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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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Is prophet Mohammed's "Last Sermon" an accurate translation?

The poorly-cited Wikipedia article states: The Farewell Sermon (Arabic: خطبة الوداع‎, Khuṭbatu l-Wadā), also known as Muhammad's Final Sermon or The Last Sermon, was delivered by Muhammad on the 9th of Dhu al-Hijjah, 10 AH (9 March 632) in…
Cees Timmerman
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Does putative Islam convert, Robert Guilham, exist?

A widely broadcast story on Islamic sites claims that a Jewish genetics expert from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine converted to Islam as a result of scientific evidence supporting the Quran. His name is listed variously as Robert Guilham,…
user4951
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Ash Wednesday History

I recently read a blog that stated: Ash Wednesday is a relatively late addition to the Christian liturgical calendar, first surfacing in the tenth century according to accounts written in the eleventh. On the surface this seems a reasonable…
Larian LeQuella
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Is the pope's headgear adopted directly from a Mesopotamian hat, symbol of worshipping Dagon, as seen in his fish mouth looking mitre?

The Roman bishop of the Catholic church is often wearing a mitre. Countless sites, 'that really know the hidden truth and tell it', make the connection of 'fish mouth' and 'Dagon priest', claiming that the hat has a direct, long and unbroken…
LangLаngС
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Are 4 out of 5 people persecuted for their religion, Christians?

A CitizenGo petition for aiding persecuted Christians claims that Christians are the most persecuted people in the world, with 4 out of 5 persecuted people identifying as Christians Are there official sources or statistics which support or…
vsz
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Do any Jewish organizations lobby for destruction of Israel?

I recently was in a discussion where one of the people, as an argument, claimed that Jews have been known to participate in what's activities clearly detrimental to Jews as a whole (the argument itself had nothing to do with Jews, it was merely an…
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Was Glyn Barrett invited to speak at a meeting for an atheist society in Cambridge?

I saw a video on Facebook, linked from God TV, (both now removed but available here) where Pastor Glyn Barrett of !Audacious Church, in Manchester UK said he was invited to debate at a meeting of the "Atheistic Society" at a university. He joking…
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Why is the smell of flowers sensed in some situations?

Some people report sensing a flowery smell in some places or situations in which there are no flowers present. Those sensations are sometimes related to religious experiences. There are also claims that the sensation has no scientific…
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Did Soviet miners drill a hole to Hell?

This was claimed (though referred to as a hoax by one of the characters) in a recent XKCD comic: http://www.xkcd.com/1330/ Did Soviet miners drill a hole to super-hot cavern where you could hear screaming?
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Has Angola destroyed all its mosques and banned Islam itself?

I'm seeing a few reports, which appear to primarily stem from this report on a site called onislam.net, which claim that Angola has destroyed (or is set to destroy) all its mosques and has banned the religion of Islam. “This is the final end of…
user7920
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Did clergymen contribute more to science than scientists in the 19th century?

Taleb provides yet more fodder for skeptical enquiry. In the middle of Chapter 16 of Antifragile ("A lesson in disorder") where he is arguing that science isn't the source of practical applications of technology but the product of it, he argues:…
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Are the Claims of Edward Carpenter (and others) historically accurate regarding the Zodiac and biblical interpretation?

In Edward Carpenter's, "Pagan & Christian Creeds : Their Origin and Meaning" one of the claims is made that the golden calf story in Exodus is allegorical due to the astrological turning of the age of taurus. There are also claims that the death, 3…
Larian LeQuella
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Does Santa Claus get more mail than any other fictional or divine entity?

Source I was listening to the 2008 Christmas Special of the BBC radio programme The Unbelievable Truth, where the following was said to be true: Santa has more mail than any other fictional or divine entity. God and Sherlock Holmes come next. I…
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Did the Zohar predict 9/11?

Several websites claim that the Zohar predicted the event of 9/11 (for example, this, this, this, and this). The following quote is from the last link: On 9-11, not only the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed after being flown into by…
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Did the Miracle of Lanciano turn bread and wine into flesh and blood?

The story of the Miracle of Lanciano is that, in 700 AD, a monk in Lanciano reported that: During the Mass, when he said the Words of Consecration [...], with doubt in his soul, the priest saw the bread change into living flesh and the wine change…
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