I just love it when religions create all these hoops for their followers to jump through and then, whenever one of those rules become inconvenient for whatever reason, struggle to find ways to break the rules while trying to maintain façade of coherence. Jews are clearly the winners in providing the most source of fun because their kosher and Sabbath rules are unbelievably complex while their Talmudic scholars are ingenious about finding loopholes for them, as was the case with telephones, ovens, elevators, and escalators. [Read more…]

Remember the recent revelations of how Yeshiva University covered up sexual abuse by faculty of students for decades and that led to the chancellor resigning? [Read more…]

I was struck by reports about the rise in Satan worship among young people in a region of Northeast India. It is causing some concern to religious leaders. [Read more…]

Bryan Fischer is a well-known evangelical leader and Director of Issues Analysis of the American Family Association who also has a radio show. He has the usual reactionary beliefs of his group, such as that men should rule over women in households and that the recent rise in the number of households in which women are the primary breadwinners was a bad thing. [Read more…]

The issue of dress codes is one that arouses strong passions. Part of the problem is the gender bias involved. What women wear comes under much closer scrutiny than what men wear and the stringent dress codes that Muslim (and Orthodox Jewish) women must operate under in many parts of the world is one of the hottest of issues. In 35 nations some form of veiling of women is compulsory. [Read more…]

It has been established that the number of people in the US who self-identify as unaffiliated with any religion is steadily on the rise, now reaching about 20%. One would expect that those who are religious would see it as a bad thing, while the non-religious would see this as a good thing, resulting in an 80-20% split as to whether this trend was bad or good. [Read more…]