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
2006, Iraq after the Samarra mosque bombing. Sunni and Shia Muslim militias carried out killings, kidnappings, and mosque attacks. Violence was justified as protecting Sunni or Shia Islam, avenging desecration of holy sites, and enforcing sectarian religious control over neighbourhoods.
Fact
In Islam, divine decree is accepted, and Islam teaches that God’s knowledge and will encompass all events.
Truth or surrender
If truth is reduced to personal conviction, society loses its compass. Shared problems require shared facts. Cooperation requires agreement about reality. Without a commitment to objective truth, public life collapses into competing narratives enforced by power rather than resolved by reason. Religion has long modelled this collapse by demanding obedience to claims that cannot be shown to be true.
Truth is not a feeling. It does not care about offence, comfort, or tradition. It does not negotiate with belief. It either corresponds to reality or it does not. Any system that asks people to abandon this standard in favour of conviction is not offering insight. It is asking for surrender.
Quote of the day
“God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” John Lennon.
Ask the right question
If a god communicates through feelings of peace or conviction, how can those feelings be distinguished from normal psychology?
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.
History tells us that wherever fools gathered, there was always a religious crook to take advantage of them. The best way to stop the crooks is not to be a fool.