3 posts tagged “religion”

China regulates reincarnation
Snip:
In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation."

So sad.  And so funny at the same time.  How, exactly, does a government regulate reincarnation?

We demand:  respect, equal wages and orgasms
And we should demand it here, too.  Some days, when I see what the religious right is trying to do to this country, I'm scared to be a woman.

From Newsweek:  Being an Athiest in America Isn't Easy 
It's a very well written book review and discussion of the marginalization of athiests and agnostics in this US society.  I've placed holds on both the books discussed and can't wait to read them.
Snip:

Dawkins and Harris are not writing polite demurrals to the time-honored beliefs of billions; they are not issuing pleas for tolerance or moderation, but bone-rattling attacks on what they regard as a pernicious and outdated superstition. (In the spirit of scientific evenhandedness, both would call themselves agnostic, although as Dawkins says, he's agnostic about God the same way he's agnostic about the existence of fairies.) They ask: where do people get their idea of God? From the Bible or the Qur'an. "Tell a devout Christian ... that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible," Harris writes, "and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever."