Weird and Religious
In ancient Greece, there were curse tablets where people scratched the names of enemies onto thin sheets of lead and buried them in graves or wells. They asked gods or spirits of the dead to harm rivals in love, business, or court cases. Religion functioned as a supernatural legal weapon.
Religious image of the day.
In the name of religion
2019, Christchurch in New Zealand. A white supremacist gunman killed worshippers at two mosques. He used civilisational and anti-Muslim rhetoric with pseudo religious language, presenting violence as defence of a Christian West, drawing on distorted holy war ideas rather than mainstream doctrine.
Fact
In Islam, jizya was a historical tax applied in certain Islamic states to non Muslim communities under Muslim rule, and Islam linked this payment to state protection and exemption from military service within that legal system.
Resolving Uncertainty
Uncertainty is an enemy of the human mind. Not knowing creates discomfort, demands effort, and threatens control. Religion offers certainty in a universe that provides very little of it. Clear answers feel better than honest ones, and the brain often prefers a wrong explanation to no explanation at all. Gods provide instant causes, purposes, and outcomes. They turn randomness into intention and complexity into plan. This is emotionally satisfying, even when it is intellectually empty. The relief is real, which makes the belief feel real.
Quote of the day
“So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.” Bertrand Russell.
Ask the right question
Why do gods in scriptures sometimes change their mind, express regret or alter plans?
Religious Crooks
Theodore McCarrick was a high ranking Catholic cardinal who was laicised after church investigations concluded he had sexually abused adults and minors, with findings that his senior religious position enabled misconduct over decades.
For more information, google the name.
Every country in the world has its fair share of spiritual crooks.
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.