religion
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Which Religion Is Friendliest To The Idea Of Aliens?
In the annals of most world religions, a quick walk-on from an alien would not, at least on the surface, seem particularly strange. Unusual occurrences are kind of key to the whole enterprise. And adherents of both camps—UFO-watchers and the religious—know what it means to believe in the face of long odds. Should a member…
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A History Of The 7 Deadly Sins, And Why They’re Such A Popular Trope In Fiction
Pride. Greed. Gluttony. Lust. Sloth. Envy And, of course…the Wrath of Khan. These are the Seven Deadly Sins, a list of seven forbidden acts from Christianity that, if committed, equal a one-way ticket to the Bad Place. But they’re also a widely used trope in fiction, a way for some people to contextualise, and compartmentalise,…
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Humans Built Complex Societies Before They Invented Moral Gods
The appearance of moralizing gods in religion occurred after—and not before—the emergence of large, complex societies, according to new research. This finding upturns conventional thinking on the matter, in which moralizing gods are typically cited as a prerequisite for social complexity.
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How Ancient Religious Texts Went Digital
In the 1940s, as the Italian Jesuit priest Father Roberto Busa studied “the verbal system” of Thomas Aquinas, he wondered if, perhaps, there was “any gadget” that could help him develop a concordance — an alphabetical listing of all words written by the 13th century philosopher saint, complete with conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, and their citations.