What is the best book relating to religion/spirituality you have read?

[More Than A Feeling]

By best, it could mean "most inspirational/meaningful" or possibly "most informative", or even "most skillfully written"...any standard you feel is proper. If you could say which standard you use, that would be even better, thanks!

Mine is The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. It really opened my mind and my eyes, the standard I am using is "most informative".

On edit: My most inspirational would probably be Being Nobody, Going Nowhere, Revised: Meditations on the Buddhist Path by Ayya Khema. It made me want to put it down and go meditate immediately, and I did.

[NMDemDist2]

1. "Sermon on the Mount" by Emmett Foxx is a great start IMO n/t

[rhino47]

2. Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism

By John Shelby Spong.I found it to be very inspirational to me.My next read is The Sins of Scripture also by Bishop Spong.

[MistressOverdone]

14. I like Spong's writing

although I disagree with him on many issues. But in truth, nobody knows for sure.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

34. Spong is a good man, so far that I can tell.

He had a thousand reasons to defend homosexuality.

:hi:

[cosmik debris]

3. Cat's Cradle

Taught me that mankind's purpose was to surprise god. Even though I am an atheist now, I still pretend sometimes that there is a god so I can figure out how to surprise him.

[Dracos]

30. sounds like you might be a backslider

[HereSince1628]

4. Alan Watts The Myth Against Knowing...

[bananas]

20. Shouldn't that be "The Taboo Against Knowing..." ? nt

[OneBlueSky]

5. "Original Blessing" by Matthew Fox . . . n/t

[Jane Austin]

6. The Kingdom Within by John Sanford

(Not John Sanford the mystery novelist.)

The first time the Gospels made any sense to me.

It changed everything for me.

[SutaUvaca]

7. The Gift, Poetry by Hafiz

Translations by Daniel Ladinsky.
Get it. Read it. Walk in the golden light.
Laugh, love, be filled with wonder.

Close second, Love Poems from God.
Also translations by Daniel Ladinsky. 12 voices of mystics,
6 each from eastern and western traditions.
Amazing is the common thread of spiritual voices from
christian msytics, and such souls as Rumi,Kabir and Tukaram.

[applegrove]

8. Ricci, Nino - "Testament" was a great book.

[Goblinmonger]

9. A collection of Bertrand Russel essays

which contained as the "title" essay, "Why I am not a Christian." Started me on my path to atheism. I am very happy I picked up that book.

[Meshuga]

10. My two all time favorites:

"The Faith and the Doubt of Holocaust survivors" by Reeve Robert Brenner

and

"Hot to Get More Out of Being Jewish Even If: A. You are not sure if you believe in God, B. You think that going to synagogue is a waste of time, C. You think keeping kosher is stupid, D. You hated Hebrew school, or, E. All of the above" by Gil Mann

The Gil Mann book is available electronically online:
http://www.beingjewish.org/freebook/HowtoGetMore%20PDF%20of%20whole%20book.pdf

The current book I am reading is getting to be one of my favorites (becoming a list of 3 all time favorites) which is a Jewish history book called "The Unity Principle" by Ellis Rivkin

[EVDebs]

11. Toss up between The Harlot By The Side of the Road and

Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller of Portland OR.

The Harlot By The Side of the Road—Forbidden Tales of the Bible...
by Jonathan Kirsch a lawyer and newspaper worker at The Los Angeles Times.

Learned much from both.

As for video, the Peter and Paul and the Christian Revolution
http://www.pbs.org/empires/peterandpaul/

was a 'Damascus moment' so to speak for PBS.

For someone seeking insight slipped in between the lines, take anything by Thornton Wilder, say Bridge at San Luis Rey or Heaven's My Destination (pretty funny book, too) as pointing the way to the power of love.

[InvisibleTouch]

12. Probably this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Power-Now-Guide-Spiritual-Enlightenment/dp/1577311523/sr=1-2/qid=1169920207/ref=pd_bbs_2/104-5512430-4778318?ie=UTF8&s=books

The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle

Definitely not about religion, and maybe not even so much about spirituality in the conventional sense, but certainly the most thought-provoking for me in this general field. I don't know that I agree with or would want to live out his every premise, but it certainly gives a whole new perspective.

[cain_7777]

13. "Why I Am Not a Christian" by Bertrand Russell

[Orrex]

18. A great piece!

I'm also quite fond of The Gospel Fictions by Randle Helms.

[moggie]

31. Bertrand Russell is such an entertaining writer

You can't help smiling while reading "Why I am not a Christian".

[TRYPHO]

15. Loads of books, all of which I still have (except one series)!

The Essential Talmud, by Adin Steinsaltz
Which showed me what I didn't know but should have.

The Shulchan Aruch, which, at some point I will dedicate the rest of my life to, but have too many other things to do first.

The best written;

The lensman series by EE Doc Smith

The Saga or the Exiles by Julian May

And Everything written by Isaac Asimov

And my all time most life-affecting book (it wont affect others but there were bits in it that lead me to change many aspects of my life and researches ever since I read it)

The Hiram Key by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas

And the one's I don't have, which were the best written books I've ever read, I lent to someone and never had returned. There were two books, both about a Chinese man with a slight flaw in his charachter, and he went on missions with a young man whom he protected and tought, but the stupid boy didn't realise much of what was happening. If anyone should have come across these books I would be eternally grateful for a reminder of their titles so I can re-read them.

Oh, and dirk gentleys detective agency was amazing - by douglas adams - who wrote hitchikers guide to the galaxy - also worth reading.

And, oh what was the other space one called...red Dwarf, thats it - read those books too, they're fab.

So many awesome books.

And my Mum would still say they were all crap!

TRYPHO

[struggle4progress]

16. Too many to select just one:

About forty years ago, some of Idries Shah's Sufism texts and Buber's output on Hasidism were very interesting. About thirty years back, I was influenced by Merton's little volume of selections from Chuang-Tzu. Twenty years ago, a number of the volumes the Maryknoll imprint, Orbis, produced on liberation theology were very helpful, notably Marx and the Bible; I also learned a lot by working my way through portions of translations of the Midrash Rabbah and the Zohar.

[rug]

17. Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton

[bananas]

19. "Be Here Now" by Ram Dass

http://www.amazon.com/Be-Here-Now-Ram-Dass/dp/0517543052/sr=8-1/qid=1169973575/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-2128601-8802301?ie=UTF8&s=books
http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/0517543052.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

[TechBear_Seattle]

21. "Parable of the Sower" and "Parable of the Talents" by Octavia Butler

While not directly about religion or spirituality, the doctrines that come to be known as Earthseed are the driving force behind both novels.

[The Kicker]

22. Kyogyoshinsho by Shinran

Kyogyoshinsho(Teaching,Practice, and Realization of the Pure Land Way)http://www.shinranworks.com/ by Shinran Shonin (founder of Jodoshinshu buddhism). Also: Shoshinge-The Way of Nembutsu Faith by Hisao Inagaki, commentary on the Shoshinge wasan which is a hymn to the Pure Land masters written by Shinran Shonin.


edit to add link

[Unvanguard]

23. Milton Steinberg's As a Driven Leaf.

Utterly brilliant. That book once ended my atheism, and still can get me to seriously reconsider abandoning my return to it.

I loved The Bible Unearthed too; I question some of the more radical conclusions of the authors, but they do seem to have an excellent case.

[raccoon]

24. When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold Kushner.

By far and away my favorite.

It really helped my clarify my beliefs about a lot of things.

[papau]

42. Excellent - also With Joseph in the University of Adversity: The Mizraim Principles by

Jerry L. Parks. It uses the life of Jacob's son and how he dealt with the problems that arose after brothers sold him into a life of suffering to illustrate the "Thirty-two timeless principles" which are indeed timeless. A wonderful read and lesson.

Kushner's Temple Israel is in Natick, 5 miles from me, but in all these years I have never tried to talk to him in person. And I do have questions about his approach/view. He says that evil is because 1) it sometimes just goes that way; (2) we are given freedom of choice and consequently life is full of injustices; (3) nature is morally blind; and (4) there may be "corners of the universe where God's creative light has not yet penetrated." with God not meaning to punish us, just wanting a means to test us and present us with problems and see how we react to them. “The God I believe in does not send us the problem; he gives us the strength to cope with it.” So bad things happened to good people because obstacles, temptations, and difficulties are parts of God’s plan for us in this world. So we need to learn to forgive life's imperfections and love it because it is capable of containing great beauty and goodness, and because the ability to forgive and the ability to love are the weapons God has given us to enable us to live fully, bravely, and meaningfully in this less-than-perfect world.

But neither book addresses what David Hume, the eighteenth century philosopher, stated as the logical problem of evil and God, "Is He willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is impotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"

Or if you prefer, Peter Kreeft said that the problem can be summed up by the apparent contradiction between the following four propositions: 1) God exists 2) God is all good 3) God is all powerful 4) Evil exists (Kreeft and Tacelli 1994: 129). If we affirm any three of these propositions, it seems we must reject the fourth. For example, if we accept that God exists, is all good and that evil exists, we must reject the idea that God is all powerful, otherwise He would put a stop to evil. Or, if God exists and is all powerful and yet evil also exists, then God must not be all good, because He wills or allows evil to exist. Kreeft then suggests five possible responses to this problem.
o Atheism solves the problem by denying proposition one, that God exists.
o Pantheism, the belief that God is everything and that everything is God, denies proposition two and allows that God could be both good and evil.
o Polytheism, the belief in many gods, denies proposition three, and reduces God to just one of many gods.
o Idealism, the belief that reality is a product of the mind, rejects proposition four and states that evil is just an illusion.
o Christianity, on the other hand, affirms all four principles and denies that there is any inherent contradiction between them.

And as a Christian I buy into the last solution. It seems quite logical to me that God could have a good reason for permitting evil; a reason of which we are not aware. And as long as this is logically possible, there is no contradiction between the existence of an all good, all powerful God and the existence of evil. Just because we may not be able to figure out what that reason is does not mean the reason does not exist, or that the existence of evil does not in some way lead to more voluntary good and love in the world - the ultimate goal.

Scripture states that "with God all things are possible" (Mt. 19:26), but it also says that there are some things God cannot do -God cannot lie (Tit. 1:2), -can not be tempted to sin, nor can He tempt others to sin (James 1:13). He cannot do anything that is "out of character" for a righteous God and He can not do anything that is out of character for a rational being in a rational world. God cannot "undo the past," or create a square triangle, or make what is false true, as he can not do what is irrational or absurd. Logic then seems to force one to conclude that if God were to eliminate evil He would at the same time render impossible the accomplishment of other goals which are important to Him.

I reject the free will defense - God does not punish folks in this life for the evil they do in this life, and the need for free will does not force evil to exist.

I instead buy that the reasons are not only beyond our present knowledge, but also beyond our present ability to understand. Perhaps there are people who would not see their dependence on God if they did not see the pain that tis in life (Ps. 119 : 71). Perhaps the suffering is somehow a required preparatory to our existence in the life to come (2 Cor. 4:16-18) We say Jesus was truly human and say he was "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" (Isa. 53:3). The psalmist tells us that "the Lord is near to the brokenhearted" (Ps. 34:18), and that when we go through the "valley of the shadow of death" it is then that his presence is particularly promised to us (Ps. 23:4). Even in severe trial God is working all things together for the good of those who love Him (Rom. 8:28) - which is not to say evil is somehow good, but does say that even in what is evil God is at work to bring about his good purposes in our lives.

Which brings me back to my book recommendation - a book about Joseph - who learned the above truth after years of unexplained suffering due to the betrayal of his brothers, saying to them "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good" (Gen. 50:20). Even Jesus "learned obedience from the things He suffered" (Heb. 5:8).

In any case - both books are excellent, IMO.

[kwassa]

25. Among the Dervishes

among many others.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

26. The Unity of Religious Ideals

is one of my favorites. It was written by Haz. Inayat Khan.

[DeSwiss]

27. These 3 books by author Karen Armstrong:

A History of God : The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam
In the Beginning : A New Interpretation of Genesis
Jerusalem : One City, Three Faiths

[toddaa]

28. Nice compendium of online religious and spiritual texts

Lot's of religious and occult texts for your perusal. These are all in the public domain so translations may not be up to current academic standards, but hey, it's free.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm

[Manifestor_of_Light]

29. The Importance of Living, by Lin Yutang

Published in America in 1936. His parents were xtian missionaries and he wrote the first comprehensive Chinese-English dictionary. He wrote about Lao Tsu and Confucius in that book.

There is a chapter called "Why I am a Pagan" that distilled my philosophy to one sentence:

"All I know is that if God loves me half as much as my mother does, He will not send me to Hell."


Excellent book, few have heard of it. I think you can find it in paperback nowadays.

[zeemike]

32. Jesus the Son of Man by Khalil Gibran

Although it is fiction it is as close to the true Jesus as any factual account I have ever heard. And so well written.
It is available on line, just google his name.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

33. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, even though I'm an atheist. I've never read Dawkins, though.

The best-written book on religion that I've ever read is undoubtedly "Mere Christianity", by C.S. Lewis. Chapter 2, where he explains why Christianity is true, is a mess, but if you accept that then everything else he states follows as a logical consequence. It's changed how I think about several things, and it's significantly changed how I try and write.

That said, I've never read anything on theology by Richard Dawkins, and I've thought very highly of his pop-science work, so e.g. "The God Delusion" might be a contender.

[Egalitarian]

35. "Think on These Things" by Jiddu Krishnamurti

[PreacherCasey]

44. There's my man! "The first and last freedom" and 'The Awakening of Intelligence" are also tops.

[Stevepol]

36. don't know about the best I've read, but an excellent one I'm reading now ...

is MY GRANDFATHER'S BLESSING by Naomi Rachel Remen which has some wonderful stories that are deeply religious but not very sectarian.

[Dogmudgeon]

37. Bardo Thodol (The Tibetan Book of the Dead)

I was quite surprised how relevant it was/is.

There are several translations available. If you're a serious student of Bon (Tibetan Mahayana) Buddhism, get copies of the Evans-Wentz translation and the newer one published by Shamballah, and read them in tandem. The newer one is more accurate, but the Evans-Wentz version is said to capture the poeticism of the original better. Tim Leary also did a translation that holds up well in spite of the focus on entheogenic states.

The Bardo Thodol (or Bardo-Thötrol in the Shamballah version) is, strictly speaking, a deuterocanonical Buddhist scripture, but the Buddhists seem to take "secondary" works more seriously than do Christians or Muslims.

It is also highly regarded for its literary value; I suppose only someone fluent in Tibetan could say for sure.

--p!

[Manifestor_of_Light]

38. I have the older new translation

By Sogyal Rinpoche, from 1992, called The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
It's pretty good but I haven't read it in a long time.

[Dogmudgeon]

39. That's the one I was referring to

Rinpoche's name didn't stick with me (my apologies to him) and I thought he was actually the director of a group effort on the part of a number of monks and scholars. That version also included a fascinating discussion about how Evans-Wentz changed a number of details, like descriptions of colors, to conform with European symbology.

Did Shamballah publish another translation?

E. J. Gold (a poet and 60s-era activist) also did a fairly good translation in a slightly slangy (USA) voice.

--p!

[Vidar]

40. "I and Thou"--Martin Buber

[varkam]

41. Oddly enough - A Devil's Chaplain by Dawkins

I'd guess that's probably not a popular nomination, but I got a lot out of it. It helped me cultivate a spiritual outlook of a completely physical existence.

[Hoping4Change]

43. Fearful Symmetry by Northrop Fyre.

Fearful Symmetry explains William Blake's views on organized religion. You do not need to read Blake to gain great insight into religion and importance of man creative impulse. Below is from a review of Frye's Great Code (a very difficult read) but it summarizes nicely what is in Fearful Symmetry.


"Does God create humanity or does humanity create God? His answer is "Yes": rather than one or the other, both of these assertions are true. The existence of God is not a proposition to be proven or believed but a reality manifested in creative human action. Frye concludes Part I with his own prophetic reading of what the Bible reveals about God: "The Bible begins by showing on its first page that the reality of God manifests itself in creation, and on its last page that the same reality is manifested in a new creation in which man is participant. He becomes a participant by being redeemed, or separated from the predatory and destructive elements acquired from his origin in nature. In between these visions of creation comes the Incarnation, which presents God and man as indissolubly locked together in a common enterprise." (135) Such an interpretation, Frye proclaims, could serve as the basis of a religion of the future."


http://cla.calpoly.edu/~SMARX/Publications/frye.html

[MedleyMisty]

45. Hmm

"The Buddha: His Life Retold", by Robert Mitchell, and the Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh volumes of this great little series of the essential writings of spiritual masters.