Do atheists know more about religion ?

Count Saint Germain

Anthony North: No occult figure is more puzzling than the Count Saint Germain. Always dressed in black, but decorated by diamond jewellery, Saint Germain first appears in Vienna about 1740 when he moves in high circles after curing a French Marshal of illness.Where the Count came from, no one knows - there are many versions of his birth from being the son of a Hungarian prince, to the son of a Portuguese Jew, to the b****** child of a Bohemian nobleman. In a full life he was known as a great mus...

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Richard Dawkins and the new age fakers

Two years after challenging a selection of religious fundamentalists to justify their beliefs in Channel 4’s The Root of All Evil,Richard Dawkins – “Darwin’s rottweiler” – is growling again. This time, in The Enemies of Reason, he takes on the wider penumbra of the paranormal, New Age mystical mumbo-jumbo, and the often expensive spiritual services that bring succour to the sucker. His targets include astrologers, psychics, dowsers, homoeopaths and a woman called Elisis Livingstone who claims th...

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Baby with abnormal features deified in Jharkhand

Submitted by Peace Crusader: A girl born with three eyes and two noses has been attracting hordes of people who believe her to be an incarnation of Hindu god Shiva. The birth of the "wonder girl" in Angara block of Ranchi created quite a stir last week with villagers queuing up for a glimpse of the baby. "People from far-flung areas are coming for a glimpse ofmy daughter. Why has god played such a cruel joke with me by giving me a daughter with abnormal features," rued Sukhlal Mahto, the girl"s ...

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The power of prayer

For thousands of years people have believed that prayer can help heal the sick and since at least the 19th century scientists have conducted research and experiments to try and determine if this is really the case. Just what is the real powerofprayer ?"Health and religion have always been intertwined, most obviously through prayer on behalf of the sick. . Does intercessory prayer for sick people actually help heal them ?&q...

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Techno-animism

Anthony North: Few of us have not heard of, or seen, The Matrix. A film that mixes the ultimate ideals of cyberspace with religious and mythological imagery, it is seen as pure fiction. But fiction has a habit of coming true. Many would scoff at such an idea. Religious hog-wash has no place in the modern technical world. But I would argue our innate spirituality will recur in every society and culture -even the most atheist, materialist and technological. The first religion was arguably the anim...

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Can we really transplant a human soul ?

Danny Penman: the progress of medical science in the past 30 years has been so rapid that yesterday's miracles are tomorrow's commonplace procedures. So it has proved with heart transplants, which have become almost routine in hospitals around the world. Yet every once in a while a story emerges which should cause us all to sit up and take note that there is nothing "routine" or "commonplace" about such complex operations. The suggestion, highlighted again this week, ...

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Creationist museum challenges evolution

Martin Redfern: For some a battle between science and religion is being fought for the soul of America. The Creationists argue God created the world in six days and want their beliefs given equal status to evolutionary science. Petersburg, Kentucky, is in the middle of North America. It is supposedly within a day's drive of two-thirds of the US population. For the rest, it is just 10 minutes from CincinnatiInternational Airport. That is why it was picked as the site for a new museum, due to ...

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The forever gods

Anthony North: The more I study the mind and society, the more I am convinced the two are interlinked to a far greater extent than we realize. Indeed, not only this, but throughout our existence we have shared specific traits. This is what I would call 'universal psychology'. Carl Jung captured the concept in the 'collective unconscious', populated by 'archetypes', which appear to be specific personality fragments of the mind. Such fragments appear in myth.: These are the...

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Iron age slab shows belief in soul seperation

Archaeologists in southeastern Turkey have discovered an Iron Age chiseled stone slab that provides the first written evidence in the region that people believed the soul was separate from the body. University of Chicago researchers will describe the discovery, a testimony created by an Iron Age official that includes an incised image of the man, on Nov. 22-23 at conferences of biblical and Middle Eastern archaeological scholars in Boston. The Neubauer Expedition of the Oriental Institute at the...

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Should creationism be taught in schools ?

Almost three out of ten specialist science teachers believe that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in school science lessons, according to a national poll of primary and secondary teachers. The survey also reveals strong support for the views of Michael Reiss, the Royal Society"s former director of education.Reiss resigned from that position in September over his views on how to include creationism in science lessons. Some 73% of science specialists endorsed his position thatcreat...

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