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Members of lndia’s Thuggee sect strangled people as sacrifices to appease the bloodthirsty goddess Kali, a practice beginning in the 1500s. The number of victims has been estimated to be as high as 2 million. Thugs were claiming about 20,000 lives a year in the 1800s until British rulers stamped them out. At a trial in 1840, one Thug was accused of killing 931 people. Today, some Hindu priests still sacrifice goats to Kali.
The Mountain Meadows massacre was a mass killing of the Fancher-Baker wagon train at Mountain Meadows in Utah Territory in 1857, by a group of Mormons and Paiute Indians.
The emigrants fought back and a siege ensued. Intending to leave no witnesses of Mormon complicity in the siege and avoid reprisals complicating the Utah War, militiamen induced the emigrants to surrender and give up their weapons. After escorting the emigrants out of their fortification, the militiamen and their tribesmen auxiliaries executed approximately 120 men, women and children.
Pope Innocent IV issued a papal bill which authorized the use of torture by inquisitors. The Inquisitors were forbidden to use methods that resulted in bloodshed, mutilation or death. One of the more common forms of medieval inquisition torture was known as strappado. The hands were bound behind the back with a rope, and the accused was suspended this way, dislocating the joints painfully in both arms. Weights could be added to the legs dislocating those joints as well.
The organization is still active today under the name of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Prior to becoming Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Ratzinger was the head of the congregation.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith previously known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition (wherefrom arose the names Roman Inquisition or Holy Inquisition popularly used in reference to the 16th century tribunals against witchcraft and heresy), and after 1904 called the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, is the oldest of the nine congregations of the Roman Curia. Among the most active of the congregations, it oversees Catholic Church doctrine. Its offices are housed at the Palace of the Holy Office at the Vatican. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congreg...e_of_the_Faith
The circumcision of male children is a central feature of both Judaism and Islam. It is also important in many African and New World cultures.
An increasing number of committed Jewish and Muslim people reject circumcision on ethical grounds, although they are certainly the minority at present.
Attitudes to circumcision may provoke fierce hostility within families and among communities. In the past, wars have been fought, and thousands have died, to preserve the right to circumcise when rulers from other cultures forbade it.
Judaism
In the book of Genesis (17: 10-14), circumcision represents the covenant made by God with Abraham and his descendants.
Traditional religious circumcision is performed by a mohel (pronounced mo-hell in Hebrew or moyle in Yiddish). It is usually carried out on the eighth day after birth, unless there is a danger to the child's health, in which case it should be delayed until that danger has passed. In the UK, mohelim attend 40 to 50 circumcisions and have to pass practical and theoretical examinations during their training before performing circumcision alone. Islam
The divine law or sharia defines every aspect of Muslim life. It is based upon the Holy Koran, the hadith (the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed) and the sunnah (Prophet's tradition).
All Muslims agree that these are the three sources of Islamic law, but different groups interpret their application in different ways. Circumcision is not mentioned in the Koran, but has the status of sunnah. Only the Shafiite school of law regards circumcision as obligatory (wajib), while the Hanafite, Jafarite, Malikite, Hanbalite and Zaidite regard it as only recommended, because it is sunnah.
Even those who consider circumcision an obligatory duty for themselves do not see it as an essential requirement for others to become a Muslim. However, the procedure is very commonly practiced and is certainly seen as an important external symbol of submission to God's will.
Circumcision to prevent future disease
Prevention of disease is the second most commonly given reason for circumcision after religious reasons, although the evidence that it has any beneficial effect on future health is very poor.
The practice is, more likely, rooted in cultural traditions, although western societies may find this an uncomfortable conclusion.
I got months of criticism for not circumcising my son. Even though I'm atheist, and people knew I had no reasons to do so. I'm not Jewish or Islamic I thought, why am I getting grief for not cutting up my son?
Circumcising is a perfect example of how religious mutilation can become main stream and effect everyone. When society gets use to something like this, they forget the real reasons behind the act in the first place. They find other justifications for it. They try and make it about something else but the truth is, it's a religious mutilation. You may be joining in for other reasons but the majority are doing it because they feel God wants it done.
In an effort to keep their minds pure, Twelve Tribes children aren't allowed to have toys, play games or make-believe. If a child disobeys these rules or fails to respond to an adult, he or she is hit on the bare bottom or hand with a 45-centimetre, reed-like stick, one of which is kept above the door ledge in every room.
Twelve Tribes' attitude towards children that has proved most controversial. Harsh discipline is one of the group's central tenets, as detailed in its 267-page Child Training Manual, copies of which have been handed out to parents at Picton. Written by Spriggs, the manual codifies when, why and how to hit children, saying "you must make it hurt enough to produce the desired result" and that "stripes or marks from loving discipline show love by the parent".
"Once, when I was making some food in the kitchen, I saw an eight-month-old boy being repeatedly hit with a stick for 40 minutes by his mother," George, a former member from Picton, says. "All because the kid kept dropping a lid that she'd given him."
David Pike, a former member from the tribe of Mannasah, in the US, told of seeing a two-year-old "switched" for eight hours "because she didn't want to eat a bowl of millet, which is what they eat all the time. I also saw young boys who couldn't sleep on their backs because their buttocks were so welted and bloody."
Again, I think people use religion as an excuse to be hateful, but most Christians I talk to deny this and say it's the word or will of God, and sometimes it isn't always what we want to here. So, what can you do.
What happened in Russia happened in the name of economic theory. There is no logical connection to atheism.
Communism isn't atheism, and vice versa.
A connection of atheism to communism/marxism could only be possible by a true believer in communism/marxism.
Therefore those that believe the two are one and the same, must be communists/marxists.
The early Christians tried to live in a pretty purely communistic society. It was not the communism of Lenin and Stalin, but it did believe the line from Marx *from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.*
All that believed were together, and had all things in common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.
(Acts 2:44-45)
Many utopian societies were based on this as an ideal.
A pig caused hundreds of Indians to kill one another in 1980. The animal walked through a Muslim holy ground at near New Delhi. Muslims, who think pigs are an embodiment of Satan, blamed Hindus for the defilement. They went on a murder rampage, stabbing and clubbing Hindus, who retaliated in kind. The pig riot spread to a dozen cities and left more than 200 dead.
The First Crusade was launched in 1095 with the battle cry "Deus Vult" (God wills it), a mandate to destroy infidels in the Holy Land. Gathering crusaders in Germany first fell upon "the infidel among us," Jews in the Rhine valley, thousands of whom were dragged from their homes or hiding places and hacked to death or burned alive. Then the religious legions plundered their way 2,000 miles to Jerusalem, where they killed virtually every inhabitant, "purifying" the symbolic city. Cleric Raymond of Aguilers wrote: "In the temple of Solomon, one rode in blood up to the knees and even to the horses' bridles, by the just and marvelous judgment of God."
In the Third Crusade, after Richard the Lion-Hearted captured Acre in 1191, he ordered 3,000 captives -- many of them women and children -- taken outside the city and slaughtered. Some were disemboweled in a search for swallowed gems. Bishops intoned blessings. Infidel lives were of no consequence. As Saint Bernard of Clairvaux declared in launching the Second Crusade: "The Christian glories in the death of a pagan, because thereby Christ himself is glorified."
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