reading about religion

     i recently started reading a book by Stephen Prothero called God Is Not One. the main reason i decided to buy it was that it goes through the 8 most influential religions and explains them and the similarities and differences between them. i've often felt like i didn't have enough knowledge about different religions and have wanted one source that could give me the basics. i wanted to share certain paragraphs from the introduction that i thought were insightful and well written.

     "One purpose of the "all religions are one" mantra is to stop this fighting and killing. And it is comforting to pretend that the great religions make up one big, happy family. But this sentiment, however well-intentioned, is neither accurate nor ethically responsible. God is not one. Faith in the unity of religions is just that--faith (perhaps even a kind of fundamentalism). And the leap that gets us there is an act of hyperactive imagination."
     "... Yet we know in our bones that the world's religions are different from one another. As my colleague Adam Seligman has argued, the notion of religious tolerance assumes differences, since there is no need to tolerate a religion that is essentially the same as your own. We pretend these differences are trivial because it makes us feel safer, or more moral. But pretending that the world's religions are the same does not make our world safer. Like all forms of ignorance, it makes our world more dangerous. What we need on this furiously religious planet is a realistic view of where religious rivals clash and where they can cooperate. Approaching this volatile topic from this angle may be scary. But the world is what  it is. And both tolerance and respect are empty virtues until we actually know something about whomever it is we are supposed to be tolerating or respecting."
     "... One of the common misconceptions about the world's religions is that they plumb the same depths, ask the same questions. They do not. Only religions that see God as all good ask how a good God can allow millions to die in tsunamis. Only religions that believe in souls ask whether your soul exists before you are born and what happens to it after you die. And only religions that think we have one soul ask after "the soul" in the singular. Every religion, however, asks after the human condition. Here we are in these human bodies. What now? What next? What are we to become?"

   each chapter of the book covers one religion. as i read this book, i will probably be writing a lot of entries about my thoughts on the different religions. i want to make sure that if you read these entries, you do not think that i am trying to offend anyone or belittle their religion in any way. i will simply be offering my thoughts on them. i was born in orange county to parents who were Christians but went through a New Age phase and never made us go to church. they believed in spirituality without religion. a part of me has always wanted to learn about other religions out of a curiosity to see if some religion i have never really known about might be something i want to follow. i am rather doubtful that i will ever find a religion that i agree with completely, but i have always wanted to know which ones i am most inclined toward and why. i think we all deserve it to ourselves to get knowledge about the different religions and see what speaks to us. you never know what you might agree with or just find fascinating. be an active participant in your spiritual journey.