In China, death doesn’t necessarily stop one from getting married. In the Chinese tradition of ghost marriage, one or both of the parties are dead.
There are many practical reasons to marry a dead spouse. For example, when an unmarried woman has no children to take care of her in old age, she can be "married" into another family. If a son died before he has descendants, his parents can arrange a ghost marriage to provide a "wife" who remains chaste, as a pretext to adopt a grandson to continue the family line. Another reason is to give the deceased a "spouse and companion" in the afterlife.
How is a ghost marriage performed? Singapore Paranormal Investigators has the story:
Next, the priest empowered the East Gate with a lighted joss paper folded in the shape of a cone, which is also known as the "fire brush". Soon after this, the priest struck the paper gate three times with the sword and declared the gate to be opened at his order. At the same time, the family members were to shout out the name of the deceased. Finally, the priest declared, "From the East Gate, out you come" The whole atmosphere became very tense as the ceremony was going on. [...]. After the "destruction" of all the gates, the priest took a paper effigy out from the centre of the squared shape model. This meant that the spirit had been rescued from the gates of hell.
The paper effigy was placed in front of the altar by the priest. Beside the paper effigy, there was another effigy which was much taller and larger in size. Madam Tham continued to explain to SPI, "The paper effigy which was just rescued from hell represents the current state of the spirit, she carries the illness and sufferings she had when she was alive. The much larger paper effigy next to her represents the healthier form. The priest will soon heal her spirit and she will regain her original healthy form again."
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If democracy is rule by the people (from the Greek words “demos” for people and “kratos” for power), and theocracy is rule by religious body, then what about pornocracy? Yes it’s real and no, it’s not what you’re thinking of.
In the tenth century, the papacy of the Roman Catholic Church fell under the influence of harlots in an era termed Pornocracy.
Pornocracy or the Rule of the Prostitutes/Rules of the Harlots or the more polite Saeculum obscurum (latin for the Dark Age) began in 904 AD with the installation of Pope Sergius III. The Pope was completely under the control of Theodora, the beautiful wife of Roman consul Theophylactus, who used sex to wield power.
Theodora’s 15-year-old daughter Morazia became the concubine of Pope Sergius III. Their son later became Pope John XI – the only illegitimate son of a Pope that later became Pope himself.
The era of Pornocracy ended with Pope John XII (the grandson of Marozia) in 963. He was so immoral that the Basilica of Rome was said to be converted into a brothel under his rule.
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So scientists can now grow meat in a laboratory — that is, animal muscle tissue without starting with an actual, living animal. This has brought up all sorts of interesting ethical questions, particularly among vegetarians. But here’s the angle that Tim Barribeau of io9 took: is artificially-produced meat compliant with Jewish food traditions?
We talked to Rabbi Arnold Bienstock of Congregation Shaarey Tefilla, a Conservative Synagogue in Carmel, Indiana, and asked his opinion on the matter. “The way any religious issue comes down, in the Jewish community, is the more traditional, pious Orthodox Jews have a hard time accepting change, the Reform embrace it, and the Conservatives fight about it,” said Bienstock, with dry humor. So it will vary greatly along the various degrees of observation.
Bienstock thinks the Conservatives will be hesitant to adopt artificially raised meat, unless it’s seen as something completely different to its original form. The Rabbi compared this to two previous cases with kosher food: cheese and gelatin. Both contain animal products which may not be kosher, so specific variations have to be made for people who are strictly Orthodox. On the other hand, the Conservative movement viewed these objects as being so far changed and removed from their original source, that they don’t need to be kosher. Says Bienstock, “these elements are re-defined as not really being meat, as the substance is so incredibly transformed. So using [this technology] the Conservative movement might say it’s not really meat because it doesn’t come from an animal.”
Link | Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture
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In the country where “Jedi” appears as a category on the census (and there are 390,000 adherents), heavy metal music might likewise become a recognized religion. British fans have mounted a political campaign for official status:
Rock magazine Metal Hammer launched its campaign last week and has already attracted nearly 10,000 followers to a Facebook group.
It has even gained the backing of a metal figurehead, Saxon frontman Biff Byford, whom the magazine says will become the proposed faith’s ”world metal peace ambassador” if the campaign proves successful.
Link | Photo: PA
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In the February issue, National Geographic magazine takes a in-depth look at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), who still practice plural marriage. Pictured is the family of Joe Jessop, who has five wives, 46 children, and 239 grandchildren.
Members of the faith describe the life that the Jessops and other founding families have built as idyllic, one in which old-fashioned devotion and neighborly cooperation are emphasized and children are raised in a wholesome environment free of television and junk food and social pressures. Critics, on the other hand, see the FLDS as an isolated cult whose members, worn down by rigid social control, display a disturbing fealty to one man, the prophet Warren Jeffs—who has claimed to be God’s mouthpiece on Earth.
To spend time in Hildale and Colorado City is to come away with a more nuanced view. That view is revealed gradually, however, due to the insular nature of the community. Many of the oversize homes are tucked behind high walls, both to give children a safe place to play and to shield families from gawking Gentiles, as non-Mormons are known. Most residents avoid contact with strangers. National Geographic was given access to the community only on the approval of the church leadership, in consultation with the imprisoned Warren Jeffs.
(image credit: Stephanie Sinclair)
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What with hazy images of Jesus or the Virgin Mary appearing on toast, potato chips, and other assorted food items, artist Adam Sheldon felt the inspiration to create a mosaic of the crucifixion out of 153 pieces of burnt toast. It’s on display at the Church of St. Peter in Great Limber, Lincolnshire, UK. More (and larger) images at the link.
Link via DudeCraft | Video about the Project | Photo: This Is Grimsby
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As Clark Kent, Superman was raised as a Methodist.
While growing up in Smallville, Kansas, Clark Kent attended Sunday church services at the local Methodist church with his mother, Martha Kent, every week until he was fourteen years old. These aspects of the character are not speculative, but are canonical – established by in-continuity published DC Comics.
Batman’s religiosity is a bit more complex:
…there is some disagreement among fans as well as among writers about whether the character is a mostly lapsed Catholic or a mostly lapsed Episcopalian. There is universal agreement that the character is not an active churchgoer in any faith.
The religious affiliation of hundreds of comic book characters and superheroes has been tabulated at Adherents.com. You can search through a list to find your favorites, or view them as groups. Pictured above, for example, is the Legion of Baptist Superheroes.
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Everybody knows who Manson, Koresh, and Jones are. These are a few cult leaders that didn’t reach the same level in the media. But their behavior and actions were equally disturbing. Pictured is Wayne Bent (or Michael Travesser), who founded the Lord of our Righteousness Church.
Wayne, now calling himself Michael Travesser, decided that October 31, 2007 was a good day for the world to end and proceeded to relay that information to his congregation. There were stings attached, however, as he also told the congregation that God also told him that he needed to sleep with seven virgins before that happened.
Cult members offered up their daughters and Travesser obliged them by making sure God’s work was done. October 31 came and went. When the world continued to function, some cult members became disenchanted, left, and narc’d on their leader. He was arrested, tried, and convicted of criminal sexual contact with minors and was sentenced to 18 years in state prison.
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Cartoonist H. Caldwell Tanner drew a version of the expulsion from Eden narrative in Genesis 3 using only Internet catchphrases. He writes “Genesis would have been a lot cooler if it featured blue hedgehogs.” Probably.
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It seems strange that a man best known for creating the quintessential detective, who based his deductions solely on reason, would also be one of the biggest proponents of Spiritualism around the turn of the last century. Equally strange is that a man who based his career of performing illusions and magic tricks was one of the most stringent disbelievers of the same religion. Perhaps strangest of all was the friendship of these two men, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini.
Houdini met Doyle while doing a performance tour in Europe. While the magician did not believe in Spiritualism, he had a strong interest in the subject and said many times that he did desperately want to believe, as he truly wished to speak to his beloved deceased mother.
Doyle was already well-known for his support of the belief by this point, and was considered by many to be a saint of Spiritualism. When he met Houdini, he went about bringing him to some of the best mediums in Europe in an attempt to convert the magician. At this point, Houdini attempted to lead Doyle to believe that he was very open to the idea, but just undecided. He did enjoy hearing about the religion from a person he considered to be on the same intellectual plane as himself and not an entirely gullible person.
Still though, the magician was able to see through the parlor tricks used by the mediums that Doyle brought him to. The more of the mediums he saw, the less convinced he became. While he did not yet begin exposing the frauds, he did record their methods and become increasingly frustrated with their taking advantage of people’s trust.
Soon enough, Houdini started to begin his famous crusade against fraudulent mediums. He eventually even became part of a Scientific America committee offering a massive reward to anyone who could prove their methods were authentic –of course, no one ever managed to claim the reward. As his fame grew for these acts, Houdini even started attending séances in costume, taking with him a reporter and a police officer.
Funny enough, Doyle actually supported these efforts at first, because he was afraid the fakes would damage the religion’s legitimacy. Although Houdini offered to show Doyle how to spot the tricks used by mediums, Doyle insisted that the mediums he knew were extremely honest and would never cheat their followers.
As Houdini started to push Doyle even further to admit the people were acting dishonestly, Doyle soon converted to the belief that Houdini himself was one of the most powerful mediums around. Doyle and other Spiritualists who held this belief claimed the magician actually dematerialized himself to make his famous escapes. They believed he was working to discredit other mediums so he could gain publicity and take his act even further. Doyle expressed many of these beliefs in his last book, The Edge of the Unknown.
Houdini, unfortunately, was caught between a rock and a hard place with these accusations. He couldn’t actually reveal his tricks, but by not doing so, the Spiritualists still had ammo to claim he was a medium. While he simply stated that his escapes were all performed by physical means, these tales haunted him until his death.
In an attempt to prove to Doyle that his performances only involved trickery, Houdini offered to perform a special trick for his friend. The two men were joined by the Bernard Ernst president of the American Society of Magicians for the test, which started with a room filled with a slate, five cork balls and some white paint. Doyle was instructed to choose one of the balls at random and then place it in the container of paint. He was then given a pencil and a piece of paper and was told to go wherever he wanted to write a message of his choice on the paper.
Houdini and Ernst stayed in the room, while Doyle left the house, walked three blocks away and then wrote a message on the paper. He then folded the paper, put it in his pocket and returned to the house.
Upon his return, Houdini instructed Doyle to pick up the ball and put it on the slate. The ball then began to roll over the slate, where it spelled out the words Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin, the same words Doyle wrote on the paper.
While Houdini devised this test to show Doyle these methods all involved simple tricks, Doyle was convinced more than ever that Houdini was a medium.
The two continued to be friends and spent a vacation together in Atlantic City shortly after Doyle’s speaking tour in New York. During the vacation, Doyle’s wife, lady Jean offered to perform a séance for Houdini. He accepted, trusting her sincerity and honesty, and tried to completely accept the realism of the experience. As stated earlier, Houdini wanted to believe, he still had not found anyone who was worth believing in though. He was particularly excited about the séance when Jean announced that she would be try to contact his mother. Houdini said, “I had made up my mind that I would be as religious as it was in my power to be and not at any time did I scoff during the ceremony… with a beating heart I waited, hoping that I might feel once more the presence of my beloved mother.”
Lady Jean entered a trance during the séance and her hand started moving, scribbling words across paper, which Doyle then handed to Houdini. The message detailed his mother’s pleasure in finally getting to contact her son. They started off saying, “Oh my darling, thank God, thank God, at last I’m through. I’ve tried, oh so often — now I am happy. Why, of course, I want to talk to my boy — my own beloved boy — friends, thank you, with all my heart for this.”
After the séance, Houdini wrote a small note on the bottom of the paper, saying, “Message written by Lady Doyle claiming the spirit of my dear Mother had control of her hand — my sainted mother could not write English and spoke broken English.”
A few months after the Doyle’s returned home to England, Houdini went public about the incident. He said there was no chance his mother had been summoned in the séance based on her poor English and the fact that she never learned to read or write. He said he believed the Doyle’s did not deceive him intentionally, but were victims to their own gullibility.
Doyle tried to argue against these claims by saying that language is universal to the dead. He also said Houdini was too nervous about the encounter to accept that it was his own mother speaking to him from the beyond.
After this, the pair tried to maintain some level of strained friendship, but the final blow came when Houdini began publicly attacking Mina “Magery” Crandon. His Scientific American panel was fervent in discrediting Mrs. Crandon after she came forward to claim the prize. Doyle was a huge supporter of Crandon, even praising her in his later book The History of Spiritualism. “The commission is, in my opinion, a farce,” he wrote, “and has already killed itself.”
The two began privately quarreling, but by 1923, the were exchanging criticizing letters to one another via the New York Times. After they publicly feuded when their tours happened to cross in Denver, they stopped talking for good.
A few years later, Houdini died. When his wife, Bess began clearing out his property, she uncovered a huge collection of books on Spiritualism and she opted to send them to Doyle. The author wrote back to her, stating his reluctance to accept the gifts though, because he thought Houdini harbored bad feelings against him up until the time of his death.
Bess wrote back and said that Houdini had, in fact, held out hope of contacting his mother up until his death and even told her so on his death bed. She assured Doyle that Houdini carried no resentment towards him and that the press had greatly exaggerated the feud between the two. She best summed up Houdini’s thoughts by writing, “he was deeply hurt whenever any journalistic arguments arose between you and would have been the happiest man in the world had he been able to agree with your views on Spiritism. He admired and respected you –two remarkable men with different views.”
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Those Mayan priests were way off base. The correct date for the end of the world is May 21, 2011.
Harold Camping has announced that this new date corrects his previous incorrect prediction that the world would end in 1994. He acknowledges that the previous prediction was based on a “mathematical error.” The new prediction has, however, a much more fundamental theological basis:
The number 5, Camping concluded, equals “atonement.” Ten is “completeness.” Seventeen means “heaven.”
“Christ hung on the cross April 1, 33 A.D.,” he began. “Now go to April 1 of 2011 A.D., and that’s 1,978 years.” Camping then multiplied 1,978 by 365.2422 days – the number of days in each solar year, not to be confused with a calendar year. Next, Camping noted that April 1 to May 21 encompasses 51 days. Add 51 to the sum of previous multiplication total, and it equals 722,500.
Camping realized that (5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17) = 722,500. Or put into words: (Atonement x Completeness x Heaven), squared.
“Five times 10 times 17 is telling you a story,” Camping said. “It’s the story from the time Christ made payment for your sins until you’re completely saved. “I tell ya, I just about fell off my chair when I realized that,” Camping said.
Squared, mind you. How can you argue with such mathematical precision? And please ignore the shape of his head in the shadow…
Link.
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When Danish political cartoonist Kurt Westergaard was attacked at home by an ax-wielding man, he didn’t lock himself in the bathroom – instead, he utilized the panic room:
Westergaard took his 5-year-old granddaughter into the "panic room" when he realized what was happening, Chief Superintendent Ole Madsen said.
Westergaard, who has been threatened for drawing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, is ordinarily accompanied by bodyguards when he leaves his home, but nobody was on guard at the house Friday, the Security and Intelligence Service told CNN.
And you thought that the 2002 movie Panic Room by Jodie Foster and Forest Whitaker was just Hollywood non-sense: Link (Photo: AFP)
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Just because it’s holy water, it doesn’t mean that it’s also sterile water! To guard against swine flu, Italian inventor Luciano Marabrese invented the automatic holy water dispenser:
The terracotta dispenser, used in the northern town of Fornaci di Briosco, functions like an automatic soap dispenser in public washrooms — a churchgoer waves his or her hand under a sensor and the machine spurts out holy water.
"It has been a bit of a novelty. People initially were a bit shocked by this technological innovation but then they welcomed it with great enthusiasm and joy. The members of this parish have got used to it," said Father Pierangelo Motta.
Catholics entering and leaving churches usually dip their hands into fonts full of holy water — which has been blessed by a priest — and make the sign of the cross.
But fear of contracting the H1N1 virus has led many in Italy — where some 15 people have died of swine flu — not to dip their hands in the communal water font.
"It’s great," said worshipper Marta Caimm as she entered the church. "Thanks to this we are not worried about catching swine flu. It is the right thing for the times," she said.
Link (Photo: Stefano Rellandini/REUTERS) | Video clip (embedded YouTube clip) at TYWKIWDBI
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Jeremy Barker of The Ampersand gives us the run-down on saints, demons, and other mythical figures associated with Christmas throughout Western history. Pictured above is “The Lord of Misrule”:
In medieval England a low-ranking servant was appointed Master of Ceremonies for the midwinter revelries. This tradition originates in the Roman festival of Saturnalia, where the social order was turned on its head for a week.
Link | Image: Dean Tweed
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If you don’t celebrate Christmas because you belong to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, there’s no reason you can’t still enjoy delicious goodies this holiday season. Here’s instructions on how to make your own edible spaghetti monster, complete with edible googly eyes.
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St. Matthew-In-The-City Anglican church in Auckland, New Zealand considers itself a liberal place of worship, and this year it erected a billboard that was intended to provoke thought about the literal meaning of Christmas. So far all they’ve provoked is the collective rage of area Christians.
Archdeacon Glynn Cardy defends the church’s message:
“This billboard is trying to lampoon and ridicule the very literal idea that God is a male and somehow this male God impregnated Mary,” said Cardy, who described his church as having very liberal ideas about Christianity.
“We would question the Virgin Birth in any literal sense. We would question the maleness of God in any literal sense,” he said.
On the billboard — painted to mimic the fresco style commonly used in church murals — Mary and Joseph are in bed side-by-side. Joseph is looking down. Mary, looking heavenward, appears sad. The caption reads: “Poor Joseph. God is a hard act to follow.”
Link to NPR story. (Photo: Sarah Ivey)
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Michael Jordan of Urlesque compiled pictures of and links to some of the strangest nativity sets ever made. Some of these have previously been featured on Neatorama, but most will be new to readers. These include a bake set, one made out of human hair, and one made out of marshmallows.
Link | Photo: Museum of Idolatry
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A Hello Kitty menorah? Yes, it’s just one of a collection of off-the-walll menorahs at Urlesque. The Star Trek menorah we featured recently is in there, as well as a menorahs shaped like a moose, a cat, a Jeep, and some that are hard to describe. I wonder how many of these are actually used to celebrate Hanukkah. Link
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Next up for Grammy, Sen. Orrin Hatch! The Mormon senator from Utah has just penned his newest single, "Eight Days of Hanukkah":
In Tablet, a magazine on Jewish life, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that he met with Hatch 10 years ago when he worked for the New York Times Magazine. The two were listening to some of Hatch’s Christmas music, when Goldberg asked about a Hanukkah song.
Goldberg says Hatch got back in touch with him nine years later and a new Hanukkah song was born.
“I have always felt that the song canon for Hanukkah, a particularly interesting historical holiday, is sparse and uninspiring, in part because Jewish songwriters spend so much time writing Christmas music,” writes Goldberg.
USA Today’s On Politics blog has the story and video clip: Link
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Etsy seller Podkayne Studios sells nativity sets that remember the Christmas story just a little bit differently. Dinosaur, Star Wars, Pokémon, Indiana Jones and other themes are available.
Link via Geekologie
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A man asking for money approached two nuns in a California parking lot. When the nuns refused to give him money the man made off with sister De Leon’s purse instead. This guy is on Santa’s naughty list for sure.
Sister Mary De Leon was with another nun and had just finished their shopping at the Food 4 Less. They were loading groceries in the trunk of their car when the suspect approached them in broad daylight two weeks ago. Surveillance video captured the crime on tape…
“She was blaming herself for leaving her purse in front of the car,” said Sister Mary Fatima Guevara of the Poverello of Assisi School.
Guevara said De Leon has already forgiven the suspects for the crime.
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Trigger Finger of Santa Guerra
When I die and become Saint Neatorama, I’d like sculptor Al Farrow to make me a reliquary to treasure one of my body parts. Presumably my blogging pinkie. Al has made some 40 unusual reliquaries, mausoleums and monuments out of guns and ammo parts, dedicated to preserving the body parts of fictional saints.
Link – as suggested by Minnesotastan in this Neatorama post by John Farrier (yes, I do read the comments 
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Earlier this year the Vatican issued a statement acknowledging that Darwin’s theory of evolution was compatible with Christian theology. Now the Vatican’s chief astronomer has postulated that extraterrestrial life is possible.
Writing in the Vatican newspaper, the astronomer, Father Gabriel Funes, said intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space. Father Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory near Rome, is a respected scientist who collaborates with universities around the world. The search for forms of extraterrestrial life, he says, does not contradict belief in God.
Just as there are multiple forms of life on earth, so there could exist intelligent beings in outer space created by God. And some aliens could even be free from original sin, he speculates.
Link. The photo does not depict an alien free from original sin – just a random chestbusting alien.
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In 1971, Gerald Mayo sued Satan in U.S. District Court, alleging that the Dark One had interfered in his life, causing him harm. Judge Weber dismissed the case, arguing that Mayo had failed to serve process of the suit to Satan, and that the court lacked jurisdiction over the defendant. Kevin Underhill’s legal humor blog has a copy of the decision:
Civil rights action against Satan and his servants who allegedly placed deliberate obstacles in plaintiff’s path and caused his downfall, wherein plaintiff prayed for leave to proceed in forma pauperis. The District Court, Weber, J., held that plaintiff would not be granted leave to proceed in forma pauperis who in view of questions of personal jurisdiction over defendant, propriety of class action, and plaintiff’s failure to include instructions for directions as to service of process.
Prayer denied.
The case was later used as a precedent during a case against God.
Link via Grow A Brain | Photo: flickr user Forever Wiser
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For a science fiction series, Star Trek had a lot of references to religion. Gene Roddenberry once said he rejected all religions, yet one or another of the Ten Commandments showed up in quite a few episodes. Beliefnet takes a look at some of those episodes.
In “The Apple” from the original “Star Trek” series, Captain James Kirk and his crew encounter an idyllic world whose ageless inhabitants feed a computer named Vaal.
It seems like a dandy setup to Mr. Spock, but Dr. McCoy argues that it can’t be healthy to have all your needs met by a “hunk of tin” (perhaps shortly after polishing off a meal created by the Enterprise’s replicator). Eventually, the Enterprise is forced to zap Vaal with its phasers, sending the binary being to an ignoble, smoky end.
The natives are seriously bummed, but Kirk cheers them up by telling them they can now work and struggle and get sick and die just like everyone else. Yay!
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When Mother Teresa died in 1997, she was buried at the Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Calcutta. Now that she is expected to be canonized as a saint, the government of Albania has asked that her remains be disinterred and turned over to Albanian authorities. India has formally rejected the demand.
“Mother Teresa was an Indian citizen and she is resting in her own country, her own land,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said.
A spokeswoman for the nun’s Missionaries of Charity described the Albanian request as “absurd”.
Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, was born in Skopje, now part of Macedonia.
Correspondents say that the row over her resting place could develop into an ugly three-way squabble between India, where she worked most of her life, Albania where her parents came from and Macedonia where she lived the first 18 years of her life.
Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha said his country will continue the quest to regain Mother Teresa’s remains before the 100th anniversary of her birth next year. Link -via Arbroath
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Is
the belief in (or fear of, depending on your point of view) God necessary
to have a "good" society? What would a nation of atheists look
like? Would a godless country lead to lawlessness and immorality?
We actually don't have to wonder - there is a place where the great majority of people are not only not religious - they're can't even be bothered about the questions of faith, God, and life's meaning.
Sociologist Phil Zuckerman spent a year in Denmark and Sweden, the least
religious countries in the world and perhaps even in history, and interviewed
people about their religious beliefs (technically, the absence of such
beliefs). He published his findings last year (Oct 2008) in his book Society
without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment
TYWKIWDBI has some thought-provoking excerpts from the book:
Here's the premise of [Zuckerman's] book:
“First of all, I argue that society without God is not only possible, but can be quite civil and pleasant. This admittedly polemical aspect of my book is aimed primarily at countering the claims of certain outspoken, conservative Christians who regularly argue that a society without God would be hell on earth: rampant with immorality, full of evil, and teeming with depravity. Well, it isn’t. Denmark and Sweden are remarkably strong, safe, healthy, moral, and prosperous societies…”
He's careful not to extol the absence of religious belief as preferable for a society, while arguing strongly that when religious belief (or dogma) is absent, society can crank along just fine. Herewith some excerpts and some of my notes from the book -
p. 6 - “…their overall rates of violent crime – such as murder, aggravated assault, and rape – are among the lowest on earth. Yet the majority of Danes and Swedes do not believe that God is “up there,” keeping diligent tabs on their behavior… In fact, most Danes and Swedes don’t even believe in the very notion of “sin.” Almost nobody in Denmark and Sweden believes that the Bible is divine in origin. And the rate of weekly church attendance in these Nordic nations is the lowest on earth…” [...]
p. 10 – "When they say they are “Christian” they are just referring to a cultural heritage and history. When asked what it means to be Christian, they said 'being kind to others, taking care of the poor and sick, and being a good and moral person.' They almost never mentioned God, Jesus, or the Bible in their explanation of Christian identity. When I specifically asked these Nordic Christians if they believed that Jesus was the Son of God or the Messiah, they nearly always said no – usually without hesitation. Did they believe that Jesus was born of a virgin or that he rose from the grave? Such queries were usually met with genuine laughter – as through the mere asking was rather silly.”
I haven't read it, but will definitely put this fascinating book on the short list of must-reads this year: Link
Here's a fascinating interview with Phil Zuckerman about, amongs other things, the difference of being a religious Christian in America and a cultural Christian in Denmark and the rise of Islam because of the immigration from Africa:
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Many religious cults are based on apocalypticism, the belief that the world is going to end. Check out ten such beliefs, their founders, and followers. One such cult is the Panacea Society.
In 1792, part-time fortune teller Joanna Southcott started collecting “divine revelations” and had them sealed in a box with strict instructions to open it only for Jesus. Her followers called themselves Southcottians and were mostly early-19th century Spiritualists. Southcott dramatically announced that she was pregnant with the messiah, Shiloh, whose birth would kill all but her followers. However, Southcott was a 64-year-old virgin who showed no signs of pregnancy. To Southcott’s credit, she began doubting her beliefs when she failed to give birth but died before she was able to do anything about it. The sudden power vacuum among the Southcottians brought out all sorts of leadership, all of whom claimed they could psychically communicate with Southcott’s box, and transformed the Southcottians into a bizarre cult that refused to bury Southcott’s corpse, believing that she would be resurrected. They renamed themselves the Panacea Society under the belief that they had healing powers, and still believe that Shiloh will descend from heaven to reboot the world at a later date.
There are nine other cults profiled at Ty.rannosaur.us. Link
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It has been one of the 20th century’s most intriguing artifacts, a shroud measuring 14 feet, 4 inches by 3 feet, 7 inches, with what appears to be an imprint of Jesus Christ. The so called Shroud of Turin shows an image of the front and back of a man with long hair, with arms crossed in front, and what appears to be blood from wounds in the side, hands, and feet.
In 1988, carbon dating tests showed the shroud to date between 1260 and 1390 AD, proving a setback for the believers in its authenticity. Now, according to an Italian scientist, he was able to reproduce the image, undoubtedly proving that the Shroud of Turin was a clever reproduction.
“We have shown that is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics as the Shroud,” Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to illustrate the results at a conference on the para-normal this weekend in northern Italy, said on Monday.
A professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, Garlaschelli made available to Reuters the paper he will deliver and the accompanying comparative photographs.
Garlaschelli reproduced the full-sized shroud using materials and techniques that were available in the middle ages.
They placed a linen sheet flat over a volunteer and then rubbed it with a pigment containing traces of acid. A mask was used for the face.
The pigment was then artificially aged by heating the cloth in an oven and washing it, a process which removed it from the surface but left a fuzzy, half-tone image similar to that on the Shroud. He believes the pigment on the original Shroud faded naturally over the centuries.
They then added blood stains, burn holes, scorches and water stains to achieve the final effect.
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Zach Gage says that he created the free video game Lose/Lose to make people question their ethical assumptions. The game is similar to Space Invaders, but every time you kill an alien, the game deletes a randomly-selected file from your hard drive:
Lose/Lose is a video-game with real life consequences. Each alien in the game is created based on a random file on the players computer. If the player kills the alien, the file it is based on is deleted. If the players ship is destroyed, the application itself is deleted. Although touching aliens will cause the player to lose the game, and killing aliens awards points, the aliens will never actually fire at the player. This calls into question the player’s mission, which is never explicitly stated, only hinted at through classic game mechanics. Is the player supposed to be an aggressor? Or merely an observer, traversing through a dangerous land? Why do we assume that because we are given a weapon an awarded for using it, that doing so is right?
Clicking on the link below will not download the game onto your computer and begin deleting your files. But it will give you the option to do so.
Link via Geekologie
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