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Introduction
In the Beginning
Gerin Oil
Richard Dawkins
"Gerin oil (or Geriniol, to give it its scientific name) is a powerful
drug which acts directly on the central nervous system to produce a range
of symptoms, often of an anti-social or self-damaging nature."
Everyone's a Skeptic—About Other Religions
James A. Haught
"You see, by going through a laundry list of theologies, I think
you can establish that the average Christian doubts 99 percent of the
world’s holy dogmas. But the 1 percent he believes is really no different
than the rest."
Faith = Illness: Why I've Had It With Religious Tolerance
Douglas Rushkoff
"Maybe I’m just getting old, but I no longer see the real value
in being tolerant of other people’s beliefs."
Current Events & Controversies
The US Is a Free Country, Not a Christian Nation
Michael E. Buckner and Edward M. Buckner
"American history supports this view, showing conclusively that we
are not a Christian nation. And, as many well-documented quotations demonstrate,
America’s founders supported religious liberty and understood that
the government’s support of any religion undermines religious freedom."
Posting the Ten Commandments
Peter Eckstein
"Proponents may call the Commandments 'the foundation of the freedoms
we hold dear,'but the Commandments grant no freedoms except the choice
of obeying or being killed. The US Constitution enumerates at least twenty-five
noneconomic rights. Not one of them—from habeas corpus through the
ban on slavery to the right of women to vote—is anticipated in any
way by the Ten Commandments."
Philadelphia Grand Jury Report on Abusive Priests and the Cardinals
Who Enabled Them
"This report contains the findings of the Grand Jury: how dozens
of priests sexually abused hundreds of children; how Philadelphia Archdiocese
officials—including Cardinal Bevilacqua and Cardinal Krol—excused
and enabled the abuse; and how the law must be changed so that it doesn’t
happen again. Some may be tempted to describe these events as tragic.
Tragedies such as tidal waves, however, are outside human control. What
we found were not acts of God, but of men who acted in His name and defiled
it."
God Has Left the Building: The Self-Imposed Death of Institutional
Judaism
Douglas Rushkoff
"Judaism is not set in stone but to be reinterpreted by each generation."
Reformation Hymns: Islam, Iran, and Blogs
Nasrin Alavi
"Those who lived through the Islamic Revolution almost a quarter
of a century ago are now a minority. More than 70 percent of Iran is under
thirty, and for this population, literacy rates for young men and women
stand well over 90 percent, even in rural areas. It is the voices of this
educated youth that come through the phenomenon that is the Iranian blogosphere."
Bible Tales
The God From Galilee
Ruth Hurmence Green
From the editor's introduction to this long article: "For this anthology,
I had considered writing an essay about the Jesus one finds in the Gospels,
but I quickly realized that I would merely be retreading what Ruth had
already covered:
• Jesus repeatedly said that his Second Coming and the End Times
would happen almost immediately, that many who were listening to him speak
would live to see these events.
• Jesus refused to heal a Gentile little girl, only relenting when
her mother begged him.
• At three different times, Jesus was asked what a person must do
to be saved, enter heaven, etc. Each time, he gave a completely different
answer.
• Jesus, “the Prince of Peace,” declared: “I came
not to send peace but a sword.”
• Jesus never condemned slavery, even though he constantly talked
about it.
• Peter and Paul both denied the Virgin Birth by stating that Joseph
was Jesus’ biological father.
• And—as the commercials say—much, much more, complete
with chapter-and-verse references to everything."
Who Wrote the Gospels?: (Hint: It Wasn't Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John)
Gary Greenberg
"Each of the four Gospels was written anonymously. No author’s
name appears on any of the earliest partial or full copies of these texts
(through at least the fifth century), and none of the authors give any
personal information about themselves. The Gospel of Matthew, for example,
refers to the Apostle Matthew in the third person, giving no evidence
that the author and the Apostle were the same person."
Bridging the Leap of Faith
Bobbie Kirkhart
"It is the fundamentalists, clinging to their belief that the Bible
is literally true, who need a J.P. Holding to tell them that, yes, the
Bible is literally true and a great moral guide, but you just have to
understand that it doesn’t always mean what it says."
Journey to Bethlehem
Neil Gaiman and Steve Gibson
This is a seven-page comic that presents the gang-rape, murder, and dismemberment
of a woman, as told in the Bible (Book of Judges, chapter 19). A sample:
I Was There! (True Encounters With Religion)
With the Sword: Attending a Muslim Students' Conference
Tasha Fox
"The title of the conference’s crowning event borrowed a buzzword
from Marxism: struggle. And the series of speakers whose lectures comprised
'Muslim Students in the Struggle' indeed talked of striving, with one
basic objective: world domination. One young man sketched out his vision
of the day 'when we are called upon to rock the West like it’s never
been rocked before.'"
Broward County, Florida
Jeff Sharlet and Peter Manseau
"'Let him suffer,' they prayed, a chorus of hate so deep it didn’t
so much stain their faith as transform it."
My Weekend With Osho
Sam Jordison
"Osho is one of the most weird—and worrying—extreme religious
groups around. They now market themselves as a meditation and alternative-therapy
group, but in reality they are a cult who follow the teachings of a discredited
guru, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and follow some bizarre and dangerous practices.
After a long period in the wilderness, they are once again on the rise,
attracting new followers to their bases around the world—including
Osho Leela, an old Manor House in Dorset in the South of England, which
I visited in late 2005."
Jungle Drums of the Evil I
Earl Kemp
"Yet there was still one religion that I felt compelled to explore,
just in case I belonged there and didn’t yet know it. The elusive,
mystical Macumba!"
Sacred Spots: Corpses, Thorns, BMW Coffins, a Hymen-Restoring Spring,
and Other Religious Relics and Places
Kristan Lawson
A gallery of eleven previously unpublished photographs with extensive
annotations, including:
• Ghostly handprint on a German religious book, in the Museum of
the Souls of the Dead, in the church of Santa Cuore in Suffragio (Rome,
Italy).
• Two thorns from the Crown of Thorns, in the church of Santa Croce
in Gerusalemme (Rome, Italy).
• Grotto of the Last Judgment (Brantome, France).
• Gruesome religious mural, in the church of Santo Stefano Rotondo
(Rome, Italy).
• Girls praying at the Lover’s Rock shrine (Hong Kong Island,
Hong Kong).
• Statue of the Devil in the village church (Rennes-le-Château,
France).
Taking Up Serpents: A Photo Gallery of Snake-Handlers
Robert W. Pelton
Gallery of five photographs (including three full-page) of Pentecostal
Christians handling venemous snakes, drinking poison, and playing with
fire.
God-Free Living
The Honesty of Atheism
Dianna Narciso
"Like the religious with their labels, atheists disagree on exactly
what atheism is and who is and isn’t an atheist."
Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do With God
Greta Christina
"So here's the problem. If you don’t believe in God or an afterlife;
or if you believe that the existence of God or an afterlife are fundamentally
unanswerable questions; or if you do believe in God or an afterlife but
you accept that your belief is just that, a belief, something you believe
rather than something you know—if any of that is true for you, then
death can be an appalling thing to think about. Not just frightening,
not just painful. It can be paralyzing."
Confessions of an Atheist
Paul Krassner
"The paradox of my own peculiar spiritual path is that I’m an
unbeliever who engages in constant dialogue with the deity I don’t
believe in."
Doing God's Work
"Irish Gulags for Women": The Catholic Church's Magdalene
Asylums
Sam Jordison
"In 1993 a mass grave was uncovered on the grounds of a Catholic
nunnery in the north of Dublin. The grave was found on land that the Good
Shepherd nuns from High Park Convent had sold to a developer, to build
the kind of brash new development that has characterized Ireland’s
economic miracle during the past fifteen years. At first it was thought
that 133 bodies had been buried—we now know that there were 155.
They were all female."
"End of the World Prophet Found in Error, Not Insane": A
Failed Prophet's Survival Handbook
John Gorenfeld
" The beauty of blown prophecies is that failure is the beginning
of success. That is, if you adopt the techniques of history’s most
successful faulty prophets. Through time-tested rebranding methods, they’ve
reinvented failure as proof that they were righter than anyone could have
imagined."
Faith and Curses
Therese Taylor
"Curses are not remote in pagan antiquity nor lost as a means of
expressing religious feeling. The infliction of harm, whether by God or
his agents, is definitely part of the history of religions that we would
consider mainstream."
The Most Popular Sin
Voluptuous Ecstasy on the Temple: Erotic Aspects of Hindu Sculpture
Lawrence E. Gichner
Contains 6 rare photos of sexual sculptures on remote Hindu temples. "Five
hundred years after the Muslims, the British came to India. They, especially
the missionaries, were profoundly shocked by the public display of what
many regard as 'obscene' carvings."
Wanting the Topmost Peach: The Erotic Poetry of the Sixth Dalai Lama
Coleman Barks
Eighteen erotic poems written by the Sixth Dalai Lama, with a long introduction
by translator Coleman Barks, best known for introducing Rumi's poetry
to the public. "I hear Shakespeare, Sappho, Byron, Keats, Wyatt,
Elvis, and Van Morrison in these poems, Chaucer, Ovid, Emily Dickinson,
and the troubadours. He is not simple! And he’s still very controversial:
a tantric master, a libertine, or some as yet unnameable mixture?"
"Fondling the Fellows in Folly": In Which God Wonders, Why
Be Gay When Straight Sex Is So Great?
Jack Murnighan
"But, tucked away among Christianity’s chastisements, repressions,
flagellations, and guilt, there is a curious little gem—deep within
a heavy-handed homiletic poem (i.e., a sermon with meter)—that, while
condemning one type of sexuality, actually makes a pretty strong case
for the kind many of us know and love."
The Private Parts on the Pope's Altar
Kristan Lawson
Includes three photos, two of which are previously unpublished close-ups
of the carvings that are never shown in picture books of the Vatican's
art treasures. "Someone—it might have been Agatha Christie—once
said that the best place to hide something is in plain sight. Never has
that aphorism been more successfully put to the test than in the case
of the indecent carvings on Christendom’s most sacred altar, which
have been there for the last 400 years."
Sounds and Words
It Ain't Necessarily So: The Musical Legacy of Nonbelievers
Dan Barker
"Nonbelievers, in fact, have immensely beautified (not beatified)
the musical landscape. 'Inspiration' turns out to be a purely natural
phenomenon. A brief survey of the lives and views of some beloved composers
and songwriters will dispel the myth that only religion can inspire truly
great music." This 27-page article covers Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann,
Verdi, Brahms, Strauss, Stephen Foster, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, the
Gershwin Brothers, Richard Rodgers, Stephen Sondheim, and many others.
Includes 3 images.
Holy Blood, Holy Code
David V. Barrett
"In February and March 2006 Baigent and Leigh went to the magnificent
Victorian Gothic buildings of the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand
in London to sue Random House, publishers of The Da Vinci Code
(under the Doubleday and Bantam/Corgi imprints), for infringing upon their
copyright. I was at the court case (disappointingly held in a modern courtroom),
which had some fascinating revelations we shall come to later. Unless
otherwise stated, all quotations from Dan Brown below are from my own
court notes."
"Incomplete Jews" and "International Monetarists":
Veiled Anti-Semitism in the Left Behind Series
Michael Standaert
"Simply chalking off the books as a didactic screed against modern
'secular' society, as many have done, likely misses the most dangerous
aspect of the Left Behind books: the revival of anti-Semitism as a strong
undercurrent in American society. LaHaye, in these books, has combined
both the old anti-Semitic idea of Jews as 'deniers' with Jews as being
the leaders in anti-Christian 'secular'society, nicely wrapped together
with hints of conspiracy theories of Jewish world domination, Elders
of Zion style."
Holy History
Martin Luther Goes Bowling
Bill Brent
"Bowling at pins, which originated in Germany during the third century
C.E., emerged not as a sport but rather as a religious ceremony."
Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth
Michael Parenti
"It is widely held by many devout Buddhists that Old Tibet was a
spiritually oriented kingdom free from the egotistical lifestyles, empty
materialism, and corrupting vices that beset modern industrialized society.
Western news media, travel books, novels, and Hollywood films have portrayed
the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La.... A reading of Tibet’s
history suggests a different picture."
The God Machine: Building the Mechanical Messiah in 1850s Massachusetts
Robert Damon Schneck
"In October of 1853, on a hilltop in Lynn, Massachusetts, a group
assembled to create the New Messiah. They had not come to pray to it,
sing psalms, or take an otherwise passive approach to the problem; they
were actually going to build Him out of metal and wood under the supervision
of spirits."
The Verge Extreme: California's Religion of Transformation
Erik Davis
"Between its Edenic bounty and multicultural mix, its wayward freedoms
and hungry dreams, California remains an imaginative frontier exceptional
in the history of American religion. Less a place of origins than of mutations,
California long ago became a laboratory of the spirit, a sacred playground
at the far margins of the West. Here, deities and practices from across
space and time have been mixed and matched, refracted and refined, packaged
and consumed anew."
Grab Bag
Jesus of Nazareth Discusses His Failure
H.G. Wells
"The companion I find most congenial in the Beyond is Jesus of Nazareth.
Like everything in Dreamland he fluctuates, but beyond the Happy Turning
his personality is at least as distinct as my own. His scorn and contempt
for Christianity go beyond my extremest vocabulary."
Holy Shit: Excrement and Religion
John G. Bourke
Examines the religious roles of feces and urine among Zunis, Hindus, Zoroastrians,
Jews, Romans, Egyptians, Australian aborgines, and others.
Legion's Legacy: Possession and Exorcism
Benjamin Radford
"Most religious doctrines hold that evil lurks in the world, in the
form of demons or devils who attempt to lure, tempt, and trick humans
in their unholy mission. You’d think that supernatural entities would
find countless opportunities for executing mayhem and evil on their own,
but apparently that is not the case."
Found Religion
FOUND Magazine
Reproduces 11 notes of a religious nature sent to FOUND Magazine.
Bits and Pieces
Russ Kick
Sections:
"Who Would Jesus Torture?"
"Mary's Confused Ob-gyn"
"More on Mary"
"Let's Talk About Connubium"
"Of Brothels and Abbeys"
"Saving the World From Filthy Flowers and Plant Porn"
"Joyfully Watching Sinners Roast in Hell"
"A Host of Problems"
" The Movie That Triggered a Major Terrorist Incident in the US"
"The Children of God's Books From Beyond"
"Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid. (Or, The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is
God Itself)"
Good Books
Russ Kick
Book reviews:
"Confession Is Good for the Pole" (Sexuality in the Confessional)
"Holy Peter" (The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art
and in Modern Oblivion)
"A Load of Malakoi" (The New Testament and Homosexuality)
"The Family That Prays Together, Lays Together" (Christianity
and Incest)
"Homespun Blasphemy" ("Reflections on Religion" by
Mark Twain)
"Illustrating the Rest of the Bible" (Illustrated
Stories From the Bible (That They Won't Tell You in Sunday School))
"Deja Vu, All Over Again" (Does the New Testament Imitate
Homer?)
"Islam and Slavery" (Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters
and Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in America)
"Rules, Rules, and More Rules" (A Clarification of Questions
by Ayatollah Khomeini)
"Confucius Say ... Nothing, Really" (Manufacturing Confucianism)
"When God Wasn't a Woman" (The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory)
"The Coining of Scientology by L Ro Allen Upward (The
New Word)
Includes 7 images, including scans from a rare 1910 book containing the
first occurences of the word scientology.
End Matter
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