. 'But we've also answered others and found the answers to be much stranger.'

It is certainly enough to convince Dr Hawass, who now believes that this most enduring of Egyptian mysteries has been solved.

'It seems to me this man has been sitting in the Cairo Museum waiting for someone to identify him,' he says. 'Now I really do believe that this unknown man is not unknown any more.'

God is a gamer

2008-12-15T10:32:00.000-08:00

God is a gamer

Religion Can Be Funny!

2008-12-14T10:03:00.001-08:00

Celebration of Kurban Bayram worldwide

2008-12-11T10:48:00.000-08:00

Millions of Muslims are preparing today to the Feast of Sacrifice - Eid al-Adha. The Islamic feast of the end of Hajj stated in honor of the prophet Abraham through seventy days after the Ramadan holiday. This morning, faithful Muslims carried out lustration, odelis in festive, breakfast odd number of dates, go to the mosque for morning prayers and started to prepare for sacrifices.The victims today are sheep, goats, camels and bulls. Home beast cut in the name of Allah in untold numbers, then divide the meat with edinovertsami - a third of the meat remains in the family, neighbors and the third is given to the remaining leaves as a charity for those in need.When something is not accepted by Allah Ibrahim victim in the form of his first son Ismail, replacing it on lamb.Therefore, the feast of Eid al-Adha (Kurban Bairam) symbolizes the mercy of Allah.

Hey… Let’s have a little respect

2008-12-10T11:14:00.000-08:00

The Majectic Ancient Ruins of Angkor Wat

2008-12-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

A couple summers ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the Ankor Wat temples in Siem Reap, Cambodia. It is the most spiritual place I've ever visited and the most impressive ancient ruins I've ever seen. There are over one thousand temples in the Angkor area including the magnificent Angkor Wat, said to be the world's largest single religious monument. The temple complex was built for the king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city.

Below are some HDR enhanced photos from an amazing photographer, Trey Ratcliff. These are by far the best photos of Angkor I have ever seen.

The main Angkor Wat temple.

Monks strolling around.
The temples in Angkor are smack dab in the middle of the forest. This temple was unique because it was embedded in the roots of a huge tree.

All the temples are special in their own ways, but the Bayon temple was my favorite and the spookiest. With huge carved faces, Imagine the kinds of shadows you would see during sunset.
Security is almost non-existent yet the detail of the temples is unreal.
Angkor is truly majectic and spiritual.

Conventional logic vs. religious logic

2008-12-08T12:58:00.000-08:00

Though religious Nazis are scary…doesn’t mean what they are saying isn’t true. BTW, I’m assuming that by “religious” you mean Christianity. I mean, usually these cartoons are against Christianity and not religion in general. Also, while I was perusing Myspace the other day I went to a site that I thought was going to try and disprove Biblical things and such…but it talked scientifically about how people try to disprove it through science and archaeology etc..but has not been able to. It was intriguing. I also read somewhere about how Muslims think that Mickey Mouse is working for the devil or something…

Jesus VS. Satan

2008-12-07T10:29:00.000-08:00

Jesus VS. Satan

Unusual Churches

2008-11-27T05:54:00.000-08:00

The Church of Hallgrímur, Reykjavík, Iceland

The Church of Hallgrímur is very very unusual, never seen anything like that.

This Lutheran parish church is also a very tall one, reaching 74.5 metres (244 ft) height. It is the fourth tallest architectural structure in Iceland.

It took incredibly long to build it (38 years!) Construction work began in 1945 and ended in 1986.

The Architect of this building is Guðjón Samúelssondesign.

More info: Hallgrímskirkja

Cathedral of Brasilia in Brasilia, Brazil

This is a very famous Cathedral of Brasília designed by Oscar Niemeyer. It looks really modern but somehow childish to me. These columns, having hyperbolic section and weighing 90 t, represent two hands moving upwards to heaven.

The construction was finished in 1970.
More info: Cathedral of Brasília

Paoay Church (St. Augustine Parish) in Philippines

Paoay Church reminds me of Aztec architecture. It looks very massive and strong. The walls of the church are 1.67 meters thick and are supported by 24 carved and massive buttresses.

Its construction started in 1704 and was completed in 1894 by the Augustinian friars led by Fr. Antonio Estavillo. It is said, that Its construction primarily was intended to withstand earthquakes. And it could test the strength of the walls very soon, because the church was damaged by an earthquake in 1706 and 1927.

The design of the church is a mixture of Gothic, Oriental and Baroque influence.

Duomo (Milan Cathedral) in Italy

Duomo looks incredibly tall and majestic. It even has an evil and scary look in this picture. After checking the Wikipedia for more info I found there were more photos of this cathedral, but they don’t look as cool as this photo here. Maybe its just an illusion made by a good photographer that this building is so amazing.

On the other hand, Mark Twain said the following of the Duomo in Milan in his work, Innocents Abroad:
"They say that the Cathedral of Milan is second only to St. Peter’s at Rome. I cannot understand how it can be second to anything made by human hands."

Church Ruins in Goreme, Turkey

The rock cut ruins of a church by persecuted Christians.
Not sure when it was built, but definitely look very ancient. How did those guys carved the inside of these rocks?

The Cappadocia valley, where this church stands, is very popular for its rocks that the people of the villages at the heart of the Cappadocia Region carved out to form houses, churches, monasteries.

There are an estimated 150 churches and several monasteries in the canyon between the villages of Ihlara and Selime.

Those rocks are volcanic deposits, so that means they are soft rocks, making it possible to carve such structures.

Green church, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Don’t have info about this church, nevertheless it’s very unusual. I have never seen a church so green, have you?

Michael: “a parish church in Buenos Aires, Argentina known as the “Huerto de Olivos”, or “Garden of Olives,” most likely a reference Gethsemane, on the Mount of Olives”

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Borgund Stave Church, Lærdal, Norway

Stave churches may have been very usual all over medieval northwestern Europe but now you can only find them in Norway. Well ok, there is one one in Sweden, but nowhere else.

Borgund stave church located in Borgund, Lærdal, Norway is the best preserved of Norway’s 28 extant stave churches. This wooden church, probably built in the end of the 12th century, has not changed structure or had a major reconstruction since the date it was built.

Interesting fact: the church is also featured as a Wonder for the Viking civilization in the video game Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings.

Paraportiani Church, Mykonos, Greece

I will just cite, what the author of this picture wrote about it:

"Paraportianí Church is one of the most famous architectural structures in Greece. Its name means secondary gate, because it was built on the site of one of the gates of the Medieval stone walls. Some parts of this beautiful church date from 1425 and the rest was built during the 16th and 17th centuries. "

Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Spain

I have never seen anything as incredible as this building! Never been to Spain, but if I ever happen to do so, I will definitely include Sangrada Família on the must-see list. I wonder, how does it look in reality?

Sagrada Família is a very massive Roman Catholic basilica under construction in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Construction began in 1882 and continues to this day. A very famous architect Antoni Gaudí worked on the project for over 40 years, devoting the last 15 years of his life entirely to this endeavour.

In the center there is going to be a tower of Jesus Christ, surmounted by a giant cross; the tower’s total height will be 170 m (557,7ft).

There is so much info on this one, that you should check Wikipedia.

St. Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow, Russia

Cathedral of Saint Basil the Blessed , is a multi-tented church which stands on the Red Square in Moscow.

This church looks really cool, because It has very unusual onion domes which look playful and colorful. Sometimes people even say, that they remind them of lollypops.

The cathedral was built in 1555 -1561 by Ivan IV (a.k.a Ivan the Terrible) to celebrate the capture of the Khanate of Kazan.

A legend says that Ivan had the architect, Postnik Yakovlev, blinded to prevent him from building a more magnificent building for anyone else. In fact, Postnik Yakovlev built a number of churches after Saint Basil’s.

More info: Saint Basil’s Cathedral

. Church in Stykkishólmur, Iceland

This church in Iceland looks really weird, like some alien structure. If you have more info on that one, let me know.

Basilica de Higuey, Dominican Republic

Basilica de Higuey is located in the city of Higuey, Dominican Republic. Its unusual look reminds me of a basket.

The church is one of the most respected monuments of the Dominican Republic. The basilica was inaugurated on January 21, 1971, and was built by French architects.

Grace Fellowship Baptist Church, Baltimore, MD, USA

This strange building is actually a church. Once it was famous for being "Detroit’s most beautiful Chinese-American restaurant". Later it closed down and became the Omega Baptist Church and then the Grace Fellowship Baptist Church. Located at 265 Baltimore, MD, USA.
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Las Lajas Cathedral in Columbia

Las Lajas Cathedral looks unusual to me because one side of it seems to be a part of a bridge across the river and the other side rests on the hill. The overall look is really fascinating.

Built in 1916 inside the canyon of the Guaitara river where, according to local legend, the Virgin Mary appeared.

You can find this church in southern Colombian Department of Nariño, municipality of Ipiales, near the border with Ecuador.

Jubilee Church in Rome, Italy

Jubilee Church has very distinctive curved walls which look like sails to me. Designed in 1996 by architect Richard Meier, the church has curved walls which serve the engineering purpose of minimizing thermal peak loads in the interior space.

The walls are made from a special cement, which contain titanium dioxide, so it destroys air pollution.

According to Borgarello "When the titanium dioxide absorbs ultraviolet light, it becomes powerfully reactive, breaking down pollutants that come in contact with the concrete."

St Joseph Ukrainian Catholic Church in Chicago, IL, USA

Maybe I’ll better don’t tell what those domes remind me (haha). Very very unusual looking building I must say. Its massiveness and gray color looks like Soviet architecture. I was amazed when I read that it was actually in USA and not somewhere In Soviet Union.

St. Joseph Ukrainian Catholic church is a is most known for its ultra-modern thirteen gold domed roof symbolizing the twelve apostles and Jesus Christ as the largest center dome.

It is celebrating its 52 years, so it was built in 1956 (if my calculations are right).

Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, France

Someone told that the roof of this building looks like Elvis’ hair.

Informally known as Ronchamp, the chapel of Notre Dame du Haut was completed in 1954 and is considered one of the finest examples of architecture by the late French/Swiss architect Le Corbusier.

Most interesting fact to me is that, when it rains, water pours off the slanted roof onto a fountain, creating a dramatic waterfall.

Odd Church in Huntington Beach, CA, USA

Don’t have info on that one, only this photo and the location: Huntington Beach, CA, USA.

As far as I understand it must be sponsored by Shell, because it has a huge SHELL logo on it (this statement can be absolutely different from the reality). Looks terrible overall.

Chapel of St. Gildas, Brittany, France

This church is really odd one, sorry I have no info on it, only the words of the picture author: "This was on the canal to Carnac. Really odd church in the (seeming) middle of nowhere. "

Mads: “This is the chapel of St-Gildas, which sits upon the bank of the Canal du Blavet in Brittany, France. “Built like a stone barn into the base of a bare rocky cliff, this was once a holy place of the Druids. Gildas appears to have travelled widely throughout the Celtic world of Corwall, Wales, Ireland and Scotland. He arrived in Brittany in about AD 540 and is said to have preached Christianity to the people from a rough pulpit, now contained within the chapel.” (from ‘Cruising French Waterways’ by Hugh McKnight p.150)”

Cathedral of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Cathedral of Rio de Janeiro looks like a Pyramid of Egypt or Aztecs.

It was built between 1964 and 1979. Conical in form it has internal diameter of 96 metres (315 ft) and an overall height of 75 metres (246 ft). The church has a standing-room capacity of 20,000 people.

Four rectilinear stained glass windows soar 64 metres (210 ft) from floor to ceiling.