Religion

For many Christians, the belief that souls go to Heaven or Hell after death is a cultural legacy rather than a conclusion reached through personal analysis of the biblical text.

Hendel Butoy was born in Brazil and raised in southern California. He studied at the California Institute of the Arts, and was then offered a position as an animator at Walt Disney in 1979.

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14).

Much of the Bible was written by prophets, so it is full of prophetic revelation. Most of these revelations are about mysteries of the past and present that we would not otherwise have access to.

The nativity of Jesus gives meaning and hope to all the stories about us and the world in which we live. In the bundle of narratives that have ever been imagined and told, it remains "the most beautiful story in the world."

“Is God dead?” was the question on the cover of Time magazine on April 8, 1966. Three-and-a-half years later (December 26, 1969), the publication changed that to: “Is God coming back to life?”

"Even to your old age and gray hairs I am He, I am He who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you" (Isaiah 46:4).

Sometimes, I wonder what I would be like if I were more like Jesus. Above all, I wonder how He would act in my situation. I have to admit that these questions sometimes leave me feeling lost.

In Dante Aligheri's Divine Comedy, written in the early 14th century, hell is described as a "city of woe" and a place of "eternal pain"—metaphors of endless suffering.

On April 26th 1986, reactor 4 at Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded. The effects were catastrophic­­—it was the worst nuclear disaster in history. The explosion let out the equivalent of 500 Hiroshima bombs-worth of radiation, and the area around Chernobyl—including the town of Pripyat—is now uninhabited. It will be unsafe to live there for the next 20,000 years.

Traditional communities are like rivers, while modern societies are like oceans, said Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Consider that a river—deeper or shallower, faster or slower—always has a direction, as traditional societies usually direct the lives of their members. The ocean is a different story.

The New Testament would have looked quite different[1] without the influence of Athanasius the Great, bishop of Alexandria and church father of the Christian Church in the 4th century.

It seems that one of the requirements for any sustainable worldview, philosophy or faith is that it should have some account of origins. Perhaps we could think about it simply as a necessary element of a good story. It is certainly one of the recurring tropes of superhero sequels or sci-fi epics that at some point we will come to better understand a...

Whenever we acknowledge that our prayers have become a boring exercise rather than a real conversation with a real person, it’s time to explore creative, tried and tested methods to rebuild a meaningful, enthusiastic and transforming prayer life.

A group of atheists in Sacramento, California, have prepared 55 billboards for the Christmas season, featuring images of local people and slogans such as "Good without God", "Doing good is my religion" or "Believe in yourself".