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
2021, Afghanistan after Taliban takeover. Islamist Muslim Taliban enforced strict religious codes, with reports of reprisals and executions. The Taliban justified actions as implementing Islamic law, preserving moral order, and eliminating corruption and un-Islamic behaviour.
Fact
In Islam, community worship on Friday is important, and Islam gathers believers for a congregational prayer and sermon.
On being offended
Often, believers are offended by criticism of their religion as if the critic had stabbed them in the back. Offence is not something imposed from outside. It is a reaction rather than an injury. No one possesses the power to offend another person in the same way one has the power to physically harm them. People respond emotionally to ideas, and those responses belong to them. Demanding protection from offence is often a demand to avoid engagement altogether, replacing debate with silence and substituting feeling for reasoning.
Quote of the day
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.” Seneca.
Ask the right question
If the universe was made for humans, why is almost all of it instantly deadly to human life?
Religious Crooks
Marcial Maciel was the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, a Catholic religious order, and was later found by Vatican investigations to have sexually abused minors and seminarians over many years while using his religious status to avoid scrutiny.
For more information, google the name.
Almost all of the crooks appearing in this section have their own wikipedia page.
Today we took a look at yet another religious crook but there are hundreds of thousands of them. You could spend a lifetime researching the topic.