He is known variously as Vissarion , The Teacher, and Jesus of Siberia and his followers believe that he really is the Messiah. From Wikipedia : Sergey Anatolyevitch Torop (Russian: Сергей Анатольевич Тороп), (born January 14, 1961) known by his followers as Vissarion (Виссарион), is a Russian mystic. He founded and heads a religious movement known as the Church of the Last Testament with its head church in the Siberian Taiga in the Minusinsk Depression east of Abakan, in the southern Siberia Kuraginsk district of Krasnoyarsk territory. He has around 4,000 followers (called Vissarionites) in around thirty villages in the immediate vicinity of his base at Sun City, while having approximately 10,000 followers around the world. Vissarion claims to be a reincarnation of Jesus. He teaches reincarnation, veganism, and the impending end of the world, or at least of civilization as we know it. In May 1990, aged 29, Vissarion claims to have experienced a mystical revelation. He first spoke publ...

By SConnor I, recently, had a heated debate at the excellent blog, Debunking Christianity, http:// debunkingchristianity. blogspot.com/2008/07/genesis- 221-25-woman-from-rib-and. html?showComment= 1217981580000# c2183258380688335035 with a zealous, Pastor Harvey Burnett, http://www.blogger.com/ profile/15315686602819371111 . I wanted to share with you some of the exchanges, I had with Harvey, to illustrate, what lengths, some delusional, Christians will take, to protect their feeble beliefs. As you will see, Harvey -- not being able to refute the specifics of my germane, arguments -- habitually, relies on absurd, non-sequiturs, hemorrhages equivocations and diverges, at any cost, including disparaging me and my relationship with my son Connor. For those who do not know my story; my ten year old son died from a heart attack, related to leukemia -- a devastating blow, that has left me emotionally crippled and overwhelmed my family with grief. http://exchristian.net/ testimonies/2...

A review of scientific studies on intelligence in relation to religiosity. From RationalistTube.Com

By Marlene Winell, Ph.D. I get this question so frequently, I’ve decided to make a better effort to reply. To be honest, I don’t like the question because it presumes we know what those words mean. Here are some responses, touching on more or less serious aspects of the topic. 1. Which god? Do you mean Zeus, Baal, Athena, Shiva, Allah, Jehovah, or some other? If you mean one of those, then no. I am not a theist. I don’t believe in an individual being that created and now controls the world. 2. What is belief? Is it a cognitive conclusion that I have reached basic on logical consideration of evidence? That would assume I have access to all the information, and I do not. Is it an emotional feeling for something beyond myself? Well, my emotions vary, and some days are hopeful, other days are dark. Emotions are a rocky basis for “belief.” Do I make a leap of faith, not knowing anything really, but simply wanting to “believe,” and putting stock in a “scripture” to give it su...

Blogger corrected the error and even sent an apology (below): But first, I would like to thank everyone for the positive feedback. I really appreciate the kind words, especially from people who understand why I would create such a blog. Christians tend think I'm just slamming them for the fun of it or that I'm a hateful fuck working for satan or something. But most of you understand that the real reason is to spread truth, not lies. Thank you for your support! -DocMike Message from Blogger: "You Are Not Spam August 2, 2008 — permalink You knew that already, and now we do too. We have now restored all accounts that were mistakenly marked as spam yesterday. (See: Spam Fridays) We want to offer our sincerest apologies to affected bloggers and their readers. We’ve tracked down the problem to a bug in our data processing code that locked blogs even when our algorithms concluded they were not spam. We are adding additional monitoring and process checks to ensure that bugs of t...

Hello everybody, A while ago I sent you a notice about this weekend workshop for recovering from religion. I'm pleased to say that we have some space available for some "pay what you can" participants. The room and board would still be $125 but beyond that is negotiable. So get in touch soon if you'd like to come! Warmly, Marlene Winell Here's the notice again. LEAVING YOUR RELIGION? It's not the end of the world! Join us at a recovery retreat. "RELEASE AND RECLAIM" August 15-17, 2008, with Dr. Marlene Winell Do you feel alone in your struggle for healing? Come to a supportive and powerful weekend with others who can understand you -- an oasis from dogmatic teachings and judgmental groups. We'll rant and rave, tell our stories, discuss the issues, visualize, role-play, dance and draw – whatever it takes to think for ourselves and reclaim our lives. A joyful, empowered life is your birthright and you can start now. WHEN: FRIDAY, Aug. 15,...

By Calladus Originally posted April 2007, in the Calladus Blog I was pretty active in church as a teenager (that was a long time ago now). We had Lock-Ins (where the youth group would spend all night at the church), retreats, summer camp, conferences. It was pretty good being a teen in the church. I once attended a youth conference at Texas Christian University that was interesting and fun. There were a lot of teens there – it felt like thousands. We would have speakers in the main auditorium with all of us in attendance, and we also had some smaller groups with speakers. I was in a smaller group that had a speaker who was traveling across the country to tell his story. This speaker was very eloquent, and the message was one of salvation. He was a young-ish man, perhaps late 20's – who exuded “coolness” from his sunglasses, pony-tail and motorcycle to his ripped physique. I don't recall much of the actual message, but I do recall this gentleman relating his past. His past was s...

By DocMike I started By The Book Comics in March of 2007 because I'd met so many Christians who had absolutely no idea of the injustice, absurdity, cruelty, violence, intolerance, and contradictions the Bible contains. And still, they consider it to be the inerrant word of God. Since then, I've posted 45 comics (with commentary) that point out (using humor) some of the many weaknesses of the Bible. I've promoted the blog by posting here at ExChristian and by responding to posts on this and other Atheist-related blogs. I have links to other Atheist sites, blogrolls, etc. I'm definitely not running a spam site. I get maybe 50-100 hits per day. Just a law-abiding US citizen exercising my right to express my opinions... Today, I got this email from Blogger: Your blog at: http://bythebookcomics.blogspot.com/ has been identified as a potential spam blog. To correct this, please request a review by filling out the form at (removed link) Your blog will be deleted within...

The Pale Blue Dot: a picture of Earth from 4 billion miles away, as told by Carl Sagan.

By The Thylacine This is really an adjunct to one of Sconner's comments in the Bibles to Bagdahd thread. As a young (primary school) kid my parents took us off to New Guinea in the early 1960's. Though conservative and practising xtians they were not missionaries, but government employees. I think that their main reason for going was financial as they had been forced to sell the family farm in the 1960 credit squeeze and had worked out that a term or two in PNG would give them enough cash to buy another farm. Papua New Guinea in the '60's was a place of hope and excitement but it was there that I first learned of the scourge of the missionary. The cash strapped Administration was cornered into a situation where it relied very heavily on missionaries and missionary organisations to provide the absolute basics of education. Outside the major urban centres the vast majority of education was the province of the missionary school. Coupled with the administration's alm...

By Calladus Originally posted April 2007, in the Calladus Blog . I have a long post today that was spurred by the article that Abstinence Only education doesn't work. How odd - religious conservatives keep saying that it DOES work - so I wanted to find out why they would say such a thing. I decided to see if my favorite religious fundamentalist lobbying organization could shed some light. Tony Perkins, President of James Dobson’s Christian lobbying organization “Family Research Council”, is a big advocate of Abstinence Only education programs for teens and pre-teens in public schools. On 23 March ’07 he wrote on FRC.com: … stacks of peer-reviewed research are showing the direct impact of abstinence education, including a peer-reviewed study on America's largest and oldest abstinence program, Best Friends. In Adolescent and Family Health , Dr. Robert Lerner's analysis of urban D.C. participants found that, "Despite the fact that [these students come from schools ...

By Calladus Religious groups have been exploiting the US Military Postal Service to flood Iraq and the surrounding region with bibles since shortly after the World Trade Center atrocity. These organized religious operations operate under the stated goal of sending bibles to the troops, but the results tend to imply another unstated goal, the creation of a “subtle” Crusade that witnesses to and attempts to convert Muslims in and around Iraq. Before the invasion of Iraq one organization, Campus Crusade for Christ , through their Military Ministry set up a program that would allow anyone to send a solder something called a “ Rapid Deployment Kit ”. These kits each contain a New Testament Bible, a written 90-day prayer devotional, and a ‘how to’ booklet used to instruct solders in the methods of witnessing to others. In other words this is a ‘religious conversion kit’ designed to help Christians proselytize and it is meant to be given to new Christians to reinforce their conversion an...