Reddit mentions: The best christian self help books

This is golden. Lots of great information here. It's also encouraging, because based on your descriptions, I don't feel like I'm necessarily far off from being able to get into the much more absorbed, plainly altered jhana stuff. I'm familiar with much of what you describe, but I've never really just gone for it. I'm usually experiencing a lot of these sensations with a mind that is at least partly using its vipassana/investigative lens, so I don't fully absorb in the piti or make much effort to spread it around.

The few times that I have tried to really play with piti and spreading it around, I had success. In keeping with the phenomenonological spirit of this sub, I'll try and recall as best I can what those different stages felt like. I didn't get there using the breath as an object. As best I can recall, I was just practicing noting and decided to instead absorb myself into pleasant sensations. This was around the time I was reading Leigh Brasington's book Right Concentration, so I was playing with some of these things, just not exclusively. It was also right after a major path breakthrough of some sort, so the mind was extremely powerful and unified, which I think made accessing these experiences much easier. I haven't had much success repeating this experiment, but candidly, it hasn't really been a focus of mine.

• First stage (what I thought of as first jhana): Tuning into the pleasant sensations arising in my body, the electric energy sensations, which I have always thought of as piti, I manage to become deeply interested and engaged with it. As you say, I started spreading it around using a sort of body-scanning method in which I'd slowly expand that sensation to surrounding areas until it felt like I was basically sitting in a bubble of the piti, which completely surrounded my body. Physically, the bubble was most intense around the exterior of the body as I recall. It was present, but less intense in the interior portion (chest, stomach, neck, head area -- basically corresponding to the chakra points).
  
  
• Second stage: I tune into a different quality of that sensation. I recall thinking that I was looking for that part of the sensation that was not the gross physical-feeling sensation itself, but that quality of the sensation that was purely pleasant, free from that, what I thought of at the time as sukha. There was a noticeable shift. Maybe I was just tuning into a different flavor of the piti, as you described. But the sensation was less frenetic, electric, and smoother. Also, while I could still see the background first stage piti (the electric stuff) prominently focused around the body, this flavor of piti (or what I thought might be sukha) felt like it was focused in the central channel of the body -- the heart, third-eye, and crown were all very engaged at this stage.
  
  
• Third stage: At this point, I tried to tune into that quality of the experience that pleasantly subdued, basically trying to tune away from the energetic stuff and into a more stable quality of relaxed peacefulness. This felt like the external first-stage sensations falling further into the background noise, and the internal second-stage sensations sinking into a heavy, relaxed sensation. Again, maybe just another flavor of piti I was playing with, but it felt like the descriptions I'd read of "third jhana." It was much quieter, more peaceful, yet still, I felt like I was in the bubble, always in the bubble.
  
  
• Fourth stage: Felt like all of the stage one through three experiences coming back online, syncing up, but now they'd lost their edge is the best way to describe it. Whereas before, in stages one through three, each subsequent stage felt like I was moving away from a slightly unpleasant quality to a more pleasant quality, this felt like deep equanimity, bringing the entire bubble of those sensations, outside and inside, all together, without any of it really bothering me. I took this to be fourth jhana, and it felt -- that quality of equanimity -- just like it does in my standard noting/path work practice. From my perspective, the "feeling" of equanimity is less of a feeling and more of a quality of mind in which each object -- in this case the mix of these piti-flavored sensations -- is sort of picked up and put down immediately, without causing any clinging or aversion or, to put it another way, movement of the mind (which I experience as a stressful sensation in the heart area). All the stuff is happening, and I'm just sitting there, neutral to it all.
  
  From there, I was able to tune into some formless stuff (which Daniel told me sounded more like what he thinks of as 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, and 4.8 formless experiences, because it wasn't entirely formless given that there was a background sense of the body present). Basically, following Leigh's instructions, I progressively tuned my now well-honed attention into (1) that which I perceived as creating the quality of "space" -- used the sound of a passing car fading into the distance to shift into this phase, (2) that which I perceived as consciousness (simply becoming aware that the boundless space was all infused with mind clicked this into place), (3) that conceptual space in which nothing was happening (a turning away from even the perception of consciousness, almost like turning away from a light to stare back into a dark room) -- created a noticeable shift and I recall rousing myself from the state when the thought occurred "are there still cars outside?" and (4) trying to get into neither perception nor non-perception, which I am not sure I was successful at, I tried turning away even from that perception of "nothing," which led to a weird, hard to describe, seemingly barely conscious state, which felt something like,but not quite like, sleep maybe. (This last one I'm really not sure about, and my memory of that experience is not well formed because it was, weird.)
  
  I'd be curious to get your thoughts on these things. It felt like I'd rolled up through at least the first seven jhanas (with some degree of absorption) based on the descriptions I'd read in Brasington's book.
  
  But one confusion I'm having is on the absorption front. I've never distinctly experienced that "snowball" effect with any of this, where it feels like the piti just "takes off" and builds exponentially on its own.

You should really read Jewish Magic and Superstition by Rabbi Joshua Trachtenberg. It’s a study of the magical techniques and, more importantly, the magical philosophy which flourished among Jews primarily in the Rhineland around the 12th Century (known as the Hasidei Ashkenaz). The book is available for free at the link I provided, but you can also purchase it pretty cheap and find it in other formats elsewhere.

Magic of this type is termed “Practical Kabbalah” (distinguishing it from the more well known Meditative Kabbalah as found in the Zohar). I found this website some time ago on Practical Kabbalah. It has a really pretty format, but ultimately is nearly contentless and looks abandoned. However, it has a pretty great starting bibliography. I’ve been working on and off to collect the books on said bibliography and other books relating to Jewish magical practices. Recently I acquired a partial translation of Sefer Hasidim (the foundational text of the Hasedei Ashkenaz).

You might also want to look into the magical thought and stories in the Hasidic movement (not to be confused with the like-named Hasedei Ashkenaz). The aforementioned bibliography has, I think, two books on the subject, but there’s more books which broadly look at the mystical/magical practices of Hasidism and their legends. A good beginner book focusing on Hasidic legends is Elie Wiesel’s Souls on Fire. Martin Buber has written Tales of the Hasidim which has more tales, but is a little more dry.

There are some other books I have of varying relevance, but I don’t know how many book recommendations you need. Some of the books mentioned, centrally Jewish Magic and Superstition, are probably a good start. Also, a good book on mythic stories in Judaism is Tree of Souls by Howard Schwartz.

----

Edit:

I just finished reading Alan J. Avery-Peck’s article “The Galilean Charismatic and Rabbinic Piety: The Holy Man in the Talmudic Literature” in The Historical Jesus in Context. It focuses on Honi the Circle Drawer and Hanina ben Dosa, two individuals part of the charismatic, miracle tradition of antiquity and how this tradition was rethemed and incorporated into Rabbinic Judaism. You might be interested in such individuals and such a tradition. Of the same general time period, you might also be interested in Maaseh Merkavah (and Hekhalot) and Maaseh Bereshit (from which emerges Sefer Yetzirah).

Also, some Jewish figures have featured prominently in alchemy (like Mariam the Jewess).

It looks like I’m just going to keep editing this post with more stuff. Anyway, in regards to patriarchal religion being introduced by the Jews which led to the destruction of the Great Goddess, well, the whole Great Goddess hypothesis isn’t really argued in modern academia. Regardless, a patriarchal dynamic to religion was not introduced by Jews, and the Jewish God is overtly asserted to not have a gender (or be two genders, depending on how you read the text) and female personification has historically been applied to the Jewish God. All of this aside, Rabbi Jill Hammer has done a lot of theological work focusing on the Divine Feminine in Judaism. She even worked to make a highly female inclusive siddur (which seems to be permanently out of print). She runs this website which has, for instance, an article on the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine of the Godhead which is the kind of thing that’d probably fit just as easily on a website on Wicca. She’s also written, like, a Jewish wheel of the year book (which I bought and, regardless of how one feels about the book as a whole, is a nice assortment of references to midrash). In a similar theme, I’ve also read On the Wings of Shekhinah: Rediscovering Judaism’s Divine Feminine by Rabbi Leah Novick, but I didn’t really like it.

You might also want to look into The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism. I own it, but haven’t really looked through it. I’ve seen some other people cite it though. So I can’t really give my own opinion of it other than mention its existence.

Wait, also also, just occurred to me, you might want to look into the creation of Matzevot and Bethel as seen primarily in Genesis. They’re akin to altars anointed with oil where the Divine is asked to be present. The best book I know of academically touching on the subject is Benjamin Sommer’s Bodies of God (which is a book I somehow manage to tie into just about everything I ever write on Reddit). Glancing around to see if I could find anything else on this theme, I came across this text (I don’t know how relevant or interesting it is since I hadn’t read it, I’m reading it now) (Finished reading. I’d certainly recommend it as an interesting text. Not much about Metzevot. Instead a whole lot on early Medieval Jewish magic involving oil. There are a good handful of these divination rituals translated. The rituals primarily involve using oil and a reflective surface [predominantly a fingernail, but also mentioned is oil on water, iron, mirror, liver, glass cups, and resin] to commune with spiritual Princes.).

Probably should have also mentioned Ancient Jewish Magic: A History by Gideon Bohak which makes reference to Trachtenberg's work, but aims to be more expansive and make use of later scholarship to advance the neglected study of Jewish magical traditions.

The book I always recommend people start out with is Sophie's World, not because it's the most in-depth, but because it's the most accessible for a newcomer. It's also the most entertaining I've read. If you want something more in-depth, Russell's History of Western Philosophy is generally this subreddit's big recommendation, although I personally wouldn't say it's a great starting point. His reading of some thinkers is not great, and he's not quite as good at dumbing down certain ideas to an introductory level.

A good summary of philosophy will help you for a couple reasons. One, it will give you enough information to find out what thinkers and ideas interest you. If you're interested in a particular question or thinker, then that's obviously where you should go. Philosophy of religion? Logic? Aesthetics and art? Language? There's plenty written on all these topics, but it can be a bit overwhelming to try and just attack all of philosophy at once. Like any other field, there will be parts of it that click with you, and parts that don't really seem all that appealing. Find your niche, and pursue it. In addition to giving you an idea of where to go, a good overview will put ideas in context. Understanding Augustine and Aquinas will make more sense if you know that they're working with a foundation of the Greek thought of Plato and Aristotle. Descartes wrote his meditations during the enlightenment, and was a major contributor to much of the emphasis on reason that defined that era. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard's existentialist ideas become more powerful when you realize they're critiquing and challenging the technicality of Kant and Hegel. Ideas don't exist in a vacuum, and while you can't be expected to know all the details of everything, your niche area of interest will make more sense if you understand it's context.

As for easier texts that I'd recommend trying out (once you find an area of interest), here's a few that are pretty important and also fairly accessible. These are texts that are generally read by all philosophy students, due to their importance, but if you're just into this for personal interest, you can pick and choose a bit. Still, these are important works, so they'll be very good to read anyways.

Plato - Apology: not terribly dense, but an accessible text in which Socrates basically defends his pursuing philosophical thought. I'd recommend this as an accessible introduction that will get you to feel like philosophy matters; think of it as pump-up music before a big game.

Plato - The Republic: this is arguably Plato's most important work. In it, he talks about the nature of men, politics, education and art.

Aristotle - Nichomachean Ethics: a text that deals with leading a life in accordance with virtue. Aristotle's style is a bit dry and technical, but he's also very important.

Augustine - On Free Choice of the Will: a dialogue similar to Plato's in which Augustine argues that the existence of God does not conflict with man having free will.

Aquinas - Selected Excerpts: he wrote a lot, so you don't wanna try reading a whole one of his works. This selects his key ideas and puts them in bite-sized chunks. He's a big Christian thinker, arguing for the existence and goodness of God and related theological concepts.

Descartes - Meditations on First Philosophy: Descartes uses reason to prove he exists, along with some other things. Pretty easy to read, although it sparked a revolution in thought, making epistemology a central problem of philosophy.

Kant - Grounding for Metaphysics of Morals: one of his easier works, but it's still one of the more technical works I'm recommending, in which Kant demonstrates that morals are a priori.

Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling: one of my favorite books, Kierkegaard writes about the nature of faith using the story of Abraham and Isaac as his starting point. A huge critic of Kant's obsession with pure reason, he is generally considered to be the first existential thinker.

Nietzsche - Beyond Good & Evil: Nietzsche is one of the more controversial thinkers in history. Also a critic of Kant, he is one of the most profound critics of religion. This book is one of his more important, in which he talks about his problems of religion, the culture around him, and at times points us in the direction he wants us to go. Know that he doesn't write in a terribly direct manner, so if you choose to read him, come here for assistance. He's a bit different to read, and can be challenging if you're not ready.

This list is by no means exhaustive, and having a good reference to help you along will be very helpful.

I totally understand!! Honestly, I went through the same feelings while learning this stuff too. There came a point where I sat myself down and was like look - if I continue to believe what I’ve always believed, the world stays small and known. Imagine telling someone back in the 15th century that cars existed - no need to walk or ride a horse to travel. They wouldn’t have believed you, but it’s true - cars exist. I took the same approach to learning - a conscious decision to accept that there’s so much I took for fact, that actually isn’t known, just assumed.

For example, Darwin’s theory - he said himself, when presenting the theory, that he wasn’t actually sure that survival of the fittest was natural law, but theorized that it was possible and likely. Possible and likely, but NOT fact.

(I don’t remember where I originally read this, but here’s a great read from Quora: https://www.quora.com/Was-Charles-Darwin-100-sure-that-his-evolution-theory-is-right-and-without-single-doubt)

Scientists have been studying nature, and guess what - survival of the fittest is not The Law of Nature. There are endless examples of collaboration, support, exchange in nature - it’s about giving and taking, for the benefit of all.

As a society, however, we took Darwin’s theory and ran with it, and it’s literally baked into the fiber of our fabric. Capitalism, hierarchical structure, large corporations consuming small businesses, etc etc etc.

What would society look like if we built our structures on the basis of sharing, caring for each other, pursuing the highest good of all?

All of that to say, when you allow yourself to be open, to think, to consider different approaches, you achieve different outcomes.

When you close yourself off, assume you have “the answer”, act reactively, unconsciously, then you achieve the same outcome.

I just want different! For me, life is about growing, stretching, learning, getting my mind blown over and over and over, adjusting and adapting, constantly. And ITS FUN!

Regarding the whole life after death/soul separate from body concept, I was thrown into it via Dolores Cannon. If you like reading books, buy and read Between Death and Life: Conversations with a Spirit (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1940265002). If you prefer watching videos:
https://youtu.be/FhjoEnG4gww

She’s incredibly close to “the answer”, but I think since she was practicing, some things have changed - like the emotional evolution of the greys, nothing is static.

Another great book: The Gaia Project by Hwee-Yong Jiang (https://m.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-gaia-project-hwee-yong-jang/1123431981)

And another: The Complete Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0399153292)


In any case, all of us reach a point where we can’t be told “the answer”. Someone can tell us something close to it, but ultimately, you can only truly truly believe what you’ve searched and found to be true. That’s literally what belief is, and in its truest form, it cannot be forced. I think that’s the beautiful thing about exploration, and the great news is, if you consciously stay open to new information and actually seek, you absolutely will find and find and find until you choose to close down or stop.

Yeah, it sounds to me like you are a Unitarian Universalist. Pretty much anybody and everybody who doesn't fit into the limitations of dogmatic Christianity loves Unitarian Universalism.

Unitarian Universalism is a non-creedal faith which means that you don't have to adhere to any dogma in order to be a part of a UU community. I won't go through them all but we have seven principles and six sources the most relevant here are: "Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;"
"A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;" from the sources, "Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life," and "Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature." ( Read more here if you'd like: UUA: Our UU Principles )
Your interest in yoga, Buddhism, Christianity and pantheism makes it seem like you would fit in really well and love a UU community. Generally, most UU communities will have Buddhists, Christians, atheists, agnostics, pagans and/or pantheists, mystics and more (plus people who consider themselves more than one of those categories) as happy members.

A great book to check out to give you a nice short, concise and interesting introduction is John Buehrens' A Chosen Faith

If you have any other questions let me know.

I think it really depends on what you want to get out of reading it. I think pretty much everything people have suggested could be/is a good choice, but interestingly they are all going to give you a very different impression of Buddhism.

What the Buddha Taught is simple but dry. Imo, doesn't convey much of the "spirit" of buddhism, but it does get the ideas across pretty directly. When I was about 18 I read this... it was pretty confusing at the time, being one of the first things I read on the subject.

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind is a classic and also written in short essays, iirc. However that's from (obviously) a Zen perspective. It's going to have some pretty different things to say about Buddhism than Walpola's book. Also, Zen can be rather enigmatic. So don't expect any kind of direct explanation if you go that route.

Awakening the Buddha Within might be a pretty good choice. Das is good for a mainstream audience. He's light and fun to read, but also gives a lot of good information on the subject.

Siddhartha is probably the suggestion I like the most. It's literature, but also pretty short, and quite interesting. I think it probably is going to give you the best idea of what Buddhism is "about."

I would also throw out there a personal favorite, [The World is Made of Stories by David Loy] (http://www.amazon.com/World-Made-Stories-David-Loy/dp/0861716159/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323643538&sr=8-1). This book makes for some very light reading and it's fun, but also very profound, imo. It's totally anecdotal, in that the whole thing is a collection of unrelated quotes strung together to convey a concept. However, don't expect any real talk about Buddhism. It really is just quotes.

Another thing that I think is worth mentioning, and might be a good choice, depending on your mentality is [Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist by Stephen Batchelor] (http://www.amazon.com/Confession-Buddhist-Atheist-Stephen-Batchelor/dp/0385527071/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323643708&sr=1-1). This book probably isn't for most people. For one thing its very polemic! And I don't necessarily agree with his ideas about the "historical Buddha" (a pretty lame concept in general, if you ask me) but reading this would definitely give you a good idea of how the western mind deals with some of the less appealing aspects of eastern thought. I think it can also show you what is at the core of Buddhism, what makes it worth translating into another culture.

Anyway, hope that helps!

As a person who converted through the Reform movement, I highly suggest that you take a holistic approach to your initial study of Judaism. Getting a better idea of where other movements are coming from will not only give you a better grounding in Judaism as a whole, but it will foster understanding between movements and also put you in a better position to decide which movement works best for you.

Personally, even though I converted Reform, I don't actually identify strongly as a Reform Jew, because it's a bit too free form for me (in particular, I became very frustrated when the response to any question I had about observance essentially boiled down to 'do whatever makes you feel good'). That said, like you, I don't identify completely with the theology or some of the practices of Orthodoxy (separation of men and women being one of them), so I wouldn't make a good Orthodox Jew even though I'm more observant than, oh, 90% of Reform Jews.

Take the advice of other people in this thread and try out several different synagogues and Jewish events in your area, if possible. And read a lot on Judaism from different perspectives. Even if you strongly identify with the Reform movement (which is totally fine--I am not knocking the movement, it just isn't 100% for me), it will still be helpful to understand other levels of observance.

Some books I suggest you check out:

• Basic Judaism by Milton Steinberg -- This book gives a brief and easy-to-read overview of the basics of both traditional (Orthodox) and liberal Judaism. VERY good place to start your studies.
  
• Choosing a Jewish Life by Anita Diamant is a good overview of the conversion process and some of the issues coverts face. Been a while since I read this, but it's definitely not from an Orthodox perspective--I think it strives to be more neutral as far as denomination goes.
  
• I also highly recommend To Pray as a Jew by Hayim Halevy Donin. This is an introduction to the synagogue service and its prayers. Very informative book. It is written from an Orthodox perspective, and will be easier to follow once you are further along in your studies, I think, but it's a wonderful resource.
  
  Particularly because you mentioned that you are a feminist, I thought you might also be interested in:
  
  
• How to run a Traditional Jewish Household by Blu Greenberg. This book is written from a Modern Orthodox perspective by a well-known Orthodox feminist. It gives a lot of background and information about Orthodox customs that aren't as well-known to more liberal Jews (like the concept of an eruv, for example). Though I don't identify as an Orthodox Jew myself, I found this book fascinating and it really helped me solidify my own practice and feelings about traditional Judaism.
  
• Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Toward Traditional Rabbinic Ordination by Haviva Ner-David is an account of Ner-David's journey to becoming one of the first women granted the equivalent of Orthodox semicha (ordination) in Israel. I found it very eye-opening. It is definitely possible to be a feminist and be traditional. I don't agree with everything she says/does, but this is another great book to give you a perspective on how and why Orthodox Jews do things the way they do.
  
  Welcome to the path of Jewish study. If you ever have any other specific questions about converting Reform or need support in your studies or your journey, please feel free to PM me any time.

Do you want the intentionally vague and obscure answer that most people want when they ask about existentialism? "It may be true that there is no ultimate purpose to life. But that is irrelevant either way since it is fundamentally unknowable."

The big idea is to seek out your own purpose, to find something bigger than yourself and devote yourself to it. Whether that something is an established thing like a religion, or if it is something like bringing vaccines to areas of the world without them, BOTH of those options are pretty big ideas. Can't find an already existing idea that is big enough? I guess you'll just have to create something.

>There's nothing bigger than myself to dictate my actions, and I haven't found anything that really ignites my passions.

That just kills me. Nothing? Really? There's NOTHING bigger than yourself? I'm not sure how much of an ego you've got on you, but it sounds like you have no problem finding a passion. It is just a selfish ambition that ignores that there are other people to be concerned about. If you REALLY think that there is NOTHING bigger than yourself out there, and there are no other people to be concerned about, no other events to get involved with, then existentialism and philosophy as a whole would like you to kindly remove your head from your hindquarters.

Is the study of philosophy not big enough? Or do you already encompass it? Is writing a novel something too easy for you that you can bang one out with no troubles?

You could devote yourself to becoming the Ubermensch, but why? You still need to answer the question for yourself "why bother?" What makes that your ideal goal instead of the Knight of Faith? Why become either when you can merely float along and exist? It would certainly be easier.

Why are you assuming that the bigger thing would have to dictate your actions? They can influence, or guide you, but you can also influence the ideas and help form them. Some big ideas are SO formless that they don't seem like a coherent thought at all. You could jump in and help clean them up.

I generally don't recommend reading existentialist texts. Especially to help find a purpose. I'm sure there is some great stuff out there, but it also helps give philosophy a bad name. Read someKant and devote yourself to being abel to understand what the hell he was trying to say in this. If you absolutely MUST read existentialism, read Kierkegaard or something. I don't know. Existentialism is one area that I just steered clear of because everything I read in there just sounded like a lot of angsty teenagers.

Your examples aren't really drawing a clear picture.

> My car is pretty dirty, so I should probably for 30 minuts or so take up the cause of cleaning it. But why bother if I don't really care?

You ought to bother because if you live anywhere that puts salt on the roads, regular cleaning will help maintain your car better. Also, if you ever go to pick someone up, it is SUPER nice to be able to get in and out of a person's car without getting the bottoms of your pants dirty.

>I could make a point to really try and be the best man I could by working out and dressing nice, etc. But I just don't care enough. So what if I'm skinny as hell and just wear jeans and a tee-shirt everywhere?

Working out and dressing nice makes EVERYTHING a lot easier. Until you do it, you have no idea how much easier it is to move around, open heavy doors, carry groceries, breathe, etc. And dressing nice makes people want to talk to you more. If your T actually fits and goes with your pants and is maybe even clean, that goes a LONG way to making you more approachable. And once someone approaches you, then suddenly you get to talk to them about philosophy!

So it isn't really about YOU at all. A good chunk of what we do, including philosophy, is to make you a more complete citizen. And there is never a city with only 1 citizen. You need to make a bigger choice of whether it is a society you want to be part of, or not. If not, are you going to devote yourself to changing it, or are are you going to turn tail and remove yourself from it?

> I tried to reach out to a local Rabbi, and she simply turned me to a
> website. (I understand she is busy.)

Not to defend a particular Rabbi, but it’s worth remembering that Judaism isn’t an evangelising religious tradition.

Judaism is a tribal religion (perhaps best thought of as an ethnos in the Greek sense: a ‘people’) and it rather shies away from universal claims.

So the tradition of conversion is utterly unlike that of an evangelical religions like Christianity or Islam. Lots of ‘are you sure?’. Absolutely no ‘you have to join us or everything is just awful’.

The standard story is that Rabbis will turn you away three times if you come to them seeking to convert. It’s not strictly true but it is true that Rabbis will generally start by asking why you want to join rather than rolling out the welcome mat and crying ‘sister!’.

The Rabbi you encountered may well have used ‘take some time to read [website address here]’ as her version of the ‘are you sure?’ question.

Once you’ve studied the site in question (and I recommend doing the study, BTW), go back to the Rabbi and say you’ve done the required reading and now you want to talk some more.

A serious-minded approach is probably best here, because conversion to Judaism is a serious commitment.

The figure to keep in mind is Ruth, often called the Mother of all Converts:

For whither thou goes, I will go;
And where thou lodges, I will lodge;
Your people are my people, and your G‑d, my G‑d.
Where thou dies, will I die, and there be buried;
— Ruth 1:16–17

Becoming Jewish is as much about joining a new tribe — ‘Your people are my people’ — as it is about taking on the tenets and practices of a new (to you) religious tradition.

> Resources

A few resources off the top of my head (including several web-sites; so sorry to go down the same path as your local rabbi):

Choosing a Jewish life: a handbook for people converting to Judaism and for their family and friends, by Anita Diamant.

Perhaps the classic book on ‘how to convert’, especially if you are in the United States. A little old now (it may be ‘revised and updated’ but this most recent edition was published almost twenty years ago) but still very useful.

Orthodox conversion to Judaism

The web-site run by the Rabbinical Council of America (the organising rabbinical structure for Orthodox Jews in the US) to ‘establish an improved and more dependable conversion process that would Be fully in accordance with Halachah (Jewish law)’.

Reform conversion to Judaism

The Reform Judaism sub-site on conversion. Include links to personal stories, articles on the process and an on-line study course.

Links returned by searching on ‘conversion’ at ReformJudaism.org

More than you probably want to read about converting in the Reform tradition, plus lots of personal stories of conversion.

Conversion to Judaism

An online study course for prospective converts, created and maintained by Rabbi Celso Cukierkorn of the Adat Achim synagogue in Florida. The aside from the study materials the site includes a page of Personal conversion experiences.

The Washington Institute for conversion and the study of Judaism

Another online resource and study course for people considering converting, this one run by Rabbi Bernice Weiss from Maryland. Weiss is also co-author of a book — [Converting to Judaism: choosing to be Chosen](http://converttojudaism.org/converting.htm) — which consists of personal stories of conversion.

Becoming Jewish

A web-site run by and for Jews By Choice (ie, people who’ve converted to Judaism). Aside from resources and places to look for more info, the site includes a collection of stories by others who’ve made the conversion journey

> personal stories

[Life with Ruth: your people, my people*](https://amazon.com/Life-Ruth-Your-People-My-ebook/dp/B00HFFAT3G), by Ruth Hanna Sachs.

A memoir focusing on the author’s journey to Judaism, haltingly started in the late-1960s and early-1970s but only properly taken in the late-1990s.

‘10 things nobody told me about converting to Judaism’, by Anna Thomson.

A 2014 article (or ‘listicle’ if you will) about converting to Modern Orthodox Judaism after meeting and falling in love with a Modern Orthodox Jew.

‘Conversion: a Black Jewish can-do story’, by Stephanie Ambroise.

A 2016 article about ‘[h]ow one woman went from having no idea what Shabbat was to celebrating it every week.’

‘From looking Jewish to being Jewish’, by Esther Hugenholtz.

A 2016 article by a cultural anthropologist about ‘going native’ (to such an extent she became a Rabbi and now serves a congregation).

‘A global conversion’, by Rachael Bregman.

A 2016 article about the formal conversion of a woman in her 80s who’d been living a Jewish life since she was a teenager but had not formally converted ‘because it would have hurt her mother deeply’.

The woman converting was in New South Wales. The Em Beit Din overseeing her conversion were in Tennessee, New York, and New Mexico.

The Becoming Jewish (see above) blog, Into the Jewish pool, includes multiple personal stories about, you guessed it, becoming Jewish.

Finally, Rabbi Mark Kaiserman has an Amazon listmania page dedicated to Books about converting to Judaism. More than enough personal stories here to last a year’s worth of reading time.

> guidance

Joining a tribe isn’t easy. There are obstacles and challenges, some of them internal and some of them put in place by the tribe you seek to join.

My partner made the journey from Dutch Catholicism to Reconstructionist Judaism more than thirty years ago.

And they’ve been asked about this more than a few times over the years.

When asked by someone contemplating the journey their short answer these days is ‘it won’t always be easy, but it should always feel right.’.

Hope this is at least diverting, if not helpful.

> what's Unitarian Universalism like?

I've found it to be a good fit for me. It was a long journey to get there. When I first was leaving Catholicism and talking with friends, several people suggested I check out Unitarian Universalism. In those days, I didn't want to go anywhere near any church. Over the years, the UU suggestion came up a few times. When I would take those "what religion am I?" online quiz, I would always get UU. Eventually, I decided to check out the local UU church.

There is a certain amount of familiarity. There's a weekly service that has a similar structure: readings, songs, sermon, etc. UU congregations can differ in their religiosity. The church attend is pretty reluctant to embrace Christianity, but that's okay with me.

What I like about UU'ism is that people come to it from all sorts of backgrounds. At my church there are people who grew up: Catholic, Baptist and various Protestant denominations, Jewish, Buddist, Pagan, Athiest, Agnostic, and more. What helps make it work in one of the UU Principles

> As responsible religious seekers, we recognize that we are privileged to be free, to have resources to pursue life beyond mere survival, to continually search for truth and meaning, to exist beyond bonds of dogma and oppression, and to wrestle freely with truth and meaning as they evolve.

There is no official religious dogma or creeds, people are encouraged to find their own truths and respect other peoples search for truth. It's not a perfect process. There have been people who find their truth in more conservative viewpoints and then get frustrated that other UUs are not supportive of that. If you are a fairly liberal, lefty, progressive, then UU could be a great fit, though there are probably more conservative UU congregations that would embrace those beliefs too.

I found this book to be a helpful introduction to UU'ism.

> While I certainly agree that there is value in looking at things in a new light to see a new truth, all too often people do not actually read the actual source material and instead read modern interpretations which are fallacious, and misleading.

Sounds like we'd get along. :)

In the Jewish tradition many English speaking practitioners happily accepted Michael Berg's translation of The Zohar as being canonical.

Luckily a scholar with more of an academic eye grounded in Aramaic named Daniel Matt was willing to spend the better part of a decade trying to capture the nuanced almost poetical nature of the texts for an English audience.

This gets to a point that I think Jorge Luis Borges perfectly described in his short story 'An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain' and 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote'.

The first short explores the idea that the same book may tell many stories or that there is only one story iterated infinitely as a sort of synecdoche. The second portrays how translations are in many ways whole new works that never fully capture the original's essence, somewhat similar to Godel's incompleteness theorem.

To illustrate this look at a single simple Hebrew word that has shaped the better part of the last 2000 years of Western civilization: יֵשׁוּעַ. Most westerners think the correct pronunciation of this word is Jesus. Yeshua is far closer to the truth, but even then it doesn't entirely capture the full Hebrew vocalization on the vowels/nikkud.

How did this happen? The name Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) comes from Joshua's Hebrew name, Yehoshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ) which sometimes appears in its shortened form, Yeshua (e.g., 1 Chron. 24:11; Neh. 8:17). Yeshua, when transliterated into Greek, comes out as ᾽Ιησοῦς (pronounced YAY-soos), with the final sigma being necessary in the nominative case to designate a proper name. In old English, the "y" sound was rendered as "j," and thus we obtain "Jesus".

Put another way all interpretations and translations are necessarily corruptions.


> As an aside I have not read much re; Kabbalah, do you have a recommendation of a good book?

The tradition spans everything from neoplatonism, gnosticism, hermetica, to pythagorean mysticism. It wouldn't be exaggerating to say Kabbalah is the thread that ties together almost all of western esotericism.

There are a number of popular documentaries that give a general overview without being too inaccurate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibuSPtXG5dg

Rav. Michael Laitman's protege, Anthony Kosinec, does a nice job as well,

http://www.kabbalah.info/engkab/kabbalah-video-clips/kabbalah-revealed-a-basic-overview

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan does a stellar job summarizing the traditional Jewish take on Kabbalah in his 1991 book "Inner Space." The book doesn't convey the feeling, however, of what it means to be really "in" the tradition.

The closest thing I think I can share to give a sense of what I'm getting at is this little paper.

Other than that though unless a person has any experience with lucid dreaming or out of body experiences, I am not sure anything I say will make any sense. Kaplan wrote two books, "Jewish Meditation, A Practical Guide" and "Meditation and the Bible", with the hopes that others could have the same sorts of lived experiences. Like anything, though, it requires a little practice. :)

Not sure if this is what you are looking for, but if you are looking for a good "intro to Buddhism" book that puts great emphasis on cultivating bodhichitta (the aspiration to attain enlightenment/buddhahood in order to best help infinitely many beings), then I can recommend 3 of my favorite books by the Dalai Lama, and one book by the famous 8th century Bodhisattva Shantideva:

• An Open Heart
  
• How to practice: the way to a meaningful life
  
• From Here to Enlightenment
  
• Shantideva's The Way of the Bodhisattva
  
  I ordered the books from lightest to more dense reading. Shantideva's text is all poetry, I derive great inspiration from it but I admit that it may be somewhat difficult to read for someone less familiar with Mahayana Buddhism.

Sartre presented a lecture called "Existentialism and Humanism," which can now be found in print as Existentialism is a Humanism. It's almost like an Existentialism manefesto, per se. The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus is a good treatise on existentialism (Absurdism, really, but it'll do).

I would not hesitate to start reading fiction novels that have Existentialist themes. Camus' The Stranger, Sartre's Nausea, and Dostyevsky's Notes From the Underground are just a few that will find your studies well.

As for secondary literature, the only text I can knowledgeably recommend is Existentialism For Dummies, as I'm currently working my way through it. It's actually not as bad as you might think coming from the "For Dummies" series. It doesn't go too in-depth, and ideas are very concise and oftentimes humorous.

I have also heard good things about David Cogswell's Existentialism For Beginners, though I have never read it myself.

If your niece feels comfortable with this level of writing and philosophical examination, it is almost imperative to read Kierkegaard's Either/Or and Fear and Trembling, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, and Sartre's Being and Nothingness, among others. It is good to have some background understanding of Kant and perhaps have a few essays by Schopenhauer under your belt leading up to the more rigorous academics like Heidegger and Hegel.

Good luck, and happy reading!

Shingon and Zen are both practices that, in my opinion, benefit greatly from some preliminary understanding of Buddhism. There is a lot of info out there and you already have a great start with Suzuki. In my opinion, you'll want to get a feel for the Buddhist approach to inquiry, teaching, and the importance of spiritual friends. accesstoinsight.org has some fantastic material from the Theravada tradition, which (again in my opinion) serves as an excellent foundation for the Mahayana tradition if you so choose. I personally am Mahayana but learn so, so much from Theravada.

Inquiry: The Kalama Sutta

How to recognize the Dharma

The importance of spiritual friends

Access To Insight Study guides

If you feel you have a good handle on the basic concepts like the Four Noble Truths, The Eightfold Noble Path, Stream Entrancy, etc., then Shantideva's The Way of the Bodhisattva is a sublime text no matter what tradition you end up calling home. Good luck!

>I'd love to do the Vedas or the Tripiṭaka, but from what I'm reading, these are almost impossible to understand without the formal training and would take more than a year to complete (if you can even find English translations of them).


The Tripitaka actually has a lot of very accessible parts -- reading the entire thing would be a massive undertaking (this would be thousands and thousands of pages), but the Majjhima Nikaya (the middle length discourses of the Buddha) and the Digha Nikaya (the long length discourses of the Buddha) are IMO extremely accessible and cover most of the non-Mahayana Buddhist teachings. Both come with very good forwards which serve as a good introduction for understanding the rest of the text.

For Mahayana Buddhism, there are a number of sutras translated, but probably the most foundational/important would be the Bodhicharyavatara (the way of the Bodhisattvas) which is amazing, but really needs more unpacking to fully appreciate. For that I'd recommend The Nectar of Manjushri's Speech which is an excellent and detailed commentary on it.

I truly think it is. I read A Chosen Faith before even attending. They make a point of having no doctrine, but have seven "principles." The principles are simple and promote tolerance, dignity, and acceptance. In some places you might run into some of the "cheesiness" but I just mark that up to others uniqueness. However, you won't find anyone trying to push anything on you or getting in your face w/ the cheesiness. I was raised Southern Baptist. When we started attending a UU congregation, we met a Jew who married a Catholic, a young couple that had been raised Hari Krishna, and a boatload of atheists just looking for somewhere to find a social support network. Also, they have "religious education" that I think you would approve of for your child. They do cover different faith traditions, but only to the point that your child would not be clueless if someone tried to push something on them later in life. I know this was a long response, and UU does not proselytize as a rule, but I have always felt comfortable. The UUA website has a search function so you can find a congregation near you. One further piece of advice though. Find a large to medium sized church if possible (400 members maybe). We've been to a medium sized one and now occasionally make it to a small one. There were simply more opportunities at the larger church.

> I'm talking about the people who are instantly healed after having a Christian lay their hands on them. Blind see. Deaf hear. Lame walk. Dead are raised. People with back-pain for 10+ years are healed. People with pain in their knees every time they bend them are healed. People who haven't been able to lift their hands above their shoulders for 10+ years are healed.

And yet, where are these people? Are you talking about faith healers who con people into giving them money? These people have been debunked and exposed as frauds so many times, yet people still continued to go to them. What do you make of this?

James Randi has spent a lot of time researching faith healers, and he debunked many. In his book called The Faith Healers, James Randi has written a damning indictment of the faith-healing practices of the leading televangelists and others who claim divine healing powers. Randi and his team of researchers attended scores of "miracle services" and often were pronounced "healed" of the nonexistent illnesses they claimed. They viewed first-hand the tragedies resulting from the wide-spread belief that faith healing can cure every conceivable disease. The ministries, they discovered, were rife with deception, chicanery, and often outright fraud.

Self-annointed ministers of God convince the gullible that they have been healed - and that they should pay for the service. The Faith Healers examines in depth the reasons for belief in faith healing and the catastrophic results for the victims of these hoaxes. Included in Randi's book are profiles of a highly profitable "psychic dentist", and the "Vatican-approved wizard."

To quote one of the reviewers:

It is almost impossible to read this book and not be outraged by the callous and reprehensible behavior of the so-called "faith healers." Not only does Randi reveal the methods and tricks used by these charlatans, but he provides example after example, including actual documents, to back up his findings. He demonstrates just how disgracefully these individuals use every underhanded trick they can come up with to wring money out of people who honestly believe that their hard-earned dollars are going to support a good cause; they believe they are doing the right thing, when in actuality their donations are used to purchase sports cars, clothes, and new homes for these supposed "men of God."

I say this: bring some of these Christian "healers" and have them demonstrate their powers in a controlled scientific setting. If you manage to prove that such powers exist, you'd probably get a Nobel prize. You don't even have to go as far as proving that the "supernatural" exists, as they can just be X-Men style mutants with healing powers, but that would still be extremely impressive.

So I'm not asking you to prove the supernatural, but just to prove the claimed powers of these faith healers, and that will still be a huge step forward.

You mentioning the value of community reminds me of the second chapter of this book, and I only wish I had such a community of my own. Alain de botton is a dabbler (dabblist?) if I've ever seen one.

My favorite idea to ponder is that of impermanence. Observing anything, you'll see that nothing lasts- but does anything stand still? The taoists seem to think that nothingness is behind the seams of everything, and getting in touch with it by clearing your head is the natural path of authentic virtue.

I think a few near death experiences made the search for something that lasts come along pretty authentically. I believe that if everything comes from and returns to nothingness, then everyone is born as a clean slate- so what keeps you from empathising with others when the wrongdoer does exactly what you would do if you went through every single thing they have?

I am skeptical about group dynamics, and the way people lose themselves in a crowd, so I naturally can't pick one "ism", but I also have my guard up from giving too much attention to just anything, in fear of falling pray to inauthentic things.

Meditation, or returning to my clean slate, I can ask myself "do I really want this thing this group wants of me?" of any group, or "do i really need to feel this way?". Realising that nobody can please me but myself, and more importantly- that nobody can upset me other than myself, I find my self getting overjoyed and overwhelmed less and less.

It may sound crazy, but self-reliance, meditation, permanence, compassion, reason, and tranquility may all be one & the same thing. Whenever I work to develop one of them, the other ones seem to flourish with it.

My pleasure! I apologize if I came across as rude in my first comment; it's been one of "those" days today. Feel free to reach out to me at any time if you have any other questions or are looking for any kind of resource. If do you end up really wanting a book to read that will help you with this, I'd really recommend The Way of the Bodhisattva by Shantideva. It's absolutely beautiful to read, and there are good talks on YouTube which examine this text in-depth. Hope you have a beautiful day! :)

You're welcome, and thank you!

You make a good point. If your life ends up in a direction that leads to believing the sorts of things Watts talked about, which is no small 'if' in itself, then it will still take some time to process those ideas. I'm in my 40s and only starting to understand some of the things I read in my late teens.

My understanding of formal philosophy comes from books and conversations. ;) I was an art student. Watts is one of the more down-to-earth of the, uh, alternative thinkers/authors/speakers I spend a little time with once in a while. I do read more academic and/or formal stuff, but I tend more toward the mystical (spiritual but not religious) side of things. But I also read popularized physics and stuff like art theory books and the occasional programming manual. I tell you this so you don't go thinking I'm some kind of academic philosophy major before I recommend any books.

Here are the three books I've read from Watts, as Amazon links just because it's easy that way... no marketing here.

The Way of Zen - I read this mostly on the train back and forth to school each day when I was 18. It made some sense, but mostly introduced a lot of ideas I needed to examine and explore for years thereafter. I am not a Buddhist, but I really appreciated the ideas I picked up from this little book. It is on my list for re-reading in the near future.

Tao: The Watercourse Way - I don't think I recall much from this. I read it when I was in my 20s. I picked it up at a used bookstore, mostly because it was "by the guy that wrote that Zen book," and because I had heard of the Tao. I don't recall much of it, probably because I was a raging drunk at the time. I think I came to understand the futility of fighting against what you can't fight from this book, but I can't really say off the top of my head.

The Book - I just finished this last week. It's hard to describe, but it is very accessible, as are the other two, and sums up most of what Watts wanted to tell the world. I recommend it highly. Most of that thing I wrote before is from there, and from recordings of him speaking about it.

Search for Alan Watts on Youtube. There are many recordings of him. Most are just bits and pieces of talks he gave, but some are longer. I do this every once in a while (and other names, Ram Dass, Robert Anton Wilson, Terrence McKenna, etc.. Mostly kind of out-there people but I enjoy having different thoughts thrown at me. Watts is quite a bit more grounded compared to a lot of them.) Along the way Youtube recommends other videos from people who fall along that vein. I think you will find a lot there of interest.

Prickles and goo.

>Me: So God makes good things happen to good people? But why do good things happen to bad people and vice versa? And if you're good, God will make good things happen?

You don't do this. Question 1 was good. Question 2 forced him to defend his position. Use questions to make him describe things, not to argue a point.

If nothing else, there's always books. Huston Smith writes wonderfully about religions of all types, and gets at what drives the practitioners. Also this book or this book are a bit more focused on the topic at hand.

One thing that helps with the Tao Te Ching is to read different translations. It gives you a better sense of what they're really trying to get at. Check some out online compared to the copy you have.

A really good book for learning some ways to apply the Tao to your life is Change Your Thoughts Change Your Life. A bit new agey but helpful. This is an awesome look at the Tao by one of the greats in Western understanding of Eastern thought.

Taoism has had a huge impact on my life, I hope you find your way! One thing I notice in reading the Tao Te Ching is that I can't force my understandings. I often just open up to a random chapter and read. Sometimes it seems like gibberish, but sometimes you're in the exact right place in your life to understand, and the same chapter you've read a hundred times all of a sudden just hits you like... a wave. Or something!

I'm an atheist, and most will hate me for this, but I don't recommend The God Delusion. There are better books, and Dawkins is much better when he writes about biology.

Atheist worldview book: I recommend Sense and Goodness without God by Richard Carrier

Books about Christianity (there are so many to recommend, but these are some favorites):

• The Christian Delusion by various authors.
  
• Gospel Fictions by Randel Helms
  
  I'm a big fan of Spong, so I would recommend any of his books. Also Robert M. Price is worth looking into, he has lots of free sermons and writings available from when he was a liberal pastor and theologian, which he is not anymore.
  
  

Couple things here.

You're describing the same idea as what John W. Loftus called the Outsider Test for Faith: “Test your beliefs as if you were an outsider to the faith you are evaluating."

Your former missionary companion seems to be applying Pascal's Wager to Mormonism, without realizing that if Pascal was right to propose this, that means Mormonism had to be false (since Pascal was a Christian, which is at odds with Mormonism). But Pascal was wrong.

Pascal's Wager fails to tell us which God is the right one, and it certainly does not tell us how to please this Being. For all he knows, God gave man reason and then hid Himself from man to test them to see if they would use the reason God gave them to conclude God doesn't exist, thus freeing mankind to develop moral frameworks based in reason, which would please this God. So in this scenario God would reward atheists and punish theists for their rejection of God's gift of reason in favor of faith. Another scenario is that the true God is not known to anyone on Earth and whenever people worship another God it just makes the true God angrier and angrier.

There's also the minor point that if God requires belief then the person using Pascal's Wager isn't providing a genuine faith, but is trying to game the system to cover their own ass "just in case." I doubt God, if such a being existed, would take kindly to this approach since people are trying to use a false faith to trick God into rewarding them for their feigned commitment.

Plus, there is a real downside. Sure, we will all eventually become worm food but between now and then we can either be prisoners to a false religion or live free to achieve our best life. So wasting the one life you've got for a what-if religion is not a costless gamble.

When I say "hallucinations," it's really just for lack of a better word. I can tell what is in the real world and what isn't. But what I was experiencing were like what other people describe in other places as "visions." I know what I'm seeing isn't the real world. It's really not the type of problem that people seem to think when I try to communicate it.

That being said, there is some history of mental illness in my family, (as in all families I suppose), but those with those illnesses have been successfully treating them with marijuana for quite some time now without anything like what I've experienced. One family member using this method has actually been diagnosed schizo-affective, and the herb makes it better, not worse.

I understand this evidence is anecdotal and that I'm not a doctor. I have people looking after me to make sure nothing gets out of hand, and am seeking a medical opinion, but I am reasonably confident that it won't turn up anything concrete.

I know this sounds like fucking insanity...but I think maybe this is what's happening to me? https://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Emergency-Personal-Transformation-Consciousness/dp/0874775388



Variously, I have seen it put in these terms: http://theyogalunchbox.co.nz/what-is-a-kundalini-awakening-and-have-i-had-one/

In the second link, try to read through the strange Hindu language, it's really his report of the experience itself that I resonate with.(the stuff about the energy in the spine though doesn't mean anything to me, and I did not experience anything like that)

I don't know if Judaism has a word for this, but this is the closest thing I have found so far to describing what I've been experiencing over the last 5 days or so.

Any feedback from anyone would be greatly appreciated.

Edit* Although the links are to things that were probably outside of my worldview...and that makes me feel uncomfortable...the people in those links passed through this experience unmedicated and came out better on the other side.

I was curious about this myself about a year ago and did some reading. turns out the ancient Jews were into meditation as well, but their practice differed from the typical eastern meditation practices.

Eastern Meditation is usually performed as a means to an end, or done for the experience itself. The Jewish practice didn't use meditation for the experience in itself, but rather to quiet and focus the mind for prayer. I highly recommend this book for a in-depth look at this history and techniques of Jewish Meditation and how it differs from the eastern practices: https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Meditation-Practical-Aryeh-Kaplan/dp/0805210377

I've begun to incorporate aspects of the jewish meditation practice (within my own christian context) into my own prayer life. I haven't become regular at it yet, but for someone who is very easily detracted while praying, I can tell you it does work wonders for keeping focused during prayer. Also, I do believe there are emotional and psychological benefits to regular practice, and I hope to become more regular.

Your image makes sense to me now (I am atheist).

Like most of us who left religion altogether once we realized Mormonism is false, I interpreted the word "spirituality" almost as a synonym of "religion" or, at best, connected to mystical, faith-based notions.

As an atheist, however, I knew (and still do) I hadn't "lost" anything once I cleansed myself from a faith-based perception of reality. I remained the same ethical, moral person. My personal principles remained unmoved if not higher now than before. I was still sensitive to other people's pain. I felt the same love towards my family and friends. I would still be emotionally moved by music and books and movies. I still had "spiritual" experiences in the presence of nature, and the universe, and a new born baby... etc.

So I started considering that maybe "spirituality" is not exclusive to religion, you know?. Maybe the tacit definition was incomplete, or the result of cultural bias. Maybe "spirituality" is our ability for empathy, for connecting with other fellow humans or with nature and its creatures, for being selfless towards those in pain; for feeling small in the presence of the cosmos, for wanting to spread good and leave things better than we found them, etc.

My searches led me to a small, wonderful book that explained it all in plain English. It is called The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality.

I think in the end it doesn't matter what word(s) we use to describe our "meditational", introspective, self-examining abilities. Personally, I've learned to call it Spirituality without embarrassment because I now know it exists by itself, religion or not :)

I would buy land and books.

With the land, I would set up ecovillages, and I would (also) set aside vast areas where the plants and animals would be able to rejuvenate uninhibited.

I would find like-minded people, and I would ultimately try to integrate them into the enviornment with the wolves and the buffalo and the other animals. Humans can, and have been, ecologically sustainable organisms in natural environments. Not all agriculture is bad. Many Native American groups practiced agriculture in harmony with the rest of the environment.

I am also not against technology. A bow and arrow is technology, any tool that people use is technology. I am, however, against plastics and other harmful chemicals.

I would also build an army with the people who come to live on my land. There is no shortage of people - homeless people, high-school and college dropouts, homeless children, the unemployed, environmentalists, and lots of people I talk to IRL would be down for this idea.

I would learn assorted martial arts, I would teach them to others, and I would have the others teach them to more people, and we would spend a lot of time on it. This would be both for the health benefits and the self-defense benefits. It would be an army of ninjas, who also grow their own food and are self-sustaining. This will be great in case of societal failure or economic collapse. I would also teach/learn as many natural survival skills as I can. The goal of the army would be to establish peace and not wars, and to help people achieve independence (from money, oil, and industry) while also keeping a healthy relationship with the environment and the other animals.

We would also care for our children. We would raise them to be physically healthy and open-minded. We would not overshelter them, or put taboos on their sexuality, and we would make it the job of the entire community (especially the elders) to educate and take care of them. We will not over-shelter them or raise them to be weak. We will teach them how to socialize with each other in healthy ways, in an open, nurturing, loving environment. We'll also make it official policy that everything we do is done with the well-being of the next seven generations in mind.

There are also some books that I would want to buy and distribute. They include Circle of Life Traditional Teachings of Native American Elders, by James David Audlin, The Other Side of Eden, by Hugh Brody, The Conversations with God trilogy, by Neale Donald Walsch, The Art of Shen Ku, by Zeek, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, by Thom Hartmann, A Practical Guide to Setting Up Ecovillages and Intentional Communities, by Diana Leafe Christian, and I'm sure there's lots of other good ones. You should really conduct your own search, but I feel all the ones I've listed have valuable information and the power to change the ideas of large groups of people. Anything on Native American culture, history, and philosophy, or on organic gardening, or self-sustainability in general. I might even set up my own bookstore or library, now that I think about it, and make more money. I'm definitley not against making money, because everyone in our world believes in money and money is power in our society.

Plenty of Christian apologists were convinced by Christianity. What do you think would cause a staunch atheist to convert?

>Why do we distinguish between apologetics and philosophy?

Often we don't, and oftentimes a philosopher is an apologist and vice versa.

> Why are so few philosophers theists?

This wasn't the case for most of human history, and I don't think it's fair to draw the conclusion out of the current state of secularization in academia.

>If you think you've got something good then by all means share it, but I don't expect to be surprised.

Have you read the following?

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis - Lewis was an atheist for most of his life, but later became the most well-known Christian apologist. You might also want to read his autobiography, Surprised by Joy.

The Reason for God by Tim Keller.

The Language of God by Francis Collins -
This one is more about how science and religion relate, and it's written by one of the leading scientists of the modern day.

Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas This is the original apologetic. If you're alright with some more-serious reading, this would be a great book to have read, both from an intellectual and historical perspective.

Descartes' Meditations While I'm not really convinced by his arguments, Descartes is known as the "Father of Modern Philosophy" for popularizing rationalism, or the use of reason/logic as the chief source or test of knowledge.

Pascal's Pensees

The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant This is known as "one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy" Quite the opposite of Descartes, Kant actually argues against the notion that we can use reason alone to understand the universe.

Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard - This is definitely not apologetics. However, he was an incredibly Christian philosopher, and is known as the Father of Existentialism (interesting that the founder of existentialism was a devout Christian, though now it is often associated with atheists such as Sarte and Nietzsche).

You have asked here and not on /r/zen, so here's some Tibetan ;-)

The later meditations in Lam Rim include matters such as Exchanging Self with Others, and Giving & Taking
Try to do them all 'in order' if you have the opportunity, and ideally try to find a teacher. Mine took us through beautiful and powerful visualisions - one a week - which I would guess are quite different to Zen-style meditations. Some dharma centres offer courses/retreats where they are all taught/practiced over a long weekend.

And obviously you're an aspiring Bodhisattva (might already be one?), so no harm giving Shantideva some time? http://www.amazon.com/The-Way-Bodhisattva-Shambhala-Classics/dp/1590303881
(do Look Inside at the table of contents, and check out the Dalai Lama quote at the top of the front cover).



> they have even furnished a small closed-door room in their chapel with a rug and cushion for me to practice zazen during my breaks!

wowwww :-)

With metta.

Check out neuroscience. It can, and does, explain how we experience, understand, and learn about things like love, beauty, etc. And it's getting better at it every day. To me, calling something "just a chemical reaction" doesn't diminish it; rather, it makes me marvel at the complexities involved in all of those reactions occurring at once, and me being the type of animal with a brain evolved enough to appreciate those complexities.

In general, I applaud you for asking questions. The questions you are asking, however, show me that you should read more into biological evolution and philosophy. Sure, we might me able to give you short answers here, but I highly doubt that (even of the civil responses) you will get the detail and back-story needed to truly understand the answers to your questions. Again though, keep asking questions; it's the right way to approach everything in life. For starters, I think Dan Dennett's Breaking the Spell might be a good place for you to start with the religious/philosophical questions and Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene a good place to start for your evolution questions. All of Dawkins' book about evolution are amazing, and there is one to address pretty much any question you might have about evolution. Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea combines the two subjects a little.

Thanks for the reply - I apologize that my own response is so late in coming. I was intrigued by how someone might arrive at faith rationally, and had hoped to pick your brains a bit.

I notice that you do not mention empirical evidence. What are your thoughts regarding the evidence (or the need for evidence, perhaps) for a theistic position?

I admit to being a philosophical lightweight - but I find the lack of evidence for any kind of intelligent agency to be insurmountable. Essentially, I cannot distinguish between a universe containing a God who does not measurably affect change, and one in which no such entity exists.

But in fact, the situation is worse than this. Insofar as I am aware of any evidence, it actually weighs against intelligent agency. See, for example, God - The Failed Hypothesis.

With regards to choosing a specific denomination, the lack of evidence similarly strikes me as insurmountable. Without any evidence, I feel compelled to conclude that the prophets were not supernaturally inspired, and therefore did not have access to additional sources of information. And in particular, claims regarding the afterlife, and how God wishes people to live their lives, ring hollowly.


> Naturalistic accounts of mind in addition seemed particularly poor

I assume you're talking about the phenomenon of consciousness? How do theistic accounts improve on this?


> I realized I'd gone on for a page about how unjustly the Ontological Argument is treated

Do you find the ontological argument compelling? If so, then I'd be interested to see a version of the argument that you consider to do it justice. Personally, I'm with Russell when he states (paraphrasing), "It's easier to feel that something must be wrong with the argument than to actually figure out what."

>> It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.

I find the above quote impossible to sympathize with. I am only interested in what is true, and I could never actively hope for one set of facts over another. Similarly, I have nothing invested in naturalism. It's simply the best explanation (fits the facts that) I am currently aware of. I'd love for you to convince me otherwise. Hah, I notice that Wikipedia has a Popper quote that I would agree with:

> A naturalistic methodology (sometimes called an "inductive theory of science") has its value, no doubt.... I reject the naturalistic view: It is uncritical. Its upholders fail to notice that whenever they believe to have discovered a fact, they have only proposed a convention.

Anyway, thanks if you read this far.

It's mind-boggling isn't. Daniel Dennett wrote a book into his investigation into this question, from the perspective that religions are memes that act like evolved viral organisms, perfectly adapted to lodge themselves into the minds of those who are without the inoculation of critical thinking ability. Contained in this idea, is that many religions hijack our brains' mechanism to fall in love, meaning that religious believers are in love with their religion and are blinded to the reality of it. Pretty interesting read; http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/0143038338

My interest is comparative religion, and for people who want something easily digestible I always recommend The World's Religions By Huston Smith, and World Religion by John Bowker. Both are great for beginners, but not boring for someone a bit more advanced. The second one is a good coffee table book or something to just flip through, with lots of pictures of ancient art with great captions and little facts in the margins.

Since you know about Richard Carrier I would assume you already have read some of the well known Anti-religionists like Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Dennet, Stenger, etc. If you are talking about secular biblical scholarship and historical analysis there isn't anyone who keeps me interested as much as Carrier, but I haven't read much in that subject. Some others include Robert Price and Bart Erhman.

There are several good essay compilations by John Loftus which are more generally directed at Christianity. They include essays by Carrier and Robert Price and a number of other secular thinkers. The Christian Delusion I think is the first in that series. Hitchens's The Portable Atheist is another good collection which includes older writing aimed at all religion. Bertrand Russell is a great, too.

Don't get too caught up on the higher power thing. A lot of people are too literal (on both sides of the coin) and end up missing the point.

I'm an staunch Atheist but have no problem relating to and using the concept of a higher power in my recovery. Religion and Spirituality are not the same thing. I have met a lot of people who come into AA or NA and immediately get defensive or riled up when they start hearing the word god. They start calling people out or putting them down. Thats wrong and disrespectful.

On the flip side, I see people who think because that word is used, its OK and appropriate to read bible passages in a recovery meeting, or speak about Jesus as if he should be (or is) everyones higher power. Thats wrong and disrespectful too. "God" in this context is really just a place holder for wherever your personal strength and understanding comes from.

There are some really great books that deal with the compatibility of Athiesm and Spirituality, and explain the difference between those and Religion.

For example, I can look at a mountain and know how its made, how it formed and the process that created it. That doesn't mean when I'm hiking and look up at it, I can't be in complete awe of how beautiful it is, what it needed to come to be, and the fact that its something so much bigger than I am. Not in size, but in the fact that I couldn't create in on my own, its been there millions of years longer than me and will be there for centuries after I die. That feeling of being so small compared to the enormous existence of that mountain(in size, in history, in the pure power if it just being there), is connection with with something. Its Spiritual.

Heres one of my favorite books, if you are interested

[The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Little-Book-Atheist-Spirituality/dp/0143114433), Its a great jumping off point.

Hi, atheist here who is converting to Judaism. Long story, let me see if I can give you the gist of it.

I did not "have a bad experience in the water." I led a perfectly fulfilling life as an atheist, and I gained a lot of respect for atheism and atheists in general. I came to understand how the universe behaves exactly as we would expect it to without a god, and how it is incredibly unlikely that there is a god, given the huge body of evidence against it (a favorite book of mine comes to mind, God: The Failed Hypothesis by Victor Stenger). Nevertheless, I have chosen to convert to Judaism for a variety of reasons, most of which won't make sense to most atheists given that I'm choosing to believe something against truth because it adds meaning to my life (my best friend is an atheist and this is essentially the point he can't understand, and we respect each other for looking at it differently). But there is one psychological explanation I can offer you.

I have a pretty severe case of ADHD. My entire life is constantly in a state of chaos. I generally attribute it to the ADHD but I also believe I have an inherently disordered personality, that leads me to struggle to order my internal and external universe. It's hard for me to explain how profoundly my life is affected by this disorder, especially given the fact that some people don't believe it exists or think the only problem is distraction. I assure you the problems run much deeper, at least for me, and it has lead to problems of both pragmatic concern, and what I'm tempted to call existential concern. It's for this reason that I turned to Judaism. It adds a sort of superstructure to my life, and orders my universe in a way that I've found no secular ideas can. The external moral framework helps me because I really do require external motivation sometimes. The regularity of prayer and services have been immensely beneficial to introducing a state of order into my life. And the day of Shabbat, on which I do not work, write, handle money, or even use electricity, allows me to step back from the busy-ness of everyday life and calmly and objectively look at my life and the world for what it is, not from within the constant need to do but from the outside, reflectively and purposefully. I hope that makes sense to you, and I hope you can see that some people do have actual reasons for being religious other than ignorance. I also hope you see that I'm on your side for the most part...I believe in secularism and I plan to take every opportunity to explain to religious people that atheism isn't the existential nihilistic nightmare that most of the think it is. I understand the problems with religion, and most of people's criticism is deserved. Nevertheless, I wish more atheists could respect people like me and understand where we're coming from here.

TL;DR: Some people have reasons other than ignorance for being religious.

I wanted to second /u/lmontr33 's reply.

> Oh, I thought I felt "the Spirit" on several occasions as a youth and a little as an adult. It was usually a tingling in the spine or a warm fuzzy blanket feeling. But I also got the spine-tingling and warm fuzzies watching dramatic secular fictional movies. Reading secular fictional books. Listening to secular music with a good bass beat. There was no difference between feelings in religious settings and feelings in secular settings. Absolutely identical. This alone was not a deal breaker, but I also met people on my mission with stalwart testimonies of their Pentecostal church. I observed the Islamic terrorists on 9/11 with such strong testimonies that they were willing to not only die, but also to kill for their God.

I also felt "the Spirit" when I was a member. I come from a polygamous ancestor who was one of Brigham's apostles. I was baptized at 8 and all the rest. I felt the "tingly tummy" sitting in the old Tabernacle during General Conference and listening to Hinckley speak about new temples being built. I wept with spiritual joy thinking about all of HF's children I might share the gospel with as my plane was landing in Portland, OR to start my mission. I had a testimony and knew the church was true...until my curious nature uncovered a hidden history of the church that prompted me to apply an Outsider's Test of Faith.

I soon stopped partitioning the feelings of "the Spirit" apart and separate from the feelings I felt while watching R-rated films like Philadelphia or Good Will Hunting. How could "the Spirit" prompt me through both an R-rated film about a gay man dying of AIDS and General Conference? The feeling I interpreted as Christ's gospel touching my soul was the same. Does Satan feel the same as the Spirit? Is the only difference context?

If anything my "testimony" led me out of the church. I couldn't deny that the church had lied about it's past. Truth is more important than how I feel about something.

The church uses its trademarked HeartSell^TM to conjure up feelings of "the Spirit". Relying on feelings to tell you the truth of something is to be led by emotional manipulators.

This is perfectly normal but very under-discussed.

See Alain de Botton's book "Religion for Athiests"
https://www.amazon.com/Religion-Atheists-Non-believers-Guide-Uses/dp/0307476820


Throughout human culture we have created rituals, marked our developments, and formed communities through religion and spiritual avenues. Our need for these institutions goes beyond their adherences to divine philosophies. They serve the human need for meaning and collaboration.

We, as atheists, can engage in religious archetypes of ritual and action because they in themselves are not religious projects, but human projects, and the atheist community hasn't solidified our own yet.

Enjoy!

Edit: link

On the whole universe expansion thing, this video should help. I apologies in advance for it being introduced by Richard Dawkins—but like it or not he was an eminent biologist long before he became the poster child for activist atheism and the main lecturer, Lawrence Krauss is perhaps one of the best communicators of astrophysics and science in general since Richard Feynman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo

Not caring about the nuts and bolts implications of what you say you believe is not an uncommon dichotomy in believers in belief. If that qualifies as yet another snide remark, again I can only repeat that it isn't supposed to read that way as it certainly doesn't sound like that when I say it in my head. Maybe something weird happens between the synapses and the keyboard that makes me think I'm being clear when I read like a wanker. Who knows?

Whatever the reason I seem to have inadvertently made you feel as if I'm selling you something. Nothing could be further from the truth. There's no genuine leather-bound books on their way to you, no 30 day money back guarantee if you order now. All I'm trying to do—all I ever hope comes of my passion for communicating what I've learned—is pass on the fact that all you need to do, to learn about the beauty of the godless universe for yourself, is pick up a book on a topic you know nothing about and start reading.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/God-Failed-Hypothesis-Science-Shows/dp/1591024811

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blind-Watchmaker-Evidence-Evolution-Universe/dp/0393315703/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268026326&sr=1-8

Read Alan Watts' "Tao: The Watercourse Way. It is an excellently written book - simple, clear, profound.... Then you will be able to "get" Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu.

Also listen to this lecture of his, and many others on youtube.

He was all I needed to get into Taoism, to understand it, to have a strong bearing from which to navigate on my own. He is the best at explaining it. Enjoy.

"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins doesn't really go into anything new or original, but the strength of the book is that is a great, concise summary of all the beginning arguments for atheism.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618680004

I'd follow it with Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell", also a good recommendation. Same goes for Carl Sagan's "A Demon Haunted World"

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/0143038338

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469/

Christopher Hitchens is a bit vitriolic for some, but "God is not Great" has some nuggets in it.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446579807/

I personally didn't like Sam Harris' "End of Faith" but I did like his "Letter to a Christian Nation".

http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Christian-Nation-Vintage-Harris/dp/0307278778/

For the topic of evolution, Talk Origins is great (and free) http://toarchive.org/
Dawkin's "The Selfish Gene" is also a good read (and short). Not so short but also good are Dawkins' "Blind Watchmaker", "Climbing Mount Improbable" and "Unweaving the Rainbow"

http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Introduction/dp/0199291152/

http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Watchmaker-Evidence-Evolution-Universe/dp/0393315703/

http://www.amazon.com/Climbing-Mount-Improbable-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0393316823/

http://www.amazon.com/Unweaving-Rainbow-Science-Delusion-Appetite/dp/0618056734/

I like Dan Dennett's Breaking the Spell, but I wouldn't make it a Christmas gift (or at least not the sole gift). Give her the book because you care, but make her actual gift something romantic that she'll remember.

The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way is amazing if you have a background in philosophy, more of a metaphysical look at existence, and why things have to exist this certain way that they do (won't spoil it for you)
The Way of the Bodhisattva is also good, you can find a free online version (I think it's a better translation than the printed version I read) at www.shantideva.net

I know it's only anecdotally about Buddhism, but Coffinman is a great novel, it got made into the award-winning film Departures (Okuribito) a few years back.

Thanks for your very nice response to my initially flippant reply.

> My parents are perfectly fine with dismissing me as being unreasonable, immature,

important information, for sure.

> she couldn't care less about my parents

But she's advising you to take actions without necessarily considering all the consequences, not even to the extent of giving you clear advice on how to deal with the consequences of her advice.

> he completely agrees with everything listed in our beliefs

okay, useful information - it's actually pretty rare that someone trained in theology actually believes the doctrine.

I will try to come back with an edit to this, or another response if it's not fairly quick in coming.

Edit: here's the edit

Okay, your main task is simply to withhold judgement. You can say things like "that's interesting" or "I'd like to investigate that claim myself later on". Don't be afraid to say "I don't know". You don't have to know everything, but simply be Unconvinced for now.

Now to "trying to win" - if you feel you must challenge him, based on those beliefs, I'd strongly suggest you look at the books by Bart Ehrman:

1. Misquoting Jesus
   
   
2. Jesus, Interrupted
   
   
3. Forged
   
   
   See Dan Barker's Easter Challenge (there are more recent versions to be found)
   
   maybe this essay: http://www.nazarethmyth.info/Fitzgerald2010HM.pdf (pdf)
   
   perhaps also The Christian Delusion
   
   Also perhaps see the links to various sets of bible contradictions given in the FAQ (but he'll probably know these)

I've only read two works by Kierkegaard (so I'm no expert) but I do have a few thoughts to consider and a recommendation.

1. First, being cited by a false teacher does not make one a false teacher by proxy. The Biblical authors are often quoted by heretics, and yet the Biblical authors themselves were not proposing heresy.
   
   
   
2. Second, remember that Kierkegaard is a philosopher first and foremost. Just as we wouldn't read the Psalms in the same way we read Romans, we shouldn't read Existential Philosophy in the same way we read Reformed Theology or Christian Apologetics. Kierkegaard's goal in much of his writings is to take his reader on a thought experiment, and so that should be remembered when pulling quotes from his works or reading them at face value.
   
   Now as far as what to read first I'd recommend "Fear and Trembling." It isn't a long read and it deals with the familiar Biblical account of the binding of Isaac. It would be a good introduction to Kierkegaard and would be helpful in seeing if his works are for you. This was my first Kierkegaard book and I liked it enough to pick up "The Works of Love."
   

This book, by Martin Buber. I have a few others but this one is my favorite.

I am pretty sure that Buber's presentation of Hasidic Judaism is pretty different from the religious beliefs of the Hasidim that live today, but I am not certain about that.

While you may get good suggestions, ideas here, you're not going to find what you're looking for. YOU are the only person who can decide what you believe and why you believe it.

I suggest taking a World Religions course at a local community college and learn the basics of all religions. Go to different churches, mosques, temples and read as much literature as you can.

There are few concrete facts when it comes to religion or belief in God in general. You have to go with your heart, and allow yourself the freedom to believe or disbelieve. The only way to do that is to inform yourself.

This is a good book to start:
http://www.amazon.com/World-Religions-Faiths-Explored-Explained/dp/0756617723/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342803241&sr=1-1&keywords=religion

This was a pretty good read.

As was this.

Still reading this one.

A fun, quick read.

Haven't read it, but if his other book is anything by which to judge, worth a look.

Good luck.

Not my bag really, but Alain de Botton has published a book which sounds like it might be right up your alley - Religion for Atheists.

The other option that comes to mind is AC Grayling's The Good Book. (In my opinion, a little better)

Hope they help!

2 things.

1. You are not yet educated on how to bring yourself into perfect balance. If you what to learn to be very, very, very emotionally empowered, read Conversations with God. It's a 9 book set but here's 1-3. https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Conversations-Neale-Donald-Walsch/dp/0399153292
   
   Once you learn the ropes, you will be amazed at the massive changes for the better in your life. In fact, it only gets better as long as the desire remains. It's easy once the instructions are learned.
   
   
2. Stop thinking or your own problems and start thinking about the worlds problems. Most of your problems stem from the bigger picture which you think you can't control but that book set will teach you how a single person can move mountains across the world.
   
   That's a good starting point. I have seen some seriously messed up people turn into harmonious powerhouses. The secret ingredient is intelligence. You can only do it if you know how and this stuff isn't taught in any schools unfortunately.

It all depends on the goal. If OP wants to send a message, then choosing The God Delusion or God Is Not Great would certainly send that message. If OP wants a book that's a good read, both are still good choices, but now there're other books that are equally good choices.

The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, The Portable Atheist, On Bullshit, On Truth, The Good Book: A Humanist Bible, The Moral Landscape, The Demon Haunted World, Religion and Science, and many others are excellent reads, but don't send that little (possibly unnecessary) jab.

In Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, Stephen Batchelor wrote of visiting the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, three decades before they were reduced to a pile of rocks.

"From the monk's cell, hewn out of the sandstone cliff centuries earlier, where I spent my days idly smoking a potent blend of marijuana, hashish, and tobacco, a narrow passage led to a dark inner staircase that I would illuminate by striking matches. The steep rock steps climbed to an opening that brought me out, via a narrow ledge, onto the smooth dome of the giant Buddha's head, which fell away dizzily on all sides to the ground one hundred and eighty feet below. On the ceiling of the niche above were faded fragments of painted Buddhas and bodhisattvas. I feared looking up at them for too long lest I lose my balance, slip, and plummet earthward. As my eyes became used to the fierce sunlight, I would gaze out onto the fertile valley of Bamiyan, a patchwork of fields interspersed with low, flat-roofed farmhouses, which lay stretched before me. It was the summer of 1972. This was my first encounter with the remains of a Buddhist civilization, one that had ended with Mahmud of Ghazni's conquest of Afghanistan in the eleventh century.

Like others on the hippie trail to India, I thought of myself as a traveler rather than a mere tourist, someone on an indeterminate quest rather than a journey with a prescribed beginning and end. Had I been asked what I was seeking, I doubt my answer would have been very coherent. I had no destination, either of the geographical or spiritual kind. I was simply "on the road," in that anarchic and ecstatic sense celebrated by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and other role models I revered at the time.

I enjoyed nothing more than simply being on the way to somewhere else. I was quite content to peer for hours through the grimy, grease-smeared windows of a rattling bus with cooped chickens in the aisle, observing farmers bent over as they toiled in fields,women carrying babies on their backs, barefoot children playing in the dust, old men seated in the shade smoking hookahs, and all the shabby little towns and villages at which we stopped for sweet tea and unleavened bread." https://www.amazon.com/Confession-Buddhist-Atheist-Stephen-Batchelor/dp/0385527071

---
While the adventures of past pilgrims are inspiring, other types of journeys are impressive as well:

Cave in the Snow: A Western Woman's Quest for Enlightenment https://www.amazon.com/Cave-Snow-Western-Womans-Enlightenment/dp/0747543895

The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Two-Hands-Clapping-Education/dp/0520232607

If you can, read the book Religion for Atheists. It's all about how awesome traditions and customs we assign to religion could be appropriated to serve a secular mankind. In truth, Christmas was a pagan festival well before it was appropriated by Christianity and vestigial aspects of that pagan holiday (x-mas tree, the date Dec. 25th for example) still remain.

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, by Daniel Dennett

Dennett is incredibly pleasant (like, the Mr. Rogers of atheistic philosophy), and the main point of the book is to get the reader to a place where they are comfortable thinking critically about religion. Once that initial barrier has been breached, people tend to be much more comfortable with something a bit harsher, like The God Delusion, or just more open to conversation.

• Richard Carrier's Not The Impossible Faith has an informative and engaging exposition of the life, times and culture behind the origin of Christainity. Also available online for free as in beer.
  
  
• Dan Dennett's book Breaking the Spell also does a good job of examining religion as a psycho-cultural phenomenon. Here's a talk summarizing that.
  
  
• The most eye-opening treatment I've ever seen on the topic, though, was Dr. Robert Sapolsky's lecture Evolution, religion, schizophrenia and the schizotypal personality. Some of the psychological underpinnings of the stuff we find weird about religions. Fascinating, highly recommended!

On the topic of religion in general, which is important to understanding Mormonism as much as any other religion, a few books would help:

The Outsider Test for Faith - John Loftus

What You Don't Know About Religion (but should) - Ryan Cragun
(he is an exmormon, and this adds to the interest for those of Mormon background)

The Varieties of Religious Experience - William James
(a classic)

I also have a somewhat short summary where I examine the claims of the Church:

Examining Church Claims

Good luck!

If you are looking for good reading on Buddhism, I cannot recommend enough a book called, "The Way of the Bodhisattva", by Shantideva.

Another favorite is, " Gates to Buddhist Practice ", by Chagdud Tulku

( an excerpt )

Best of luck.

One approach would be to check out a book called "365 Tao." It's a wonderful book that gives you a Tao passage every day and then expands upon the meaning of it. 365 Tao on Amazon

Also you could check out Alan Watts' "Tao: The Watercourse Way." I personally really enjoy Watts, and this book is a nice exposition of some Tao ideals. Tao: The Watercourse Way

Several good books, God Delusion I like. Demon Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan is also a very good one. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon is another good one.

Sorry to hear what you went through. If you are in to reading Stanislav Grof could be something to look in to.

In his”biography” - when the impossible happens, he describes several incidents with his wife Christina. He/they call the incidents spiritual emergencies. Which seems to be other words for psychotic breaks, but with less stigma.
Some happen with psychedelics others out of the blue.

They have written this book, which may interest you:

https://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Emergency-Personal-Transformation-Consciousness/dp/0874775388

Thank you for sharing!

This is exactly one of the points of this book. The ideas of communal support, getting together with the goal of talking and listening, and knowing one is not alone in their thoughts are all excellent ideas. Unfortunately, this idea had baggage known as organized religion. This idea will evolve, like everything else. Hopefully it will catch on and places like this will spout up in more and more places.

>It doesn't require, but it provides a similar kind of community support, education and social life that many people get at church. It's great, and if you live in the Denver area, I invite you to come visit.

Cool. If you haven't read it, I recomment "Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion". It talks about the need for community-building institutions and practices.

Hoping this comment gets read.. for whomever has had this experience or similar, I strongly suggest reading Stan & Christina Grof's book "Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis", it has a lot of information pertinent to these kinds of experiences.

To find a therapist, I would suggest looking into the Spiritual Emergence Network, started by Christina Grof to help people find therapists who can recognize and competently work with spiritual emergenc(e/y) without pathologizing it.

The energies associated with kundalini awakening are indeed extremely intense, which is why it is recommended that people never attempt to undertake a kundalini yoga practice unless they are working with a master/extremely experienced kundalini guide. But, as this report shows, these energies can be awoken by psychedelics, by other practices, or even spontaneously. With kundalini yoga, the aim is not to awaken energies that will profoundly destabilize your life as can happen when it is awoken without the proper support, but rather to awaken it within a supportive context that can help one to navigate the experience skillfully.

/u/tralfaz66

>This year, I made it my mission to understand and implement the teachings of Napoleon Hill and then teach it to others.

You left out the part between implementing it and teaching it to others where you confirm that it works. You seem committed to teaching it to others before you have observed personally that it works, so your plan might lead to you spreading lies.

Napoleon Hill's belief system is a type of magic, that is, claims about cause and effect without any plausible mechanism that could really connect them. "Magic Ladder to Success" literally has "Magic" in the title. Magical thinking is considered a sign of psychosis. The problem with magical thinking it is that it is a-priori implausible; it is structured in a way that discourages doing systematic experiments; and it is structured in a way that disrupts the objectivity of the person doing it so they are not in a position to determine whether it is true or false.

Religions are fundamentally about doing magic. No one religious belief has a majority, so most believers in magic are wrong. The evidence is also consistent with all of them being wrong. If you're going to work in this area, you have to be very clear how you are doing something different from the other magic users, since most of them are wrong.

If you learn to do magic, that's great. Figure out how to do experiments with it, publish a physics paper proving that it works, and get a Nobel prize. Many parapsychologists have failed before you.

It is irrational to put a large fraction of one's wealth into a risky investment even when that investment has expected positive return. Therefore you want to have a huge pile of money, or a large group of financially supportive people who are not concurrently experimenting with the same type of magic, before you start. If you aren't up to trying something that risky, don't bother trying to do magic.

Actually, this format box on Amazon might be the solution. I remember having this problem with Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard because there were two different Penguin Classics covers. The format box seems to show the distinction between the one with the portrait of Kierkegaard (http://www.amazon.com/Fear-Trembling-Soren-Kierkegaard/dp/B000K1PPZO/ref=tmm_pap_title_9) and the one with the painting (http://www.amazon.com/Trembling-Penguin-Classics-Soren-Kierkegaard/dp/0140444491/ref=tmm_pap_title_4). Thanks very much for the help!

Literally 30 seconds on Amazon (Subject: History, Keywords: Religion) gives a ton of good-looking books:

Of course! Comparitive Religions for Dummies

Huston Smith is a fairly famous writer in this area: The Illustrated World's Religions

Nat Geo should be neutral: National Geographic Concise History of World Religions

By the author of the Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, World Religions: The Great Faiths Explored & Explained

Here's some info you might find useful. Good luck. https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1616147377/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i7

Haha, that's a good one. He wrote a book about faith healers. Foreword by Carl Sagan. http://www.amazon.com/Faith-Healers-James-Randi/dp/0879755350

For anyone looking for a logical resource to take a skeptical, comprehensive, step-by-step look at any God or faith, The Outsider Test for Faith is a great resource.

Knowing that brilliant people believe was one of the things that kept me in the faith for a very long time. I really get that "who am I to judge" inner voice.

What helped was getting the opportunity to question those I deemed most brilliant, and discovering something shocking. The smarter you are, the more convoluted your defenses of things can get.

I found amongst the brightest a few strains.

Most of them had abstracted God into something very remote from the Judeochristian mainstream. He is an idea, he is unknown and unknowable, the stories about him are metaphor, man's grasping attempt to reach out and touch the untouchable. I think this makes it possible for you to be aware of the vast volumes of evidence against Gods in general, and the specific Christian God in particular, and yet feel it's ok because it's part of the mystery. They were perhaps better classed as Deists, but staying in the community they were in and playing along.

Some, but fewer, of them had found a way to reject the findings of science (at least in the areas that conflicted with them) completely, because of some version of God's Ways Are Higher Than Ours and We Can't Understand Them. They willfully remained ignorant of much of the historical/textual/archeological/scientific evidence because those are Lies of Atheistic people who are Afraid To Obey God so their ideas should be ignored.

And one very sad one was struggling with a fatal disease, and clinging to this belief for comfort.

Nobody was able to give me a simple explanation for why to believe. They either weren't aware of the evidence, couldn't address the evidence, or they way they did made it so abstract that you might as well believe anything.

If you can find someone whose intellect you admire and ask them why they believe, you might find it's for reasons like this, and that might help let this go.

The ultimate stopper for me is what /u/xlightbrightx said; brilliant people believe all kinds of crazy, incompatible things. Indoctrination is powerful. If you want a very comprehensive guide through this line of thinking check out The Outsider Test For Faith. It's unreasonable for you to wake up afraid of hell and not also be afraid of, e.g., being reincarnated as a cockroach. You were just indoctrinated with one fear and not the other.

There is a very good book which I recommend. What you are briefly outlining is the very attitude we should have while dealing with faiths.

https://www.amazon.com/Outsider-Test-Faith-Which-Religion/dp/1616147377

God is Not Great. Getting it out there, I think it's probably one of the more inevitable ones.

Losing Faith in Faith and Godless each by Dan Barker.

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett.

First ones that come to mind. I think a few theologians may be worth reading as well. Not sure what ones though. If Kent Hovind wrote a book, we could keep a facepalm count.

I found this difficult for a while too. These days, I've come around to the more typical anti-theistic stance on God (a "celestial North Korea" and all that), but coming to terms with godlessness was a painful process for me.

I found André Comte-Sponville's Little Book of Atheist Spirituality very helpful. Not sure if your wife's ready to read a book that identifies her as an atheist, but if so it may help her too.

Anti-theist Humanist here. I experience what might be considered a spiritual feeling when I contemplate the scale and beauty of the universe, or the desert, or the forest. I also think there are intrinsic benefits to quiet contemplation, aka meditation. I suppose it depends on what one calls "spirituality," but I think it's a useful part of being human, regardless of whether supernatural things exist.

See also The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality.

> Atheism now has a strong foothold in western society.

Blatantly false, unless you consider approximately 3-7% of the population explicitly identifying as atheist as a "strong foothold":

• In Canada: "Christians, representing 67.3% of the population, are followed by people having no religion with 23.9% of the total population." Those explicitly identifying as "atheist" were a tiny fraction of the 23.9% identifying as having no religion, which can be found in the statscan data.
  
• In the United States: "According to the Pew Research Center, in 2014, 22.8% of the American population does not identify with a religion, including atheists (3.1%)".
  
• In Europe, numbers are slightly larger: "According to another poll about religiosity in the European Union from 2012 by Eurobarometer, 16% are Non believer/Agnostic, and 7% are Atheist".
  
  ---
  
  > (Peterson on Belief) It’s not in dispute that human beings are a biological product of an evolutionary history.
  
  Although Peterson incorporates evolutionary arguments in his work, he also clearly has pretensions to a dualist position on the nature of being and consciousness: From an interview with Peterson https://youtu.be/07Ys4tQPRis?t=814
  
  > You can say consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the material world, and you can make a perfectly coherent set of tools out of those presuppositions, but those set of tools do not cover everything that you need, and it's no more viable as an explanation than the explanation that, no, consciousness is somehow fundamental to being, and of course being is different than material reality.
  
  ---
  
  > The new atheists, the four horsemen (Harris, Hitch, Dawkins, Dennett) that think the belief in god is false, and religion corrupt and outdated.
  
  Although they all share the common belief that God does not exist, there are some actual differences in their positions. Dennett, for example, argues we should teach religion in schools, but he wants it presented as objectively as possible. That is, by providing the facts about all religions without any spin or bias to any one particular religion. https://youtu.be/DTepA-WV_oE?t=233 . Also see is book Breaking The Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Great book. I'm reading Bachelor's latest Confession of a Buddhist Atheist and having like moments. He's a stellar teacher.

Book suggestion. Check out Breaking The Spell

It's a brilliant examination as religion as natural human evolution and really assisted me with better articulating some problems I have with religion.

You're completely ignoring the sociological functions that religion satisfies, which is why "common sense and intelligence" hasn't overrun religion entirely in the developed world. You should definitely read Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion.

I'm also not talking about morality (and you're incorrect claiming that most religious people are immoral) nor about war and "divisiveness" (which are primarily caused by material factors and not ideological ones).

Good work!

Also, if you're interested in some deep exposures of the effects of Christianity upon humanity, you might want to check out:

https://www.amazon.com/Christianity-Not-Great-Faith-Fails/dp/1616149566

I just bought the book, and reading the book's foreword blew me away. Can't wait to get further into it!

Also:

https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Delusion-Why-Faith-Fails/dp/1616141689

https://www.amazon.com/End-Christianity-John-W-Loftus/dp/1616144130

A more philosophical discussion of the Chinese language can be found in Alan Watts "Tao: The Watercourse Way" link, particularly Chapter 1 on the Chinese Written Language. You should proceed with caution, though. Having read DeFrancis, you'll be in a good position to critique Watts' description of Chinese.

"365 Tao" link and "Everyday Tao" link, both by Deng Ming-dao are not scholarly works, but they include some interesting philosophical discussions about particular characters which include some etymology.

"The Composition of Common Chinese Characters(an Illustrated Account)" link by Guanghui Xie also includes the etymology of specific characters.

If I were absolutely convinced of it, yes. I doubt I will ever have an Abraham-type experience though. My favorite book on the matter: http://www.amazon.com/Trembling-Penguin-Classics-Soren-Kierkegaard/dp/0140444491

There are other takes on Jewish meditation as well, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan has some great starter books explaining the concept. Jewish Meditation: A Practical Guide & Meditation and Kabbalah

Beautiful quote :-)

As a reference, it was Shantideva who wrote this in the The Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicharyavatara)

Given the absence of evidence, it is best to accept the null hypothesis - i.e. the position not making positive claims.

A positive claim is something like "God exists" or "This tree exists".

You can touch a tree, take a picture of it, climb it. You can feel a change in temperature when you are walking into its shadow. It is safe to say that it exists.

On to god.

• Is this god loving? Then why eternal torture (hell), aka infinite torture for finite sins?
  
• Is this god the creator of the universe? They why is it so imperfect? Beautiful things are almost always fragile and easily marred. Much of the universe is harsh and inhospitable. We are worried about asteroids wiping us out.
  
• Is this god responsible for intelligent design? Then why AIDS? Why the plague? Why are human eyes so much worse than those of other species? Why are there eight different eye designs? SMOGGM has more.
  
• Does this god answer prayer? Then why did a double-blind study show that people who knew they were being prayed for have significantly worse outcomes than those who were not being prayed for?
  
  More questions like this can be found in God: The Failed Hypothesis
  
  If you are reserving judgement about god, then are you doing the same for dragons, fairies, santa, the loch ness monster? Why not? All of those mythical things are written about in old books.
  
  

Do you feel like it was a spiritual awakening? Your experiences sound very similar to kundalini awakening. I had a similar experience and found some solace in the books Spiritual Emergency and Kundalini by Gopi Krishna


I was able to come back but some days the veil seems too thin for my own good.

Yeah, maybe he said the reverse of what he had to say. But for anyone interested in God being a meme, check out Breaking the Spell

Padmakara Translation Group revised edition for the translation: https://www.amazon.com/Way-Bodhisattva-Bodhicaryavatara-Shambhala-Classics/dp/1590303881/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1518685960&sr=1-1&keywords=bodhisattva


The Nectar of Manjushri's Speech for a traditional and detailed commentary https://www.amazon.com/Nectar-Manjushris-Speech-Shantidevas-Bodhisattva-ebook/dp/B005LQYQJO/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1518685934&sr=1-5


If you want a lighter commentary maybe the Dalai Lama's, or Pema Chodron's.

Ringu Tulku Rinpoche also has a great video series/course on it: https://bodhicharya.org/teachings/courses/bodhicharyavatara/

I think converts should read works from all across the Jewish perspective. Especially the "very different sort."

How else is anyone supposed to know what they believe if they don't know or understand what they don't? It's not an informed decision if you're not informed.

On that note...

Exploring Judaism: A Reconstructionist Persepctive.

Choosing a Jewish Life (liberal, leaning Reform)

To Pray as a Jew (Orthodox)

OP: Go wild. Read across the spectrum. Read things you agree with and things you don't. Read stuff you don't understand yet. Ask questions about what you read. Read, read, read!

I will link you to a couple of sites. I enjoy reading the Amazon reviews people submit, although you're going to find a lot of "this guy is just profiting...he's insane...this is NOT the Bible" type of stuff. But pay attention to the 5-star ratings, and what those people have to say. It is a VERY relevant book in my opinion.

Conversations With God - all three books in one

If they do, I haven't found them, and it's not for lack of looking. Neither has Lohn Loftus, who also made the same argument in his book "The Christian Delusion". Neither have the Christians of Reddit, I've brought it up multiple times and the only 2 real answers yet are something like "god doesn't give a shit about us", which, well, kind of goes against the god talked about in the bible a bit, and "evolution is false", which is just flat out ignorant.

Edit: Platinga (probably Christendom's best philosopher) takes on a subset of this argument(doesn't address the blaming humans part) and comes up with a 3rd answer: Blame Satan.

This is but one of the many reasons I am a fairly recent ex-Christian.

You pretty much came to the outsider test for faith on your own. Well done!

> I believe there is a God

> I believe he has communicated with people

Does your evidence for these two claims pass the outsider test for faith? That is, if someone else presented you with this evidence for a faith other than your own, would you believe in that faith? I find this question is easier with a faith that no one believes in, so here's an example:

Someone comes up to you and claims that Elvis wasn't human, is alive, and communicates with people. He presents you with evidence equivalent to the evidence you use to justify your beliefs in God and his communication (old book, many other believers, feels Elvis's presence in their life, people have suffered for their belief, just the right song at just the right moment, "prime rocker" argument, whatever it is that reinforces your belief.) Do you now believe Elvis is a nonhuman entity who still lives and communicates with people? Or do you doubt some or all of that claim?

If you want to learn about Jewish mysticism, I've heard this is an awesome book:
http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Meditation-Practical-Aryeh-Kaplan/dp/0805210377/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1319601342&sr=8-10

Dawkins was merely speculating on possible mechanisms, not absolutely claiming truth to that mechanism. It is clear that children are credulous and gullible...Dawkins looks at both why that would be and how religion would affect such credulous minds.

But if you want a better examination of where religion comes from, read Breaking The Spell by Daniel Dennett.

Well... yes, you can. (Link is to an autobiography by a former Buddhist monk, still practicing Buddhist—self-defined but also accepted by other members of the Buddhist community—who also identifies as atheist but nonetheless keeps certain ritual practices.)

With Each and Every Breath by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond by Ajahn Brahm
Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas by Leigh Brasington
Wisdom Wide and Deep by Shaila Catherine
Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana
Beyond Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana

I don't really disagree. Maybe you would prefer "science-based" to "science-driven"? As far as spirituality is concerned, I think I'm with you, and I enjoyed reading the following a number of years ago: https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Atheist-Spirituality/dp/0143114433

Zen Buddhism. [Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist] (http://www.amazon.com/Confession-Buddhist-Atheist-Stephen-Batchelor/dp/0385527071 ) is a great book talking about how reincarnation was just something the Buddha talked about in terms of adopting a world view that was very common at the time. It is not, therefore, a central component of the Buddha's message.

• Breaking The Spell by Daniel Dennett
  
• Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman
  
• The End of Faith by Sam Harris
  
• The Elegant Universe by Briane Greene (about string theory)
  
• Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees
  
• Before The Beginning by Martin Rees
  
• Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter
  
• The Demon-Haunted World by Sagan
  

I haven't read either of these, but they seem to be the kind of thing you're looking for.

The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality by Andre Comte-Sponville

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Atheist-Spirituality/dp/0143114433/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1376775957&sr=1-1&keywords=the+little+book+of+atheist+spirituality

The Good Book by A. C. Grayling

http://www.amazon.com/The-Good-Book-Humanist-Bible/dp/0802778372

The Christian Delusion edited by John Loftus is an excellent collection of essays coming from various points of view

I have not progressed further than the above, but Leigh did release a book on how to progress to the others this year. It's called Right Concentration.

Here are some books that may help.

• Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, by Daniel C. Dennett. A philosopher and cognitive scientist examines the evolution from primitive consciousness, through a belief in ghosts, all the way to complex religions with their accompanying requirements and taboos.
  
• Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion, by Todd Tremlin. More brief and introductory (and less thorough), this book finds religion as a side-effect of the useful cognitive processes of empathy, risk aversion, and facial recognition.
  
• Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, by Pascal Boyer. A cognitive anthropologist argues that the thing we called "religion" is made up of a variety of unrelated cognitive patterns that evolved as distinct adaptations, and cannot be explained by a single, unified theory.
  

Jeg er ateist, hører en masse black metal og jeg er mindst lige så kritisk overfor religion, MEN den her video og den har bog i kombination med en øget muslimsk tilvækst i Europa har flyttet mit syn på den sag. Jeg er fuldt ud overbevist om at 1) Kristendommens positive indflydelse er undervurderet og 2) uden kristendommen bliver muslimsk indflydelse meget større i Europa end den er i dag, hvad jeg meget gerne vil undgå. Hvis valget står mellem Islam og Kristendommen, hvad jeg er begyndt at tro det gør, så vælger jeg Kristendommen. Uanset hvad, så er det min vurdering, at det bedste bolværk imod Islam er Kristendommen, og jeg er trosalt mere utryg ved Islam end ved Folkekirken.

The first book that my teacher instructed that I read is The Way of the Bodhisattva by Shantideva. In many ways, this is a foundational text across the various Tibetan traditions, and it really grounded me in my preliminary practice.

/u/DespreTine provides a great list of teachers. (A personal favorite is Bokar Rinpoche, who was my teacher's root guru and who I have developed a devotional relationship toward. He has a few books out there, but they're really more designed for practioners who have received certain empowerments/transmissions.)

The key here, of course, is that there really is no substitute for a lama/guru who you can physically go to and receive teachings from. They will guide you along the path.

Jewish Meditation by Aryeh Kaplan. It's not such high level and written for beginners but it is definitely insightful.

People accept emotionally, justify rationally… and ever religion, there's an element of ridiculousness.

I was once in a Buddha seminar with monks from Tibet visiting the US. They'd actually convinced people in the room that if you mediate hard enough at this chart and had good "alignment" of body, soul, mind, etc… you could stop wearing glasses and contacts.

You can also read about someone being an atheist buddha.

The OP and the book don’t talk about anything but Christianity - that does not exclude other gods. That’s a logical conclusion that is not present in this thread outside of your post.

Here’s a link to the book - it’s written by an atheist but it’s only focus is Christianity: https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Delusion-Why-Faith-Fails/dp/1616141689/ref=nodl_

There are many people and religions that identify as Christian that believe in more than one god.

At its core, atheism is solely the absence of belief in gods/magic/metaphysical/religion etc.

But there are many related issues that are inextricably linked to atheism. A very common one is opposition to the very idea of faith - defined as belief without evidence. Science, being a rigorous method for the continuous pursuit of knowledge, is a natural ally of many atheists and an excellent counterpoint to the phenomenon of faith.

Further, many people take the position that science has nothing to say on the topic of religion or gods (Gould's NOMA). This is entirely untrue. Just as science can be used to determine if there is an invisible elephant with specific attributes in a specific room, it can also be used to test the hypothesis of the existence of a deity with specific attributes. Research along these lines already occurs, such as studies on the efficacy of prayer.

I highly suggest God: the Failed Hypothesis by physicist Victor J. Stenger for any skeptic.

Edit: I accidentally a letter.

> its funny how everytime I ask an atheist what proof refutes God's existence they find a way to dance around the question.

Maybe that's because the burden lies on the person making the assertion? hmm? The God of the Gaps argument is so lame. That ever decreasing nook where you think your deity lives is not an impressive or convincing argument.

> science still hasn't explained how life is created or where the infinitely dense ball of matter at the source of the big bang

That doesn't mean magic did it. 500 years ago you'd be saying the same thing except thinking earthquakes and disease are a message from your god. And while science can't prove the things you mention, they have made an awfully good start:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo
http://www.amazon.com/God-Failed-Hypothesis-Science-Shows/dp/1591024811

You question wouldn't happen to have been inspired by this book would it?

given what i have said so far, i don't see how the age of the tradition is relevant, unless we're just to go round in circles.

some interesting readings

http://www.amazon.com/Mutual-Causality-Buddihism-General-Systems/dp/0791406377

http://www.amazon.com/Confession-Buddhist-Atheist-Stephen-Batchelor/dp/0385527071/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346351097&sr=1-1&keywords=confessions+buddhist+atheist

http://www.amazon.com/Buddhism-Science-B-Alan-Wallace/dp/0231123353/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346351200&sr=1-4&keywords=materialism+buddhism

i am a layman. if i have a sangha it would be right here, although i have in the past had association with the cambridge buddhist centre.

If you haven't read it; I highly suggest Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett. It's an entire book dedicated to this question.

The Way of the Bodhisattva

H. H. the Dalai Lama - "If I have any understanding of compassion and the practice of the bodhisattva path, it is entirely on the basis of this text that I possess it."

Oh yeah! This one:

God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist Hardcover – January 2, 2007
by Victor J. Stenger

I haven't read that yet. It's definitely on my wishlist now.

Here's a pretty good online summary of his faith/reason thinking.

Hit up Fear and Trembling for a primary source.

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/0143038338/ref=cm_lmf_tit_4 this one should be good

also, wanted to add - a good precursor to that book is confession of a buddhist atheist.

and his third book in a similar fashion, after buddhism: rethinking the dharma for a secular age.

Check out this book on Buddhism written by Stephen Batchelor. It was a good read on Athiesm in Buddhism.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0385527071/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/175-2409745-7939719

This might be a good starting point:

https://amazon.com/Chosen-Faith-Introduction-Unitarian-Universalism/dp/0807016179

From what you wrote, you might be experiencing something called a "spiritual emergency". A good starting resource for it might be for example this book https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0874775388/ or just search the internet.

Right Concentration is an easy recommendation. Here's more of Leigh's content here.

Also by the same author "The Faith Healers"

The Faith Healers (Amazon)

Derren Brown - Miracles for Sale (youtube)

Jewish Meditation sounds like what you're looking for!

I would recommend "Breaking The Spell" by Daniel Dennett.

http://www.amazon.ca/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/0143038338/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405461794&sr=1-1&keywords=daniel+dennett

The Way of Zen, by Alan Watts

The Three Pilars of Zen, by Philip Kapleau Roshi

Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, by Stephen Batchelor.

Outside of that, most of the stuff that I read comes from brazilian monks, like Monja Coen or Monje Gensho

Also good is this though some may object if they don't like Buber.

Tales of the Hasidim by Martin Buber https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805209956

Not sure where the above wording is from - seems to not be verbatim from book... I saved it into my Evernote a few years ago.

> Can a Deist be spiritual? Is the belief in energies, spirits, and other entities against the concept?

Your two questions are actually unrelated. Rationalist/anti-supernaturalist/atheists can be spiritual.

http://www.spiritualatheism.com/

http://www.uua.org/beliefs/welcome/atheism/

http://chrisstedman.religionnews.com/2014/04/10/religious-atheists-interview-maria-greene-unitarian-universalist-humanists/

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/a-plea-for-spirituality

http://www.amazon.ca/The-Little-Book-Atheist-Spirituality/dp/0143114433

I think that deists can also believe in energies, spirits and other entities but they typically do not.

I think there's a failure for many people to view religion anthropologically. Study the history of religions. Learn about religions in other places. You quickly realize there are as many religions out there as there are opinions.

The Christian Delusion has a great chapter about culture and Christianity:
http://www.amazon.com/Christian-Delusion-Why-Faith-Fails/dp/1616141689

I believe anthropology can also inform us on the subject of religion. Not just science alone.

Sorry, the title is translated differently sometimes. It is maybe more commonly known as The Way of the Bodhisattva. I liked this translation.

You're right that tonglen is not part of the Theravada tradition. Whether that means it is "counter to" Theravada is up to you, I guess. One doesn't need any special Mahayana vows or initiations to do those practices, as far as I know.

You can still be an atheist and "become" a Buddhist. A book worth checking out.

You might want to check out Alain de Botton's books (most notably, "Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion") and his project "The School of Life".

Also, see Sunday Assembly.

He's got some TED Talks too.

If you want to read a book which may have you actually smashing things, read The Faith Healers by James Randi. Now, I don't think Randi is the final authority of the world, and he's got a rock star sized ego. But he makes some scathing criticisms of people who promise everything and deliver nothing. Those people absolutely prey on others who are in a very bad place in life.

I come from a similar angle, I'm surprised no one has suggested this:

"Buddhist Without Beliefs"
http://www.amazon.com/Buddhism-Without-Beliefs-Contemporary-Awakening/dp/1573226564

"Confession of a Buddhist Atheist"
http://www.amazon.com/Confession-Buddhist-Atheist-Stephen-Batchelor/dp/0385527071/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409011759&sr=8-1&keywords=confessions+of+an+atheist+buddhist

I highly recommend "Buddhist Without Beliefs", being an atheist you will find a lot of empathy points. Buddhism it self, a lot of people argue, is atheist, not based on a deity (or group of deities), but on self realization.

yep

http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/wiki/recommended/reading

http://smile.amazon.com/History-God-000-Year-Judaism-Christianity/dp/0345384563/

http://smile.amazon.com/Descartes-Baby-Science-Development-Explains/dp/0465007864

http://smile.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618918248/

http://smile.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/0143038338/

And so many more.

>Maybe you should read Dennett’s Breaking the Spell

HTH

>>Maybe you should read Dennett’s Breaking the Spell

I said, what part in particular? Waving at a book is unhelpful. I'm trying to understand what point you're trying to make.

This book doesn't offer much in the way of scripture or teachings, but it may be up your alley.

Tao: The Watercourse Way - by Alan Watts

Neale Donald Walsh already did one with him

I don't, but I have a book on it. Aptly titled Jewish Meditation by Aryeh Kaplan.