Weird and Religious
In medieval Christianity, pieces of saints’ bodies were treated as powerful objects. Churches claimed to possess multiple skulls or bones of the same saint, sometimes more body parts than one person could physically have had. Pilgrims still travelled long distances to see them.
Religious image of the day.
In the name of religion
1984, Amritsar in India. Indian forces stormed the Golden Temple complex to remove Sikh militants, causing heavy casualties and damage to a sacred site. Militants had framed their campaign as defence of Sikh faith and rights, while the state justified action as restoring order.
Fact
In Islam, the Qur an is the sacred scripture, and Islam teaches that it is the direct word of God as "revealed" to Muhammad.
Confirming belief
Reason operates by testing ideas against reality, demanding coherence, consistency, and evidence. It accepts uncertainty and revises conclusions when new information appears. Faith does the reverse. It begins with a conclusion and defends it regardless of contradiction. Discrepancies are reinterpreted, absence of evidence becomes a test, and failed predictions become mysteries. Every outcome is made to confirm belief because belief has been placed beyond evaluation. This is not strength but insulation.
Quote of the day
“The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms.” Bertrand Russell.
Ask the right question
How does the existence of severe natural disasters and childhood disease fit with the idea of an all powerful and benevolent deity?
Religious Crooks
Makoto Takahashi, known as Master Ryuho Okawa of Happy Science in Japan, founded a spiritual movement producing large volumes of paid spiritual literature and events, with critics describing the organisation as a profit driven religious enterprise built around his claimed revelations.
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.