2014-04-27

Another round of updates

  • The Peacock vs. the Ostrich - Religious Behaviour and Sexuality: Two additions. (1) In Section 1: Nearly all fundamentalist religious organisations reject human rights, and in particular, reject women's rights and are hostile to homosexuality, transvestitism and any other sexuality that is not traditional and patriarchal. They "typically exclude women from the senior ranks of religious leadership. All or almost all express concern about control of female sexuality". But in history, all these things were the mainstream positions of mainstream Christian churches.

    (2) And in Section "3.2. Scientology": Paul Haggis was a Hollywood screenwriter who left the Church of Scientology after 34 years, in 2008, when the Church's name appeared on a list of organizations supporting Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative to ban gay marriage.

  • Is the Christian God Evil? Evidence from Scripture and Nature: I have added comments from the story of Job. Section 1.1 "God Creates Evil Regardless of Human Free Will" notes that evil was done to Job regardless of his free will (i.e., he was described as holy and blameless in the Book of Job chapter 1), and, his children all died as a result of God's test of Job, which was also nothing to do with /their/ free will. In section "1.2. Satan and God are Interchangeable", I note that between Chapter 1 and Chapter 42 of Job, God and Satan's actions and culpability are completely intertwined.

  • NEW PAGE: Satan and The Devil in World Religions (The mythology of evil, suffering, death, pain and materialism.). This was actually done in February but I haven't mentioned it!

  • NEW PAGE: Wicca - The Rise of a Western Mystery Religion Based on Witchcraft: A Western mystery religion invented and founded by Gerald Gardner in the UK in the 1950s, followed shortly by the very similar Alexandrian Wicca in the 1960s, although the two strands are now very closely intertwined and Wicca is decentralized. Wiccan practices centre on ritual, nature veneration, natural cycles, and magical and spiritual learning. Much of it derived from pseudo-folklore. Its festivals are held on the eight yearly Sabbats. Divinity in Wicca is seen as both male and female (typically as the Horned God and Mother Goddess), as are the general forces of nature which emanate from a complementary male and female principal.

There's more, but I'll share those updates in a different journal rather than let this one have all of the attention!