religion

Common Religious Claim: “No true Scotsman …”

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When you confront some believers with examples of truly outrageous religious behaviour, the common rebuttal is “Ah but they are not real believers, no true believer from my faith would …“. Now that indeed might be factually correct, but they are missing the key point, so let us now take a quick look at all this. First, what … Read more

Indonesian Insanity – Non-believer jailed for 2.5 years after writing “God doesn’t exist” on his Facebook page

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The Jakarta times reports … An Indonesian man arrested after writing “God doesn’t exist” on his Facebook page was jailed for 30 months Thursday for sharing explicit material about the Prophet Mohammed online. Alexander Aan, 30, was found guilty of “deliberately spreading information inciting religious hatred and animosity,” presiding judge Eka Prasetya Budi Dharma told … Read more

Your Support Needed – Indian rationalist Sanal Edamaruku vs the Catholic Church

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First the background – Hopefully you are already familiar with it all A couple of months ago Sanal Edamaruku, the President of the Indian-based skeptic organization Rationalist International, was invited by an Indian TV channel (TV-9) to visit a Catholic Church in Mumbai to offer his opinion of a claimed miracle. He is well-known in … Read more

Four Women murdered in Pakistan … because they were singing and dancing.

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A week ago there were stories circulating about four women and two men in Pakistan who had been sentenced to death for singing and dancing at a wedding. I need not explain why, by now you will be familiar with the thinking .. it was of course yet another example of Islamic clerics demonstrating just … Read more

offending religious feelings … gets you a prison sentence in Spain

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People get offended by many things … smoking, chewing gum, spitting, etc… but there is apparently one very special category of offence in Spain, “offending religious feelings”, apparently that will potentially get you jail time. The news is that one of Spain’s leading underground artists has been charged with this, appeared in court and now faces … Read more

“They shall take up serpents; and …” … die.

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I never cease to be amazed about the diversity of truly crazy things that people believe. One recent example concerns a verse in the bible that says … “And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; … Read more