#Religion

Intelligent design doesn't jive with the Torah and Quran

I spend a lot of my free time reading about religion. Most of that time is on the features that make one religion different from another. That’s why G. Willow Wilson’s article on why intelligent design doesn’t work in Islam and Judaism riveted me.

“The God of the Bible is omniscient and all-powerful, but the God of the Torah and the Quran is omnipresent and omniparticipant. This essential difference has led some religious scholars to draw a distinction between monotheism, the belief in one God, and monism, the belief in One.”

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Biblical Reality Hacking

I really enjoy reading Grant Morrison. I can think of few writers who really grok the power of storytelling to change our reality like he does. I’ve learned a lot about the power of the written word from reading his comic books. What surprises me is when I come across those ideas in much older works, like the Bible.

Numbers 5:12-31 is about how husbands can force their wives to submit to an abortion if they merely suspect their wife has cheated on them. They go before a priest goes who has God curse some water before the wife drinks it. The cursed water causes her to miscarry and renders her barren if she cheated on him.

the great divider?

“It is fitting that we honor this great American in a church because out of the church comes the notion of equality and justice. And even though progress has been made, there is more to do,” Bush told the largely African-American congregation.

I’m asking sincerely. Does a sense of equality come out of the church? I’ve never felt that way. I’ve always viewed it as striving to divide the population into the chosen/elect/saved and heathens/sinners/witches. The big three, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all seem to thrive on these distinctions. The one area where I could see it uniting is people with different income levels.