Most people are afraid of the unknown. Those things we have never seen or experienced can seem overwhelming.

On the old maps, back before the world was understood in modern terms, cartographers, map makers, would put down what they knew, but at the edges of the map, beyond which they had no knowledge or understanding, they would often write, "Beyond here, there be dragons."

Fans of the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox will do anything they can to help their team get an edge on their bitter rival. It's not uncommon for some to attempt to put a jinx, either seriously or jokingly, on the opposing team.

Exhibit A is Gino Castignoli. When the Yankees were building a new stadium in 2008, Gino—a Red Sox fan—was a construction worker on the project. He decided ...

Albert Einstein wrote things that suggested he had some sort of belief in God, but he also wrote of his own unbelief. James Randerson says:

Einstein penned [a] letter on January 3, 1954, to the philosopher Eric Gutkind who had sent him a copy of his book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. The letter went on public sale a year later and has remained in private hands ever since.

In the letter, ...

The movie Behind The Sun follows the story of Samir Majan, a young man born and raised a Muslim in the Middle East. After attending college in the United States, he has done the unthinkable: he has become a Christian. It's a costly decision for Samir, because few things are more offensive in the eyes of a Muslim family than Christian conversion. In this scene, Samir has come back home, and one of ...

In May of 2006, Bimbala Das married a snake—a cobra, to be precise. Because Hindus venerate cobras, the residents of Atala, India, believed that Mrs. Das' serpentine nuptials would bring good luck to their town.

Commenting on her relationship with the snake, Das said, "We communicate in a peculiar way." Apparently so, as snake-charmers were not able to lure the cobra out of its home for the wedding. ...

According to a June 2005 Gallup poll, about three quarters of Americans believe in the paranormal. The percentage of those who believe in:

Extrasensory perception: 41

Haunted houses: 37

Ghosts: 32

Telepathy: 31

Astrology: 25

Communication with the dead: 21

Reincarnation: 20

"It doesn't smell too bad."

—Tennessee Titans cornerback Samari Rolle, on sleeping in an unwashed T-shirt before games for 11 years.

Mel Gibson's recent movie, Signs, is about a former pastor and farmer who discovers crop circles, or what some believe are spaceship landing pads, in his cornfield. The copycat phenomenon began in England in the late seventies and the circles have been found in 70 countries around the world. In the early nineties the original pranksters confessed that they created the circles with a plank, knotted ...

Roman Holiday is the classic 1953 movie about a frustrated princess who escapes from her royal entourage while on a trip to Rome. While incognito, she falls in love with an American newspaperman. The princess, played by Audrey Hepburn, is weary of the pomp and circumstance of the royal life and longs to do the things that common folk enjoy. Joe Bradley, the American newspaperman played by Gregory ...

People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord.

We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch ...