Weird and Religious
In ancient China, oracle bones were used to ask questions of ancestors or gods. Priests carved questions onto animal bones or turtle shells, then heated them until cracks formed. The pattern of cracks was read as an answer from the spirit world, making burnt bone a decision making device.
Religious image of the day.
In the name of religion
1994, Hebron in the West Bank. Baruch Goldstein killed Muslim worshippers at the Ibrahimi Mosque site. He was influenced by extremist religious nationalist ideas. Supporters cast the attack as defence of Jews and a holy place, using religious identity to rationalise murder.
Fact
In Buddhism, the Middle Way describes how Buddhism avoids both extreme self indulgence and extreme self denial, teaching a balanced approach to living and practice.
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
“Religion divides people. It has been a bloody business.” Christopher Hitchens.
Ask the right question
Why do prophecies in religious texts tend to be vague, symbolic or written after the events they appear to predict?
Religious Crooks
Roch Thériault led a breakaway sect in Canada known as the Ant Hill Kids, presenting extreme religious authority while subjecting followers to abuse, forced labour, and financial control, later convicted of multiple crimes.
For more information, google the name.
Every country in the world has its fair share of spiritual crooks.
That was just a tiny case in a vast ocean of religious crooks.