Everybody Bake Jesus Day was celebrated on July 3^rd, 2010, to protest the Spanish government’s violation of musician Javier Krahe’s freedom of speech. The event generated enthusiastic response on facebook. Scroll through the slideshow to see how folks around the world commemorated the day.

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Long before the arrogant West coined the term “pseudoscience”, the ancient Indians already knew about it. It is an art that is inherent in the self and manifests through inner pro-activeness, yogic leverage and spiritual actualization. Unfortunately, the modern mind which has been corrupted by western thought, cannot comprehend the sublime supremeness of the ancient art. So I, who is dubbed “Sri Sri….∞ ” Anantananda Swami, will explain the divine art in modern terms, using the science of Gayatri Mantra as an example.

The Gayatri Mantra is a primal force in the Universe. The scientific nature of it has been explained by an ecstatic soul sometime back in the incoherent past. Allow me to demonstrate how the art of pseudoscience was put to use in the creation of that exalted piece of literature. Read the full story

India is a democracy. In a free country, the right to speak one’s mind is guaranteed to all its citizens, regardless of what individual persons might think about the opinions or thoughts expressed. Freedom does not include the right to not be offended by ideas, as long as the ideas expressed do not call for direct physical harm or physical suffering on fellow humans (Note: Inciting violence because of religious opposition to criticism, and then blaming those who criticize said religion for the violence, is akin to blaming the victim after an assault). Unfortunately, certain elements in our country and abroad have taken it upon themselves to be the moral police of the world. They use threats of violence and intimidation to shut down freedom of speech. Despite the threats of physical harm and the direct incitement of violence, acts that are not protected under the free speech standards of any democracy on earth, the extremists are allowed to walk free and continue breaking the laws of the land while the shadow of public disapproval is cast over those who express their sentiments in peaceful displays of intellectual rigor and academic scrutiny. Read the full story

Over the past few weeks the Indian media has been bringing to light stories about holy men indulging in not-so-holy activities! Well, screaming headlines and video footage bordering on pornography for the sensation mongering media have brought to the fore what religion is about- sex! If one were to look for the common factor between jihadis, swamis and the priests of the Roman Catholic Church it could be only one- obsession with sex.

As has been said before, one craves more for what one has been deprived of, and sex is the one thing that has been denied to all these categories. It is not that such behaviour does not occur between followers of other religions in similar circumstances, but their number is significantly less and hence does not hit the headlines as often. However, some such acts have been reported among Jains and Buddhists too. Read the full story

After years of debating over the Internet (they rarely debate outside), believers and non-believers have finally reached a consensus on something about God: God is incredible.

The Learning Curve is a comic strip published by Siddharth Singh. The above work was originally published here.

Thanks to Karen Armstrong, the author of The Case for God, we religious people FINALLY have a powerful strategy for combating reason. Contrary to its title, the book does not make a case for God at all. The story Ms. Armstrong lays out is, in actuality, the most succulent red herring that we can throw down to protect religion from critical thought. This is the basic idea: Atheism causes religious fundamentalism.

According to Ms. Armstrong, before science came on the scene people did not have any desire to know the ‘facts’ about reality. All pre-enlightenment Christians viewed the stuff in the Bible about Adam and Eve, the devil, the queers, the adulterers and the son of god, as metaphors for states of emotional well-being. They assigned no factual significance to all of this, until the atheists came along and forced some religious people to start understanding the scriptures as literal truth. Thus, atheists (and science itself) gave birth to religious fundamentalism!  The same goes for all the world’s religions. Thanks for your awesome revisionism, Ms. Armstrong. In my religious apologetics I have always wanted to employ Karl Rove’s strategy of going for your opponent’s strength while ignoring the facts. Read the full story