We in the 21st century aren’t exactly unused to stupid, time-wasting lawsuits. But at least our judges have a tendency to slap them down with enough regularity to stop us losing all faith in the system. The same can’t be said for their medieval counterparts. In 1474, a Swiss rooster was discovered to have laid an egg—something roosters typically lack the, uh, equipment to do. Rather than dismiss it as an obvious case of mistaken identity, the townsfolk had the rooster arrested and put on trial for demonic possession.

Yeah: a real trial, in a real court, with real judges. People at the time believed a possessed rooster could give birth to a Basilisk—a monster so evil it got a whole Harry Potter book devoted to it. Faced with this imminent danger, the judges sentenced the rooster to be burnt at the stake—a feat so uniquely stupid they felt compelled to repeat it 300 years later.

For most of us, ‘Satanism’ conjures images of black mass and blood sacrifice and so on. Not for Patricia Pulling. As far as she and her organization B.A.D.D were concerned, there was only one face to modern Satanism—and that face involved 12-sided die and skinny adolescents pretending to be Thunder Gods.

In 1982, Pulling found herself on the wrong side of a shitty tragedy when her teenage son committed suicide. That would be enough to screw anyone up, and Pulling was not just ‘anyone’. Learning that her son had played D&D shortly before his death, she put two and two together and sued the game’s creators, along with the principle she believed had put a D&D ‘curse’ on him. It took two years for the case to be thrown out of court, but by then the damage was done—and a whole generation of hysterical parents had something they could fear until rap music was invented.

Like the Deep South, rural England has its fair share of rednecks just itching to form a mob. Only, instead of child molesters and Peter Fonda, their vigilante groups have their sights set on something a little bigger.

In the winter of 1855, the population of Devon woke up to discover hoof-prints covering 100 miles of the county in a perfectly straight line. And I mean perfectly: when they met a wall they carried on over it. When they reached a house, they continued across the roof. Since nothing says ‘Satan’ like unexplained footprints, the local men armed themselves up and set out to kill the devil. Luckily, no dapper, goateed men happened to be strolling around the country at the time and the mob eventually wore itself out. In a ridiculous twist, it later emerged that a kangaroo had recently escaped from a nearby zoo—meaning Skippy’s brother was probably this close to being lynched by angry villagers.

Martin Luther is a pretty important guy in the history of protestantism. He triggered a major schism, helped spread protestant doctrine and even founded his own branch of Christianity. Not bad for a guy who thought the pope was literally the antichrist.

Yes, the pope. God’s representative on Earth and so on. Obviously a fan of the ‘it’s always the person you least suspect’ school of thought, Luther condemned the papal office as being in league with Satan—sparking a vast conspiracy theory that survives to this day. Islam, Communism, Nazism, Freemasonry, the assassination of Lincoln . . . everything bad that’s ever happened is said to be the fault of ‘Satan’s pope’, who no doubt teaches piety as a cunning way of condemning people to the flames. It doesn’t make any sense, but hey, that’s insanity for you.

The Loudon Possession is probably one of the stupidest witchcraft cases on record. Basically, a bunch of repressed French nuns began to suffer vivid, erotic dreams and blamed the Devil. Since this was the early 17th century, the target of their lust—a local priest called Grandier—was arrested for causing demonic possession. Then things got really dumb. Exorcists were called in and found the nuns showed absolutely no signs of supernatural visitation. They couldn’t levitate, read minds, see the future, speak in previously unknown languages or do anything a half-assed con artist couldn’t. All they could do was scream about sex a lot, something most of us can accomplish with nothing more demonic than a pair of vocal cords. The exorcists dismissed the claims, so Grandier was released without charge and given a full apology.

Whoops, I mean the exorcists were told to zip it and Grandier put on trial for witchcraft. There, the judge ruled that anyone speaking in Grandier’s defense would be fined and tortured, while the prosecution was allowed to submit evidence like this ‘contract’ between Grandier and Satan, that just happened to be written in the handwriting of one of the nuns. After a fair and balanced trial that was anything but, Grandier was tortured horrifically and burnt alive at the stake. Meanwhile the ‘possessions’ continued—with the convent eventually charging tourists entry to watch the exorcisms.

But Loudon wasn’t even the largest case of mass-insanity to rock seventeenth century France. That dubious honor would go to the Affair of the Poisons, an outbreak of Satanist hysteria so widespread it would even affect the King. Around 1679, Louis XIV discovered that some of the noblemen and women of his court were resorting to charms, curses and potions to get ahead. And by ‘some’, I mean ‘all of them’—the subsequent investigation uncovered over 300 alleged poisoners. Quite a scandal, huh? Well, sort of. Unfortunately, most of those arrested were third rate alchemists, conjurers and quacks hawking folk ‘poisons’ about as deadly as a case of Mountain Dew. And, faced with torture and a certain death, they started indicting anyone they could think of—and when they ran out of people, they started inventing lurid details. Infanticide, black mass, blood sacrifice, magic curses . . . the French police believed every single word of it. Panic gripped the court, hundreds of people were thrown in prison and dozens executed in a five year purging—proving it’s not just America that can do ‘blind panic’.

Sometimes, the line between tragedy and comedy is so blurred as to become not just invisible, but completely non-existent. The McMartin Pre-School Trial is one of those times.

The panic started in 1983, when an alcoholic, paranoid schizophrenic named Judy Johnson accused her estranged husband Ray of sodomizing her son. Now, there’s nothing amusing or unusual about that sentence in itself, but Johnson’s accusations didn’t stop there. She also claimed her Ex had sex with animals, held satanic orgies with the other teachers at the preschool he worked in and could fly. Usually, when a mentally ill woman starts claiming her former-boyfriend has magic superpowers, the authorities make sure she gets the treatment she clearly needs. Not this time.

Ray was arrested and over 300 pre-schoolers questioned in the most absurdly-leading way possible. Being, y’know, toddlers, they did what the adults obviously wanted them to do and started making up stories about witches, and secret tunnels hidden inside toilets. Because the ’80s were insane, the case went to trial—resulting in one of the most-expensive, protracted legal battles in history. It wasn’t until 1990 that someone finally realized we’d all gone collectively mad and Ray was acquitted—seven years after his crazy ex-wife first decided he was Superman’s pervy brother.

In a list of ‘biggest overreactions’, James VI’s response to bad weather on his wedding day would come at #1. On the way from Denmark, his bride’s boat ran into rough seas. When James went out to lend a hand, a storm sprang up, nearly drowning the future King and Queen of England. Rather than being grateful for his near-escape, James decided he’d been the victim of a witches plot and promptly had dozens of people arrested and tortured. In what’s probably a familiar pattern to you by now, many of those tortured indicted other people to save themselves—triggering a wave of witch trials across Scotland that resulted in as many as 4,000 people being executed. All thanks to a bit of bad weather.

There’s a reason rock is called ‘the devil’s music’—and that reason is ‘it sells albums’. No ordinary person believes Alice Cooper really holds black mass, or Ozzy Osbourne is anything but a befuddled reality TV star. But the ’80s were not ordinary times—and otherwise normal people were convinced rock music contained subliminal satanic messages that could only be heard played backwards.

Just to be absolutely clear, there is no evidence whatsoever that playing something backwards is a shortcut to mass mind-control. But that didn’t stop the State of Nevada putting Judas Priest on trial after two guys attempted suicide after listening to their music. The case was eventually thrown out for being less-scientific than just blaming magic, but not before roughly a trillion bored parents leapt onboard the panicwagon. And that wagon kept on rolling long after backmasking was forgotten, leading to ridiculous assertions like Marilyn Manson being responsible for a massacre his music had literally no involvement in.

But I guess that’s just human nature—we’d rather blame the Devil than our own failings, even if that means pretending rock stars can control our minds and our neighbors are flying monsters.

The post 9 Ridiculous Satanism Panics appeared first on Listverse.

Using one part of the Bible to back up another might seem counterintuitive, but it’s not as insane as it might first appear. For one thing, Paul’s letters are the earliest writings on Christianity, predating the Gospels by some fifty years. Also, we know he existed. Textual analysis of the epistles proves at least seven of them were written by one guy; and Paul’s historic efforts to open the new church to gentiles are the main reason you’re not reading this in, say, Hebrew. But the biggest thing Paul has going in his favor is his ego. Rather than detail the life story of Jesus, Paul prefers talking about himself—including descriptions of his conversion and travels. Travels which, by the way, include two brief meetings with Jesus’ brother James. Since James’ existence would have been objectively verifiable to Paul’s readers, the likelihood he made him up is somewhere around ‘zero’—especially since both meetings seem to go quite badly.

I’ve mentioned before how the Gospels kinda don’t agree on anything. Some see this as the final nail in historical-Jesus’s coffin; but for others, these screw-ups point in exactly the opposite direction. Take the Gospel of Mark—several times, Mark quite clearly states that Jesus came from Nazareth. A few decades later, Luke and Matthew decide, nu-uh, Bethlehem is where it started. Trouble is, there’s no historical record of anything they say happened there—the census, the slaughter of the innocents—ever, well, happening. On the other hand, there does exist an ancient prophecy saying the messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Not exactly subtle, is it? However, these shenanigans actually give more credence to Mark’s account. It’s called the criterion of embarrassment—basically, the idea that you’d be unlikely to make up something that makes you look bad. Since Nazareth is the ‘wrong’ town for Jesus to come from, Mark would’ve claimed a fictional Jesus came from Bethlehem. That he didn’t suggests his writing was at least grounded in reality.

Like a birthplace in the sticks, the Baptism is another feature of Jesus’ story that doesn’t tally with Biblical prophecy. At the time, the idea of a spiritually inferior person baptizing a superior one was completely unheard of. Having the messiah baptized by anyone would be seen more as humiliation than humility. Nowadays, we see it as an early sign that Jesus was the humble guy he later turned out to be—but in ancient Judea, that would’ve been a hard sell. A writer looking to recruit people to his newly made-up church would have probably had Jesus flying over the river, shooting fire and doing backflips while giving John the finger. The fact it’s such a step down for the ‘son of God’ suggests it’s probably based in fact—even if it’s been distorted in the centuries since.

Josephus was a 1st century Roman-Jewish historian who’s most-famous passage is the Testimonium Flavianum—an ‘early’ reference to Christ that’s probably a fake. So why bring him up at all? Well, Josephus’s works also include a much less-famous passage that’s definitely genuine. Buried deep in Book 20 of his Antiquities of the Jews is a passing reference to the execution of “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James”. That’s as far as it goes. But, like Paul above, it confirms the historical existence of James and therefore Jesus. And it’s almost universally acknowledged to be genuine—here’s the world’s leading scholar on Josephus explaining why it couldn’t be a fake. It might tell us very little, but it at least gives us a starting point—especially when combined with stuff like:

Tacitus was the Roman equivalent of The History Channel and National Geographic all rolled into one brainy, cynical guy. Over a stupefying number of books, his Annals describe life under Tiberius, Nero and other lunatics, while also dealing with day-to-day existence in Rome. Significantly, that includes the period surrounding the Great Fire. For those of you who hate clicking on links, the important bit goes:

“Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.”

That’s the first reliable account of the crucifixion in history. Although he doesn’t cite his source, Tacitus had access to a heck-load of official documents and almost always noted when he was using hearsay. Since everyone but the most-insane of scholars accept this passage as genuine, it establishes the crucifixion as a historical event—one widely known even by A.D. 64. Furthermore, recently physical evidence was found proving the existence and presence of Pilate just where the Gospels say he was.

If you’re above a certain age, you might remember the 2001 discovery of an ancient bone box inscribed with the words ‘James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.’ For those of you that aren’t—you should know that the world went nuts. Here was undeniable proof of Jesus’s historical existence. Then, in 2004, Israeli police arrested the Tel Aviv collector who found it on suspicion of forgery. So much for that, huh?

Not exactly. Last year, an Israeli court threw out the case when it became apparent most of the ‘expert witnesses’ were either lying or just plain wrong. The ‘smoking gun’ was a fake inscription that turned out to be nothing of the sort, and more tests are now being done to figure out (again) if the box is genuine. Now, we still currently don’t know if it’s real—only that it’s not a deliberate, modern fake. But if it turns out to be the real deal, it could yet prove to be the most important religious find of the century.

Despite most of the ‘big ones’ having been around for centuries, new religions are always cropping up. Mormonism, Scientology, Rastafarianism, cults like The Manson Family or North Korea’s creepy ‘Kim’ cult… and nearly all of them have one thing in common: they stem from a single, real individual. By contrast, movements with no grounding in reality whatsoever are much rarer. And sociologists have noticed this. By tracing how modern religions grow, they can make assumptions about their older cousins—including the importance of having a living, breathing figurehead. Think about it. It’s a lot easier to get people onboard your new movement if they can see your leader is an actual person and not, y’know, completely made up. But even if you don’t accept the logic of that, it’s worth remembering how utterly alien Jesus’s teachings were compared to any other branch of first century Judaism. Such a great mental leap had to come from someone, somewhere so Paul could get so fired up about it ten years later. For all intents and purposes, you might as well call that ‘someone’ Jesus.

For all his reported ability to kill things with the power of words, Gospels’ Jesus is basically the Aquaman of Biblical figures. Compared to, say, King David, his awesomeness-to-piousness ratio is sadly lacking. And that’s important, because the Messiah was prophesied to be a warrior king who would flush the scum out of Jerusalem and bring about God’s kingdom on Earth. By contrast, Jesus rides around on a donkey and is executed before he can get anything done. Remember the criterion of embarrassment? In the first century, crucifixion was a humiliating way to die. Anyone writing Jesus from the ground up would have had him go out in a one-on-one fistfight with Julius Caesar or something. As scholar Bart Ehrman puts it: “The Christians did not invent Jesus. They invented the idea that the messiah had to be crucified.” Basically, early Christians were so embarrassed by the crucifixion they did everything they could to turn it into a victory. Hell, they probably wished they had just made him up—it would’ve saved them all a lot of trouble.

The post 8 Reasons Jesus Definitely Existed appeared first on Listverse.

Dionysus is the Ancient Greek god of wine and divine madness. One of the many names attached to him is “Twice-born.” There are a number of myths which could explain this, but one involves the death and rebirth of Dionysus.

When Zeus made Persephone pregnant, his wife Hera fell into a jealous rage. She sent the Titans to tear the infant Dionysus apart. They then consumed all of the corpse except the heart. This was saved and sewn into Zeus’ thigh, where he was gestated and born anew.

Some attribute this myth of death and rebirth to viniculture. At the end of the grape season, vines are cut right back; they appear almost dead until finally springing back to life the next season. It would not be the last time in history wine was associated with a deity of resurrection.

Persephone is the daughter of the Greek goddess Demeter, deity of the harvest and of growth. When Hades, lord of the underworld, fell in love with her, he carried Persephone off into death to be his queen. But as soon as Demeter began mourning for her daughter, the Earth’s plants began to wither.

In order to prevent life on Earth from dying, Zeus ordered Hades to release Persephone. Unfortunately,Persephone had already eaten some of the food of the dead, and so she would have to return to the underworld for one third of every year. So whenever her daughter returns to Hades, Demeter mourns—and this is why winter descends on Earth. Growth only resumes properly when Persephone is returned to the world of the living.

There are several versions of the myth of Osiris from Egypt, but all of those related to his early life tell of his death and rebirth. Osiris was not originally a god in his own right, but was at least partially divine—and while on his path to godhood, Osiris would die and return to life at least twice.

On one occasion, jealous rivals murdered Osiris and cast him into the Nile. His sister (and wife) Isis hunted for the body and returned him to life with the help of a magic spell. But Osiris soon died once again. This time his body was ripped to pieces and scattered across the world. Isis gathered up the fragments and joined them together for a decent burial. When the other gods saw the extent of Isis’ devotion, they rewarded Osiris by resurrecting him and making him the god of the dead.

Odin is the chief god of Norse mythology, who gained great wisdom by undergoing several trials. In order to achieve knowledge from beyond the realm of the dead, Odin decided to sacrifice himself. He took a spear and drove it into his side. Then he tied a noose to the world-tree Yggdrasil, and hanged himself for nine days.

It was after this sacrifice that Odin returned, stronger than ever. If this tale of suffering, death, and resurrection sounds familiar, it is likely because Christianity had reached northern Europe long before the writing of the Poetic Edda, and would have coexisted alongside the Norse religion. Even after the official conversion of Iceland to Christianity, it was reported that sailors would sacrifice to Thor before a sea voyage.

Ganesha, because of his elephant head, is one of the most recognizable of the gods of the Hindu pantheon. Due to the ancient origins of Hinduism and the large number of traditions, there are a variety of stories which explain how he came into the possession of his rather unorthodox head.

In one tale, Ganesha was made by the goddess Pavarti and set to guard her chamber. When Shiva attempted to enter, Ganesha did as he was told and tried to stop him, whereupon Shiva cut off Ganesha’s head. Pavarti was peeved, so Shiva decided to make up for his rash decapitation by returning Ganesha to life, giving him a new head in the process. Perhaps in an attempt to make Ganesha less handsome, Shiva used the head of an elephant.

In Finnish mythology, Lemminkainen is a hero who sets out on a mission to capture one of the black swans from the river of the underworld. He dies in the attempt, and his body sinks in the waters and is lost. The body is broken on the rocks at the bottom, and his remains are scattered. Lemminkainen’s mother comes in search of him and gathers together all of the body parts, sewing them together. This does not return her son to life, so she sends a bee to fetch some of the gods’ honey, which does the trick perfectly well.

Tammuz was a Sumerian god of vegetation who is supposed to have started out as a mortal king. When he was taken as a lover by the goddess Inanna things became rather tricky. According to the Epic of Gilgamesh, all of the beings loved by Ishtar (a Babylonian parallel of Inanna) end up worse off for the love.

Tammuz was no different: he ended up in the kingdom of the dead. Inanna supposedly relented, and went to rescue Tammuz and turn him into a god. She did this not just once but many times. Each year Tammuz dies and the world (at least in the Near East) is hit by droughts and extreme heat, and when the rains come and the crops begin to grow, it is a sign that Tammuz has once again been resurrected.

According to the Mahabharata, another Hindu epic, Krishna is an incarnation of the god Vishnu. The form of Krishna allowed the god to better understand his creation and interact with his people. After many adventures, wars, and explorations of the nature of the universe, Krishna attends a festival. At this festival conflict breaks out and Krishna retires to a wood to meditate. While he is contemplating under a tree, a hunter mistakes him for a deer and fatally wounds him with an arrow. Krishna dies and his body burned, but, being a god, he does not decay and instead ascends to heaven.

Quetzalcoatl was one of the great gods of the various peoples of Mesoamerica. In iconography he is usually shown as a feathered serpent. He was given this frightening appearance in place of his formally ugly and pock-marked face.

Once, when drunk, he called for his sister to be brought to him and had proceeded to have sex with her. Sobering up, he was ashamed of what he had done, and had himself placed in a sarcophagus and floated down a river. Coming to rest on a river bank, he arranged his possessions into a pyre and burned himself to death. His ashes rose into the air and became birds, and his heart entered the sky as the Morning Star. After four days in the underworld, he returned to heaven.

Attis was a Phrygian god who later entered the Greek and Roman pantheons as the partner of the goddess Cybele. Like some of the other gods associated with death and resurrection, Attis was a vegetation deity. He was born from an almond nurtured in the body of a goddess. Attis was just about to be married to a princess when the goddess Cybele showed up, throwing Attis into a frenzy.

Maddened, he castrated himself and bled to death. Cybele relented and brought Attis back to life, possibly resurrected in the form of a pine tree. Each year the death of Attis was mourned as it led to the failure of plants to grow. Come Spring, his resurrection was celebrated with the ritual dressing of a pine tree.

LordZB enjoys wearing pajamas.

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As a legal system, Sharia Law is the very definition of ‘insanity’. Instead of things like fines or imprisonment, it advocates whipping, amputations, blinding and the death penalty for crimes as dumb as wearing pants. And, according to our TV pundits, it’s as Islamic as flowing beards and going to Mecca.

Except of course it isn’t. Out of the fifty or so majority-Muslim countries, guess how many implement full Sharia? Ten. But they’re probably the big ones, right? Nope—only Pakistan has both Sharia Law and a population of over 100 million. Four of the five most populous Muslim nations on Earth (Indonesia, India, Bangladesh and Egypt) either use a watered-down version or don’t use Sharia at all. Globally, more than 50 percent of Muslim-majority legal systems have no basis in Sharia whatsoever. Oh, and those rumors about Sharia Law being forced on Western cities? Well, a 2009 British poll found 79 percent of Muslims thought Christianity should dictate UK law. That’s a higher percentage than Christians themselves.

Make no mistake, honor killings are a real problem. Because some idiots have a warped sense of priority, anywhere between five thousand and twenty thousand women are killed each year by relatives. But, despite what you hear, the problem is far from an Islamic one. In Turkey and Pakistan, cases of Christian honor killings are frequently reported, while India has seen a stratospheric rise among the Hindu population. According to some women’s rights groups, Jordan’s Christian community is even responsible for more killings per capita than the Muslim majority. Yet the perception still somehow remains that this is something only Muslims do, despite there being no mention of honor killings in either the Koran or Hadith.

To be fair, not everyone voicing concerns about Islam is expecting violent takeover and Sharia Law. Some are simply worried about the level of immigration, which would be fair enough if it weren’t so unbelievably tiny. Thanks to historic links with Morocco and Algeria, France is likely the country with the biggest Muslim population in Western Europe. Know the percentage of French citizens who identify as Muslim? Seven. That’s less than the number of Americans who think they’ve seen a flying saucer. Even our most pessimistic estimates put the likely number of European Muslims by 2030 at eight percent of the population—and even then only if you include the Balkan states that already have Islamic majorities. For comparison, the populations of traditionally-Islamic Egypt, Syria and Indonesia are all over ten percent Christian.

Thanks to its association with Sharia Law, Islam is seen by most as a pretty intolerant religion. I mean, the Koran hates gay people and advocates persecuting Christians. Who’d want to be a minority in a Muslim country?

Well, it depends on the country. See, despite its track record of homophobia, the Iranian government—for example—not only recognizes transsexuals, it facilitates more sex-change operations than any other country bar Thailand. Post-op trans-people are given all the rights of their new gender and even allowed to marry, making Iran more progressive with trans-rights than Illinois, Texas or Ohio. As for religious persecution, it’s true that passages of the Koran are pretty anti-Christian—just as other passages warn against forcibly converting people. Like the Bible, it’s down to interpretation—which is why you get stories like that of the militia-targeted Iraqi Christian who was saved by his Muslim neighbors. And while we’re on the subject of acceptance, Indonesia is home to one of the world’s biggest gay pride events and Turkey is taking steps toward legally recognizing gay couples. Basically, assuming all Muslims are intolerant based on literal readings of the Koran is like claiming all Christians stone their neighbors for picking up sticks on Saturday.

We’re used to hearing that Islam is backward, intellectually-broken and about as open to science as David Icke. Never mind all the scientific, legal and mathematical advances made under the Islamic Golden Age—that was hundreds of years ago. Modern Islam and reason are incompatible, right?

Try telling that to Pakistan. Despite being an absolute basket-case, India’s belligerent neighbor churns out some of the best minds in Physics, Mathematics and Engineering anywhere in the world. In December, the minister for science and technology even pledged to allocate two percent of GDP to research and development by 2020. For comparison, the UK currently allocates around 1.7. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: Turkey and Malaysia both have active space programs, while Saudi Arabia and Qatar are pouring billions into research universities. Even backward Iran invests hard enough in computer science to launch crippling cyber-attacks on US companies, despite being incapable of using Photoshop. It’s not Islam itself that hates science, just a handful of idiots who happen to be Islamic.

Let’s be blunt: growing up poor and female in Afghanistan or Pakistan is a bad situation to be in. However, things are no better in Christian D.R. Congo and only slightly in secular India. According to this report commissioned in 2011, only three of the top five worst countries in the world for women were Islamic—with two of those being open war zones. Similar polls regularly list non-Islamic Chad, Nepal, Guatemala and Russia right at the bottom, alongside places like Yemen and Saudi Arabia. And while Pakistan may have little respect for women’s rights, it still found time to elect a female leader—as did Indonesia, Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey. But what about the Burka, symbol of female oppression? Again, a handful of crappy countries do require it by law, but they’re vastly outnumbered by those that don’t—Turkey, Bangladesh, Tunisia and Syria even banned it from public places.

On the subject of the burka, most of you have probably heard about Europe’s recent infatuation with banning it. Given that people are so riled up about the issue, it stands to reason there must be a problem with Muslim integration, right?

Not exactly. Know how many people the Netherlands burka ban affected? Less than 100. That’s about 0.0006 percent of the population. In France, the number was 367—a percentage so small you’d be better off simply writing ‘zero’. Additionally, half of those who wore the burka were found to be young white converts—suggesting it’s less a failure of integration than the latest phase of adolescent rebellion. As for Muslim immigrants refusing to adopt their new home’s values and traditions; a British study found that eighty three percent of Muslims were proud to be British, compared to seventy nine percent of the general public. Even crazier, while eighty two percent of Muslims wanted to live in diverse, integrated neighborhoods, only sixty three percent of Brits did. Turns out the myth of Muslim non-integration is exactly that: a myth.

We all know by now that you can’t trust the media. When they’re not busy hounding innocent people to suicide, they’re making up stories or just generally being dicks. But we still kind of expect their reports to have at least some basis in fact. So it may come as a shock to discover they objectively don’t.

According to a report commissioned for a UK government inquiry into press ethics, stories on British Muslims were “unsatisfactory… sloppy and sometimes stereotypical” and often “false and racist”. The study found nine out of ten stories mentioning Muslims were negative, while an overview of eight years’ worth of papers concluded two thirds of them reported Islam as a threat, with references to ‘radical Muslims’ outnumbering any other kind by seventeen to one. A further study from the University of Ottawa added that British news outlets go out of their way to associate Islam with terrorism. America fared little better, with bad and stereotypical coverage of terrorism being largely blamed for a rise on racist attacks against Sikhs.

One of the most damaging beliefs about Islam is that it’s inherently anti-Semitic. Do a random sample of a group of Iranians or Palestinians and you’ll almost certainly find an undercurrent of racism so thick it has to be measured in Mel Gibsons. But, equally, guess what you’ll find if you do a survey of the Israeli army? That’s right: Muslims.

According to this BBC report, there are thousands of Muslims who serve in the IDF—literally giving their lives for the Jewish State. And it’s not something forced on them either: Israeli Muslims aren’t required to do military service. Some do it to get access to benefits, some to improve their employment prospects, and some—like this guy—simply do it for a love of Israel. Because the Koran includes the story of Moses, Islamic scholars since the ninth century have argued that God gave Israel to the Jewish people, a bit of history we missed here in the West. Even in the present a minority of Muslims still identify as Zionists. Since this includes the former president of Indonesia, whose voting public consists of around 200 million Muslims, anti-Semitism is apparently nowhere near as rife as we think.

A 2006 study found people in Nigeria were more supportive of terrorism than anywhere else in the world. Want to guess who ranked second? Iraqis? Saudis? Maybe Pakistanis?

Nope, it was Americans. When asked whether “bombings and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians” were ever justifiable, only forty six percent of US residents said no. To put that in perspective, eighty six percent of Pakistani’s responded that hurting civilians was “never justifiable”. Even weirder, of the remaining Pakistani’s who did support terrorism; seventy nine percent of them also supported American humanitarian intervention. While it seems counterintuitive at first, you gotta remember that most terrorist attacks take place in Muslim countries and kill mostly Muslims. When researchers crunched the figures for 2006-08, they found non-Westerners were thirty eight times more likely to be killed in a terrorist attack than Westerners. When active combat zones were removed from the statistics, the share of non-Westerns killed by Al-Qaida was ninety-nine percent. That’s not a typo—all but a handful of people blown up by Bin Laden’s goons last decade were Muslims themselves. So while, yes, there are Muslims who think being a terrorist is a noble goal, they’re vastly outnumbered by those who think being a terrorist is kind of a dickish thing to do.

The post 10 Reasons We Shouldn’t Fear Islam appeared first on Listverse.

It is not our purpose to belittle the beliefs of others, nor to declare any one point of view on such a dense and divisive topic as religion to be the correct one. We assume that our readers are intelligent, well-informed, and capable of thinking for themselves, and that is the end of this disclaimer.

It’s been reported recently that atheism is on the rise worldwide, while religiosity is declining. The relationship between the religious and non-religious has always been a tricky one; while many from each group eventually find themselves forced to admit that there is much to learn from the other, atheists still generally have a tough time accepting the role that religion plays in society—and are of the opinion that humanity would be better off leaving it behind, for a number of reasons. Here are ten of them.

Reason: The Messiah Story Has Been Around For Thousands Of Years

It should be noted that the idea of a divine savior of the human race is practically as old as the human race itself, and has resurfaced continually, echoing throughout our culture for thousands of years. That it continues to be a theme of popular works today is no surprise, but there exists a bitter debate over whether many or most of the major elements of the story of Jesus Christ were co-opted from other sources—some that originated hundreds or even thousands of years before Jesus.

The general assertion by the skeptical is that all of these elements—the virgin birth, significance of the solstices, the miracles, disciples, baptism, crucifixion, resurrection—along with many even more specific elements like Heaven and Hell, the soul, holy communion and others, were all seen before in multiple ancient pagan religions. Many Christians contend that these similarities are a distortion, or the result of ancient records being taken out of context or simply being inaccurate; atheists similarly will point out that practically all ancient records are of questionable accuracy to some degree, including those non-Christian references to the historicity of Jesus.

Modern scholars can only agree on two things about Jesus: that he was baptized, and that he was crucified on the order of Pontius Pilate. All of the other details are disputed by some group of scholars or another, and an examination of the ancient pagan religions predating Jesus—those surrounding Horus, Mithra, Dionysus, Krishna and many others—yields an astounding number of similarities that cannot be explained away as coincidence. These stories seem to be a part of ancient Mediterranean culture, which leads us to the fact that . . .

Reason: “Mythology” Used To Be Religion

When we think of the Greek, Roman, Norse and other mythologies that we studied in school, most of us probably consider them to have the same level of actual historical significance, or value to our modern culture, as The Lord Of The Rings. That is not to say that they have little or no value—these mythologies were an important part of the development of human intellect and understanding of the world, of which we had very little at the time of their inception.

From an atheist point of view, it can be argued that we still had very little understanding of the the way our world works two thousand years ago, and that the application of different aspects of pagan myth to the Christian gospels makes sense—many ancient mythologies borrowed from each other, as we know from our study of the very similar Roman and Greek mythologies and all of their various analogues (Zeus and Jupiter, Venus and Aphrodite, etc.) of the same deity archetypes. These ancient mythologies weren’t myths to the people who created them—they were religion, their way of explaining the world and its mechanics. Mount Olympus was simply the highest mountain in Greece, and to the ancient Greeks it was their version of Heaven, and Zeus their version of God.

This holds true for all ancient and pagan belief systems, which also illustrates the point that Christianity did not bring religion, the concept of salvation, or even monotheism to the world—these things had been in place for centuries. Christianity, Islam and other such belief systems (and there are many similarities there as well) can be seen simply as the myths that have somehow survived to this day.

Reason: The Bible Doesn’t Line Up With Modern Values

The Bible is, obviously, an extremely old text with dozens of interpretations throughout the centuries. The term Christian itself is a rather a blanket term for a dizzying array of belief systems, very few of whom are in complete agreement as to how the Bible should be interpreted—or even in what context specific passages should be taken.

Atheists do have trouble reconciling that the Word Of God, infallible as it should be, would be so open to such wildly varying interpretations—but what they have more trouble with are the passages in the Bible that clearly have absolutely no bearing on any sane, modern system of beliefs and morals. Most are aware of the passages that provide for the keeping of slaves, the wanton murder of homosexuals and adulterers, the selling of children and other such things which have no place in civilized society, let alone in texts that are considered to be holy.

Yes, these things were common 2,000 years ago, but that’s the point—that these do not appear to be the suggestions and guidance of an all-knowing and loving God, but rather of men—not prophets, just men, who were very much of their time. An omnipotent God would have demonstrated an understanding of basic human rights long before we humans got around to realizing, for instance, that slavery is wrong. This limited understanding of historical context works backwards as well as you will see in this next item:

Reason: The Bible Doesn’t Work As A Historical Text

The above-referenced debate as to whether Jesus was actually a historical person (he almost certainly was) notwithstanding, there are myriad problems to be found when attempting to reconcile the Bible’s account of ancient history with the known historical record. Again, these are inaccuracies which would not be expected from an omnipotent being, but would absolutely be expected from a 2,000 year old author with a limited historical and scientific frame of reference.

Take, for example, the story of Noah and the Great Flood, a significant event that, even if it were not worldwide but localized to one region, would have made the historical records of many ancient civilizations. Many Christian scholars believe that it was localized, not a global flood, which explains its absence from the ancient record. The Bible itself says:

“6 The LORD regretted that he had made mankind on the earth, and he felt highly offended. 7 So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth-everything from mankind to animals, including creatures that move on the ground and birds of the air, for I regret that I have made them.” … 11 The earth was ruined in the sight of God; the earth was filled with violence.”

This clearly did not happen—but it was also far from the first “Great Flood” story of the ancient world, another mythological element that has echoed across cultures for millennia. And while it’s easy to argue for the validity of parables and metaphors as a means to understanding human nature and morality, the opposite case can also be made; that it has become unnecessary for us as a species. We have developed into civilized people that understand the concept of morality simply being good for our continued survival.

Reason: Religion Is Behind Many Conflicts, Large And Small

If religiosity is the key to the understanding of human nature and our place in the Universe (or wherever we are), then this is particularly troubling to the skeptic. Yes, “Why does God let bad things happen?” is a well-worn and simplistic argument, but the fact of the existence of numerous bloody religious conflicts throughout history—including those between differing sects of Christianity—combined with the aforementioned Biblical references to the many types of offenders that should be put to death, cannot simply be waved away. Not only is killing for any reason obviously morally wrong, but there’s a direct conflict with the First Commandment, the Christian doctrine of turning the other cheek, and the simple truth that religion and politics—that other great cause of violent conflict—should not be mixed.

The very phrase “King James Bible” is suspicious to the skeptic, as it implies government involvement in the interpretation of religious doctrine, and even the founders of the US thought enough of the issue to include the tenet of separation of church and state within the establishing documents of the nation. But the ability of faith to transform a political moderate into a radical cannot be overstated—and the ability of governments to use said faith to their own ends is easy to see, as it continues to this day.

Many in the US think of religious radicals as those of other religions—alien religions with weird beliefs that make their followers do crazy things, but the truth is that there are radicals of practically every religious affiliation—and that there is no killer more determined than the one who believes with all their heart that God wants them to kill.

Reason: The Religious Are Not Favored

This raises another question: the religiously devoted are certain of the truth of their religion, but there are hundreds, thousands of religions all over the world, and they cannot all be right—unless they are really all just metaphors, different interpretations of a truth that may be beyond our intellectual grasp. So the question is: if one religion is correct, why is it not the only religion? Why are its followers not favored by God? Why is there such widespread disagreement?

There simply is no answer, because there is no one religion that is favored in any measurable way; not by rate of new converts, happiness or comfort of the converted, protection from disease or physical harm, anything. And the notion of a God that must “remain hidden”, that cannot interfere with the lives or fates of his followers, negates the entire concept of prayer—while also raising questions about why God spoke to so many people in Biblical times.

It’s somewhat of a well-known notion that the devoutly religious, when set upon by severe misfortune, will simply think of it as “God’s will”, which we’ll discuss a little more later. But to the skeptic, it follows that an all-knowing God who loves all of his children—and is admittedly “jealous”—would be pleased with those who know the truth, and likely very displeased with the millions of his children who erroneously follow false religions. If this is the case, it is in no way apparent, but it is painfully apparent that…

Reason: The Religious Are Not More Morally Sound Than Others

In fact, religious beliefs are decidedly not an indicator of strong moral values, and vice versa. Among atheists, it is a common misconception that Christians and other religious types are closed-minded, superstitious and judgmental; among the religious, it is a common misconception that the non-religious are depraved, morally reprehensible perverts. Thoughtful people of both types understand that such generalizations fail to hold up in reality, and that morality and religious inclinations (or lack thereof) can be two very separate things.

Indeed, even those who do not believe in a deity should still be able to agree that the core values of most religions—respect for one’s fellow human beings, striving to be a good and worthwhile member of society, an agreement not to steal, cheat or murder—are basic human values that it is the responsibility of every parent on Earth to instill in their children. This does not, however, necessitate the existence of a Creator who enforces these values upon us; nor does the atheist assertion of a lack of said creator imply that we do not have a duty to lead moral lives.

Many agnostics and those who don’t accept the literal truth of religious texts while still holding up the value of religion as a moral guide miss this point. Atheists will counter that there can and must be morality without religion, that we as humans no longer need these parables and metaphors that may have helped to guide us in our early development, but have outlived their usefulness to (reasonably) enlightened, thinking beings.

Reason: Science Is Starting To Answer All Of The Big Questions

The big questions: how did we get here, where did we come from, where are going—have been with us for our entire existence, and we are finally reaching a point in our development where we are beginning to be able to address and even answer some of them. Not in the way our ancestors did, but with new tools and information that have only been recently available to us.

The field of physics, and recently quantum mechanics, has revealed things to us about the world we live in that could not have been known even half a century ago—things like the nature of matter and the structure of cells and proteins—which was about the time that the double-helix model of DNA was accurately hypothesized by James D. Watson and Francis Crick, and the “code” with which we are programmed became known to us.

And while the religious may argue that these things are aspects of God’s design, the skeptic may counter that though there may very well be a design, it does not automatically follow that it is the design of a Creator deity. For what the majority of the devout fail to realize is that…

Reason: There Can Be Spirituality Absent Religion

Not only is there a strong sense of the spiritual among most of those who are atheist, but many of them feel that it is the need for spiritual oneness—the longing that is innate to most of us to be a part of a more significant whole—that is most cruelly exploited by religion. For while the skeptic contends that we were not all created by a God, that does not mean that we all didn’t come from the same place.

Indeed, in purely practical terms, we did—from the universal singularity before all of time and space, before our Universe began, the same “place”—if it can truly be called that—that everything, living and non-living, past, present and future, originated in. This is what Carl Sagan understood when he penned the above quote; that there is no difference between any of us, and manufacturing differences where there are none serve only to isolate and divide.

This need for oneness, for return to a singularity, is a part of human nature that is so very easily manipulated, as those who claim to offer it to us are doubtless aware. But there is no one path to it, no one way; and likewise, no way to absolve ourselves of the one absolute imperative of human existence. This is perhaps the concept that troubles the non-religious the most, because…

Reason: Religion Helps Us Avoid Responsibility

If every aspect of our existence is a part of God’s plan; if everything that has ever happened or will ever happen is God’s will; if we exist only for God, then the need for us to be responsible to and for ourselves is negated.

Even the most heinous crimes against humanity—against ourselves, from the murder of a single child to the Holocaust—can be ascribed to God’s will. But what does that mean for us? In the most practical terms, it means that we are not responsible for our actions. That if a parent abandons a child, a rich man becomes richer off the backs of the poor, a corporation causes irreparable damage to the environment, or a government exterminates thousands of its own innocent citizens, it was all a part of God’s plan. It was inevitable; it could not have been avoided. There is nothing to learn. We are not responsible.

This, of course, can lead into a much longer discussion about destiny versus free will, but thinking people—both religious and non-religious—can and must agree that it is the purpose of the human race to never stop learning, and never stop growing. It’s more than a belief system, and it remains relevant regardless of what you believe or don’t believe—indeed, whether God exists or not. It’s why we’re here, and it’s our responsibility.

You can follow Mike Floorwalker’s blog or Twitter no matter what you believe, so long as you’re cool.

The post 10 Reasons for Man to Leave Religion Behind appeared first on Listverse.

The contradiction: After murdering his brother, Cain runs off and shacks up with another woman—despite his mother Eve being the only thing on Earth with human ovaries.

Why it’s not: Remember that scene in Dark Knight Rises when Bane does his prison speech and we catch a glimpse of him in the future, even as he continues speaking? Rather than screaming “how can he be in two places at once?” and blaming it on witchcraft, we understood it was Nolan using non-chronological editing to heighten the emotion of the scene. And guess what? The same thing happens in the Bible.

In Genesis 4:16-17, we hear that Cain went and got a wife. In Genesis 5:4 we hear that Adam lived 800 years and had enough sons and daughters to populate the planet. Because storytelling was different 4,000 years ago, all that’s happened is we’ve heard the whole of Cain’s tale in one go, rather than split up across Genesis, soap opera style. It’s the same storytelling trick that allows us to watch Phantom Menace after Return of the Jedi without becoming confused, only a whole lot less disappointing.

The contradiction: Faced with a city of homosexuals, God flies into a rage and blows the whole place up. Faced with his servant Lot having drunken sex with his daughters, God has no problems with it.

Why it’s not: Because the sodomites tried to rape God’s angels, people have used this story as evidence that God firebombed the place because he hates gay people. Only the Bible doesn’t say that. Ezekiel 16:49 makes it pretty clear the people of Sodom were killed for being greedy and inhospitable to the poor, as does Amos 4:1-11 and Jeremiah 23:14. In the original passage, the angels are traveling around ancient Canaan disguised as hobos, taking hospitality where they find it. Now, kindness to strangers and poor people is obviously a big theme in the Bible. So when the holy hobos move on to wealthy Sodom and only local immigrant Lot offers them his hospitality, it says more about the place than any same-sex action ever could. This isn’t just my opinion by the way; plenty of scholars have come to the same conclusion. The contradiction only arises if you come at it from an anti-gay standpoint.

The contradiction: Our whole species is directly descended from Adam and Eve. That means a whole lot of incest, the effects of which should be pretty obvious by now.

Why it’s not: We tend to forget that the Bible was originally written in ancient Hebrew. Thanks to our wildly different language system, this throws up all sorts of quirks in translation. For example, 1 Samuel 20:41 can be translated as either a passage about King David crying, or about him getting an erection. In the early chapters of Genesis it gets even more confusing. In Hebrew, ‘Adam’ isn’t just a name—it literally means ‘man’. So the creation story can either be about one man called Adam and his wife Eve, or about the birth of man. Since Genesis 5:1-2 explicitly refers to Adam as ‘them’, it makes sense to think of Biblical Adam as an example of synecdoche—a literary technique where a part (one man) is substituted for a whole (the entire human race). So even God himself didn’t intend Genesis to be read literally.

The contradiction: God totally tells the Israelites he’s the only God. The Bible then proceeds to mention a ton of other Gods.

Why it’s not: Aside from pioneering literary techniques, the Bible’s also crammed with some pretty heretical psychology. For example, Galatians 4:8 and Isaiah 37:19 outright claim most gods were forged in the minds of men, and following their non-existent law made slaves of us all. Aside from sounding like something Richard Dawkins might say, it reduces guys like Molech and Baal and Dagon to nothing more than the ancient equivalent of those bargain bucket knockoffs of recent blockbusters. But what about the times God refers to himself as multiple people? That’s just the Holy Trinity—the father, son and Holy Spirit that all make up the one big G.

The contradiction: The New Testament claims Judas both hanged himself and exploded after falling over.

Why it’s not: If you’ve seen Con Air, you probably remember John Malkovich’s death scene. Aside from going on for fifteen minutes, it includes his charactering getting stabbed, smashed into a wall, electrocuted, dropped several hundred feet and finally crushed by a laundry press. It’s the very definition of ‘overkill’, but it’s also what basically happens to Judas. Although Matthew kills him off in 27:5, Luke brings him back for a Con Air in Acts 1:18 by describing him falling and his stomach exploding. Since we usually don’t explode from falling over and Judas was already dangling from a tree, it makes sense to see Luke’s account as a record of what happens when a rotted corpse falls from a great height. Because he’s tactful, Matthew focuses on the hanging bit. Because he’s Jerusalem’s answer to Eli Roth, Luke plumps for the exploding stomach.

The contradiction: God created everything, including maths. The Bible is God’s word. It also doesn’t know what Pi is.

Why it’s not: 2 Chronicles 4:2 puts the value of Pi at ‘three’. If you have even the vaguest inkling of mathematics, you probably know that’s not only wrong, it’s so wrong that accepting it as truth would involve resetting our entire understanding of the universe. So what gives? Well, the Bible hated specifics. When all the people in the city of Ai are killed, their number is put at 12,000. Not slightly more or slightly less, but bang on 12,000. When a bunch of people decide to leave Mount Gilead, they number exactly 22,000, while exactly 10,000 stay. Since this happens all the time, it’s not that big a leap to assume the writer of Chronicles rounded Pi down. Granted, that’s still wrong, but he lived at a time when advanced mathematics meant being able to count all your fingers and toes.

The contradiction: The Bible makes it pretty clear you only have one life before heading off to heaven or hell. So when Job says “naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return there”, he’s either lying about reincarnation or about to do something we don’t really want to think about.

Why it’s not: Like most books, the Bible uses metaphors. Since Jesus himself spoke in parables, taking every passage literally would mean believing the son of God spent way too much time worrying about lost coins and giving wedding advice. Same deal with Job: throughout the story he uses phrases like “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle” and “My flesh is clothed with worms”. In other words he talks in metaphor. The mother’s womb image is nothing more than a poetic way of saying he’ll die one day—it only becomes a contradiction if you somehow forget the whole of high school English.

The contradiction: According to Jesus, you can go to hell for saying ‘fool’. Then Jesus himself uses the term a few pages later.

Why it’s not: Taken in the context of Matthew 5:21-22, it’s pretty clear Jesus is using ‘fool’ as shorthand for any aggressive insult. The one-way ticket to hell comes from being abusive rather than the word itself—kind of like how using the n-word with your black friends is cool, but shouting it at random people in the street is not wise. Also, the full passage only prohibits you from getting abusive with your ‘brother’, in other words with another follower of God. When Jesus calls the Pharisees fools a few pages later, it’s while accusing them of swapping God for gold. In other words, as far as he’s concerned, they’re no longer his ‘brothers’—he can call them whatever he likes.

The contradiction: Moses is said to have written the first five books of the Bible. The last of these five, Deuteronomy, ends with Moses’ death.

Why it’s not: Remember the Silmarillion? It’s an unfinished Tolkien book that was completed by his son and published in 1977. Same deal with Deuteronomy. Early versions of the Bible were written on scrolls, with breaks between books often either unclear or non-existent. While we’ve got the order sorted now, at the time there wasn’t a definitive break between the end of Deuteronomy and the start of Joshua. So the account of Moses dying could just as equally belong at the start of the next book—we’ve just stuck it in Book 5 for completeness sake. In other words, it’s less a contradiction than it is good storytelling.

The contradiction: Despite seeing exactly the same stuff happen, Matthew, Mark and John disagree about nearly all of it.

Why it’s not: Pick literally any significant event and you’ll find no eyewitnesses can agree on what happened. Take 9/11—here’s some testimony proving the government blew up the Pentagon. Now here’s some different eyewitness testimony proving it was a terrorist attack. You can apply this to almost anything: go to the beach with your friends on Sunday and by Friday you’ll all have slightly different takes on what happened. Wait another 20 years and your stories will be completely different, bar the central fact that you were physically at the beach. It’s called memory and it’s faulty—plenty of studies have concluded that eyewitness testimony is almost useless for that very reason. Given the gospels are attributed to different authors and supposedly written some 20–50 years after Jesus’ death, it’s kind of impressive they agree on anything at all.

The post 10 Bible Contradictions That Aren’t appeared first on Listverse.

With its center situated at Clonegal Castle in Ireland, the Fellowship of Isis has a global community of over 24,000 members, of any religion. The Fellowship’s aim is to promote the ‘divine feminine’ and educates her members about the relationship that can be formed with a Goddess. Members can be ordained into priesthood through ritual (long distance is not a problem, as members of the fellowship can ‘ tune in’ to you) and can be as active as they want to be. There are ‘ College of Isis’, centers through which you can learn more about a particular goddess, and many sub groups in which members combine their own faiths with the principles of the Fellowship of Isis Manifesto. Overall the fellowship appears to be a friendly bunch, formed around founder Olivia Robertson.

David Bowie knew about voodoo when he appeared in the film ‘ Labyrinth’ in leggings and a cod piece. The Voodoo Authentica Cultural Center know more than he ever did. Voodoo spells are explained and advice is given for those who pinned their doll in the wrong places. In the voodoo religion there is one God and a pantheon of gods. There’s a lot of confusion about the difference between voodoo and hoodoo, but hoodoo is mainly a collection of Cajun magic rituals and spells whereas voodoo has a lot of rituals, rules and traditions.

The Druids are still alive and kicking today and appear to focus on creativity and care for the environment and their wisdom. Druids see themselves as personifications of three types: the singer, shaman, and sage. Singers focus on the ancient bardic knowledge, storytelling and creativity, the shaman focuses on healing and the sage aims to develop inner wisdom. There is a different path that is chosen by every druid, whether the aim is to care for the land and raise funds for charities, or to work on magic. You don’t have to get involved in constructing a wicker man to burn people in nowadays, you can even focus on animal lore!

Asatru, the Icelandic word meaning ‘to believe in gods’, is the name of a Scandinavian religion that, according to its followers, covered most of Europe in ‘ ancient times’. This polytheistic religion is based on many gods from different traditions within scandinavian mythology and appears to be rooted in a strong idea about racial superiority and evil. Hitler and his Nazi party were deeply interested in Asatru, took many symbols such as the swastika from it and founded many of their Holocaust ideas on it. Main gods that members of Asatru follow are are Odin, Thor, and Frey, and runes and their meanings are used in rituals and spells.

Wicca is a modern religion based on witchcraft, rituals, spells, magic and a god and goddess. The basis of this religion can be found in folklore, and most witches quote the ‘Book of shadows’, a book with rituals by Gerald Gardner as their major source of inspiration. In 1939 Gardner supposedly started a coven (a group of witches) from which the modern traditions are derived. Wiccans believe in a triple goddess, the virgin, mother and wise woman, connected to the phases of the moon, as well as in a horned god. Wicca is popular amongst Buffy the Vampire Slayer type teens and adults living mainly in the USA and Great Britain. The focus is on magic that is connected with nature and its flow, with the main rule being ‘ do what thou wilt and harm none’.

Geomancy means ‘ divining the earth’. Geomancy is based on the belief that the earth energies (ebb and flow) run throughout the landscape, where these lines of course also may cross each other. These energy lines may influence our daily lives, according to geomancers. Personal success, the home and work can be changed or improved when a connection is made with the earth and its energy lines. It is believed by many geomancers that geomancy can be a great tool in resolving cases of technopathic stress (changes in the geomagnetic field of the earth that may cause psychic disturbances in the home). The geomancer throws rocks, sticks or sand on the ground and interprets the pattern formed by these. Geomancy has been around in Europe since the Middle ages. One of the best known practitioners is American author John Michael Greeg, also known for being a druid.

The Church of satan was founded on the 30th of april in 1966 by Anton LaVey. Of course he gave himself the fun position of high priest. In 2011 Pete H. Gilmore took over this position from Blanch Barton who led the church after LaVey’s death in 1997. Gilmore defines satanism as a way of thinking and sees atheism as the foundation of satanism. There is no god or devil, and people are responsible for their own actions in the church. Satanists don’t believe in spells either. Basically the whole exercise seems pretty pointless.

The Aetherius Society was founded in 1955 by George King, taxi driver, to uplift humanity, and you! By use of karma yoga and by listening to the wisdom of spiritual masters, you can heal and evolve and help the greater good. If you want you can join in with a power circle meeting (apparently they’re everywhere). With a slogan like “Service is the Jewel in the rock of attainment”, one of the society’s Nine Freedoms, surely you can’t go wrong. Through the society the wise cosmic masters from other planets are trying to convey important knowledge to us silly humans. As political and spiritual leaders have ignored the masters, it is up to us to sort it all out. So help, join, listen to their online radio and uplift everything! Maybe George would have reached more people if he had stayed with his day job.

Raëlism is the second largest religion based on a belief in aliens and UFOs. The first one is of course Scientology. Life on earth was started by the Elohim (a group of extraterrestrials) who were pretty bad and lied to humanity and said that they were angels. According to Raëlism this group included Buddha and Jesus. But in fact its all about the aliens you see. The group offers seven levels of initiation and its members strive towards peace and democracy through a web of alien-belief-induced ritual and ‘ knowledge’. The religion was started by Claude Vorilhon, also known to his followers as Raël. He even started a business venture connected to the religion in 1997 (the venture was called Clonaid). In 2002 Clonaid claimed to have cloned an American woman, who then had a daughter called Eve. If all this does not tempt you, the Raëlistic Sensual Meditation techniques may.

If you feel drawn to water based activities such as swimming and boating, and a pantheon of water deities, you may just be a Mami Wata child! Mami Wata deities are mostly female and half human, half fish. Mami Wata (you may have guessed) means “water women”. Her followers may be abducted and taken to her under water lair of joy and gifts. She will then leave you some shiny trinkets and reappear in a dream (of course you have taken the gifts, who wouldn’t?) and demand them back. If you really want to keep them she will demand your sexual faithfulness. You would think you would see her only close to water, but no! Mami Wata can take on any form and could even appear in the shape of a man. She likes to go drinking in bars and she likes busy shops as chosen locations for her abductions. This sounds downright creepy to me. I wonder how many Mami Wata followers have gone home with some strange fishy looking dude who gave them a plastic pearl a a gift.

If none of these groups and religions took your fancy, you may like this one. Join the Yaohnanen! Much has been said about them on the Internet and you may have to move away from your snug home to the Pacific to enjoy this religion to its full extent. If you can wholeheartedly agree that Prince Philip of England is a joyful overlord, and you feel happy worshipping him, try to join this tribe. The South Pacific island Tanna has a legend that says that a powerful white man emerged from a volcano and travelled to marry a powerful monarch. Currently Yaohnanen chief Siko is still waiting for Philip to return to his home base. I wonder if they would change their mind if they knew about his little racial joke-faux-pas situations.

Sabine Bevers is a freelance writer with an interest in all things weird.

The post 10 Bizarre Spiritual Groups You Can Join appeared first on Listverse.

Pope Francis was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1936 making him 76—two years younger than Pope Benedict upon his election. Pope Francis is the first pope from the Americas. His father was an Italian railroad worker which probably accounts, in part, for his humility and simplicity in his life as an Archbishop and Cardinal. He has four brothers and sisters. Before entering the seminary it was Bergoglio’s dream to become a chemist. It is unlikely he ever imagined he would one day be the Supreme Pontiff.

Pope Francis is believed to have been a serious contender at the 2005 conclave which eventually elected Pope Benedict XVI. Leaked documents after the conclave show that Pope Francis received forty votes in the third ballot but this was reduced to twenty-three in the final one. He was very popular at the time and it is likely that this popularity was one of the reasons for his election in this year’s conclave. Smear campaigns and bad press prior to the election of 2005 may have been part of the reason that he lost but it is also said that when he realized he might win, he asked the Cardinal Electors not to vote for him. Perhaps a similar situation arose this time given the fact that the final ballot took much longer than was expected.

Pope Francis is the first pope to reign with that title. He selected the name in memory of St Francis of Assisi. Interestingly, another Francis is St Francis Xavier—the co-founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits)—the other founder was St Ignatius. The Jesuits are currently considered to be very liberal but Pope Francis was one of the rare conservative members of the society. For this reason a smear campaign was started prior to the 2005 election against him claiming he “never smiled”. It is believed that the campaign was initiated by other members of the Jesuit order.

The Jesuits were founded by St Ignatius Loyola and six students from the University of Paris (including St Francis Xavier) in 1540. The intention of the order was root out protestantism and to run schools. They were suppressed in 1760 for their political maneuvering but the suppression was lifted in 1814. In modern times the Jesuits have often been involved in liberation theology—entwined with modernism which allows for the alteration of inalterable dogmas. However, a few remain true to the original intentions of the founders and Pope Francis is amongst that few.

Pope Francis is considered to be amongst the conservative faction of the Church. In the early 1900s (some might even say earlier) a heresy arose called modernism. Essentially the people who subscribe to this view believe that the Church can—and should—reverse previous dogmas and strip the Church back to a simplistic form as seen in the early years. Many Popes spoke against modernism claiming it would lead to confusion and dissent and ultimately the destruction of the Church. With the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, modernism was introduced in a subtle way by what had become known as the liberal faction. Since then, the conservatives and the liberals have been at each other’s throats in the Vatican trying to gain or maintain power. Pope Benedict XVI was seen as a conservative Pope and the election of Pope Francis who is also conservative was to be expected given the fact that Pope Benedict XVI elevated more than half of the cardinals from amongst those he trusted most. Having said that, the simplistic life previously led by Pope Francis could mean that the some of the pomp and trappings of the papacy may be minimized in his pontificate.

While he is considered to be relatively quiet when it comes to social justice, Pope Francis has spoken out against inequality: “The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers.” Nevertheless, Pope Francis advocates personal holiness before social justice believing that the latter will flow from the former. He is more a pope of holiness (through understanding God) first and charity second. This is in conformity with traditional religious education in the Church in the past.

In the 1970s Pope Francis (then the superior of the Jesuits) was accused of kidnapping two Jesuit priests who refused to step down when he ordered them to. This occurred during the so-called Dirty War—a time of state brutality and guerrilla warfare in which the extreme left fought against the conservative government. The priests who were allegedly kidnapped were on the side of the left and Cardinal Bergoglio had ordered that the Jesuits distance themselves from the fighting and maintain a conservative stance. The cardinal rejected the allegations of kidnapping and no charges were brought.

While stating that all humans must be respected (as shown when he washed the feet of twelve AIDS patients in 2001), Pope Francis has strongly spoken against same-sex unions and vehemently opposed legislation in Argentina which intended to legalize them. He also opposes adoption by gay couples stating that it is discrimination against children and a “real and dire anthropological throwback.” He also stated (in a letter to all Argentinian monasteries): “Let’s not be naive, we’re not talking about a simple political battle; [same sex unions are] a destructive pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”

While he was the leader of the Catholic Bishops of Argentina, Cardinal Bergoglio had a palace and chauffeured limousine. He opted, however, to live in a small apartment and catch the bus to work each day. He cooked his own meals and shunned the trappings of his office. For this reason he is seen by many to be a very humble and very holy man. He is noted, on the other hand, for his strength and outspokenness in matters relating to abortion and contraception (which he strongly opposes in line with traditional Catholic doctrine)—don’t expect to see women priests or married priests on his watch.

Pope Francis is likely to be a conservative Pope like Pope Benedict XVI. He will most likely continue down the same path as his predecessor but in a perhaps more forceful way. He will probably travel more than Pope Benedict and almost certainly his first foreign visit outside of Italy will be to Argentina. It is probable that his personal habits of simplicity will remain and we will see less of the richness of Church vestments and art during his reign. He is also likely to reform the Curia (government of the Church) as it is seen desperately in need of it following scandals and abuses in the Church. Furthermore, he will be presented shortly with a 300 page document prepared by three cardinals that names and shames the men in the curia behind many intrigues and scandals. There is a good chance that many men will be removed from their current offices.

The post 10 Fascinating Facts About Pope Francis appeared first on Listverse.

Quite a few of the laws God enacts in the Torah make the Jews look rather bad, but that is not a fair view of them. Genesis 6:5 and 6 state, “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.” So it was not just the Israelites, but everyone, with whom God frequently got angry.

There were no laws before God gave them to Moses. So Cain might not have understood why he should not have killed his brother, Abel. Today we know better, primarily because of the Bible. It is the go-to Book for most people when discussing ethics. Not only did God have to command us, “Thou shalt not kill,” he also had to command us, “Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion.” He then explains that the Jews are his chosen people, and that they should not do these abominable things, because all the cultures around them are doing them.

Perhaps more than any other book, the Bible teaches anyone who reads just what sort of people we all came from, and what we can expect from our species in general. One on one, most of us are sane and good-natured. But there’s always the chance for a soccer riot, and when this “pack of dogs” mindset crops up, you can expect to see people killed just for the thrill, or the challenge of getting away with it. You can expect rapes and looting. This is who we are in the Bible, and in Revelation, it is who we still are.

Lewis Black once said that the God of the New Testament is a really great guy, especially when compared to the God of the Old Testament, “who…is a prick.” The severity of his anger, the lurid brutality of actions have put more people off Judeo-Christian-Muslim theism than any other reason. But the Bible does make amply clear why God treats his own chosen people as harshly as he does. He explains through multiple prophets, over thousands of years, that whenever bad things happen to the Israelites, they have brought it on themselves, and it is God’s punishment against them.

He also punishes other cultures in the area for worshiping other gods. His punishments are extreme to state the obvious. When Jerusalem sins against him by turning aside after other gods, he declares through Ezekiel that the city will be ransacked by a foreign nation, Babylon. He could destroy Israel as he did Sodom and Gomorrah, but he wants Israel to survive and learn how to be righteous in his eyes. So they are defeated and taken into slavery by Babylon.

God’s methods of instilling discipline in people are difficult to take. But when you were a child, did you love your parents at every moment? It was difficult to understand why these two adults you knew better than any others would take you out for pizza at no charge to you, and an hour later spank you and yell at you for doing something of which they disapproved. And for just a little while, minutes only perhaps, you hated them. You were angry and wished terrible things on them. You said, “I’ll show you. I’ll hold my breath till I die. I’ll never speak to you again.”

Then, the next day, everything was somehow back to normal. Welcome to the Old Testament. The Bible makes it clear many times throughout that this is how we should think of God, as a father figure for all adults. “Honor thy father and thy mother” works for children until they reach the age of self-reliance, after which they should still honor them, or their memories, by raising their own children in the same way, and it also works for adults as an instruction to honor God, everyone’s father.

That sounds obvious, but people routinely bring up that God made the rules, whether the laws of physics, or the rules of logic. You name it, God created it, and many theories have been proposed for how God performs the miracles in the Bible (more on that in #5). The parting of the Red Sea might have been caused by the eruption of Santorini, or a freak windstorm. The 10 plagues of Egypt began with the Nile turning to blood. This might have been due to red algae, which kills fish, which float to the surface and draw flies, gnats, and more. The frogs were able to get out of the river.

But this is all to imply that God operates within the confines of Nature, at least as we understand it, according to the rules he created. That is not necessarily true. Ezekiel and some of Paul’s letters emphasize the sovereign will of God, namely that he has the power to do as he pleases, and no one has the slightest right to take issue with him. Job attempts to do so as politely as possible, ranting about why God would let harm befall him when he has done everything right. What is God’s rejoinder? “Where were you when I created the earth? Answer me, if you even know how to.” Job sums this up with, “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.”

One of God’s most shocking infractions against what we consider the rules takes place when he “hardens Pharaoh’s heart.” This is to say that Pharaoh might have let the Israelites go long before the plague against the firstborn. But God states blatantly at Exodus 14:17, “And I, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall follow them: and I will get me honour upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen.”

Here, the Egyptians are following the Israelites into the parted Red Sea. How could they be so dumb as to chase after them between the walls of water? Because God made them dumb through anger. We rarely think of God as a braggart seeking fame at all costs, but this story illiustrates just that. Not even free will is immune to his power. How do we reconcile this scene with the merciful, loving persona we have cultivated in him over the millennia? The Bible itself explains that God did this to teach the Egyptians just who is God, that their gods do not exist, that they worship empty idols, and that they had better worship the Hebrew God. It is not a request; it is not a plea; it is the first commandment. And there is no safety in the laws of nature, or physics, or free will, or logic, from God’s will.

The Old Testament is thought by Christians to be incomplete on the subject of the afterlife. If you ask a Jewish person what happens to them after death, they will usually reply with a variation of, “I don’t know. But I will live on in the good works of my children.” Jews do not believe that they will go to Heaven, until after the Messiah has come to grant them admission into Heaven. They believe that Jesus was not the Messiah, since they consider that he did not fulfill several Messianic prophecies.

Christians, however, believe that Jesus is the Messiah, conquered death by his nature as God in the flesh, and by that act gained for everyone who believes in it admission into Heaven. Thus it is obvious why Christians are expected to be unafraid of death, to wit, that there is no such thing for them. The transition from Earth to Heaven may be painful, and will always be a source of grief to someone, but it is just that, a transition, not an end. Christian theology maintains that there is no end to a Christian’s life once s/he is born.

But neither should those who only hold to the teachings of the Old Testament fear death, since if they are right that the Messiah has not yet come, then they go nowhere upon death, neither to Hell, nor to Heaven. The Hebrew word for their destination, if any, is “sheol,” or the “grave.” Here, there is no punishment or reward, until such time as the Messiah does come, fulfills all the prophecies concerning him, and opens the door to Heaven. Hence, all those who died before receive their spirits and go to Heaven or Hell.

The Bible makes abundantly clear in both Testaments that to fear death is insensible, since there is no such thing in the first place. Fear of Hell is completely different.

Nikola Tesla was the first to surmise that the Ark was actually a capacitor, which is a storage unit for electricity. Benjamin Franklin was the first to arrange several of these in a row and call the assembly a “battery,” his choice of words, as the extra power reminded him of a battery of cannon. The Ark is first mentioned at Exodus 25:10, at which point God gives very detailed instructions on how to build it.

It is to be built of shittim (acacia) wood, 2.5 cubits long, 1.5 wide, and 1.5 deep. A cubit is the length of the forearm, from the elbow to the middle fingertip. This is usually deemed 18 inches, so the box proper would be about 45 by 27 by 27 inches. God instructs the Israelites to overlay the box, inside and out, with 24-karat gold. They took this gold from the Egyptians. They are then to cover the box with a gold-overlaid lid, with molding and a cherubim “mercy seat,” between the outstretched wings of which God will communicate to Moses.

Now consider the following: gold is the third finest conductor of electricity of all metals, after silver and copper; the Israelites wandered for 40 years in a very dry, windy climate, often very cold at night; the Ark was covered with silk, which rubbed back and forth over it during transit. The result is a metal box that you cannot touch without being shocked. How much voltage it would produce is as easy to answer as constructing one using the Bible’s blueprint.

Various sources agree on an estimate of 1000 volts built up within 1 minute of setting the lid in place, or 1 minute of grounding out through another object, like Uzziah. An electric chair uses about 2,000 volts.

Nevertheless, it is doubtful that such an electric capacitor could knock down the walls of Jericho or stop the flow of Jordan River, so here, divine power must be attributed. Whenever the Bible gives technical details of an event, the question “How?” is usually answerable in a word, “God.”

But if you want a scientific explanation for how Noah got 7 pairs of every clean and 1 pair of every unclean animal into a boat anywhere from 450 to 1000 feet long and 75 to 165 feet wide, the Bible will not give you one. Even if he only saved the species of his area around northern Iran, southern Armenia, and eastern Turkey, there are still too many to fit on the ark. Some theologians have posited that God placed the animals into the fifth dimension for the year-long stay, so they were technically on the ark, but in such a way as to render them invisible or at least out of the way of Noah and his family.

How did Jesus walk on water? A few scientists recently proposed that he was actually standing on a piece of ice that floated him across the Sea of Galilee (Lake Gennesaret, today), given the weather at the time. These scientists immediately received death threats and hate mail. Whether Jesus really did walk on water is a matter of faith in the first place, not just our faith in such an ability, but as an illustration intended to teach us the power of faith. The Bible’s answer for “How?” is simply, “Because He is Jesus.”

The Bible’s stories are, however, meant to teach us the answers to “Why?” Jesus walked on water to teach his Disciples the power of faith. And his lesson worked quite well for Peter, who believed he could as well, based on what he was witnessing. The story teaches us that Jesus never doubts in time of trial, while we do. We get scared, or yield to pain or temptation, and our faith weakens consequently.

How did God create the heavens and the earth in 6 days? Because he is God. Scientifically? Maybe it’s a metaphor for the Big Bang, “day” a metaphor for a few billion years. The Bible leaves this for total conjecture. But why did he do it? The Bible does explain this in many ways. It was his pleasure to do so; he knew it would be good work; he can see to the end of time, and knows the ending will be happy.

Many times throughout, the Bible offers very specific locations for events, and there has never been any reason to doubt the Book’s accuracy. The site where the Israelites crossed the Red Sea on dry ground is still not known with universal certainty, but the traditional site places it at a point on the present-day Suez Canal. But Exodus 14:2 describes this location quite well, “Tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp near Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. They are to encamp by the sea, directly opposite Baal Zephon.” Pi Hahiroth probably means “the mouth of the gorges,” indicating a river which at the time had long since dried up. No dry riverbeds have been found in the area around the Suez Canal. The only bodies of water are the Mediterranean and the Nile. The Red Sea is actually a mistranslation of “Yam Suph,” which means Reed Sea, either a marshy area, or a vaster body of water with reeds along its shores.

So if the Israelites did not cross at the Suez Canal, their flight took them across the Sinai Peninsula to the Gulf of Aqaba, with the Egyptians in hot pursuit. A more fitting site is at modern-day Nuweiba, a resort town on the east coast of the Peninsula. It is the delta plain of an extinct river that flowed through the Sinai mountains. Two prominent peaks rise above the plain, and they match the definitions of Migdol and Baal-Zephon. The former means “tower,” and the latter “Lord of the North,” both of which could well be nicknames of mountains.

A simple Google Earth view of Nuweiba matches everything depicted in the famous scene in Exodus. The delta plain is large enough to accommodate over a million people, and there is a submerged landbridge 90 feet underwater that spans the Gulf for several miles in an east-northeast direction. Walking across the Gulf would still be impossible, were it not for this bridge, given the 2-mile depth at an angle of 70 degrees. At the other side there is a pillar, round and bare, which some have argued was posted there centuries afterward to commemorate the crossing site. Nuweiba may not be the correct site, but it has a better claim based on the Bible’s description of the location.

Moses’s burial site is also given with fair precision in Deuteronomy 34:1-6, in which Moses climbs Mount Nebo, then Pisgah, a different mountain, in Moab to view the Promised Land. Moses dies there and God himself buries him in the valley opposite Beth Peor. “Beth” is Hebrew for “house of,” and “Peor” is the name of a mountain, not Nebo. So Moses climbed two mountains to get a look at Canaan, then died near a third mountain and was buried in a valley that mountain faces.

Today, via oral tradition dating from the events of the Torah, we have a fair idea of which mountain near Nebo and Pisgah is Peor, and it stands at 31 degrees, 48 minutes, 42.75 seconds North, by 35 degrees, 45 minutes, 28.31 seconds East. There is only one valley directly opposite it, and although the Bible states that “to this day no one knows where his grave is,” the fact that we have a good idea of the valley itself is extraordinary in itself.

No less than Aristotle argued that the world, and by extension, the Universe, must have always existed, from eternity; that is, the notion of a time before the Universe and its contents made no sense to him. His view was supported by the intuition of Critolaus and Averroes, among other greats. The Old Testament, however, opens with a definite beginning, a single event in which God says, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Today, we know that the Universe most likely began from a single, infinitesimally small point which contained all the matter and energy the Universe has while you’re reading this list.

The Old Testament is still our main source of information for the history of ancient Israel, from about 1200 BC on. The Bible gives no dates, but traditional conjecture centers on the 1300s to 1200s for the events of the Exodus and Jewish re-inhabitation of Canaan. David was anointed king in about 1002 over the united Kingdom of Israel. His reign is mentioned by a stone tablet discovered in 1993 in Tel Dan, dating from about 870 to 750 BC. This lends strong credence to the Bible’s narrative of Israeli history. There was a Dvid, who was king at about the traditional date.

Noah’s Flood was apparently a worldwide event, as many cultures from that time around the world corroborate it, including the Ninevites, the Epic of Gilgamesh, accounts of the Kiche, Mayans, Indians, and even a few native American tribes, all dating roughly to 8000 BC. This comes close to a theory of a bolide impact in about 7640, plus or minus 200 years. The bolide is believed to have caused a universal deluge.

It is fair to turn to the Bible first in order to learn about Israeli royal lineages, battles, invasions, dispersions, subjugations. The Books of Nehemiah and Daniel provide excellent sources of information on the 586 BC Babylonian sacking of Jerusalem and destruction of Solomon’s Temple, and Jewish life in Babylonian exile. Daniel’s depiction of King Belshazzar is supported by the Nabonidus Cylinder, found in 1881, which mentions Belshazzar reigning at around the same time. Daniel’s account of the Persian conquest of Babylon and the death of Belshazzar is corroborated independently by Persian records.

The Bible is a classic, just like the Divine Comedy or King Lear. Admit it: believer or not, you’re entertained by this story or that. The Bible is loaded with excitement, sex, war, love, and along the way, you’re almost unaware that you’re being taught ethics, history, poetry, prose, and more. Frankly, we remember the bad moments better than the good, but that’s the way it is with literature. What is the first thing you remember about Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris? Quasimodo dies at the end, and not happily. What is the first thing you remember about Jesus? He gets tortured to death. And neither of them did anything wrong, at least as the authors of the literature present them.

Much of Western literature draws heavily on the Bible for inspiration, not necessarily in direct retellings, but in general character similarities, storylines, principles of ethics. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a reworking of the Gospels. So is The Matrix trilogy. Paradise Lost is an in-depth analysis of Christian theology and the character of Satan via a fictional rendering of the war in Heaven and life in the Garden of Eden. All the famous literary superheroes or villains who possess superhuman strength but one simple weakness, like Superman and Bane, are inspired by Samson, who acquired supernatural strength directly from God, but lost it when his hair was cut.

The Book of Job, as poetry, is held in as high esteem by literary critics as Shakespeare’s best work. Its author is referred to as “the Shakespeare of the Bible.” Whoever wrote the Torah, whether Moses or committee, has been referred to as “the Charles Dickens of the Bible,” for the brilliantly exhilarating narratives throughout Genesis, and the single high-adventure storyline of the Exodus.

The second-to-last lesson the Bible teaches is the importance of forgiveness. We do not get much of it at all until the Gospels, in which Jesus impresses on his Disciples, all the people of the time, and everyone forever after, the logical brilliance inherent in what the King James translation calls “lovingkindness,” a refusal to hold grudges, a desire to repair relationships, make and remain friends with anyone. In a word, “forgiveness” is the thesis of the New Testament. For Christians, at least, John 3:16 is the culminating verse of the entire Bible, the one on which all other verses comment. Despite all man’s imperfections, shortcomings, idiocy, pride, self-righteousness, and defiance against God’s law in the Old Testament, God still takes it upon himself to die as a replacement for man’s death through sin. This is God’s forgiveness of us.

Jesus teaches the crowds time and again that they should love one another; and forgiving any and all transgressions is what it means to Jesus to love. When Peter asks him, “How many times must I forgive my brother if he asks for it? Seven times?” he sounds as if he is reluctant to forgive, as if he would rather hold a grudge and hate someone for an offense, because it’s easier that way. Jesus tells him, “Not seven, but seventy times seven times!” He is not being literal here, but means that we should forgive one another infinitely provided that forgiveness is asked. This is the trick.

Many critics of this concept point out that forgiving someone as a rule invalidates the forgiveness, since it no longer means anything. But the Bible never says to do this. Jesus always describes forgiveness as being asked for, then given. If someone sins against you and does not ask for forgiveness, you are under no obligation to give it. Nevertheless, if they ask for it insincerely, you still forgive them, and you are not the fool, but good and generous. The sin then rests on them.

The post 10 Secular Ways to Appreciate the Bible appeared first on Listverse.

The pope is supreme. He is an absolute monarch who answers to no man on earth. When Pope Benedict XVI abdicated he did not offer his resignation to anyone: he simply declared it to be so. The pope is the only absolute authority in the Church. He can overrule any decision made by his delegates in other countries—the bishops. Bishops do have a certain autonomy but their statements must always be in accord with the wishes of the pope. And, in turn, the pope’s decisions must always be in accord with every pope in the past. No pope can create a new dogma (teaching). He can only confirm the dogmas that have been held since the founding of the Church.

So, for example, when the dogma of papal infallibility was declared by Blessed Pope Pius IX, it was not a new teaching or concept—it was a declaration that the issue has been held constantly and is no longer up for discussion. Pope John Paul II used infallibility to declare that women can never be ordained as priests in his letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis in 1994, merely confirming what the church had always taught. While a few dissenters remain—who would strictly be defined as heretics—the majority of the Church has now accepted that women priests are impossible.

The Church has a famous phrase which sums this up: “Roma locuta est, causa finita est”—“Rome [the pope] has spoken, the debate has ended.” This turns doctrine (long held beliefs whose finer points are still debated) into dogma (indisputable truths of the faith).

An antipope is a man who is considered by some to be the legitimate pope in opposition to the rightful one. History is riddled with these guys. During the Western Schism (a period in which the Church was rent apart with doctrinal discord) there were three popes who all had followers. In some cases even saints have been on the side of the wrong guy! But there can only ever be one lawful pope. When Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation takes effect, he is no longer pope. He will become Pope Emeritus. You may be surprised to know that there are a number of antipopes currently reigning (over rather tiny audiences in very bizarre circumstances).

The second Vatican council in the 1960s introduced innovations to the Church that were unheard of. Some Catholics as a result went into a form of underground church but others decided that the popes of the council were false. Consequently their friends “elected” them “popes”. The most ridiculous—and sad—case is that of “Pope” Michael. Pope Michael currently reigns over a congregation of fifty faithful that includes his mom and a scattering of “catholics” on the Internet. Above is a ten minute documentary of Pope Michael who divides his time between writing papal encyclicals (letters), doing chores around the house, and working in civvies at the local timber mill.

Since the very first pope, Pope St. Peter, the Vatican has been an important place for the papacy. St. Peter was crucified upside-down and his bones were laid to rest at the Vatican hill. You can literally say that there has been a papal presence in the Vatican since the founding of the Church in the first century. But there was a time when the living pope did not reign from there.

The Western Schism was a time of great discord in the Church. There were three men claiming to be the lawful pope and in the end it took the resignation of two and the deposition of a third to end the schism. The lawful pope—Pope Gregory XII—reigned from Avignon in France (you can still visit the papal palace there today), as did a number of his predecessors. His resignation ultimately allowed the schism to end, and a new pope—accepted by the whole Church—was elected: Pope Martin V.

Interestingly, one of the antipopes involved took the regnal name of Pope John XXIII. Why is this interesting? Because the second Vatican council of 1962, which has caused so much distress in the modern Church was convoked by a second Pope John XXIII—Angelo Roncallli—who chose to reign under the name of an antipope: an act which was unheard of in the history of the Church and has not been repeated since.

In the Gospel of St. Matthew (16:18–19), Jesus says: “And I say to thee: That thou art Peter [Kephas: meaning rock]; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee [Kephas: Peter] the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.” It was these words that gave St. Peter the authority to reign as the supreme head of Christ’s Church as Pope. The term pope—from Latin meaning father—did not come about as an official title until a few hundred years later, but the writings of the early Church fathers confirm that Peter was considered to be the first amongst all bishops.

This has interestingly been a disputed point by many non-Catholic apologists (people who argue a point) refer to another Biblical phrase: “And call none your father upon earth; for one is your father, who is in heaven.” However this is merely semantics as Jesus is stating that you should not regard any man as equal to “the father”: i.e. God. The pope is “father” in the same sense as your dad is father. Jesus was speaking against idolatry not using the very specific word “father” to refer to a human. The pope is considered to be God’s representative on earth . . . not his equal.

St. Peter chose his successors: Pope Linus (reigned 67–76), Pope Anacletus (79–92), and Pope Clement I (92–99). From Pope St. Peter to Pope Benedict XVI there is an undisputed line of 266 popes. Now . . . if you are clever you noticed that there were three years between Pope St. Linus and Pope St. Anacletus. That leads us to:

When a Pope dies—or abdicates as in our current situation—there is no pope. No committee of cardinals or bishops takes his place. There is simply no pope. This is called sede vacante—the see is vacant and we enter a period known as the interregnum: the time between popes. No new legislation can be proposed (as the pope is the supreme legislator) and no significant changes can occur within the Church. The papacy exists as an institution whether there is a man in it or not. Just as the British proclaim: “The King is dead. Long live the King,” the papal seat remains as an institution. Regardless of how long it takes to name a successor, the throne remains.

Certain superiors in the Church have powers to maintain the legal aspects of the Church but they can not make doctrinal decisions and the power is very limited.

It is only human nature to speculate on the up-coming pope. At present a number of papabile—men likely to be elected pope—have been named. Below is a brief summary of the five appearing as the favorites. From least likely to win to most here they are:

5. Francis Arinze: Nigeria—80 years old. Cardinal Arinze is a great cardinal but his time has passed. It is very rare for a papabile to lose one election and win the next. The only way Arinze will be next pope is if the cardinals can’t make a choice after numerous attempts. In that case he will be picked as a pope who is not likely to live long enough to cause any damage.

4. Peter Turkson: Ghanaian—64 years old. Cardinal Turkson is probably too young to be the next pope. He has been appointed to many liberal congregations in the Church and has had a very positive influence politically in Africa but he is being touted as the next pope almost entirely because of his name (see item one on this list). If he were elected as a virtual unknown, the Church could potentially be looking at a twenty-year reign. For someone whose policies are unknown this is not appealing.

3. Marc Ouellet: Canadian—68 years old. Like Bagnasco below, Cardinal Ouellet has had a lot of input into the creation of bishops under Pope Benedict XVI. He is currently the head of the Canadian bishops conference. He is relatively conservative but his north American roots may work against him as the Church is global and many nations may be put off by his “American” accent. Yes—it can be as simple as that.

2. Angelo Scola: Italian—72 years old. Scola is a conservative Cardinal who is currently the Archbishop of Milan and previously the Patriarch of Venice. Both of these dioceses have given us popes in the recent past—both highly controversial. The Church isn’t looking for controversy right now. He has not had a remarkable Cardinalate which may work against him in the conclave.

1. Angelo Bagnasco: Italian—70 years old. Cardinal Bagnasco is the Listverse pick for our next pope. He is generally conservative and is currently the Archbishop of Genoa and the head of three significant congregations in Rome. He has hand-picked many of the bishops created by Pope Benedict XVI so a lot of people owe him favors. He speaks five languages and is considered very approachable. He also looks like a pope (he is pictured above). He is currently the head of the Italian Bishops conference. His age is middling so if a two-thirds majority can’t be reached, he is still a likely candidate for an interim pope. If Angelo Cardinal Bagnasco is elected I foresee great changes happening in the Church.

Only cardinals (bishops in charge of churches within Rome) can vote. Only cardinals under eighty can vote. This conclave is different to the one which elected Pope Benedict XVI. Pope John Paul II changed the rules and allowed a fifty percent majority plus one to elect the pope. Pope Benedict XVI reversed this rule so this election will be under the traditional guidelines which requires a two thirds majority. The cardinals will meet in secrecy in the Sistine chapel until they elect a pope. There is no limit on how many times they will vote nor how many days it will take.

Another change from the 1960s is that previous elections had the electors burn their votes with wet straw if they had not elected a pope. This caused black smoke to rise from the chimney. But in the 1960s chemicals were added to the mix to make the smoke more clearly black or white. As soon as white smoke emerges from the chimney on election day: Habemus Papam!—We have a Pope!

To be elected pope you must be over the age of reason—generally accepted as seven years old—you must be male, and you must be baptized. The cardinals do not have to vote for one of their members: all male Catholics are eligible even if they are not priests.

The American media is spouting the usual “Obama moment” clichés about the up and coming election and are excited by the fact that the Church might follow America’s forward-thinking and elect a black pope. The only problem is . . . the Church has already had a black pope. Pope St. Miltiades reigned from 311–314. He was the reigning Pope when the emperor Constantine gave the Lateran palace to the Church. This palace remains to this day the home of the reigning pope.

In addition to a black pope, the Church has also had seven popes from the Middle East. Sorry American media: the Church had its Obama moment 1,700 years before you.

The pope has abdicated. What happens now? Because there can only be one pope, Pope Benedict XVI will no longer be referred to as your holiness or pope. He will become the Bishop Emeritus (retired bishop) of Rome. When greeting him face-to-face the correct terms are “Your Excellency” or “My Lord.” He will be Bishop Ratzinger, not Cardinal Ratzinger as his cardinalate of Ostia (church in Rome over which he presided before becoming pope) is now in someone else’s hands.

So—to clarify—Bishop Ratzinger will have no special authority over the Church. His plans are to go into reclusion in a cloister within the Vatican. It is very likely that his face will not be seen again in public after 8pm on the 28th of February, 2013. He intends to spend the remainder of his life praying for the good of the Church and writing. There is far too great a risk of confusion occurring if he were to speak publicly during the reign of the next pope.

Pope Benedict XVI will maintain his current appointments until his abdication date. His abdication has ended the process for the canonization (saint-making) of Pope John Paul II and the beatification (making a blessed) of Pope Paul VI—two of his predecessors who are both controversial: John Paul II for presiding over the child abuse scandal and Paul VI for the damage caused to the Church by his decisions after the second Vatican council.

And for the record, his abdication is not as shocking as it may seem in retrospect: he gave a number of hints about it by referring to papal abdications from the past and, perhaps most obviously, visited the tomb of the last pope to voluntarily resign—Pope St. Celestine V—and symbolically removed his pallium (a sign of his office) and laid it to rest on the grave (picture above).

In the Middle Ages a document came to light. It was a list of popes from the past and into the future. It was as cryptic as anything penned by Nostradamus but it earned itself a great reputation for its accuracy. Rather than naming the popes by name or regnal title, it gave a short description. Because it was very accurate regarding popes prior to its discover some say it is a medieval forgery, but certain recent popes have fit the bill rather well. The prophecy is attributed to 12th century Archbishop St Malachy.

Here are the predictions for the last two popes:

From the Labour of the Sun: Pope John Paul II was born and buried during a solar eclipse
Glory of the Olive: Pope Benedict XVI chose the regnal name Benedict. The benedictines have an olive branch on their coat of arms

The next prediction on the list is the last pope named. In other words, if the prophecy is true the next pope will be the last pope. This is meant to indicate the beginning of the great tribulation: the end of times. He is to be: Petrus Romanus—Peter the Roman.

Of the most likely candidates for the papacy at the moment we have three Italians (Romans) and one African Cardinal whose first name is Peter.

The two main thoughts on this point at present are:

1. To prevent the canonization of John Paul II and beatification of Paul VI, both of whom presided over two of the biggest scandals in recent Church history.
2. In order to indirectly manage the election of a pope he approves of.

John Paul II was the pope while the majority of the sexual-abuse scandal occurred in the Church. Yet he did nothing about it and allowed bishops to continue to hide the details from the civil law. Yet many Catholics saw him in such high regard that he earned such obscene epithets as “John Paul the Great.” After his death there was such a strong drive to canonize him that things got out of hand. It is possible that Pope Benedict XVI has resigned in order to put a halt to the saint-making mechanism that will declare him a saint in 2014. Interestingly, Pope Benedict XVI had already postponed the canonization by a year shortly prior to his abdication.

Whereas Pope Benedict XVI symbolically placed his pallium on the tomb of his predecessor, Pope Paul VI—who is supposed to be beatified next year—symbolically gifted his papal tiara (crown) to the United Nations. By many this was seen as the Church stepping down and giving its religious authority to a political organization. Given the Church’s history of opposing governments in cases such as slavery, this was a complete reversal of Church policy. It was an apparent attempt to join Church and state in a macabre manner. The Church has always considered the proper separation of Church and state to mean that the state stays away from religion, this was a pope asking the state to intervene in religion.

In our second scenario, Pope Benedict XVI was—prior to his elevation as Supreme Pontiff—the head of the Holy Office of Inquisition: now known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. That put him in a position to know every dirty little secret in the Vatican. He merely needs to remind a few cardinals about scandalous secrets that could leak out if they don’t comply with his wishes with regards to the next pope.

Only time will tell.

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