50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion

50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion

<p>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:<br><ul><li>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?</li><li>"Passover" celebrates God killing all firstborn Egyptian kids while Jewish homes were "passed over" by the angel of death?</li><li>Shinto, a nature-loving, mellow religion, was transformed by the Japanese government into a nationalistic ideology promoting "holy" war?</li></ul></p></p>Adding to its popular <i>50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know</i> 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:<br><ul><li>Carpocrates, an early Christian, argued that sex orgies were a key to heaven.</li><li>Prostitution was a religious duty in Mesopotamian temples.</li><li>The two major Chinese religions (Taoism and Confucianism) are completely at odds with each other and yet are often practiced together.</li><li>Despite having persecuted Jews for 2,000 years, Christian fundamentalists are Israel's biggest supporters.</li></ul></p><p>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.</p>