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Religious Literature & Fiction:
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The best of Religious Literature & Fiction by number of unique Reddit comments:
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Top Reddit reviews mentioning Religious Literature & Fiction:
Cool. Bit of advice though: in about a week or two you're probably going to come down off the emotional high and start to question it and then be tempted to conclude you were just being emotional.
Don't give it in to it. Pick up some religious books with substance in them. Just offhand, since it's sitting nearby, I would suggest The Screwtape Letters.
I always really liked this dude. Especially that awesome fight with Bosse.
He also wrote some crazy post-apocalyptic religious war book: https://www.amazon.com/Hellbound-Heavensent-Angel-War-Book-ebook/dp/B00ADVLK8W
Another good short book to check out is Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (Not the Nazi). It takes a different perspective on Siddhartha and Govinda. It hints at Siddhartha eating hemp seeds for sustenance when he was fasting.
I've literally bought at least 10-15 copies for my younger friends trying to get into spirituality but don't really know where to go or how to get there.
I think I still have one or two copies left on my bookshelf somewhere if anyone wants/needs a copy and cant pick one up from Amazon if they are looking towards guidance. PM me if you are seriously interested and can't find/afford a copy
Also: Sean O’Connell is now a published fantasy novelist!
That book was my awakening. I keep a copy around to lend out to people who've never read it. In fact, here it is on Amazon, for any one who keeps up on this sub's required reading.
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn is a fantastic read addressing the exact same topic. It challenges our assumptions on society and humanity's place in this world.
https://www.amazon.com/Great-Divorce-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652950
I guess you were right. Whoever wrote the book description does say the gates of hell are locked from the inside. But there are no gates in the book. The bus appears to be flying but the ghosts in the bus are actually growing.
My husband complains that the book doesn’t make Hell sound that terrifying. He likes Dante’s inferno better.
The Gospel According to Biff is a comedic book depicting Jesus' "lost year" where he travels East with his friend, Biff.
I have several CS Lewis books in my library. One of my favorites is The Screwtape Letters. I also read the Narnia books to my kids.
Of course! There has been for decades!
My favorite is Anthony C. Yu's translation. It spans four giant volumes, and even received an updated version in 2012 - here's the first volume on Amazon.
It contains conscious things that are networked into a meta-consciousness.
I don't know if we can have a structural relationship with ultimate concepts ~except~ via consciousness and modeling, since to the best of our determination, that's all "we" as entities are doing - what we see is the inverted picture on the backs of our eyeballs, what we touch are impulses traveling up our arms, and then combined into an internal simulation which then reactions as a series of stages outward. Consciousness is an emergent property of strange loops that can self-refer, and we're building these outward into the universe - literally and metaphorically - so we can simulate the experiences of the entire universe, but within our simulation, we can simulate things that extend past that universe. We put forth organizing principles so understand this, and the relationship of our selves, experiences and other things - I believe in both primordial consciousness and that it made existence for it to evolve, to change.
As for things like a Final Theory of Everything, I don't think it's that there will be a Line Zero in the code, so to speak - it's going to be an infinitely complex latticework - just like there's no conceivable center of the universe: http://www.universetoday.com/111561/where-is-the-center-of-the-universe/ - the First Principle will be that it's all connected and support by everything else.
The book God's Debris by Scott Adams is a good reference for this sort of thinking: http://smile.amazon.com/dp/0740747878 He presents it as an atheist, but as a thought experiment about the nature of the physical universe, the progression of Time and the interaction with consciousness.
This has been an interesting post and threads!
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse is pretty sweet book
Before you do anything I suggest you first read a short but poignant book called Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis.
It's satire about how demons tempt Christians away from the faith.
For a different perspective on hell, you might want to check out The Great Divorce, by C. S. Lewis. In addition to being highly readable, it's also a theologically sound discussion of hell that does not involve "God sending good people to hell."
I spent most of the weekend reading The Sparrow and Children of God, two amazing SF first-contact novels by Mary Doria Russell. They were written in the 90s and definitely have that feel, but I'm old enough to be nostalgic for that. Really good exploration of miscommunications and the predicament of having to make decisions without sufficient information. Both books deal with loneliness, both romantic loneliness and the solitary feeling when no one can truly understand your experiences.
> He would shatter himself into 8 billion peices, and see if he could put himself back together again.
So you're saying we're God's Debris?
If anyone wants a funny Jesus book to read, I suggest Lamb by Christopher Moore.
It’s the story of teenage Christ according to his childhood best friend, Biff. It’s good for some laughs.
https://www.amazon.com/Lamb-Gospel-According-Christs-Childhood/dp/0380813815
Diamond said in an article (that I can no longer find)that he was first sparked to write collapse when a student asked him what were they thinking as they cut down the last tree on Easter Island, but he was not able to do much with the idea until he read Totman's work that showed that Japan came perilously close to collapse, when clear cutting for agricultural land was causing silt build-up in rivers that then cause crop failures because the irrigation failed.
And Japan was specifically unique because the energy economy was build around the 3 year cycle of sunlight input becoming caloric output that became human work. And Edo understood this way before anyone else because they wanted the closed system, and they had to do energy accounting. Every year the rivers had to be maintained, but after new forest was cleared, they could not deliver enough calories to workers to get the rivers maintained enough
So the central government got real serious about the connected nature of trees, silt, and caloric output, and energy recyling, and started tallying each individual tree in the entire country.
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520063129/the-green-archipelago
I read directly in his research paper through JSTOR, but that book should have a more organized and all-encompassing take.
Also Ishmael. I hope you have read it, but if you have not:
https://www.amazon.com/Ishmael-Novel-Daniel-Quinn/dp/0553375407
Generally I hate linking Amazon, but since that also includes the ISBN..
or it creates a sustainable problem... when you go to a nation where kids are dying because poor government or lack of resources and give the people resources, they breed.
providing support to communities where the population has been limited by the environment, creates dependency on the support.
A book on why moving food to another location creates a dependency on the resources
For what it's worth, if you haven't read it, I suggest reading Christopher Moore's book LAMB: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO BIFF, CHRIST'S CHILDHOOD PAL
It starts out rather comically, and it maintains a comic theme, but it also presents The Son wrestling very much with your italicized conclusion above and deciding to do something* about it.
* ("something" being the ultimate self-sacrifice)
Lamb by Christopher Moore. It follows Biff, Jesus’ best friend.
Since Jesus is too Godly to sun, he has Biff do it for him and report back. It’s absolutely hilarious.
https://www.amazon.com/Lamb-Gospel-According-Christs-Childhood/dp/0380813815
https://www.amazon.com.br/Ishmael-Daniel-Quinn/dp/0553375407 (em portugues é bem facil achar pdf na internet, em livro fisico eu comprei os ultimos disponiveis no ML e no estante virtual) - depois de ismael tem 'meu ismael, depois 'historia de b' e por fim 'alem da civilização'
https://www.amazon.com.br/Enders-Game-Ender-Quartet-English-ebook/dp/B003G4W49C
enders game tem sequencia em 'orador dos mortos', depois 'xenocidio' e por fim 'filhos da mente'
enders game tem também uma sequencia em 'shadow series', q sao melhores que todos os filmes de ação q vi na vida, q mistura politica e filosofia também
Have you heard of the Christopher Moore book Lamb?
The full title is Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
I would recommend The Jesus Mysteries, if you need additional arguments about his existence. He may have, but it's unlikely.
Okay, before other people talk about the topic without having knowledge about it....
Sun Wuk'ung (Son Goku, Sun Wukong) is the protagonist of one of the four most important works of literature of China. Journey to the West, Outlaws of the Marsh, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Dream of the Red Chamber.
He is the monkey king that studied to be a Buddhist monk, went to heaven, stole peaches and upset all the heavenly deities, He was hard to beat in combat and got punished by Buddha to be under a rock for 500 years.
Tripitaka Genjo Sanzou was reincarnated and he needed to do a foot pilgrimage from China to India to retrieve the sacred scrolls. He needed 4 bodyguards: A pig, a demon, a dragon, The monkey king as the leader of the guard. Amidst the journey, they meet many monsters, dragons, bandits, and many perils that they need to overcome.
At the end of the journey, the five members attained godhood and they became "A Buddha"
You can tell in these twisted tales that he is the Son Goku "After journey to the west"
By the way, his name in Japanese is "Shaka Son Goku" just like in ROR, they call him "Shaka"
If you are interested, there's a great edition of the Saiyuki (Journey to the west) by Anthony C. Yu, I read all of the novels:
For the person mentioning "translations", I left the Kanji of names intact because many of the Kanji names are puns of the original names, I made my own names based on those puns.
(Ura Momotaro, Cannibalzukin, Gurumada Shirayuki, Shaka Son Goku etc.)
The names we will use are more suited for western audiences.
Fun to play with and think about, but not particularly likely.
As a side note, I highly recommend Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal as thought-provoking Jesus fan-fiction in the "Jesus travels abroad" genre.
If you're familiar with The Journey to the West, would you have a recommendation on a good English translation?
Maybe this one by Anthony C. Yu?
The only useful example of it (or something similar) I've seen is in the book Lamb, where he uses "Josh" as Jesus' name. It's done there to help the audience think of the character as a person, and to break current associations.
If someone insists on using "Yeshua" because that's his real name, but also talks about Germany and China instead of Deutchland and Zhongguo, I'm dubious that their motives are actually a belief that we should use the original pronunciation of names.