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Zarin Havewala doesn't call herself a professional matchmaker, but her track record suggests otherwise. "So far, 55 couples have found their partners through my efforts — 53 couples are already married, and two more couples are engaged to be married soon," says Ms Havewala, a Mumbai-based mother-of-two. Ms Havewala is a Zoroastrian — or 'Parsi' (meaning 'Persian') as they're known in India — a member of an ancient monotheistic faith that pre-dates Islam and Christianity. Zoroastrianism was the official religion of Persia, its birthplace, for more than a millennium, but today the community is a fraction of its former size,...

Scientists studied more than 100 dice dating back to more than 2,000 years ago They discovered that dice made before 400 AD had major differences in shape, material, size and configuration of numbers, suggesting there was little fairness By Renaissance times, dicemakers realized the object's size affected game play Researchers believe that die changed shape as we started to believe in chance

Exact purpose of these ancient stone constructions is unknown. The main assumption is that they, perhaps, symbolized a border between the world we live in and the world of spirits. Labyrinths were used for rituals to help souls to cross over to the other world. Other hypothesis is that labyrinths, perhaps, served as fishing traps. However, the major flaw in this argument is that many labyrinths have been found inland throughout the world... After entering a labyrinth and circle several times around the center, you leave it through the same entrance. Just after several turns it becomes unclear how much...

"The Secret of Kells" is an anachronism many times over, and what a good thing that turned out to be. A ravishing, continually surprising example of largely hand-drawn animation in the heyday of computer-generated imagery, an inexpensive and sophisticated European production in an age of broad-stroke studio films, even a spirited defense of books and bookishness while Kindles walk the earth, "Kells" fights the tide every way it can. Yet this longshot that began as a college project for Irish director Tomm Moore edged Hayao Miyazaki's "Ponyo" for one of five feature animation Oscar nominations, and in a year without...

Let's do some good here: Post photos and tributes to your favorite black conservatives!!!

Imagine going to sleep and waking up sounding British. It's a real thing, and it happened to a Valley woman who has never even left the country. "Everybody only sees or hears Mary Poppins," said Michelle Myers, a mom of seven who lives in Buckeye. Myers is a former Texas beauty queen who has never even left the United States. Three times in the past seven years, Myers has gone to sleep with blinding headaches only to wake up with a different accent. The first time it was Irish. The second time was Australian. Both incidents lasted about a week....

Myers says she has been diagnosed with Foreign Accent Syndrome. The disorder typically occurs after strokes or traumatic brain injuries damage the language center of a person's brain — to the degree that their native language sounds like it is tinged with a foreign accent, according to the Center for Communication Disorders at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Greek Pagans are granted legal status as polytheism is officially a religion in Greece, according to the Supreme Council of Ethnikoi Hellenes (YSEE). YSEE is a religious organization claiming they work to restore the indigenous religion of Hellas. The organization put out a statement saying that Greek polytheism has received legal status in Greece. Until now, Greek Pagans did not enjoy religious freedoms such as the right to buy land in order to build houses of worship nor could Pagan priests perform marriage ceremonies. Now the Greek State, through a decision of the Greek Ministry of Education, Research and Religious...

White House evangelical Pastor Paul Begley said first lady Melania Trump demanded that the White House be spiritually cleansed and that pagan, demonic items and artificats from the Obama and Clinton years be removed. Melania Trump reportedly said, “I’m not going to go into that White House unless it has been completely exorcised,” according to Pastor Begley. One thing was left, a cross on the wall. “They cleansed the White House,” he said. “They had people in there anointing it with oil and praying everywhere.”

Thousands of Christian villagers in China have been told to take down displays of Jesus, crosses, and gospel passages from their homes as part of a government propaganda effort to “transform believers in religion into believers in the party.” The news comes weeks after the CPC held its national congress, where Xi continued to consolidate party power and passed a historic measure to write his political philosophy into its constitution. SCMP called Xi “the country’s most powerful leader since Mao” Zedong, who also developed a personality cult through portraits in Chinese homes. The news outlet also noted Xi’s efforts to...

What Does It Mean to Die? When Jahi McMath was declared brain-dead by the hospital, her family disagreed. Her case challenges the very nature of existence. (New Yorker is not allowed to be posted)

A professor of religious studies at Michigan State University recently argued that white people who practice yoga are guilty of enjoying a “system of power, privilege, and oppression.”

Critics accuse it of threatening the separation of church and state; in truth, Washington’s new museum makes an invaluable contribution to American (and Jewish) cultural literacy.

Fearing that America was one step closer to becoming a theocracy with the opening of the privately-funded Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C., on Thursday and Friday, CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today hyped the supposed “controversy” swirling around the institution, even claiming that a “cloud of suspicion” hung over the building as it opened its doors. “Coming up on CBS This Morning, I’ll tell you why this museum is generating some controversy. It’s just a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol,” warned correspondent Chip Reid on Thursday. Introducing the segment minutes later, co-host Charlie Rose emphasized that the...

One year from today, Washington, D.C. will see the latest addition to its plethora of museums. The Museum of the Bible will open in November 2017 and is sure to draw millions of people from all over the world. The Museum of the Bible will not only be Washington, D.C.’s newest museum but it will also be one of the best. It will catalogue the thousands year old history of the Bible in a way that will be appealing to both the academic and the lay person, to the spiritually inclined and the non-believer, and to adults and children....

The National Mall may be the nation's front lawn, but even at holiday time the museums that line it are only lightly decorated with Christmas trees and lights and not with any religious displays. But a new privately-owned museum is going up just a few blocks away - the Museum of the Bible - that only wants to celebrate Scripture.

Some intriguing details from NPR: In Washington, D.C., construction is underway on the Museum of the Bible, an eight-story, $400 million enterprise funded by Hobby Lobby president Steve Green.Green is a Pentecostal known for donating to conservative evangelical universities and developing a public school curriculum based on the Bible. After the craft store’s controversial victory in this summer’s Supreme Court ruling over contraception, some people worry the new museum will come across as evangelical propaganda. But organizers behind Green’s latest venture say it won’t be a memorial to evangelism.The Museum of the Bible will house the more than 40,000 artifacts...

When the Green family, founders of U.S. retail chain Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., purchased their first biblical artifact in November 2009, they never expected to assemble in only a few years what is now one of the world’s largest private collections of rare biblical texts, objects, and artifacts. Known as the Green Collection, the compilation of around 40,000 objects includes some of the rarest and most significant biblical texts and artifacts ever assembled under one roof. NOW THEY WANT TO SHARE THAT WITH ALL AMERICANS, BUILDING A BIBLE MUSEUM JUST IN THE HEART OF OUR NATION. The museum in Washington,...

The billionaire owners of craft giant Hobby Lobby are under federal investigation for allegedly looting hundreds of ancient artifacts from the Middle East for use in their personal “Museum of the Bible,” according to a report. The Green family has been under investigation since 2011, the Daily Beast reports, when Memphis customs seized nearly 300 clay tablets en route to the Hobby Lobby headquarters in Oklahoma City. …

One of America’s most famously Christian businesses is amassing a vast collection of Biblical antiquities. The problem is some of them may have been looted from the Middle East. In 2011, a shipment of somewhere between 200 to 300 small clay tablets on their way to Oklahoma City from Israel was seized by U.S. Customs agents in Memphis. The tablets were inscribed in cuneiform—the script of ancient Assyria and Babylonia, present-day Iraq—and were thousands of years old. Their destination was the compound of the Hobby Lobby corporation, which became famous last year for winning a landmark Supreme Court case on...