Human Religions website

I've never had any graphics skills, my very best is 'kind of okay'! I needed a new icon to use specifically for www.humanreligions.info ... so I made this, in MS Word (!!!). About once a month, I say 'I need a graphics person...'.

Hindu Violent Extremism Against Christians in India: The Continuing Legacy of the BJP

Hindu nationalists target Christians in India, as the culmination of a few decades of increasing hate. In Christmas 2007, a hundred churches were damaged and 700 Christian homes destroyed: things have gotten especially bad since the BJP gained power nationally in 2014, with their representatives giving hate speeches (including calling for death to Christians), encouraging the many hundreds of violent incidents recorded each year against Christians. See section 6 of https://www.humanreligions.info/hindu_extremism.html.

Psalm 23

Psalm 23 is much-loved because it sounds positive and wholesome. But it's a trap, just as Habakkuk's opposite gloom is a trap. Don't fall for it: we can make the world better by behaving better, educating ourselves, embracing human rights, and encouraging others.

www.humanreligions.info/psalm_23.html

The Old Testament Book of Habakkuk

After a long series of prophets promise again and again that god is going to punish the Hebrews' neighbours for their unbelief, the reality of history is that the Chaldeans, after conquering Babylon, continued to spread. In terms of the Hebrews' understanding of their place in God's world, this simply made no sense. This story explains that God empowers the violent, expansionist and immoral Chaldeans, and that God (for no particularly good reason) boosts them against the Hebrews, causing the Chaldeans to occupy and ransack southern Judah.

Habakkuk tries to explain that God is choosing the Chaldeans to damage Judah on purpose, but struggles to find a coherent ethical reason why such bloodshed and violence can be endorsed by a good god, as a collective punishment - especially when the Chaldeans were infamously immoral and ought to be the ones being corrected. It is hard to see what morals or teachings there are in these wars between the Hebrews and their neighbours other than that it pays to be on the winning side, whether or not the winners are Jehovah-fearers.

The contents of "The Book of Habakkuk by Vexen Crabtree (2012) is:

1. The 3 chapters of Habakkuk (56 verses)
   1. Habakkuk 1 (17 verses)
   2. Habakkuk 2 (20 verses)
   3. Habakkuk 3 (19 verses)

Pantheism

Pantheism is a form of theism (god-belief) in which God and the universe are equivalent: be this in either a conscious or automatic sense. The whole system of physical laws, cause and effect, and time itself, are the internal workings of a divine being. www.humanreligions.info/pantheism.html