A primitive capitalism had developed, which had quite different priorities. The lavish sacrifices had been designed to impress the gods and to enhance the patron’s prestige. By the fifth century, thes...
Imaginaţia este principala facultate omenească la care recurge religia. Jean-Paul Sartre a definit-o ca abilitatea de a gândi ceea ce nu există. Fiinţele umane sunt singurele făpturi înzestrate cu cap...
Şi totuşi, un Dumnezeu personal poate deveni o mare răspundere. Se poate transforma într-un simplu idol , făcut după chipul şi asemănarea noastră, o proiecţie a nevoilor noastre limitate, a temerilor...
There is no ascent to the heights without prior descent into darkness, no new life without some form of death.
With this new empathetic understanding of the context, we will find that we can imagine ourselves, in similar circumstances, feeling the same.
We weten niet wie de evangeliën geschreven hebben. Toen ze voor het eerst opdoken circuleerden ze anoniem, en ze werden pas later toegeschreven aan belangrijke figuren uit de jong christelijke kerken....
We have developed a more logical and discursive mode of thought. Instead of looking at a physical phenomena imaginatively, we strip an object of all its emotive associations and concentrate on the thi...
We are meaning-seeking creatures and, unlike other animals, fall very easily into despair if we fail to make sense of our lives. We find the prospect of our inevitable extinction hard to bear. We are...
Today we have become so familiar with the intolerance that has unfortunately been a characteristic of monotheism that we may not appreciate that this hostility toward other gods was a new religious at...
There are stories that explain how the High God was deposed: Ouranos, the Sky God of the Greeks, for example, was actually castrated by his son Kronos, in a myth that horribly illustrates the impotenc...
The book of Job, based on an ancient folktale, may have been written during the exile. One day, Yahweh made an interesting wager in the divine assembly with Satan, who was not yet a figure of towering...
The Taliban’s discrimination against women is completely opposed to the practice of the Prophet and the conduct of the first ummah. The Taliban are typically fundamentalist, however, in their highly s...
The Golden Rule requires self-knowledge; it asks that we use our own feelings as a guide to our behavior with others. If we treat ourselves harshly, this is the way we are likely to treat other people...
Religious ideas and practices take root not because they are promoted by forceful theologians, nor because they can be shown to have a sound historical or rational basis, but because they are found in...
People worship different things; there must be 'no coercion in matters of faith!
People who have been taught to despise themselves cannot easily respect others.
Muslim fundamentalists have toppled governments and either assassinated or threatened the enemies of Islam with the death penalty. Similarly, Jewish fundamentalists have settled in the Occupied Territ...
Jezus, de Logos, zou de functie van de verwoeste tempel overnemen en de plaats waar de joden de goddelijke aanwezigheid konden ontmoeten[...]. Het jodendom en zijn heiligste symbolen waren vervangen d...
Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians have insisted for centuries that God does not exist and that there is 'nothing' out there; in making these assertions, their aim was not to deny the reality o...
Jesus himself remains an enigma. There have been interesting attempts to uncover the figure of the ‘historical’ Jesus, a project that has become something of a scholarly industry. But the fact remains...