141
votes
Accepted
Has Zelensky "declared war against Christianity"?
The best way to tell a lie is to tell a partial truth.
It is true that the Ukrainian government has raided several churches associated with the Russian Orthodox Church. What Carlson failed to mention ...
- 14.5k
138
votes
Accepted
Have Islamic prayers been introduced into Ontario public schools while Christian ones have been removed?
Let's break the original claim down into several constituent components.
Islamic prayers have now been introduced into Toronto and other public schools in Ontario.
Toronto Sun, CBC News, and ...
- 10.8k
84
votes
Accepted
Did a survey of conservative Christians show 85% would disown their child if they turned out to be homo sapiens?
There was no poll. This was intended to be satirical, but appears to have missed its mark in many places.
It was originally posted on a Facebook page for the The Atheist Advocate.
In response to ...
- 141k
76
votes
Has Zelensky "declared war against Christianity"?
This is an addition to the excellent answer by David Hammen in order to give more historic and local context.
During the time of the USSR, Russian Orthodox Church was essentially under a complete ...
67
votes
Accepted
Does the "Blood of Jesus on the Cross" flower only bloom during the Holy week (just before Easter)?
No, that is a New Zealand pohutukawa (Metrosideros excels) and it blooms for Christmas, not Easter.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrosideros_excelsa
http://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/...
- 105k
56
votes
Accepted
Did Augustine of Hippo warn Christians to beware mathematicians?
You ask whether it's a reasonable interpretation of the text.
Book IV of Augustine's Confessions (in Latin), which was cited in this answer, includes:
Itaque illos planos, quos mathematicos vocant,...
- 26.6k
49
votes
Accepted
Did Christians kill thirty to fifty times as many people in political violence as Muslims in the 20th century?
No, the figures that were used to produce this graph are inaccurate, exaggerating the ratio.
The basic numbers being claimed are:
Christian Europe killed 100 million in the 20th Century, consisting ...
- 865
48
votes
Does the "Blood of Jesus on the Cross" flower only bloom during the Holy week (just before Easter)?
No.
This flower is the flower of the Metrosideros excelsa, the tree is also called pōhutukawa tree and New Zealand Christmas tree.
According to its wikipedia page the tree:
The tree flowers from ...
- 31.6k
30
votes
Accepted
Did a Cypriot bishop claim that homosexuality is caused when parents have anal sex?
The claim is true (that he said it, not what he said)
Here is a link from a Greek news website with the video and a full quote
https://www.in.gr/2019/07/26/greece/mitropolitis-oi-gay-genniountai-apo-...
29
votes
Accepted
Did fewer Jews die of the Black Plague because of ritual washing?
So, the JewishHistory.org website touts the hygiene of the ghettos in this way:
The sanitary conditions in the Jewish neighborhood, primitive as it
may be by today’s standards, was [sic] always ...
- 44.9k
24
votes
Accepted
Is it true that 4th century Christians "destroyed all they could reach of ancient learning"?
The author is repeating an old, hoary chestnut from the days of Edward Gibbon about a sudden decline in Roman prosperity after the conversion of the Empire to Christianity. This is basically a false ...
- 44.9k
22
votes
Did Augustine of Hippo warn Christians to beware mathematicians?
See Book IV of Augustine's Confessions (Project Gutenberg link). This translation is credited to E. B. Pusey.
I remember also, that when I had settled to enter the lists for a
theatrical prize, ...
- 9,315
15
votes
Did Kim Clement Predict 9/11?
Cherry Picking
In order to actually determine whether Kim Clement is actually making predictions we would need to analyze the complete corpus of his statements. He says a lot. Highlight reels such as ...
- 17.7k
14
votes
Were evangelicals rallied around abortion in 1978, as a substitute for segregation?
This changed, according to the podcast, because of a segregationist named Paul Weyrich, who “understood that racism -
I have confirmed that Weyrich was a segregationist who did see abortion as this ...
- 5,231
11
votes
Has Jesus been declared the king of Poland?
TL;DR:
It was a bill in parliament in 2006. It didn't have a lot of support (10%) and opposition from Episcopate.
In 2016, there was a religious ceremony (in which MPs and President were ...
- 31.2k
11
votes
Did a Chinese ethics textbook say Jesus stoned a woman to death?
There isn't enough evidence to prove either without a physical copy
I couldn't find the original book's scanned copy nor can I find any other edition of this book made by the same three people. I ...
10
votes
Accepted
Is global persecution of Christians at historic peak?
Catholic News Agency is reporting quotes from a document correctly, yet the evidence the document presents does not support these conclusion and it's otherwise unconvincing.
The news piece cites this ...
- 78.6k
10
votes
Accepted
Did the Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus, wear a hijab?
There cannot be any direct evidence, as far as we know. And the authors of the billboard know surely less than that.
But the circumstantial evidence reveals some interesting tidbits. These make the ...
- 44k
10
votes
Did the Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus, wear a hijab?
So, after a bit of poking around, the only consistent references appear to be biblical, which isn't necessarily disqualifying, but does lend a little less support to the evidence.
Garb for Israelite ...
- 2,949
10
votes
Did Augustine of Hippo warn Christians to beware mathematicians?
I'll add some more evidence to the other answers, here's what I found.
From a scholarly point of view, there seem little doubt that he meant astrologers, who at the time were called mathematici or ...
- 78.6k
10
votes
Accepted
Are Luther and Calvin responsible for executing more humans than the Catholic Inquisition?
It is likely that the number of executions was significantly lower than that of the inquisition.
Estimates of the number of executions carried out by the Inquisition range from several thousand to ...
- 373
9
votes
Accepted
Did the medieval church ban geography as an offence against the Bible?
No, the Catholic Church didn't ban geography (which I'm presuming is what the statement means by "medieval church"). E.g. after Magellan's trip, the Holy Roman Emperor (and Spanish King) ...
- 59.6k
9
votes
Accepted
Is Christianity testable?
The question isn't so much "is Christianity testable" but "is this a valid test of the supernatural nature of Christianity?"
No.
First, anacdotes are not evidence. "I was at a ...
- 17.7k
8
votes
Accepted
Did Pope Leo X say that Christianity is a fable?
Referring to Roger Pearse, this quote was sourced from a satirical work of John Bale which was written with a "historical" format entitled 'The Pageant of Popes'.
The earliest known source of this ...
- 22.7k
7
votes
Were evangelicals rallied around abortion in 1978, as a substitute for segregation?
A 1966 article The Law of Therapeutic Abortion: A Social Commentary on Proposed Reform (alternative link) in the Journal of Public Law (published by Emory law school) attempted to describe the ...
- 105k
7
votes
Did a Chinese ethics textbook say Jesus stoned a woman to death?
It seems to be a quote from Orson Scott Card's famous 1986 book "The Speaker For The Dead", one of the sequels to "Ender's Game", which was turned into a movie in 2013. I don't ...
- 687
6
votes
Does this statue outside a school in India depict a Hindu Brahmin begging in front of Virgin Mary?
The statue does not depict a Brahmin begging in front of Mary. It depicts the story of Our Lady of Good Health, a 16th century apparition of Mary to a shepherd boy, who would have been of a lower ...
- 44.9k
6
votes
Did Elvis Mbonye predict the 2012 Ugandan helicopter crash, 2018 Oscar winners, and Kenyan election dispute?
Cherry Picking
These are all highlight videos which can easily have cherry picked the statements which most closely match events. We would need to see an uncut corpus of his work to determine whether ...
- 17.7k
5
votes
Is global persecution of Christians at historic peak?
No.
Christians are being killed on account of their religion at a rate of about 90,000 per year.
However, this is not a maximum.
As explained in Wikipedia's persecution of Christians article: ...
- 105k
5
votes
Did fewer Jews die of the Black Plague because of ritual washing?
Compliance with rules for hygiene could not reduce mortality from plague so much -
...today it is accepted that the percentage of Jews who died in the plague was not less than the percentage of ...
- 151
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible