We welcome evangelicals,
secularists, religious conservatives,
liberals, Deists, Pagans, progressives, animists, fundamentalists, atheists, the undecided, the searching, etc. No matter how you describe yourself, you should find your beliefs and practices accurately represented in this website.
Almost all other religious web sites explain only the beliefs of the webmaster
or sponsoring faith group. We are different: we try to explain accurately the full diversity of religious beliefs, worldviews, and systems of morality,
ethics, and values. We hope that you will find our essays
helpful and of interest.
With a web site of this size, it may be difficult for you to find an essay on a particular topic using the
navigation bars on the left side of this screen. This search box below may help
you:
Search box
Page translator
This website is unlike almost all other religious
sites:
Many religions assign different definition to
common words and phrases. e.g.: "religious tolerance" and "religious freedom."
So it is important that we define certain phrases up front.
On this site,
religious tolerance means:
To extend religious freedom to people of all religious
traditions, and none, even though you probably disagree with their beliefs and/or practices.
Having tolerance towards another religion does not require you to
endorse that faith group's beliefs; it simply indicates your respect for its right to exist and
for its members be free from discrimination. More info.
Religious tolerance does not require you to:
Believe that all religions are equally true.
Avoid criticizing actions by religious individuals or groups that harm others.
Avoid comparing beliefs and claims of different religions with each other & with scientific
findings.
Religious freedom means that you can:
Without oppression, believe, worship and witness (or
practice freedom from belief, worshipping and witnessing), as you wish;
Change your beliefs or your religion at any time; and/or
Associate with others to express your beliefs, and explain them to
others.1
Defining the word: "Christian:"
There are dozens of different definitions in
circulation. Many people seem to have their favorite; they often believe that it is the biblical definition, and consider all others to be false.
We use the same
definition as government census offices and public opinion pollsters: A
Christian is a person who sincerely regards
themselves to be Christian. That is, they honestly believe that they follow
Yeshua of Nazareth's (a.k.a. Jesus Christ's) teachings as they understand them
to be. This includes members of the Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses, The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons), Roman Catholics, Unification Church,
etc., along with tens of thousands of other Christian faith groups.
This topic generates more negative Emails
from site visitors than any other. However, we needed to standardize on a single
definition throughout our web site in order to be consistent.
Our motto:
"A study of the world's religions will lead to an understanding of religious diversity.
This understanding can lead to inter-religious dialogue.
Dialogue may lead to peace among religions.
Peace among religions would lead to peace among nations." 2
News and information:
Page pruning: We currently have close to 5,300 essays online. Most of them present no problem, because they deal with theological beliefs that change with glacial slowness, or they deal with past history which doesn't change much. But others are problematic, becuase they require a great deal of effort daily to maintain. Meanwhile our revenue is dropping because of increased competition from other religious websites. This has necessitated a reduction in the number of hours of our part-time staff person. We are going to have to cut back our effort, and are considering dropping our news lists. An analysis of our site traffic indicates that few visitors read them, and they consume a lot of our time to maintain them. Dropping them would allow us to concentrate on other topics.
Donations welcomed: We feel that peace can only come about through advancing religious tolerance and understanding.
If you agree, will you please
consider making a one-time donation via Credit card,
PayPal, or check -- or set up a small monthly donation. We would really appreciate it. More info.
Page Rank: Google ranks web sites according to their perception of
the site's "importance." They rated themselves as 10 out of 10; Yahoo is 9;
MSN is 8. This site was 7. Overnight, in early 2009-JAN, they dropped our
"importance" in half to 4. We heard rumors that that they have treated all
web sites with paid text ads in this way. We doubt this, because a tiny text ad on fewer than 1% of our pages should not have reduced our site's "importance" so much.
At the end of 2009-MAY, we removed the text ads throughout the website. During 2010-MAR we noted that our home page's page rank had been restored to 7 -- again for no obvious reason.
Attacks on our site: We are continually fending off attacks on our
website by a person or persons unknown. So far, all but one have involved
essays dealing with abortion access, equal rights for gays and lesbians or The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We have experienced at least
two DoS (denial of service) attacks. Their latest technique seems to involve the
hijacking of one of our Email addresses to make mass mailings of spam
describing "Prestige replica watches". If you receive an unsolicited Email
that appears to have come from us, it didn't; please ignore it.
Site metrics: During the week ending 2008-APR-26, traffic on this
website reached a hew high. It handled 9.8 million hits, 1.8
million page views, 107 Gigabytes of traffic, and 449,734 visitors. The number of hits is an almost
meaningless number. However, webmasters delight in quoting them because they are
so large in comparison to other numbers.
Upgrading: On 2010-MAR-14, we placed our 5,200th essay online. We are
systematically reviewing and upgrading some each day until the entire site is
covered. This will reduce our capacity to write new essays, but will increase
the quality of our existing essays.
Each week, our site's approximately 400,000 visitors download an average of about 15 essays from our 5,277 essay website.
Other inclusive religious web sites:
There are probably tens of millions of religious websites on the Internet. A Google search for "God" returned almost 500 million hits. Most describe and promote only a single tradition or faith group within a single religion. Some of the sites that are like this one and do cover a broad range of faith groups are:
Beliefnet.com discusses topics from all religions re: inspiration, spirituality, faith, news etc.
Christian.com is a free social network dedicated to the entire Christian world.
Patheos.com provides balanced views of religion and spirituality
Page pruning: We currently have close to 5,300 essays online. Most of them present no problem, because they deal with theological beliefs that change with glacial slowness, or they deal with past history which doesn't change much. But others are problematic, becuase they require a great deal of effort daily to maintain. Meanwhile our revenue is dropping because of increased competition from other religious websites. This has necessitated a reduction in the number of hours of our part-time staff person. We are going to have to cut back our effort, and are considering dropping our news lists. An analysis of our site traffic indicates that few visitors read them, and they consume a lot of our time to maintain them. Dropping them would allow us to concentrate on other topics.
Site metrics: During the week ending 2008-APR-26, traffic on this
website reached a hew high. It handled 9.8 million hits, 1.8
million page views, 107 Gigabytes of traffic, and 449,734 visitors. The number of hits is an almost
meaningless number. However, webmasters delight in quoting them because they are
so large in comparison to other numbers.
