religion
Or are cults the religions we find distasteful?
How would you feel about working like a Lutheran or a Cistercian?
Here’s how belief in a higher power can act like a psychological safety net.
Adrie Kusserow, an anthropologist and scholar of Buddhism, shares how her study of the religion and its history has reshaped her view of the world — and herself.
Millions of people have had a near-death experience, and it often leads them to believe in an afterlife. Does this count as good proof?
While Taoism can be paradoxical and abstract, it also offers daily life lessons.
The tonal Native American language differentiates words based on pitch and makes Spanish conjugation look like child’s play.
A single knife is sometimes worth more than a thousand armies.
‘Six Persimmons,’ an ink painting by the Chinese monk Mu Qi, has long been hailed as the poster child of Zen Buddhism. But is its reputation deserved?
This necropsy represents an early entry in what would become a tradition of performing autopsies to consider an individual’s sanctity.
The clash of academic archaeology and what might be called folk archaeology comes into stark focus at Stonehenge.
Many countries’ histories are governed by the familiar demographic story of growth, industrialization, and decline. But not France.
The history of hell doesn’t begin with the Old Testament. Instead, hell took shape in the 2nd century from Mediterranean cultural exchange.
Tikal, one of the biggest cities the Maya ever built, was home to a vast and flourishing society.
If someone can make you feel insecure, incomplete, and inadequate, they then can present themselves as the solution you need.
Is immortality a tantalizing possibility or a philosophical paradox?
The toilet “is a portal to a mysterious otherworld.”
If the “self” is not real, then we are slaves to a billiard ball universe, trapped in a nihilistic nightmare in which we cannot change our fate.
The Persian Constitutional Revolution made unlikely allies and enemies of missionaries, ayatollahs, the shah, and his Russian ambassadors. Its legacy shaped modern-day Iran.
The smartest person in the world was Isaac Newton, a true polymath whose brilliance never has been, nor ever will be, surpassed.
Will you die when your body dies?
When science is a source of spirituality in people’s lives, they feel happy and engaged.
If you feel like you’re missing out on something bigger, you might be feeling saṃvega.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a medieval airship!
The mountain can generate lenticular clouds, which may contribute to its supernatural reputation.
To this day, one cult believes that Lemuria was real, and that its people left us the sacred wisdom to revive their advanced civilization.
Wherever automation rises, religiosity falls.
Be more like Goldilocks.
The Te’omim Cave in the Jerusalem Hills is filled with skulls and oil lamps — objects a new study says may have been used in dark rituals.