A Guy in the Pew

Here is another cool map. The history of 5000 years of religion in 90 seconds. You can find lots of similar use of maps to show history here and here .

It seems obvious that Americans need to learn a great deal more about Islam. Ramadan--a month long Islamic religious holiday started this week, and there is a wonderful blog by an American Muslim that does a good job of explaining what Islam is all about. Shahed Amanullah is a frequent contributor to beliefnet, and his Ramadan blog is a real gem. Here is one example of his writing, which focuses on Amanullah's efforts to deal with Ramadan at the same time as the anniversary of 9/11:: It is a difficult and challenging situation this year in that my attempts at building an internal serenity for the start of Ramadan are coinciding with the anniversary of 9/11. I spend much of the whole year (every year since 9/11) dealing with the aftermath of those terrible events through my community work and writings, and in Ramadans past I've been able to take a break from that, however short, in order to get myself in the proper frame of mind. But not this year. In the past, I've used the...

I don't know what to make of this, and doubt that his is based on peer reviewed science, but this report from the Hindustan Times is interesting nonetheless: Dr Satwant K Pasricha, a NIMHANS Professor of Clinical Psychology is a leading national authority on reincarnations, employing rigorous scientific methods to investigate reincarnation claims since 1974. Here are excerpts from an interview with Neha Tara Mehta: It is important to first understand what we mean by ‘reincarnation’. For the purpose of our research, we use the term to refer to the concept that human beings consist of two components: a physical body and a non-physical component, some call it ‘psyche’, others may refer to it as ‘mind’, ‘personality’, or ‘soul’. At death, the physical body perishes but the non-physical component survives and after an interval, becomes associated with a new physical body. On the basis of meager data that we have, we can’t make generalisations about whether or not everyone reincarnates. ...