On Religion and Politics

This is something that has been on my mind for a while, and I am just now getting to type it all out. One thing that stands out to me about the Republican Party is that they usually have the vote of the Evangelical Christians, and this vote is very important to them - just look at how Trump went from saying he wasn't a Christian to saying he was born again so he could get the Evangelical vote to become the GOP candidate, and then the PotUS. But, I think the Evangelicals also have a reliance in the Republican Party to the point that they will vote for whoever the Republicans put out simply because they are Republican.

The Masculine Appeal of Paganism

I've seen a disturbing trend across social media lately. Many of the men that I know were Christian - even if nominally so - are seemingly leaving their faith and embracing Paganism and Asatru (belief in the Norse gods). Why would this be so? What is causing these men to leave behind Christianity and pick up these different beliefs?

Religion is the Root of All Evil

I've been seeing around social media (ugh) so many people decrying the evils of all religion. There are claims that religion is the number one reason for war. There are claims that religions were made up to control the masses. And there are claims that religions are the biggest money making scams out there. Let's review these claims.

Did Religion Create Civilization?

For years, historians, archeologists, anthropologists and pretty much all of the other "ologists" have agreed that agriculture created civilization, including religion, as we have known it for the past 12,000 to 15,000 years. The assumption was that settling down to lives of farming, people built cities, created art and made up organized religions to suit the new needs they faced in the transition from hunter-gathers to farmers. Or not.

New evidence suggests that it was not agriculture which created civilization, but religion. The June issue of National Geographic offers a brief and provocative story from a place in Turkey known as Göbekli Tepe, site of the world's oldest example of monumental architecture i.e. a temple.

Read more at HuffPo