But except in one case, the report, which noted numerous incidents of discrimination or violence against Christian or Messianic Jewish communities or individuals, failed to prove that the perpetrators were Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox.

According to the US State Department, Jehovah’s Witnesses representatives reported a significant increase in assaults and other crimes against their members over the past 12-month period. Violent incidents were up from one to two a month in early 2007 to eight to nine a month in early 2008.”

Via JPost.com >

They say that the violence began in the state’s Kandhamal district when a Hindu mob attacked a Christian priest.

Police say that the priest’s son retaliated by firing on the crowd, leading to further clashes.

Orissa has seen weeks of anti-Christian violence. Correspondents say it is caused by ethnic and religious tension.

Over 30 people have been killed in the violence and thousands forced to flee their homes and seek shelter in relief camps.

The latest clashes come a day after the European Union told India’s prime minister that his government has failed to prevent “a massacre” of Christians in Orissa. ”

Via BBC News >
What will prevent these massacres? If all it takes is people realizing that their religions teach peace, tolerance, and acceptance, then why is it so difficult for people with different religious beliefs to coexist?

A while ago, my girlfriend and I were discussing religion in the car. She, a believer, was listening to some portion of my case against religion and belief in God. We stopped at an intersection where a man was yelling at passing cars with a bullhorn. Curious, I rolled down my window to hear what this motivated gentleman had to share with the world. As soon as the window cracked he barked, “There IS a heaven and a hell!”

Disappointed, I rolled the window back up - no revelations there. When I looked over at my girlfriend, she had the biggest smirk on her face. “What?” I asked.

“Well, you’ve got to admit that was pretty crazy.”

“Pretty crazy, yes, I don’t see why he’s yelling those things at cars.”

“No, it was pretty crazy that while we were talking about this stuff and he said that.”

Now, my girlfriend is an intelligent woman so I was surprised to realize that she, being a believer, interpreted what happened as some sort of message from God. From her point of view, that man with the bullhorn was delivering a message to me, from God. It wasn’t merely a coincidence, it was a small miracle. It was “meant” to happen the way that it did.

Now, I consider myself a reasonable atheist meaning that I attempt to openly consider all explanations for different things. It just so happens that the explanation that doesn’t involve supernatural forces always wins in my mind making me atheist.

So, being reasonable, I tried to consider that point of view. If God were indeed delivering a message to me there are two ways to look at it:

1. ) He somehow manipulated the timing of events so that the man with the bullhorn would be at the intersection, the light would turn red when it did stopping us at the intersection, and we would be having a conversation about God and religion at that exact moment.

2.) God did not manipulate the timing of anything but the man, doing God’s work, was, in essence, God’s messenger working as his mouthpiece. It was only a miracle in the sense that it happened to happen the way it did. This is the stance more moderate believers would take.

Now, option 1 does not seem possible to me. If God were manipulating the timing of events in such a way as to deliver that exact message to me, it would have disrupted the timing of other events in other people’s lives, and so on to the point where no one would actually be in control over any of their actions because God is controlling them in order to orchestrate thousands of these “small miracles” each day. This violates not only logic but one of the major tenants of religion - freedom of choice. This point of view, “God is in control of everything,” makes so little sense to me that I’m not going to continue discussing it. There are just too many problems with this to address them each.

If you try to find a more reasonable explanation, option 2, you are actually talking about a coincidence. If God was not controlling anything, you don’t have a miracle at all. The man could have just as easily been yelling about how much he loves Snickers bars, the light could have been green, and mylady and I could have been discussing the weather. If what defines events as “small miracles” is nothing more than the outcome of that event then we would have to define everything as miracles in some sense and then the term loses all meaning.

No, a miracle definitely has to involve God’s interference with the life of man.

So, I am forced to conclude that what happened was a coincidence meaning that there was no greater significance to the events than: a man was yelling about his beliefs at a time when I happened to be discussing mine.

However, there is a large part of the population, possibly a majority, that would not interpret it this way and I am very curious to hear their response to my post. So, if you have some thoughts on this, please do comment as I’d like to hear points of view on the topic.

Texas District Judge Barbara Walther late Friday ordered that parents and children of the Yearning For Zion Ranch submit DNA samples to help sort out family relationships that have confounded authorities since 416 children were taken into state custody two weeks ago.

The child welfare agency has said that the sect encourages adolescent girls to marry older men and have children, and that boys are groomed to become future perpetrators. Sect members deny the allegations.”

From the AP >

The continuing saga of the Yearning for Zion Ranch, where members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints settled, highlights how religion can be used to brainwash and negatively affect the lives of otherwise ordinary people. The children were taught from a very young age that rejecting polygamy would land them in hell.

It is true that people can be brainwashed without religion but there is no denying that this was a religious organization and that God, damnation, and the rest of the church’s belief system were the tools that were used to abuse the victims.

“The women of Basra are being horrifically murdered and then dumped in the garbage with notes saying they were killed for un-Islamic behavior,” Khalaf told The Associated Press. He said men with Western clothes or haircuts are also attacked in this oil-rich city some 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Iranian border and 550 kilometers (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad.”

Those who behind these atrocities are organized gangs who work under cover of religion, pretending to spread the instructions of Islam, but they are far from this religion,” Khalaf said.”

Via the Herald Tribune >

The people who committed these murders included notes saying that the women were killed for un-Islamic behavior.

Churches were ransacked, entire villages razed and their inhabitants forced to flee into the forests.

The violence, which began on Christmas Eve, has now largely abated, but the plight of the people has not.

Many are now living in the shells of their burned out homes, all their possessions lost.

The conflict has pitted Hindu against Christian, tribal against non-tribal.

All share some responsibility for what has happened, all have suffered. Years of relatively peaceful co-existence of these communities, living a fragile rural existence, has been shattered.

The Christian community blames the virulently anti-Christian rhetoric of Hindu nationalist organisations; and one person in particularly, a revered local holy man, Lakhanananda Saraswati. …”

Via BBC >
What’s behind the Christian-Hindu violence? Let’s not make this more complicated than it is: religion.

Whatever else I might have thought of [President George W] Bush’s call, with its assumption that prayer is some sort of miracle Vicks VapoRub for the national charley horse, it’s clear that his hands were reaching for any hands but mine.

The authors set out to examine this interaction by conducting experiments with undergraduates at two religiously contrasting universities: Brigham Young University where 99% of students report believing in God and the Bible and Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam where just 50% report believing in God and 27% believe in the bible.

After reporting their religious affiliation and beliefs, the participants read a parable adapted from a relatively obscure passage in the King James Bible describing the brutal torture and murder of a woman, and her husband?s subsequent revenge on her attackers. Half of the participants were told that the passage came from the Book of Judges in the Old Testament while the other half were told it was an ancient scroll discovered in an archaeological expedition.

In addition to the scriptural distinction, half of the participants from both the bible and the ancient scroll groups read an adjusted version that included the verse:

“The Lord commanded Israel to take arms against their brothers and chasten them before the LORD.”

The participants were then placed in pairs and instructed to compete in a simple reaction task. The winner of the task would be able to “blast” his or her partner with noise up to 105 decibels, about the same volume as a fire alarm. The test measures aggression.

As expected, the Brigham Young students were more aggressive (i.e. louder) with their blasts if they had been told that the passage they had previously read was from the bible rather than a scroll. Likewise, participants were more aggressive if they had read the additional verse that depicts God sanctioning violence.”

Anyone surprised by the results of this research?

Via EurekaAlert >

Police in eastern India killed at least three people when they opened fire on a group of hard-line Hindus who set fire to a police station during ongoing clashes between Hindus and Christians, officials said Friday.

The killings, which occurred Thursday in a remote corner of Orissa state, bring the death toll to four since violence broke out on Christmas Eve when long-standing tensions between the Hindu majority and the small Christian community erupted over conversions to Christianity.

The Hindus had attacked the police station in the Kandhamal district’s Brahmangaon village, complaining of a lack of protection after a group of Christians burned down several Hindu homes in an apparent retaliation for earlier Hindu attacks on churches.

About 19 churches, most of them small mud and thatch buildings, have been ransacked and burned since Monday and several homes destroyed, including that of Radhakant Nayak, a member of India’s upper house of parliament and a Christian leader in the area.

The state’s chief minister, Naveen Patnaik, told reporters Friday that three people were killed in the violence at the police station, but provided no other details.

Patnaik also called for more federal forces to be dispatched to the area after local police and a curfew failed to halt the violence. On Thursday the federal government said it was sending a 300-strong paramilitary force to the region.

At least 25 people, belonging to both Hindu and Christian communities, have been arrested for suspected involvement in the violence, Superintendent of Police Narsingh Bhol told The Associated Press by phone.

India is overwhelmingly Hindu but officially secular. Religious minorities, such as Christians, who account for 2.5 percent of the country’s 1.1. billion people, and Muslims, who make up 14 percent, often coexist peacefully.

Is “often coexisting peacefully,” often enough? Is it too much to ask that they always coexist peacefully? If that’s not a possibility, maybe we should consider that the world might be better without religions. Three dead due to religious violence is 3 too many… no matter the frequency. 

 Via AP > 

“Reports from exiles along the frontier confirmed that hundreds of monks had simply “disappeared” as 20,000 troops swarmed around Rangoon yesterday to prevent further demonstrations by religious groups and civilians.

Word reaching dissidents hiding out on the border suggested that as well as executions, some 2,000 monks are being held in the notorious Insein Prison or in university rooms which have been turned into cells.

There were reports that many were savagely beaten at a sports ground on the outskirts of Rangoon, where they were heard crying for help.

Others who had failed to escape disguised as civilians were locked in their bloodstained temples.

There, troops abandoned religious beliefs, propped their rifles against statues of Buddha and began cooking meals on stoves set up in shrines.”

Read more at Daily News >