Weird and Religious
In medieval Christianity, pieces of saints’ bodies were treated as powerful objects. Churches claimed to possess multiple skulls or bones of the same saint, sometimes more body parts than one person could physically have had. Pilgrims still travelled long distances to see them.
Religious image of the day.
In the name of religion
1572, Paris and other French cities. Catholic mobs killed thousands of Huguenot Protestants in the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre. Violence was justified as defending Catholic faith from heresy and protecting the kingdom from supposed Protestant plots against God’s order and divinely sanctioned monarchy.
Fact
In Islam, certain foods such as pork and intoxicants such as alcohol are forbidden, and Islam links these rules to obedience and discipline.
Shifting from the absurd
When some stories in the scriptures were exposed as ridiculous and absurd, religion explained them by shifting from literal meaning to metaphors.This shift reveals something important. The meaning of the stories did not change because new insight was discovered; it changed because the old interpretation could no longer survive exposure. Literalism was abandoned only when it became indefensible. The authority that once demanded belief in the impossible now demanded reinterpretation of the same text, and the claim of divine clarity did not survive contact with human understanding.
Quote of the day
“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.” Mark Twain.
Ask the right question
Why would an all powerful being require ritual worship, praise and submission from humans?
Religious Crooks
Sergei Torop, known as Vissarion, founded the Church of the Last Testament in Siberia, claiming messianic status and leading a remote community where followers gave up property and income, later detained amid allegations of financial and psychological exploitation.
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?