The folks over at Unreasonable Faith have a wonderful illustration about the arbitrariness of "natural vs. artificial.

It's very spiritually and socially in right now to espouse the greatness of the natural world and the expense of the man-made one. But why are man-made things suddenly "unnatural"? Are they not ultimately made from natural substances? Are they not shaped by natural intellect?

Sure, humanity has its issues. But decrying everything man-made is throwing the baby out with the bath water. And this is pertinent regardless of whether you're a monotheist, polytheist or atheist.

The Internet has profoundly shaped many aspects of our lives, and religion certainly isn't exempt from them.

Like most things, the influences are both positive and negative. The internet gives people access to much more information thatn previously. Communities are becoming more religiously diverse because members are learning about so many new ideas often without even meeting a believer face-to-face.

The Internet also offers a sort of support group, where isolated individuals can network with like minded people.

However, the Internet also offers anonymity, which allows people to be much more outspoken about their faith than they often would be face-to-face or in a published format where real names have to be attached. It's easier to be aggressive and generally obnoxious, which might even encourage people to bring that sort of behavior into face-to-face conversations.

Finally, the Internet is the world's largest water cooler. While lots of information can be gleaned from the internet, not nearly all of it accurate. Conspiracy theories, formerly toted largely by guys in basements wearing tinfoil hats, are becoming practically mainstream in many cases.

According to Religious Clause, a federal court in California as ruled that the white supremacist Creativity Movement is not a religion.

The US government and judicial system has historically been very hands off in determining the meaning of "religion." After all, you can't easily claim equality for all while then only applying those rules to certain groups.

And yet, all things are NOT religions. Republicanism is not a religion. My dislike of turnips is not a religion.

So how do you define a religion? Many hold that a religion needs to involve a supernatural power like a god, yet Buddhism (among others) requires no specific entity and it commonly labeled a religion.

In this case, I think the truly defining comment made by the court was that "their sole purpose is to support what the Court already has found to be a secular belief system." That is to say, it's sole purpose is to promote white-supremacy. The term sole purpose is important here. A religion can still certainly teach white -supremacy as part of its teachings. But when white-supremacy is the only defining teach of the group, that's not religion. That's secular ideology.

'Tis the Season to decorate lawns and buildings with symbols of faith and the holidays, and to debate what is and is not appropriately keeping church and state separate.

Now is the time to argue whether calling a Christmas tree a "holiday tree" somehow changes the symbolism, and what the heck that symbolism is supposed to be.

Now is the time for certain open-minded groups to open up areas to decorations from all groups...until someone pushes the envelope as to what all that might really include. And then someone else will probably drive a truck through it, taking personal offense at someone else's expression of belief.

And people wonder why I've never been a big fan of the holidays!

In writing about alternative beliefs, prejudice is part of the package. Even people fairly tolerant of other major groups often have issues with small, largely unknown groups who often hold beliefs rather different than what is accepted as "normal."

But the Study on Group-Focused Enmity in Europe has reminded me that prejudice is really more complex than that. It's not just about the truly alien. Often, it's just about being different.

In grad school, I had an entire class on the concept of "the Other." People define normal by their own experiences. Those outside of those experiences are the Other. They are foreign and different and in some ways threatening because they offer alternative viewpoints and experiences.

And despite wanting to think of ourselves as being in a global economy and part of a single human race, the fact is for a sizable number of people the definition of "Us" is still very narrow: gender, ethnicity, color, religion, country of origin.

I question a often see on religion forums is whether someone can be a member of two different religions. Now, some religions can easily accommodate other religions, but others cannot, but that's not really the question here.

The real question is why these people think they need to be part of two religions. In most cases, these are people who find spiritual truths in multiple religions, but feel that in order to identify with some teachings, they have to support the entire religion.

The fact is while having a formal name for your faith makes it easier to explain to others, there's no reason why one has to fit neatly into a labeled box. Some people's beliefs simply don't fit into any widely organized school of thought. There's nothing wrong with that. After all, forcing yourself to fit into a formal religion is little more than that feeling you had in junior high that you had to be just like everyone else.

A recent Baha'i blog post gives a great explanation on how one can be true to the tenets of one's faith without diminishing the choices made by others.

The Baha'i Faith holds that all sex outside of marriage is adultery, including homosexual sex. The faith also holds that marriage is a union between man and woman.

Yet this Baha'i has no issue with the government making gay marriages legal. Why? For one, he sees a difference between religious marriage and legal marriage. Legal marriages is something organized by the state and involves paperwork. If lawmakers want to include homosexuals in this shuffle of paperwork, so be it.

Second, he sees himself responsible only for his own behavior, not for everyone else's. He gives alcohol consumption as an example. He never drinks, yet has no objection to other people drinking. The rules of the Baha'i do not apply to non-Baha'i, and even if a Baha'i chooses to drink, that choice is personal.

Rael, head of the Raelian Movement, has essentially suggested that rights to religious freedom are nothing more than public relations and that countries with real teeth would hand out such freedom only to certain religions after being officially scrutinized.

Specifically, he speaks of Islam, accusing followers of hypocrisy for expecting fair treatment in Western countries while not affording the same treatment to non-Muslims in Middle Eastern countries.

Rights are not something you sparingly hand out. Once you do, they are no longer "rights." They are privileges. Western countries allow Muslims religious freedom because we consider it the ethical choice for us to make. It is a right deserved by all humans. That fact that some other countries disagree shouldn't impact our own opinion of right and wrong.

Moreover, Rael's suggestion treats the entire Muslim population as a sort of hive mind, where every Muslim is expected to have the same position on matters. Why on earth should we blame an individual Muslim in the US or Switzerland or wherever, for something being done by, for example, the Islamic government of Iran?

Outrageous accusations against the Church of Scientology are coming to light in Australia, including the use of labor camps, torture and pressure to get abortions.

There's a lot of people who want to automatically believe every horrible tale about the CoS. To them, its obvious that the CoS is a monster, willing to do anything and everything to keep followers under control.

Let me remind people than in the Middle Ages, it was also "obvious" to many people that wells poisoned by Jews caused the Black Death. In the Renaissance it was "obvious" that tens of thousands of people were working in league with Satan to magically destroy Christendom. And just a few years again it was "obvious" to many people that JonBenet Ramsey was killed by her parents, both of which have now been cleared by police.

Also, as tales of these accusations spread, they get embellished. In some articles about these newest allegations, there is mention of pressure to have abortions. Pregnant women are told that having a child is contrary to the aims of their organization. But other articles imply women are forced to have abortions. There's a world of difference between the two scenarios. And as people get more and more angry, they tend to repeat the most foul version of the tales they hear. That ultimately doesn't accomplish anything positive.