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Questions tagged [religion]

Use this tag for questions about religious practices. Do not ask questions about religious beliefs, though. Those are off-topic and there is no tag to use.

Religion is a cultural system that creates powerful and long-lasting meaning by establishing symbols that relate humanity to beliefs and values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to explain the origin of life or the universe. They tend to derive morality, ethics, religious laws or a preferred lifestyle from their ideas about the cosmos and human nature.

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Does the Quran promote violence?

Does the Qur'an promote violence towards others, or does it promote peace? I hear a lot of people saying that it promotes peace, but this seems like wishful thinking to me (both by believers and multiculturalists). Similarly, most people who…
patstuart
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Can the events of the Ramayana and Mahabharata be astronomically dated to around 7300 BCE and 5561 BCE respectively?

The Ramayana is one of Hinduism's greatest epics. Nobody appears to know with certainty when the poem was composed or when the events in it occurred. However, while some scholars claim that the events probably occurred at around the 8th century BCE…
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Is there a negative correlation between intelligence and being religious?

A study The relation between intelligence and religiosity: a meta-analysis and some proposed explanations indicates that there is a relationship, with an abstract: A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between…
Brian M. Hunt
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Upon retirement, what percentage of pornstars turn to religion, and which ones?

I have heard from word of mouth/gossip/etc. that many retired pornstars turn to religion after their careers are over. To what extent is this true? Is it uniform over sexes? Is it also the same for all religions? Does Buddhism maybe absorb more, or…
user876
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African Pentecostal Witch Hunting Guide real?

I found this online: "The African Pentecostal Church's Guide of Inquisitions of Witches and Magicians in the African Continent - 1989 (Translated from the Swahili Manuscript of the late Bakari Sudi Jabari)" I can't find any reliable sources to…
Cees Timmerman
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Did China destroy a Guanyin statue in Hebei province?

From Mongolia live: It was not the Taliban who exploded the stone carvings, but the Chinese Communist Party A 57.9-meter-tall cliff stone-carved vertical Guanyin statue in Pingshan County, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, which spent nearly five years…
Andrew Grimm
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Did Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni hand the national flag to intercessors in 1997 in the midst of a Christian revival?

World Trumpet Mission, an international revivalist ministry founded in 1988 in the Republic of Uganda by John Mulinde, presents the following historical timeline on their website (emphasis mine): In particular, the timeline claims that in 1997,…
user56618
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Did Abraham Isaac Kook say that Gentiles have different souls than Jews?

Wikipedia claims that a Jewish yeshiva teaches that Jews have different souls than Gentiles. To support the claim, wikipedia says that one of their teachers quoted Abraham Isaac Kook as following: The difference between the Jewish soul, in all its…
tim
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Was a "new world religion" memorandum signed in Strasbourg in June 2014?

There is a document which is shared on the internet these days. I saw it in Romanian language and then searching a bit, I found it in English as well: it refers to a "memorandum" signed in Strasbourg containing a list of weird rules which they say…
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Are there more pedophiles in the Catholic Church than other religions, or professions

Are there more pedophiles per capita in the Catholic Church than other religions, or in other professions in general? If so, what is the evidence. This seems like a very difficult thing to really know beyond anecdotal evidence, which of course there…
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Do more "animal sacrifices, desecrations of cemeteries" happen at Halloween?

The Daily Mail wrote that the Vatican claims that Halloween is evil and dangerous for young people and there are more animal sacrifices, desecrations of cemeteries and thefts of sacred bones happening. The Catholic Church has called for Halloween…
ermanen
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Is the mustard seed the smallest of seeds?

From Matthew 13:31-32, 31 He [Jesus] put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32 it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs…
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Will only 10% of the New Zealand population be religious by 2050?

I have seen this episode about religion from the documentary series "Through the Wormhole" and how it is disappearing and they say that it will have only 10% theists in New Zealand by 2050. Is this true? You can view the documentary on YouTube and…
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Is the "Reader voices strong opinion on atheists" letter a hoax?

I've seen on Facebook the following image being shared: Letters to the Editor Reader voices strong opinion on atheists It's time to stomp out atheists in America. The majority of Americans would love to see atheists kicked out of America. If you…
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Did Bertrand Russell say, "Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, ..."?

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines. —Bertrand Russell Many books and websites attribute this quote to Bertrand Russell, but none I saw has given…
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