Weird and Religious
Some strands of Buddhism in Japan developed warrior monks who took part in armed conflict. These monks combined religious life with military training and sometimes marched on cities to pressure political authorities, showing that monastic life did not always mean peace.
Religious image of the day.
In the name of religion
1568 to 1648, parts of the Netherlands and German lands. Conflicts within the Eighty Years War and Thirty Years War saw massacres and destruction tied to Catholic and Protestant divisions. Violence was justified as defending correct doctrine, protecting believers, and ruling territories according to God’s will.
Fact
In Islam, the Five Pillars form the basic framework of practice, and Islam presents these acts as essential duties for believers.
God of the gaps
"God of the gaps" is a theological and philosophical concept where gaps in scientific knowledge are filled by attributing unexplained phenomena to direct divine intervention. What makes the god of gaps appealing is not evidence but comfort, because the unknown feels unsettling as it reminds humans of their limits. Historically the gaps were vast because early humans understood almost nothing about the mechanisms governing the world, and gods had room to roam, but today those gaps are narrow and closing quickly, as we now understand how stars form, how life evolves, how brains generate consciousness, how diseases spread, and how matter behaves at fundamental levels, and none of these explanations required divine intervention while each replaced mystery with mechanism, with god never discovered hiding inside them.
Quote of the day
“The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” Mark Twain.
Ask the right question
Why would a god care deeply about dietary rules or clothing but allow widespread suffering and injustice?
Religious Crooks
Tony Quinn, an Irish spiritual teacher, led a movement where followers provided money and labour, with media investigations and former members describing a structure of financial exploitation and authoritarian control linked to his religious role.
For more information, google the name.
Almost all of the crooks appearing in this section have their own wikipedia page.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.