Weird and Religious
In some African kingdoms in the past, human sacrifice was connected to royal funerals. Servants or captives could be killed to accompany a ruler, similar to practices elsewhere, reflecting the idea that social hierarchy continued after death.
Religious image of the day.
In the name of religion
1209, Béziers in southern France. Forces in the Albigensian Crusade attacked the city and killed large numbers of residents while targeting Cathar believers. The campaign was justified as eliminating heresy, defending Catholic truth, and restoring religious unity under papal authority through violent purification.
Fact
In Hinduism, many gods and goddesses are worshipped, and these deities are commonly understood as different expressions or aspects of the one ultimate reality, allowing a wide range of devotional practices.
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 is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.” Bertrand Russell.
Ask the right question
If divine commands define morality, could cruelty become good simply because it is commanded?
Religious Crooks
Claude Vorilhon, known as Raël, founded the Raëlian movement claiming extraterrestrial revelations, building an international organisation that critics say operates as a personality centred system sustained by member donations and paid events.
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.