If you're waiting for the world's ''Holy Men'' to
tell you the truth about their religions, do you suppose
they'll mention that: The Tao Te Ching was only created
because Lao Tzu was thrown in jail by a disciple who
didn't want to let him leave town without writing down
his teachings?''Passover'' celebrates God killing all
firstborn Egyptian kids while Jewish homes were ''passed
over'' by the angel of death?Shinto, a nature-loving,
mellow religion, was transformed by the Japanese
government into a nationalistic ideology promoting
''holy'' war?Adding to its popular 50 Things You're Not
Supposed To Know series, Disinformation has teamed with
Daniele Bolelli--writer, professor of comparative
religion, and renowned martial arts practitioner and
philosopher--to tackle an ever more serious and
important topic: popular misconceptions about religion.
Among other revelations: Carpocrates, an early
Christian, argued that sex orgies were a key to
heaven.Prostitution was a religious duty in Mesopotamian
temples.The two major Chinese religions (Taoism and
Confucianism) are completely at odds with each other and
yet are often practiced together.Despite having
persecuted Jews for 2,000 years, Christian
fundamentalists are Israel's biggest
supporters.Capturing just the right balance of in-depth
knowledge, respect, humor and irreverence, Bolelli takes
an ecumenical approach to the task, revealing
surprising, shocking, and little-known facts about the
''big three'' religions but also many more, including
Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and, of course,
the increasingly popular non-religion: atheism. |
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