History of religious fraud

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1369424/Jesuss-Crown-Thorns-goes-display-British-Museum.html

 The British Museum has put on display a number of historical artifacts venerated in the past as sacred. These are interesting, strange, imaginative and sometimes gross little oddities and include the thorn thing described at the above link.
 Such relics are often criticised for their obvious fraudulent nature such as the multiple miraculous preserved foreskin of the infant Christ relics in various churches all over Italy and the world.     Yet such tragic objects do belong in a museum as they are historical artifacts and reveal the ignorance and cruelty of past humanity.  Historians can ascertain that this horrific mutilation was practised in the Medieval era by dating the relics.
 Chemical analysis frequently discredits the relics by carbon dating fabrics and materials to an inappropriate era.   Also by providing scientific explanation for so called miraculous phenomena such as crying paintings.        Religious paintings in which the Madonna or Saints are seen to weep -real- tears are due to paint chemistry. The white paint used in these paintings has higher fat content than the darker colours which have been applied ineptly by the artist or temperature changes have occurred so that the white paint used for the eyes has expanded more relative to the darker surrounding colours containing less fat content. The white paint then weeps down the painting particularly from the corners of the eyes where the boundary of the white occurs and where the dark coloured iris borders the white of the eye.
   People wanted to present these objects as sacred so as to make money out of selling them and displaying them for religious tourism and local prestige.    Believing in the authenticity of the objects allowed people to be conned.  Religious authorities therefore had an interest in keeping people ignorant and preserving science for a clique of insiders confined in a religious paradigm.
  Why people venerate objects is a wider question.   The lower animals also collect, defend and assemble things.  The Lyrebird is sometimes cited as an example of this as it collects blue objects for decoration.   Dogs sometimes collect shoes as do humans beyond the point of usefulness.  
  Hoarding, saving and souveniring are a basic behaviour instinct seemingly and religious veneration springs from this.     To rob us is of great satisfaction to our enemies. So that they may have our possessions is a motive for agression.    Such hostile desire to possess includes bloodlust, cannibalism, human sacrifice and extended into the modern era, the human body materials industry.
 The poor infants mutilated for the medieval foreskin collection in the Vatican were not the last to suffer such atrocity unfortunately as the mutilation still continues under the name of religion and for commercial reasons.  Science while providing no real justification for a medically unjustifiable amputation of a body part is yet sometimes concurrently warped to fit a religious paradigm and facilitates the horror by providing false research evidence.
 Objects and body parts treated as removable relics - Another detail for investigation of religion in the past and now.

Superstition drives teens to double murder

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368884/Young-woman-grandmother-stoned-death-witches.html
 Persecution of kids and adults accused by Evangelistic Christians of witchcraft, has been evidenced in prior posts at HOW NOT TO BELIEVE.
 At the above link one such double murder of a girl and her grandmother whose hut in Africa was recently set alight by teenage maniacs on a witch hunt, is reported.   The so called-witches- were stoned to death by the teenagers in what is evidently not an isolated example of Christians practise of stoning perceived witches in contemporary times.

Child slave traffic Reverend jailed

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368173/Eleven-years-evil-pastor-tortured-child-slaves.html

 She wrote an advise guide to parenting as a minister of religion and has now been exposed as an illegal immigrant who trafficked children from Africa to be abused as slaves in her family home.

Atheist theologian finds Goddess

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1367981/Atheist-Dr-Francesca-Stavrakopoulout-BBC-face-religion.html
 An Atheist theologian has unravelled her theory of religion at the above link.
 As I see it the God construct was male because it was just an expansion of prevailing social systems dating from pre human consciousness back to the lower animals.   The father was pack leader and the mother Goddess revered as a sludgy fertility husk symbolized in pre civilization by grain husks and podgy clay Venus dolls likely to be armless and headless.    This pathetic ideal female construct of the primitive mind translated into Christianity as Madonna often standing vapid and weepy in statuette form or centrally seated as if marooned on a desert island with brats hanging off her long entrapping skirts as in medieval and later schools of European painting.                      Yes there was a female God interpretation as gender stereotyped as the male.   Historians have recognized this.  Convention creates religion. Religions have no inherent existence outside the mind of humanity, are therefore creative, intellectual, constructed fantasies and are not real.

when scientists and priests are idiots alike

When science is idiotic there is absolutely no point in reverting to the primitive and praying.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1367524/Japanese-tsunami-earthquake-Nuclear-fuel-rods-exposed.html
 Examining the underlying nature of humanity is a better path to prevention of human idiocy, as in the act of human idiocy which has scientists and administrators playing with the experimental technology of nuclear science and then praying things dont go wrong.
 Why do scientists do this? Possibly because they are subjected to a process of initiation like indoctrination as students when their industry and teachers inculcate the dogma of their field into their minds.  They are reverting to the primitive religious mind set when they absorb the ethos of their field and they are cowering under the power of the father figures from the industry sent to their universities to instruct them so they may be worshipful to the industry of science and so that they and their skills and minds may be harnessed to preserve the idiot regimes they serve devotedly in most cases.
 And so pathetically, people quite high up in the picture are now going about praying the wind will change, the meltdown will snuff out and the public and governing regimes will be ready to stomach a reworking of the nuclear story for future reactor sales.

Animal sacrifice OK in US!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1366489/Priest-arrested-human-skulls-hundreds-pounds-animal-flesh-blood-bones-shed-Utah.html
This shocking religion practises animal sacrifice in the suburbs, does methamphetemine and brandishes human skulls for religious purposes.  They may, however get off animal cruelty charges as the US constitution is exploitable as defence of people who do wrong things for religious purposes.     
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism
They are a -syncretic- cult(amalgamation of beliefs), reported in the Dailymail link to have possibly hundreds of millions of followers.    Merged Afro- Caribbean  and Roman Catholicism and into US via Cuba, this religion is very macabre and it seems surprising to see the adult US males whose house was raided and found to have the animals, skulls,drugs and ritual shrine are aged in 40's and 50's, galumphing prime condition, clean sneakered, pressed shorts, suburban types.   Maybe they are repressed homosexuals attracted to a boyish/macho cult thing.            The obvious primitivity in this religion is very revealing of the nature of all religious belief.

Sham religion border control crime link

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1366060/Vicar-arrested-church-searched-police-probe-hundreds-sham-marriages.html     Where theres a sham marriage theres a sham religion at the above link.
 Facilitating the mass entry of people from more primitive, superstitious cultural backgrounds into the EU is extending the shelf life of religion in the Anglosphere by theoretically providing bums for seats in churches and mosques, so the churches that harbour clerics who perform sham marriages are not to be believed when they feign co operation with Border Control.            Church authorities are either idiots or culpable people traffickers. Either way, what use is their guidance?    Religion seems to be part of an immense problem of out of control immigration, global overpopulation and social chaos that cause critically degraded ecosystems threatening human survival long term.

Destiny and religious donations

http://www.voxy.co.nz/national/bishop-brian-tamakis-covenant-defence-yeah-right/1273/31219
The New Zealand based -Destiny- religious cult is the subject of the above link in which a journalist criticizes the Christian cult which has charity status and thrives on donations from believers.
 Allowing comments on the article from defensive true believers exposes the level of intensity of feeling of some of those currently immersed in the cult and the Bishop self proclaimed deity.               
  If these people  feel disillusioned down the track they will want their money back.         Would it not be a good idea for the donations to church groups to be held in an escrow account for the duration of the donar's allegiance? Refundable in full on demand.  Or something similar to an insurance company's indemnity reserves held to cover risk eventualities.    This should be possible as most religions cannot justify outgoings and accumulate hoards which are often wasted and speculatively invested.