Weird and Religious
Some Buddhist traditions describe entire realms of existence where beings suffer extreme conditions for vast periods because of past actions. These hell realms are not eternal but can last longer than the entire span of human civilisation.
Religious image of the day.
In the name of religion
2012, Timbuktu region of Mali. Islamist Muslim armed groups destroyed Sufi shrines and imposed harsh rule. They justified actions as removing un-Islamic practices, enforcing strict Islamic law, and purifying society according to their interpretation of Islam.
Fact
In Sikhism, family life is accepted as part of the spiritual path, and Sikhism does not require withdrawal from society to pursue faith.
Centuries of inequality
Religion insists that its gender rules are sacred, yet they are not. They are historical artefacts frozen into dogma. Their persistence does not demonstrate truth but endurance. When belief protects inequality from criticism, it stops being belief and becomes domination.
The treatment of women is not a marginal flaw in religion but its clearest diagnostic feature. It exposes who wrote the rules, who benefited from them, and who suffered their cost. A divine moral authority would not require half of humanity to submit in silence. A human one does. Religion did not receive its view of women from god. It imposed its view of women onto god and then demanded obedience in his name. The result has been centuries of inequality justified as holiness, defended not as custom or law but as destiny. Once this is recognised, the sacred mask falls away, and what remains is what it has always been: patriarchy, speaking with divine confidence.
Quote of the day
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil, but for good people to do evil, that takes religion.” Steven Weinberg.
Ask the right question
If karma explains suffering in Hinduism and Buddhism, why do people not remember the actions from past lives that supposedly caused their present suffering?
Religious Crooks
Kirtanananda Swami, a leader in the Hare Krishna movement in the United States, oversaw a large commune that generated income through businesses staffed by devotees, later convicted in connection with racketeering and other crimes linked to the community.
For more information, google the name.
Every country in the world has its fair share of spiritual crooks.
History tells us that wherever fools gathered, there was always a religious crook to take advantage of them. The best way to stop the crooks is not to be a fool.