Questions tagged [christianity]
the religion based on the person and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, or its beliefs and practices.
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Have Islamic prayers been introduced into Ontario public schools while Christian ones have been removed?
Recently I saw one of those chain letters circulating that made a number of lurid claims that looked suspect for me. Here's the first such claim:
Islamic prayers have now been introduced into ...
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Has Zelensky "declared war against Christianity"?
One headline on the December 21, 2022 episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight claimed that "Zelensky has declared war against Christianity", referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
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Did Christians kill thirty to fifty times as many people in political violence as Muslims in the 20th century?
Blog post by US academic Juan Cole (sometimes linked to in twitter)
Twentieth Century Deaths in War and Political Violence by Religion
Total: 102 Million
Killed by Christians of European ...
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Did a Russian Orthodox priest sprinkle holy water on Russia's Central Bank's servers?
Tweet by @bankableInsight (3,639 retweets, 1,662 favorites), reported by the NZ Herald:
This is a Russian priest sprinkling holy water on the central bank's
servers in an attempt to stop the fall of ...
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Did a survey of conservative Christians show 85% would disown their child if they turned out to be homo sapiens?
This Facebook post, attributed to the The Atheist Advocate, says:
We polled over 10,000 conservative Christians
"What would you do, if you discovered that your child was a homo sapien?"
85% ...
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Are LDS missionaries taught languages to a level of fluency in under three months which takes other schools years?
In How do Mormon missionaries learn foreign languages so quickly? it is claimed that LDS (Mormon) missionaries spend only up to ten weeks in languge learning, and that most are "fluent" within one ...
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Did Augustine of Hippo warn Christians to beware mathematicians?
On the first page of Mathematics for the Nonmathematician, mathematician Morris Kline quotes Augustine of Hippo as saying:
The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who
...
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Did fewer Jews die of the Black Plague because of ritual washing?
I've frequently heard the claim that fewer Jews died of the Bubonic Plague than their Christian neighbors in the Middle Ages because Jews took regular ritual baths (mikva) and ritually washed hands ...
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Did Pope Francis say that women are "unfit for political office", and merely the "helper of men"?
A popular image going around Facebook claims it to be true. The image was found on the Anti-Theists blog page, currently with 65,000+ followers.
The picture reads,
Women are naturally unfit for ...
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Does the "Blood of Jesus on the Cross" flower only bloom during the Holy week (just before Easter)?
It is claimed that this flower grows only in the Holy week on social media.
For example:
Facebook
This beautiful flower grows in New Zealand and is called the "Blood of Jesus on the Cross".
...
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2
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Have 50 million Eastern Orthodox Christians been killed in the 20th century?
Eastern Orthodox Christians claim that there has been a 'Holocaust' of sorts in the latter part of the 19th century and throughout the entire 20th century (and continuing into the 21st century). But ...
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Was Messina destroyed by earthquake three days after local newspaper dared God to do so?
Popular Christian author Nancy Leigh DeMoss said the following on her radio show:
One hundred years ago Messina was a prosperous, gorgeous coastal city on the Italian island of Sicily, just off the ...
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Was marriage defined as "selling your daughter for three goats and a cow" in the Bible?
The organisation Planting Peace recently put up a billboard in controversial county clerk Kim Davis' hometown:
Dear Kim Davis, The fact that you can't sell your daughter for three goats and a cow ...
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Is Jesus Christ's birthday March 28th?
Prior to about a week ago, I've never known Christ's birthday to be anything other than December 25th. However, my kids are starting to tell me about how they're hearing claims from peers that this is ...
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Is it true that 4th century Christians "destroyed all they could reach of ancient learning"?
On page 19 of Mathematics for the Nonmathematician, mathematician Morris Kline claims that:
In 313 A.D. Rome legalized Christianity and, under the emperor
Theodosius (379-395), adopted it as the ...
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Were Christians ever publicly executed for their faith in Ancient Rome?
It’s commonly known that early Christians were prosecuted for centuries in the Roman empire, up to execution via damnatio ad bestias, meaning they were made to fight lions and other beasts in deadly ...
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Did a Cypriot bishop claim that homosexuality is caused when parents have anal sex?
The August 1, 2019 issue of MetroWeekly ("Washington D.C.'s Best LGBTQ Magazine for 25 Years"), on page 46, provides a "LastWord" quotation section that includes the following:
&...
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Do Mormon teens practice "soaking" and "jump humping"?
According to this popular post on /r/facepalm, and again here
Some Mormon teens have convinced themselves that putting a penis in a vagina and then not moving is not sex. That's called soaking. Jump ...
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Do US Military personnel have to observe Ramadan while Gideon volunteers are banned from bases?
The website The Gateway Pundit claims "Military Bans Bibles But Forces Soldiers to Adhere to Ramadan Rules" :
The US Air Force kicked Christian Gideon’s volunteers off base in March.
The ...
user20862
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Did St. Patrick rid Ireland of druids and other pagans?
I've read that the common story about St. Patrick ridding Ireland of "snakes" is actually a reference to ridding Ireland of druids and other pagans. Some sources say that he accomplished this through ...
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Did Christians seek out martyrdom during the Roman empire?
In the National Geographic series "Jesus: Rise To Power", it seemed as if some Christians actively sought out martyrdom. One anecdote it mentioned, featuring Arrius Antoninus, is also mentioned in ...
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Is the Greek Orthodox church worth 700 billion Euros?
This Wikipedia list puts the Greek Orthodox church's net worth at 700B Euros in 2011 (about 974B USD), above any branch of the Catholic church or other religion. Its source is France 24, but I am not ...
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Have one million Christians been persecuted to death or exile in Iraq by jihadis?
On the Breitbart News Network is the claim
In a region where Christians predate Muslims by centuries, over one million Christians have been killed or have had to flee because of jihadi persecution, ...
user20862
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Were evangelicals rallied around abortion in 1978, as a substitute for segregation?
The June 20, 2019 edition of NPR’s “Throughline” podcast “examines how the issue of abortion became a defining political issue for evangelicals.”
In it, the hosts talk about evangelicals initially ...
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Are any fragments of the True Cross authentic?
Many churches around the world claim to hold pieces of the True Cross, the cross upon which Jesus was actually crucified. However, I doubt that any of their claims are valid. Two thousand years is a ...
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Is global persecution of Christians at historic peak?
From this article in the "Catholic News Agency":
Anti-Christian persecution is “worse than at any time in history”
How much are Christians really persecuted today, and is it really worse today ...
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Did a Chinese ethics textbook say Jesus stoned a woman to death?
I was reading this Reddit thread where the comments were casting doubt on whether this picture from this tweet was legitimate:
This image says:
From an account of John 8:3-11 in a law-and-ethics ...
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Are Luther and Calvin responsible for executing more humans than the Catholic Inquisition?
Here is a quote from one Russian Orthodox priest:
"The number of witches burned by Luther is way greater then the number
of those burnt by any (Catholic) Inquisition within one hundred years.
...
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Did the Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus, wear a hijab?
This claim (apparently) appeared on billboards in February 2018 on Interstate 55 and the Tri-State Tollway outside Chicago:
(Which, yes, does not literally and explicity make the claim "the Virgin ...
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Has Jesus been declared the king of Poland?
Reportedly, Jesus Christ was declared the king of Poland in November 2016 following a vote by their parliament. I've seen such reports in blogs and other such resources that are usually used as ...
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Did the medieval church ban geography as an offence against the Bible?
According to the columnist Simon Jenkins (Our fixation with maths doesn't add up):
When the medieval church banned geography as an offence against the Bible, what had been the queen of the sciences ...
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Did Muslims in the Middle East cut off the breasts of Christian women?
A Conservative Infidel article from 2014 made a claim (that was repeated in a forum for Americans for Legal Immigration PAC) that:
Muslims in the Middle East took Christian girls and cut their ...
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Did Pope Leo X say that Christianity is a fable?
The internet is full of references to the following quote, attributed to Pope Leo X:
How well we know what a profitable superstition this fable of Christ has been for us and our predecessors.
Did ...
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Does this statue outside a school in India depict a Hindu Brahmin begging in front of Virgin Mary?
This video was circulating on social media with the following caption:
At the entrance of St. Mary's H. S., Manapparai, Tiruchy, Tamilnadu, a brahmin is depicted as begging in front of Virgin Mary. ...
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Do Christian pastors in India pay people to convert to Christianity?
This says:
2) The Money Minded Evangelists - This is where 99.9% of today's Indian Christian Evangelists fall into. There are pastors who live in mansions and luxury, pay people to convert to ...
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Did Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni hand the national flag to intercessors in 1997 in the midst of a Christian revival?
World Trumpet Mission, an international revivalist ministry founded in 1988 in the Republic of Uganda by John Mulinde, presents the following historical timeline on their website (emphasis mine):
In ...
user56618
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Did a pastor undress and kiss his female church members' behinds to help them find a husband?
I came across this article from Facebook where this site (Warning: Site contains nudity) claims a pastor asked his female members who are spinsters to a beach where they were asked to undress and were ...
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Do a substantial number of born-again American Christians not believe "that Jesus bodily came back to life"?
In Dan Barker's Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of
America's Leading Atheists, at the start of Chapter Sixteen, he writes
(emphasis mine):
Many bible scholars[25] and ministers—...
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Did Islam dominate slave trade, and did Christians enter the slave market only later? [closed]
Stefan Molyneux claims in The Truth About The Crusades that:
Islam dominated slave trade between the 7th and the 15th century, while the Christians entered the market of human flesh much later - ...
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1
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Have 25% of all Christian Ex-Muslim converts received dreams or visions as a major factor in their conversion?
In an 2009 article, Why do Muslims come to Christ? Five case studies that underline the key factors as Living God in Christ, the living Word, and the living Body of Christ. by Salaam Corniche, there ...
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Was Mother Teresa a fanatic and a fraud? [closed]
According to this article, Mother Teresa did much more harm than good and was opposed to helping the poor, the ills and raped women.
Is it true that Mother Teresa didn't do much to help those in ...
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Has the documentary hypothesis become invalid? [closed]
The documentary hypothesis is a hypothesis which proposes that the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) was derived from originally independent, parallel and complete narratives, which were ...
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Are there any historical records of Gospel miracles? [closed]
The primary source documentation for whatever Jesus did are the Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Are there still any non-religious sources for the works/Miracles performed by Jesus....
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Did a ruler/army accept baptism with one hand unbaptized
There are a number of variations of a story on the internet mentioning how a ruler/an army accepted Christian baptism except they held their sword arm and sword out of the water, rejecting any ...
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Did Kim Clement Predict 9/11?
Recently many Christian commentators have told me that a Christian prophet by the name of Kim Clement predicted 9/11 (0:18), the location of Osama bin Laden (0:37), the rival of Ford (1:00), The ...
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Is Christianity testable? [closed]
In a debate between John Lennox and Peter Atkins on the topic "Can science explain everything?", at minute 44:47 John Lennox claims:
Lennox: "And the major reason why I believe ...
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Did Elvis Mbonye predict the 2012 Ugandan helicopter crash, 2018 Oscar winners, and Kenyan election dispute?
According to these videos, Elvis Mbonye, a self-proclaimed African prophet, predicted events such as the 2012 Ugandan helicopter crash, 2018 Oscar winners, and Ugandan election dispute:
Kenyan ...
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Did Argentine President Juan Peron grant free access to the radio, the press and two soccer stadiums to a preacher called Tommy Hicks in 1954?
The title is a summary of claims I've read from several informal sources. For example, this site claims:
It was in this environment that Tommy Hicks was welcomed into the presidential office. After ...
user56618