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
1998, Maluku Islands in Indonesia. Christian and Muslim militias clashed in communal warfare, burning villages and killing civilians. Both sides justified violence as defence of their Christian or Muslim faith communities, protection of churches or mosques, and resistance to domination.
Fact
In Judaism, prayer is structured and regular, and Judaism includes daily prayers as well as additional prayers on Sabbaths and festivals.
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
“The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women’s emancipation.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Ask the right question
Why does moral progress, such as opposition to slavery or support for gender equality, often come after resistance from religious authorities?
Religious Crooks
Eddie Long was a megachurch pastor accused in civil suits of coercing young men into sexual relationships while using his spiritual authority, with the cases settled out of court and ongoing debate about financial and power dynamics in his ministry.
For more information, google the name.
Almost all of the crooks appearing in this section have their own wikipedia page.
Throughout history and still to this day, there has never been a shortage of religious leaders who were not always following their own spiritual advice.