Weird and Religious
In parts of India, there have been temples where rats are treated as sacred and allowed to roam freely. Devotees feed them milk and grain, and eating food that a rat has nibbled can be considered a blessing rather than a health risk.
Religious image of the day.
In the name of religion
2010, Jos, Nigeria. Christian and Muslim communities engaged in cycles of massacre and reprisal. Each side justified violence as protecting their faith group, defending land tied to religious identity, and avenging earlier attacks.
Fact
In Zoroastrianism, community identity is strong, and Zoroastrianism often maintains close communal traditions.
Just and merciful?
Another religious inconsistency appears in the claim that god is perfectly just and perfectly merciful. Justice demands consequences proportional to harm, while mercy demands forgiveness, but eternal punishment for finite actions satisfies neither. A god who forgives everything is not just, and a god who punishes forever is not merciful, and trying to hold both qualities simultaneously results in definitions so vague they lose all meaning. Justice becomes whatever god does, and mercy becomes irrelevant.
Quote of the day
“Belief is not the beginning but the end of all knowledge.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Ask the right question
If religious morality is objective and unchanging, why do believers debate it so intensely?
Religious Crooks
Johann Tetzel was a Dominican friar in the 16th century known for aggressively selling indulgences, promising spiritual benefits in exchange for money, a practice widely condemned at the time as a corrupt abuse of religious authority.
For more information, google the name.
Almost all of the crooks appearing in this section have their own wikipedia page.
If a real God existed, would he allow crooks to act on his behalf?