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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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Could the Ark of the Covenant have killed by acting as a capacitor?

In the biblical account of Uzzah, he touches the Ark of the Covenant on the road from Gibeah to Jerusalem; this irks the god of Israel, who knocks him out on the spot. A 2014 Gizmodo article quotes a 1933 newspaper article in which Professor of…
François Jurain
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Was Tulsi Gabbard in a "cult"?

As late as 2015, Tulsi Gabbard considered Chris Butler (Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa) to be her guru. Numerous people claim that Butler's group is a cult, while others say it isn't. Does the Science of Identity Foundation meet the common…
Foo Bar
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Did Theodor Herzl adhere to Spinozism?

The following are found among a list of Theodor Herzl quotes on the Web site of the World Zionist Organisation: When I say God I do not mean to offend the freethinkers. For my part they can say World Spirit or any other term in place of this…
Erwan Legrand
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Is Muhammad (pbuh) mentioned only four times in the Quran and in three of those instances could be used as a title the praised one or chosen one?

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/36111/32459 says: The name Muhammad actually appears in the Qur'an only four times, and in three of those instances it could be used as a title – the "praised one" or "chosen one" – rather than as a proper name.…
money-printer
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Does Maryam Namazie identify as a Muslim?

In 2013, an article in The Guardian described Maryam Namazie as a Muslim: ... it is clear that these appeasers have much to learn from Muslim women such as Sara Khan, Maryam Namazie ... In 2015, an article in the Independent described her as an…
money-printer
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Did Omar Khayyam say this about religion?

Atheistrepublic.com made the following meme which claims: lf instead of studying religion, men would have devoted to develop mathematics - algebra. lf logic of science would have occupied the place of Sufism, faith and superstition. Religion…
Sakib Arifin
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Do religious people score more favorably on most common social indicators than the non-religious?

In the Age of Em, Robin Hanson claims that "...religious people tend to be happier, healthier, and more productive. They live longer, smoke less, exercise more, earn more, get and stay married more, commit less crime, use less illegal drugs, have…
Jayson Virissimo
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Minorities and Prejudice.

I watched an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher Show and made me wondering: If you are majority (race, gender, caste or whatever) you always have to watch what you say about minorities otherwise you are called prejudice. But in many instances I…
ObiWanKenobi
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Was Mother Teresa a fanatic and a fraud?

According to this article, Mother Teresa did much more harm than good and was opposed to helping the poor, the ills and raped women. Is it true that Mother Teresa didn't do much to help those in need ? If so, why is she seen as a saint by many ?
user14168
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Ethnoreligions: what religions explicitly claim heritability?

Several SE/SO questions (e.g., this) address what is often claimed to be (often correctly) confusion between ethnicity and religion. Certainly (IIUC, ICBW) most modern religions tend to be avowedly (pun intended :-) cognitive: they require…
TomRoche
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Is Falun Gong worse for its practitioners and society than other religions like Christianity?

EDIT: after too broad closure, split into: Have many Falun Gong practitioners forgone medical treatment and died of treatable causes as a result? The Chinese government has made lots of publicity against Falun Gong, but they have a political…
Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com
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Has the documentary hypothesis become invalid?

The documentary hypothesis is a hypothesis which proposes that the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) was derived from originally independent, parallel and complete narratives, which were subsequently combined into the current form by a…
Arun
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Life (i.e. cells) originated from clay

It's 'revealed' in many religious scriptures that man was created from clay: Life from clay Creation from clay There is an interesting article in New Scientist titled, Clay's matchmaking could have sparked life. How reliable is this article? Is…
Tom Lynd
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Does this medical study prove that wearing gold is harmful?

So I have this article that was sent to me by a friend of mine and it pertains to a ruling in the Quran (that declares that silk and gold are forbidden for men to wear). So the article claims that gold lowers ones semen count and causes it to…
user59726
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Was Pierre Teilhard de Chardin a defender of eugenics?

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French philosopher and Jesuit Catholic priest who was mentioned in the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Dangerous Tendencies of Cosmic Theology: The Untold Legacy of Teilhard De Chardin was a 2017…
Martín-Blas Pérez Pinilla
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