By Doubting Thomas ~ R ecently I spoke to a friend of mine about a car of a one German producer which has been proclaimed by a study as the most reliable machine on the market. I’ve said to him that I would love to have that car. He looked at me with a smile and said: “No way. That car sucks. I know a guy who bought him and had a lot of problems with it”. He simply discarded data from analysis I showed to him and not even bothered to read it. This example proves that testimonies are more accepted as evidence of truth than ‘boring’ and comprehensive analysis. That is a known fact which is used in marketing since humanity exists. Let us apply it to religion. When people hear of personal testimony of somebody’s conversion or miracle story they will easily believe it and accept it as a self-evident proof of God ’s existence. On the other hand, when you show them medical data or present them with other more plausible scientific explanations they will in majority cases discard them, be...

By Doubting Thomas ~ I hope that somehow I will resist all religious lures and have courage to say what I truly believe in to all fundamentalist without any fear or insecurity, hiding behind my progressive/liberal religion. “You’ve got stuck in a moment, and now you can’t get out of it”. T hese lyrics from U2 song maybe describe what I feel like since I’ve started to think on my religious view in last couple of years. I have never been a religious person in real sense of that word. I have always looked upon religious claims as some kind of symbolic messages and metaphors. Despite the fact I love to say a prayer in a silent and empty church, I have never liked crowded Sunday services and to pious believers. By the way, I live in Croatia which in the last decade has passed through some kind of re-traditionalizing process thanks to strong Roman Catholic influences, empty nationalism and general aversion toward socialist secularism. Compared to number of inhabitants I think th...