What Causes Religion and Superstitions?

I've relaunched this page and added loads of new stuff. The contents of "What Causes Religion and Superstitions?" by Vexen Crabtree (2011) is now:

1. Arbitrarily Inherited
2. Functionalism
   1. Performing Social Functions (Intro)
   2. Religion as Activism
   3. Political Power Struggles
   4. Identity Reinforcement
   5. An Example: Carib witchcraft
3. Biological Psychology
   1. Misapplied Cognitive Functions
   2. Neuronal Dysfunction
4. The Subconscious
   1. Hidden Inner Causes
   2. Childhood Fantasies
   3. The Fear of Death
   4. Myths, Dogma and Ritual: Leftovers from a Pre-Literate Humanity
5. Simple Dogmatic Answers in a Complex World
6. Life Experiences
   1. Experiencing God
   2. Desperate Times: Religious Experiments Including Conversion, Superstitions and Lucky Charms
   3. Intelligence and Suggestibility
7. The Institutionalisation of Irrationality
8. Conclusions

The Gospels and the Crucifixion - Differences in style

I have updated "The Crucifixion Facade" by Vexen Crabtree (2002) with a few biggish quotes from Bart Ehrman on the gospels' accounts of the crucifixion. Whilst there are well-known contradictions between thses accounts (who'd have thought that various people could have thought Jesus' last words were so different?!!), Ehrman's quotes summarize the totality of the style of these differences, and is the best summary on this topic. Find the quotes in section 3 of that page.

The Problem of Evil and Suffering: Can a Good God Exist?

I've redone "The Problem of Evil: Why Would a Good God Create Suffering?" by Vexen Crabtree (2011). It still opens with a list of all the main areas of the problem of evil (natural disasters, angels heaven, babies going to heaven). And a list of all the main theodocies used to try to explain why evil exists (free will, the absence of god, god testing us, etc). All these explanations do not answer the fundamental problem of evil, however.

The page contents:

1. Introduction: A Fundamental Contradiction Between a Good God and Reality
2. A Venn Diagram: Absolute Good vs. Apparent Evil
3. The Creator of the Worst of All Possible Worlds: Is God Evil?
4. Christianity
5. Conclusion