The world's religions

He doesn't pull any punches, intellectually: this is college-level, not the dumbed-down stuff that much of the writing on religion is...

I only read the Hindu, Buddhist, & Primal religion chapters, because life shattered my ability to live within the Abrahamic religions, years ago ( I've experienced some of my soul's previous-incarnation memories, so the Abrahamic-religions, with their dumbed-down assumptions, and their "God revolves around Man" paradigm, were all destroyed, for me, and when the only 2 religion-paradigms left, the Buddhist & the Hindu, differ by 1 being addicted-to-religiosity, & the other being Science-of-spirit & Engineering-of-spirit, I had no choice but to choose AwakeSoul-ism/Buddhism, the impersonal one.

I've since discovered that this incarnation wasn't the 1st buddhist one that the soul underlying "my" life had, so .. I'm just returning to buddhism, then. )

This is the only work which tells people that souls evolve, and have their own life-cycles, properly.

This is the only work which tells people how impersonal buddhism is.

( it doesn't explain that until final-dissolution, atman/soul is useful as a basis for outgrowing the ignorance-to-gnosis process, but once liberation-from-uncontrolled-incarnations is earned, then atman/soul definitely is delusion, and need be shed, so only Awareness remains, but NO self, of ANY kind, fixing it.

That subtlety seems to have been lost, in the last dozen centuries, or so, of buddhism. )

I simply defy you to understand the American Indian religions as well, before reading this book, as you will after...

Each of the major religions has its own paradigm, and cutting through the clutter find the essence of each one, of the ones I read, has never been done better, ttbomk.

Yes, I intend to read the Abrahamic religions chapters, but .. when you push AnimalsAndTribesTime religions ( as the Abrahamic religions are ), into someone who outgrew them decades ago .. it isn't fun.

This is one of the books I would require of high-school kids, or 1st-year college kids.

It would gut much prejudice, if understood by more of the population, and that would be a good thing.

I know of no competitor to this book, nothing even close.

A thoughtful class on the practices and core elements of major religions and sects.

The author does a great job of laying down the basics before moving into the more spiritual and intangible qualities of each religion. Everything is ordered in a way that often flows together by causation or influence. Some might think their religion wasn’t covered well enough, others like there's too much of a deep dive into each. I enjoyed taking my time with this and learned a lot about theology, culture, and history.

Because the author shines such a positive light on every religion, a drawback was his rationalization of some of the more repulsive practices in the three main Abrahamic religions. Stoning, the severing of a thief’s hands, and the degradation of women were deemed reasonable by the author with statements like “flogging can be technically fulfilled by using a light sandal” and that scripture "leaves open the possibility of woman’s full equality with man”. It was only in these passages that the writing felt cagey. One drawback to an enjoyable book.