What Is Love According to Science, Philosophy and Religion?
The most popular Google search of last year was the question: “What is Love?” And theGuardian newsp…
Inside Santa Fe’s Ayahuasca-Based Church
Is this what the biblical Moses was dabbling in when he encountered the “burning bush”? NPR describ…
Revealing the Mystery of Dreams and Dreaming
What are dreams? What is this strange world that exists alongside to our own, inside and outside of…
Must Watch: Neil deGrasse Tyson Moderates a Debate on Nothingness
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OLz6uUuMp8&w=627&h=383]For 14 years now, the American Museum of Natural History has hosted the Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate – an annual meeting of scientific and philosophical minds, held in honor of one of modern…
Could visions of angels described in Bible be lucid dreams?
A research group in Californiatried to explain the visions of the prophets about the appearances of angels described in the biblical writings.
A team from the Research Centrefor Extracorporeal Experiencesargues that these metaphysical visions indeed have taken place, but as a result of lucid dreaming.
Conscious or lucid dreams occur when a person realizes that he is sleeping and interferes with the plot of the dream.
The research team asked 30 volunteers to try to build a dream on the representation ofa scene from the Old Testament where the prophet Elijah accepts the help of an angel.
A Year After the Non-Apocalypse: Where Are They Now?
There will be someone new to take Harold Camping’s place, these end-timers never seem to go away. Writes Tom Bartlett on Religion Dispatches:
For a while, their message was everywhere. They paid for billboards, took out full-page ads in newspapers, distributed thousands of tracts. They drove across the county in RVs emblazoned with verses from the books of Revelation and Daniel. They marched around Manhattan holding signs. They broadcasted day and night on their network of radio stations. They warned the world.
That warning turned out to be a false alarm. No giant earthquake rippled across the surface of the earth, nor were any believers caught up in the clouds. Harold Camping, the octogenarian whose nightly Bible call-in show fomented doomsday mania, suffered a stroke soon afterward and mostly disappeared from sight. The press coverage, which had been intense in the weeks leading up to May 21, 2011, dwindled to nothing. The story, as far as most people were concerned, was over.
But I wanted to know what happens next. If you’re absolutely sure the world is going to end on a specific day, and it doesn’t, what do you do? How do you explain it to yourself? What happens to your faith in God? Can you just scrape the bumper stickers off your car, throw away the t-shirts, and move on?
Read More: Religion Dispatches.
POSTED FROM DISINFO.COM
Kopimism (The IP Pirate Religion) Takes Root In America
American online pirates now have places to worship, reports Jason Koebler for US News:
A Swedish religion whose dogma centers on the belief that people should be free to copy and distribute all information—regardless of any copyright or trademarks—has made its way to the United States.
Followers of so-called “Kopimism” believe copying, sharing, and improving on knowledge, music, and other types of information is only human—the Romans remixed Greek mythology, after all, they say. In January, Kopimism—a play on the words “copy me”—was formally recognized by a Swedish government agency, raising its profile worldwide.
“Culture is something that makes people feel much better and makes people appreciate their world in a different way. Knowledge is also something we should copy regardless of the law,” says Isak Gerson, the 20-year-old founder of Kopimism. “It makes us better when we share knowledge and culture with each other.”
More than 3,500 people “like” Kopimism on Facebook, and thousands more practice its sacred ritual of file sharing. According to its manifesto, private, closed-source software code and anti-piracy software are “comparable to slavery.” Kopimist “Ops,” or spiritual leaders, are encouraged to give counsel to people who want to pirate files, are banned from recording and should encrypt all virtual religious service meetings “because of society’s vicious legislative and litigious persecution of Kopimists.”…
[continues at US News]
POSTED FROM DISINFORMATION
50 Things You’re Not Supposed To Know: Religion | The DisinfoCast with Matt Staggs: Episode 06
Mixed martial artist, professor of religion and international raconteur Daniele Bolelli joins me for The DisinfoCast. Daniele is the author of Disinformation’s recent 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know: Religion, a slim tome chock full of fun (and true!) stories that include a mass murderin’ Moses, the Zombie Pope and much more.
Daniele schools me on Zen, tells me which religious figure he’d most like to fight MMA-style, and ponders whether there’s a such thing as an “enlightened asshole.” Get a blasphemous beatdown in in this episode of The DisinfoCast.
POSTED FROM DISINFORMATION
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Sexual Symbolism in Religion (Video)
What does sex have to do with religion? Was sex worship and fertility ever apart of Christianity? What are the symbols behind sex worship?
POSTED FROM DISINFORMATION
The Godfather of Christianity
The Roman emperor Constantine is one of the great heroes of Christian history. As legend would have it, he singlehandedly put an end to religious persecution and became the first Christian emperor. His impact was nothing short of miraculous, and this is why his name is often adorned with superlatives: he is Constantine “the Great,” or as some branches of Christianity regard him “Saint” Constantine. More than any other figure, he is the true Godfather of Christianity, who helped it turn from a small troubled sect into the dominant religion of the empire.
But the word godfather applies to Constantine in more ways than one. Think Don Vito Corleone kind of Godfather (actually, I like Don Vito Corleone, so more like Michael Corleone). The historical reality is that Constantine was a brutal dictator who used Christianity for his own self-aggrandizing means and probably never even converted (some say he converted on his death bed, while others say he never did).
At the beginning of the 300s, the Roman Empire was a mess: there were too many people following too many religions speaking too many languages. Culturally, politically, religiously and in every other way, hardly anything brought unity to the empire. The confusion was so intense that it was not unusual for multiple people to claim the title of emperor at the same time. Civil wars to settle the squabbles between these contenders were the norm.
