Ashutosh Maharaj was the leader of a religious commune in a small town in Punjab, India, one of the many gurus who infest that part of the world and concoct mystical theories about life and the universe. In January of this year the guru, who was supposedly in his seventies, experienced chest pains and was declared by doctors to be clinically dead.
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Giordano Bruno was a 16th century philosopher, theologian, and monk who was an early supporter of Copernicus’s heliocentric model of the universe. He was also burned at the stake by the Catholic church in 1600 at the age of 42 after being found guilty of heresy by the Roman Inquisition. That combination of circumstances has sometimes led to him being portrayed as the first martyr for modern science at the hands of religion. The somewhat ominous-looking image of the bronze statue of the brooding Bruno that is sited at the location of his execution in Campo de’ Fiori in Rome has become iconic.
The opening episode of Cosmos hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson (that I did not see) apparently had an extended tribute to Bruno. Corey S. Powell summarizes what Tyson supposedly said about him.
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All of us authors are fond of the books we write but I think that god is taking things a little too far. The New York Post in a story about the explosion in East Harlem last week that killed eight people and injured many more, finds a bright side.
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News reports have emerged that Fred Phelps, the founder and patriarch of the virulently anti-gay church based in Topeka, Kansas that his large extended family dominates, is near death and in a hospice facility. This is not a surprise since he is 84 years old and videos from a few years ago already showed him somewhat feeble, as if he were in poor health.
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Alun and Donna Leppitt are evangelical Pentecostals who take part in faith healing revivals and are part of a movement that claims that their prayers have enabled miracles such as women with hysterectomies having children, curing people who have cancer, and even replacing a defective heart with a new one.
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It is pretty well established that women are more likely to be regular churchgoers than men. The current discrepancy, while noticeable, is not yet huge but it has to be disturbing to the church hierarchy because in America, as soon as something is seen as essentially a feminine activity, a lot of men will drop off simply for fear of appearing to be wusses. And if one parent regularly skips church, children’s church going habits are likely to be affected as well.
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I have been worried recently about televangelist Pat Robertson. He has been saying some sensible things about how Christians should give up on things that flatly contradict science, like a 6,000 year old Earth. It seemed like he was not his usual nutty self and I was wondering whether he was suffering from some form of illness that actually increased his rationality.
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African countries like Uganda and Nigeria that recently passed appalling laws that subject gays in those countries to harsh penalties have been deservedly criticized. Some Christian leaders in those countries who supported the governments’ moves have hit back at their critics, saying that this whole idea of equal rights for gays is a western colonial import that is being foisted on the local population.
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I have repeatedly said that it is high time that pope Francis took at least some concrete steps to back up his feel-good rhetoric and he must be reading this blog because today he announced that he was willing to support civil unions for same-sex couples under restricted circumstances.
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When I wrote about the major Hollywood film Noah starring Russell Crowe as the arkmeister that is being released next month, I suggested that the filmmakers would have a tough time making Yahweh acceptable to the many religious people whom they need to buy tickets because there is no question that the story reveals him to be a monster. I said that I would be curious to see to what extent the filmmaker would go to sanitize Yahweh.
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