Welcome religious conservatives,
liberals, mainliners, pagans, progressives, secularists, 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 in the U.S. and Canada. We hope that you will find our essays
helpful and of interest.
This web site has over
5,000 essays. With a web site of this size, it may be difficult to find an essay on a particular topic using the
navigation bars to the left side of this screen. The search box to the right may help you find
essays dealing with the topics that interest you
>>>>>
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This website is unlike almost all other religious
sites:
We try to describe all viewpoints on controversial
religious topics objectively and fairly. We cover a broad range of topics: e.g.
whether women should have access to
abortion, whether
homosexuals and bisexuals should be given equal rights, including
same-sex marriage. We also cover dozens of other "hot" topics,
including the emerging controversy: equal rights for
transsexuals.
Definitions,
mandate, motto, etc.
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 toward 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 to hold different beliefs without being being discriminated
against. More info.
Religious tolerance does not require you:
To accept all religions as equally true.
To avoid criticizing actions motivated by religion that harm others.
To avoid comparing beliefs 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, worship and witness), 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
Our site mandate is to:
"Promote religious tolerance and freedom;
Objectively describe religious faiths in all their diversity; and
Objectively describe controversial topics from all viewpoints."
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
An observation:
"When some people deviate from reality, others are often hurt."
A saying by Mahatma Gandhi:
"The need of the moment is not one religion, but mutual respect and
tolerance of the devotees of the different religions.
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 hear rumors that that they have treated all
web sites with paid text ads in this way. We are
amazed that such a tiny ad on fewer than 1% of our pages reduce our site's "importance" so much.
At the end of 2009-MAY, we removed the text ads throughout the website.
Donations welcomed: We are
somewhat biased, but 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.
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. There have been at least
two denial of service attacks. Their latest technique seems to involve the
hijacking of one of our Email addresses to make a mass mailing of spam
describing "Prestige replica watches". If you receive an unsolicited Email
that appears to have come from us, 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 2009-SEP-30 placed our 5,000th 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.
The six religions chosen for these navigation bars include the three largest faiths in North
American and the three most visited faiths on our web site.
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 hear rumors that that they have treated all
web sites with paid text ads in this way. We are
amazed that such a tiny ad on fewer than 1% of our pages reduce our site's "importance" so much.
At the end of 2009-MAY, we removed the text ads throughout the website.
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.
