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Ever felt a little incoherent? Or maybe you've been in two minds about something, or even in a bit of delicate state. Well, here's your excuse: perhaps you are in thrall to the strange rules of quantum mechanics. We tend to think that the interaction between quantum physics and biology stops with Schrödinger's cat. Not that Erwin Schrödinger intended his unfortunate feline - suspended thanks to quantum rules in a simultaneous state of being both dead and alive - to be anything more than a metaphor. Indeed, when he wrote his 1944 book What is Life?, he speculated that living...

Facing a growing shortage of priests, the Roman Catholic Church is turning to former priests who left their callings to get married.While the “dispensed” priests won’t be allowed to take confessions or celebrate mass — they will be asked to serve as teachers and lay workers in such roles as helping serve communion to the congregation, roles already filled by lay members of local congregations.“The Vatican has appealed to diocesan bishops to encourage priests who have left ministry in order to get married to play a more active role in parish life,” reports Catholic Herald magazine, which reports that Cardinal...

Is evil over? Has science finally driven a stake through its dark heart? Or at least emptied the word of useful meaning, reduced the notion of a numinous nonmaterial malevolent force to a glitch in a tangled cluster of neurons, the brain? Yes, according to many neuroscientists, who are emerging as the new high priests of the secrets of the psyche, explainers of human behavior in general. A phenomenon attested to by a recent torrent of pop-sci brain books with titles like Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. Not secret in most of these works is the disdain for...

Inside your body breathes a person—a soul. Inside the body of Jewish practice breathes an inner wisdom—the soul of Judaism. We often call it “Kabbalah”, meaning “receiving.” Just as Jewish practice is received through an unbroken, ancient tradition from the revelation at Sinai, so is its soul. Kabbalah, then, is the received wisdom, the native theology and cosmology of Judaism.

Korean news outlets are reporting that an udumbara -- a legendary flower in Buddhist literature believed to bloom once every 3,000 years -- has sprouted at a humble Family Mart. Store manager Kim Jong-woo was cleaning when he spotted the 17 tiny flowers growing on the window. He recognized the flowers, he said, from images on television.

It needs to be noted that Arabs had been making the pilgrimage to Mecca-to the enormous granite Ka'aba, the old shrine at the center of the city-for hundreds, possibly thousands of years, before Islam to pay tribute to these 360 gods represented inside the Ka'aba's walls. Muhammad destroyed all but two -- that of the Virgin Mary, and that of Christ. However, even those representations would eventually be banned under Islam's subsequent prohibition of images. This prohibition was not endorsed by the Prophet. Controversies have exploded over images depicting the Prophet Muhammad, namely his depiction as a turbaned terrorist in...

The “founder” of the Jains religion which is primarily in India is called Mahavira, which mean “The Great Hero” (maha – great, vira – hero). He lived thousands of years ago, and there is ample evidence that not only was he a near contemporary of the “Buddha”, the Buddha or “Intellectual” (buddhi – mind, Budd – intellect, Buddha – the Intellectual) who was a Prince of Nepal called Siddhartha, there is evidence and I personally believe that Mahavira had taught or strongly influenced the “Buddha” in religion and yoga. Mahavira is largely unknown in the West, but that is not...

KAIFENG, China—Zhang Xinwang, a moon-faced Chinese man with a spiky beard, calls himself "Moishe." "So do you think I look Jewish?" he asks. For much of the past millennium, Jews in Kaifeng— descendants of merchants who arrived here from Persia, probably around the 11th century—have been struggling with an existential question: What does it mean to be Jewish? The handful of Kaifengers who go to Israel are sometimes floored to discover they need to go through a rabbi-certified conversion to be accepted as Jews, while the ones staying home squabble over which of them are really Jewish. The question has...

Experts say they're looking to publish the authoritative edition of the Old TestamentBible Project, center, Dr. Rafael Zer, editorial coordinator, left, and Efrat Leibowitz, graduate research assistant, confer in their office at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem on Wednesday. The ongoing work of these academic detectives shows that this foundation text of Western civilization has always been more fluid than many people's strongly held beliefs would suggest.JERUSALEM — A dull-looking chart projected on the wall of a university office in Jerusalem displayed a revelation that would startle many readers of the Old Testament: The sacred text that people revered in...

Penn Jillette is fond of Christians. Despite the title of his new book, "God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales," the talky half of the magic-comedy duo Penn & Teller finds those who follow Jesus to have compassion. "If you say bad things about them, they won't kill you — which is all I require out of people I share the planet with," Jillette says. "The fact that I attack Christians is, in a lot of ways, showing how much I trust them." "God, No!" is filled with hilarious stories from Jillette's life, each...

We saw it coming when rumors of the cobra curse started spreading. Officials at Kerala’s Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple – where a treasure estimated to be worth $22 billion was found last month – had warned against opening the last of its sealed vaults, citing the image of a cobra that ominously guarded its entrance. The vault – Chamber “B” – is still sealed. But now a group of astrologers say they are sure tragedy will befall those who upset the temple’s deity further. The god, they say, is already angry about outsiders rummaging through the other five vaults, the contents...

IN THE shadow of Mount Olympus the toga-clad worshippers sway to the beating of a drum as the bearded man leading the ceremony throws a pinch of grain into a torch, then circles his hand above the flames. While the group, dressed in yellow, red and blue robes, may appear to be taking part in some bewildering historical re-enactment, they are members a growing pagan movement dedicated to resurrecting the religion and way of life of ancient Greece. The pagans have gathered in a meadow near the sacred mountain where their ancestors believed the gods lived and held court to...

When the Taliban controlled Afghanistan a decade ago, they were fanatical about eliminating everything they considered un-Islamic. Their biggest targets — literally and figuratively — were the two monumental Buddha statues carved out of the sandstone cliffs in central Afghanistan. One stood nearly 180 feet tall and the other about 120 feet high, and together they had watched over the dusty Bamiyan Valley since the sixth century, several centuries before Islam reached the region. Despite international opposition, the Taliban destroyed the statues with massive explosions in 2001. At the time they were blown up, the statues were the largest Buddha...

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ASHDOD, Israel (AP) — A few evenings every month, some of Israel's wealthiest and most powerful people can be found in a living room in this seaside city, waiting to have a few minutes with a rabbi they see as an advisor, guru or miracle worker.Yoshiyahu Pinto is slightly stooped, his long beard and hair unkempt. He looks older than his 38 years, and speaks so softly you have to lean in to hear him. His remarkable rise in recent years has turned this living room of floral-patterned chairs and gilt sofas into an intersection of influence extending to Israel's...

Archaeologists have discovered an ancient Roman sarcophagus in the central Italian Lazio region surrounding Rome. It is the second sarcophagus discovered during a dig being coordinated by the University of Michigan. The sarcophagus was uncovered in the area of Lazio believed to the site of the ancient Roman city of Gabii, located 18 kilometres east of Rome. Both sarcophagi -- coffins typically adorned with sculptures or inscriptions -- are made of lead and are believed to date from the 1st or 2nd century AD. The first sarcophagus was unearthed in 2009 by archaelogists working on the same dig, the 'Gabii...

MITHRAISM The Cosmic Mysteries of Mithras by David Ulansey Author of THE ORIGINS OF THE MITHRAIC MYSTERIES (Oxford University Press, 1991) The following essay is adapted from my article,"Solving the Mithraic Mysteries" Biblical Archaeology Review (vol. 20, #5 [September/October 1994] pp. 40-53) This article is a summary of my book on Mithraism, THE ORIGINS OF THE MITHRAIC MYSTERIES(Oxford University Press, revised paperback, 1991) [To order this book (for $13.95), click here.]   The Encyclopedia Britannica has given this page its "Web's Best Sites" award. The Cosmic Mysteries of Mithras (Note: complete documentation for the following essay can be found...

Centuries after the Spanish Inquisition led to the forced conversion of Jews to Catholicism, an ultra-orthodox rabbinical court in Israel has issued a religious ruling that recognizes descendants from the insular island of Majorca as Jews. The opinion focused narrowly on the Majorcan community of about 20,000 people known as chuetas and did not apply to descendants of Sephardic Jewish converts in mainland Spain or the broader diaspora of thousands of others who scattered to the Ottoman Empire and the Spanish colonies in South and North America. The island, isolated until a tourist boom that began in the late 1960s,...

Over a phone conversation with one of the Saudi Arabian newspapers, he said: “there were not many Zoroastrians in history, but they have been well-known (so what! who has assigned you to be historian without documentation and authenticity, let's see what you have to say and what are your proves to the lies this time!!!). History knows them as a nation full of hate and oppression (lie, if you meant history of Iran, for you ignorant mind, it is good to say and let you know that Iran has been known as cradle of civilization, just check this link, if...

Nearly half of the New Testament is a forgery, according to a provocative new book which charges that the Apostle Paul authored only a fraction of letters attributed to him, and the Apostle Peter just wrote nothing. Written by Bart Ehrman, a former evangelical Christian and now agnostic professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the book claims to unveil "one of the most unsettling ironies of the early Christian tradition:" the use of deception to promote the truth. "The Bible not only contains untruths of accidental mistakes. It also contains what almost anyone today...