Weird and Religious
Some African Christian movements blend biblical stories with older local beliefs, including ideas about spirit possession, protective charms, and prophetic dreams. Churches may hold all night prayer sessions aimed at driving out spirits believed to cause everyday problems.
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 Christianity, mercy is a key attribute, and Christianity encourages showing compassion and forgiveness rather than strict punishment.
God of the gaps
Science progresses precisely by refusing to accept mystery as explanation, tolerating uncertainty without inventing answers, while religion insists on answers even when none are justified, and the god of gaps is the inevitable result of that insistence, the remnant of belief after every confident claim has failed. "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. There is also a deeper contradiction, for if god is invoked to explain the unknown, then god himself becomes the ultimate unknown, and the questions of who created god, how god operates, and why god exists rather than not existing are dismissed as inappropriate even though they are identical in structure to the questions god is meant to answer, so the move does not solve the problem of mystery but postpones it indefinitely.
Quote of the day
“The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms.” Bertrand Russell.
Ask the right question
Why would a just system judge people for beliefs shaped largely by family, culture and geography?
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.
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.