This book was a lot more about the history of Hinduism than the beliefs. Due to the fragmented nature of the beliefs it is necessary to explain the history of the different traditions, but there was surprisingly little on the actual belief structure as it exists today. Some of the interesting parts were about the rebirth cycle and how the god/gods work by being separate, but the same. It reminds me a lot of how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is said to be separate but the same. I’m going to need to listen to a few more books on hinduism before I feel that I have a decent understanding of the religious beliefs.
This is the history of scientology, not it’s beliefs. The history is incredibly interesting, especially in the way they go into the psychology of the group and how they used different systems in unintended ways. They used the legal system to harass, they used lie detectors to tell lies, and they used words to mean different things. They did have some really impressive methods that can be used in less sinister ways. I’d be somewhat interested to read a bit more about the beliefs of Scientology to see how strange they really are, but I’m not that desperate to find out.
This draws a lot from the Bible in all of the stories and parables. I noticed a very consistent theme to the book, Jews and Christians are OK just misguided, God is merciful for not destroying you for the smallest transgressions, and if you don’t believe in the Abrahamic form of God you should be destroyed. One interesting point that is made in the book is that “if God wanted it to be so, then it would be so.” The interesting part is that doesn’t seem to apply to non-believers. There was surprisingly little about God, and most about the stories and how a person should live a good life. I’ll have to read more on religious analysis of the Koran before I can understand everything that it is saying and what that means.
This was ok, didn’t enjoy it too terribly. It did have some good points about how to continually think about what you are doing. I do try to be deliberate, but am very bad at it. I also try to be mindful, and again, I’ve very bad at it. I’m not sure I want to listen to the next to in the series for a while, so I’ll put it off for a while. There was a lot of pseudo-sciency things in this book, but I’m not terribly surprised by it.
This book is a really interesting case for Atheism. I’m not wholly convinced that there is no God, but I’m decently convinced that the god of the Judeo-Christian faiths is not there. I’d like to think that God is a personal God, but that is less likely than a Deist God. I plan to read the holy books of several different religions so that I can more understand them. The biggest thing right now in this arena is to amass more knowledge so that I can more fully understand the arguments for and against each religion. To start that I must understand what each religion says about itself, starting with the holy books. This will probably take a few weeks to work through, and finding audiobooks of all of them may not be that simple.
It's an Exciting World 