Copyright © 2011 Daniele Bolelli

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

01 ZEN AND THE ART OF CHOPPING YOUR ENEMIES’ HEADS OFF

02 THE FILTHY LITTLE ATHEIST … FOUNDING FATHER

03 THE TAO OF BEING IN JAIL: HOW THE TAO TE CHING WAS CREATED

04 THE DISTURBING AND UNLIKELY MARRIAGE BETWEEN ISRAEL AND CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS

05 SEX, SAKE AND ZEN

06 BANZAI!

07 THANK YOU GOD FOR KILLING MY ENEMIES’ CHILDREN

08 DEADLY ALLITERATION: MOSES THE MASS MURDERER

09 HOW A FAILED SIEGE SHAPED THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS

10 FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN? I’D LOVE TO INTRODUCE YOU TO MY PET KING COBRA

11 MAMMOTH PORN AND THE CAVEMAN’S HIP HOP: THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION

12 WE LOVE FREEDOM OF RELIGION … EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF THOSE STUPID RELIGIONS ...

13 TO BEAT OR NOT TO BEAT (YOUR WOMEN): THAT IS THE QUESTION

14 THE DAY GOD STOPPED BEING A RACIST

15 PISS-DRINKING, DRUGGIE PRIESTS CREATED HINDUISM

16 STEALING IN THE NAME OF GOD

17 ORGIES FOR JESUS

18 BEING A JEWISH MESSIAH IS NOT AS FUN AS ADVERTISED

19 IF YOU ARE POOR, IT’S BECAUSE GOD HATES YOUR GUTS

20 CRAZY WISDOM, LAKOTA-STYLE

21 A LAWFUL, ISLAMIC MARRIAGE … THAT LASTS AN HOUR

22 ENLIGHTENED RELIGIOUS POLICIES AND MASS MURDER

23 BILL CLINTON HATES MASTURBATION AND OTHER TALES

24 WHY WOULD A YOUNG IRISH CATHOLIC WOMAN TEAR UP A PICTURE OF THE POPE ON ...

25 THE TRIAL OF THE ZOMBIE POPE

26 KILL THE BUDDHA

27 HOW TO GET MONEY AND SEX BY STARTING A RELIGIOUS CULT

28 HEIL JESUS!

29 BUDDHIST FUNDAMENTALISM?!?

30 FREE SPEECH AND ITS ENEMIES

31 SAINT AUGUSTINE LOVED HOOKERS

32 BIBLE PORN

33 ONE BRIDE FOR FIVE BROTHERS

34 THE GODFATHER OF CHRISTIANITY

35 THE SLAVE OWNER’S BEST FRIEND: THE BIBLE

36 TAO IS THE SHIT

37 WHY A PAGAN EMPEROR WAS THE BEST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN TO CHRISTIANS

38 GOD’S HIT MAN

39 IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT (AND I FEEL FINE)

40 TELETUBBIES ARE GAY (AND GOD HATES THEM)

41 THE SHRINE OF HYPOCRISY

42 MY GOD HAS BIGGER BALLS THAN YOURS: THE GOSPEL OF THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER

43 HORSES, NIETZSCHE AND THE DESTINY OF THE WORLD

44 I NEED A HOOKER, SO LET’S GO TO THE TEMPLE

45 IF YOU ARE TOO STUPID FOR TAOISM, YOU CAN ALWAYS TRY CONFUCIANISM

46 JOHN LOCKE AND THE LIMITS OF TOLERANCE

47 GOD WEARS DRAGON ROBES AND WANTS YOU TO KICK CONFUCIUS’S ASS

48 GOOD CHRISTIANS DEVOUTLY FOLLOW JEWISH LAWS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT… EXCEPT ...

49 RELIGION WITHOUT RELIGION

50 WHY CAN’T WE MOVE THE STATE OF ISRAEL TO PARAGUAY?

FURTHER READING

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Elizabeth Han:

In over a decade by your side I have known more happiness and more pain than most mortals could ever dream possible. Our love kicked open the gates of heaven for me. And it thrust me in the deepest pits of hell. Given the chance, I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. Being with you has meant tasting life to the fullest, since you are/were too damn intense to have it any other way.

Nothing, absolutely nothing in this world is more beautiful than your laughter. From the second I met you to when you died in my arms, you were the beating heart of my universe. My passion for you knows no bounds. In this life or in any another, you are my love.

To Isabella Han Bolelli:

If it weren't for you, I may not have survived all the heartbreak that a fucked up destiny has decided to throw my way. But you are my hero, baby girl. Your one-year-old smile chases away all the horror, and gives me the strength to move mountains. From the moment you skydived out of your mother's womb into my arms, you have been my reason for living. Looking into your beautiful eyes inspires me to be the best human being I can possibly be. And let's not forget that every one of your burps makes this world a better place.

To Gloria Mattioni:

My fellow samurai, you taught me how to love and how to kill. Whenever the doors of hell break open, and hordes of demons come out of it screaming my name, all I need in my corner is you.

To Franco Bolelli:

No one has ever loved me more than you have, and no one ever will. You are my sun, my home, my oxygen. My notoriously verbose self is at a loss to find words doing justice to how much you mean to me. You are the earth under my feet. You are my blood and my very bones.

To the one and only Zina Bolelli.

To the memory of Marina Mattioni.

A big thank you to those who selflessly rushed to Elizabeth's side when she was fighting for her life: Marlon Mercado, Geshe Lobsang Tsultrim, Jose Camacho, Sumati Bonsai, Bryan Kest, Belle Andrade and Annie Esposito.

Thank you to my partners in crime: Emilie Nguyen, Julio Perez, Rick Tucci, Michele Dalai, Tom & Alexa Robbins, Thaddeus Russell, Mike V., Giancarlo Serafino (I’m still very, very sorry about breaking your nose …), Ale Rossi (I’m not that sorry about breaking your ribs …), Anthony Formoso, Tim Lopez/ Brian Carr/Eddie Martinez and everyone at CSULB BJJ, Will Ford, Brenda De River, Adonis Puentes, Alex Rueda, Shawn Brennan, Li Schroeder, Gary and Ralph at Disinformation, Lorenzo Cherubini, Tatiana Molinar, Jason Yaselli, Joseph and Elizabeth Morales, Joey Calmer, Luciano Palermi, Rachael Pugh, Melinda Martinez and Jorge Ojeda, Amy and Wes Tang, Kriszanne Napalan, Dee, Roberto Bonomelli and Lory, John Evans, Scott Czerniak, Roberto Banchini and his tribe, Francesca Fogar, Giorgio Presca, Jenaveve Jolie, Jeff Hendricks, Shannon Seta, Barbara Bersche, Federico Giordano, Cavan Cox, Daniel Guedea, Jack Clark, Jack Carter, Liezel Legaspi, Litty and Melkon, Emily and Jamie Ludovise, Axel Hernandez and Adriana Yanez, Mike Esposito and Michaela, Diana and Jeff Gordon, the Andrade clan (Jonathan, Dan, April, Lisa and Matthew,) Maria Ramas, Bruno Dorella, Aronne dell’Oro, Rocco Attisani, John Torres, Troy Johnson, Nancy Quam-Wickham, Viva Guerrero, Chris and Lynn Stiles, Jane Dabel and Harvey Stromberg.

INTRODUCTION

Religion is one of the big taboo topics that many people are terrified to touch: too afraid that others will question their religious loyalties and just as afraid to step on the minefield that is the overhyped sensitivity of some believers.

And this is precisely why it is so much fun to talk about it.

People, after all, live and die in the names of religious values, so the stakes of what we are playing with couldn't be any higher. And yet, few fields can make many human beings as unwilling to face the evidence as religion. It is exactly because these ideas are so central to their lives that they don't want anyone to plant doubts in their minds.

If this is you—if you are afraid of tackling contradictions, if you believe that without blind faith you would be prey to senselessness and desperation, if dealing with complexity sends you running for the reassuring arms of dogma—then this book is not for you. It will confuse you, anger you and ruin your digestion.

But if you feel like taking a weird, dangerous journey through world religions and running into some of the very odd characters populating them—if you have a taste for paradox and think that questioning authority should be an Olympic sport—then hop on board. I had a hell of a lot of fun writing this book. If you can have at least half as much fun reading it, I’ll be happy.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

To those readers who wish to contact me, bodhi1974@yahoo.com is my e-mail address. Depending on the number of messages that will come my way, it is very likely that I will not be able to reply with long, thoughtful answers since I still enjoy having a life away from the computer screen. But what I do promise is that I will reply with at least a quick note to let you know I appreciated reading your message. If you do not receive a reply within a week, it means I never received your e-mail.

01 ZEN AND THE ART OF CHOPPING YOUR ENEMIES’ HEADS OFF

One of the key principles that good, old Buddha constantly emphasized was non-injury: making every effort to avoid causing pain to any sentient being—whether they be other humans, or animals, or anything in between.

During much of Japanese history, the samurai trained day in and day out to become more effective at slicing and dicing their opponents on the battlefield. The punch line in this is that most of them were devout Buddhists. Yeah, … I know … nothing screams Buddhist compassion like making a living by decapitating your enemies…

So, the obvious question is: why would warriors be attracted to a non-violent religion like Zen Buddhism in the first place?

The answer is simple. Well, kind of … if the samurai could just conveniently overlook the pesky pacifist piece of Buddhist theology just mentioned, Zen could actually help them tremendously in battle! Still not clear how that works? No problem. Here we go: the odd path that turns this particular school of Buddhism into a weapon for professional killers goes something like this.

The most terrifying emotion that anyone about to go to war has to come to terms with is fear—the sheer terror that the prospect of death, dismemberment, and crippling injuries inevitably produces. Paralyzing fear under these circumstances is natural for anyone who doesn't have a death wish but, paradoxically, it makes the likelihood of getting killed much higher. It is difficult, in fact, to be effective on the battlefield when fear leaves you breathless, with your muscles frozen stiff, and hardly able to move. Entering a sword fight in this physiological state all but ensures that your head will be saying goodbye to the rest of your body rather quickly, since you will not be able to fight to the best of your abilities. The riddle of fear is that it attracts precisely what scares you most. As professional warriors, the samurai knew well how lethal fear could be. But this is where Zen could come to the rescue.

Zen training, after all, is all about quieting the mind, being in the moment with no thoughts of the past or the future, accepting things as they are, mastering one's emotions, and abandoning all attachments. And all these ingredients mixed together offer the perfect antidote to fear. Being able to remain emotionally unmoved when death comes knocking on your door is no easy feat, but can be just as essential for a warrior as mastery of fighting tactics and techniques. Once free from fear, a samurai could fight just as he had trained, without losing precious fractions of seconds due to the excess baggage of tense muscles and shallow breathing.

This is how one of the most peaceful religions in the world ended up being part of the arsenal of the Japanese warrior class. So, bring on a steady diet of Zen meditation! We've got enemies to kill.

02 THE FILTHY LITTLE ATHEIST … FOUNDING FATHER

The story of his life is richer and weirder than any fiction. Among his close friends were visionary poets such as William Blake as well as political icons like Benjamin Franklin. Napoleon slept with his books by his pillow, and told him statues of gold should be erected to him in every city in the universe (but the admiration was not reciprocated). Thomas Edison believed him to be one of the most brilliant minds in human history. Some of his writings rank among the greatest bestsellers of the 18th century. He participated in the two revolutions (the American and the French) that changed the political face of the modern world. During the American Revolution, George Washington used his writings to inspire his troops to remember what they were fighting for, and even suggested that no other individual had done more for the cause of American independence. John Adams stated that without his pen, Washington's military victories would have been in vain. In France, the revolutionaries invited him to join the National Convention in charge of drafting a new constitution. His unconditional love for freedom, however, made him allergic to “revolutionary” totalitarianism just as much as he was opposed to monarchic totalitarianism. So, Robespierre and his proto-fascist cronies had him arrested and sentenced to death. But the blade of the guillotine missed the date with his neck thanks to a mistake by the jailer in delivering condemned prisoners. Before the mistake was fixed, a future American president, James Monroe, intervened on his behalf and had him rescued. And another president, Thomas Jefferson, personally offered him political asylum.

The man we are speaking of is Thomas Paine.

Even though his name is relatively well known, it is not nearly as celebrated as one may imagine given such a wild, intense existence, and such a deep impact on history. Paine was after all the man who came up with the terms “United States of America,” and is credited by many to be the ideological father of modern democracy. So why is his face not on the dollar bills? Why is he not hanging out with Jefferson & co. on Mt. Rushmore? Why is he not given his due among the greatest American heroes?

Paine's problem is that he didn't die in 1792. Had he done that, his place among the pantheon of beloved founding fathers would have been assured. But instead he lived, and wrote another book entitled The Age of Reason. The result? By the time he actually died in 1809, only six people attended his funeral. The most repeated of his obituaries by the newspapers read, “he had lived long, did some good and much harm.” His supporters found themselves under relentless attacks. Thomas Jefferson's political opponents had a field day using over and over his friendship with Paine against him. Abraham Lincoln's friends burned a booklet he had written, in which he defended Paine's ideas, for fear that this would irreparably ruin his reputation. Over a hundred years after Paine's death, Theodore Roosevelt still referred to him as a “filthy little atheist.”

What exactly was it about The Age of Reason that transformed Paine into a ghost among the founding fathers? Why did he turn overnight from popular hero into a hated villain? It's because the man took on organized religion with a furor, in an age when doing so was neither fashionable nor conducive to good health.

As he wrote, “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches … appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”

When he had composed passionate defenses of freedom against political tyranny, the masses had loved him. But now that he had composed a passionate defense of freedom against religious tyranny, they hated him. Paine hadn't changed. It's simply that his audience was much readier to attack political rather than religious institutions. But for Paine tyranny was tyranny regardless which adjective was attached to it. To him, sworn enemies like the king of England and Robespierre, the pope and Martin Luther were but different faces of the same evil. Whether they called themselves monarchists or revolutionaries, Catholics or Protestants, whether they indulged in inquisitions or guillotines, didn't matter much since they were all equally addicted to totalitarianism. The Age of Reason was Paine's declaration of war against the religious dogmatism that had squashed individual liberties over the centuries.

The fame of being a godless atheist followed Paine like a shadow forever afterwards. But the punch line in all of this is that Paine was anything but an atheist. It was precisely because he believed in God that he despised organized religions since—in his view—these turned the divine mystery into bad mythology, and projected onto God their own psychotic hopes and fears. In Paine's brand of freedom-loving spirituality, God was something greater than any religion. And this was the belief that cost Paine his place of honor among the founding fathers.

03 THE TAO OF BEING IN JAIL: HOW THE TAO TE CHING WAS CREATED

Being told that a religion's sacred book was composed in jail can easily conjure up in our minds familiar images: persecuted Christians hurrying to write down portions of the New Testament before Roman legionaries knock at their door and introduce them to hungry lions in the Colosseum. Or perhaps we could picture pious Jewish prophets composing hymns to God after being conquered and oppressed by one of the many, many, many nations that conquered and oppressed Jews throughout history. Well … we can quickly chase these images from our heads because the story we are playing with here is much weirder than that. The hero of our tale is not in jail as a victim of religious persecution. The opposite is actually true. He is in jail because somebody loved his ideas too much.

The setting is ancient China, about 2,500 years ago (give or take a century or two). Our protagonist is Lao Tzu, the mythological creator of Taoism and author of the Tao Te Ching (the philosophical foundation of Taoism). At the beginning of our story, Lao Tzu is very old, but he has not written anything yet. Despite having gained great fame for his wisdom among all those who have come in contact with him, he has always refused to commit his ideas to writing. By this point in his life, Lao Tzu has decided he has had enough of living among the noise and the crowds of the city. So, he packs his bags, resigns from his job in the imperial library, and begins to head out of town. By the time he reaches the city gates, ready to enjoy his well-deserved retirement, he is stopped in his tracks by an adoring fan. The fame of Lao Tzu's brilliant teachings, in fact, has reached the ears of one of the guards at the gate. As fate would have it, he had some friends among Lao Tzu's disciples who had told him wonderful things about how the old man's insights had changed their lives. On a couple of occasions, the gate guard even had a chance to join them and listen spellbound to Lao Tzu's teachings in person. Both times he had walked away amazed by the depth of the man's wisdom, and yet with a feeling that he had barely gotten a small taste of what Lao Tzu had to offer.

But now Lao Tzu was calling it quits. He was getting ready to cash his chips and head off to Florida, or whatever was the ancient Chinese equivalent where old guys went to warm up their achy bones and spend their golden years in the sun. Worse yet, Lao Tzu had so far stubbornly refused to put pen to paper and write down a single word about his unique worldview. And so the old man was about to be gone, vanish forever and be lost to history. The gate guard knew exactly what he had to do.

After several rounds of polite begging only met with Lao Tzu repeatedly turning down his requests, the guard decided to take matters in his own hands: he promptly arrested Lao Tzu, tossed him in jail, gave him all the paper he could need and told him he would only be free when he would finish a book capturing the essence of his teachings. As it turns out, jail is a powerful motivator, so Lao Tzu spent the following three days writing furiously. Eighty-one short poems later Lao Tzu got up, handed his writings to the guard, waved goodbye and disappeared from the pages of history. According to the story, this is how Tao Te Ching, the most important text of Taoism, came into being.

Just like in the case of most tales about the founding of the various world religions, no reliable data confirming the historical truth of this story exists. But unlike in the case of most religions, Taoists freely admit that this is probably nothing but a legend—one of many versions of an imaginative tale. According to them, it matters little whether things really happened this way. The point of the story is to highlight Lao Tzu's distrust of words. In case the first line of the Tao Te Ching wasn't emphatic enough as a warning in this regard (“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao”), the myth of Lao Tzu's composing the book only under duress makes even plainer a key Taoist concept. Wisdom is something that's alive. On the other hand, words in general, and written words in particular, are an abstraction—too easy to misinterpret. At best, words can give you a glimpse of somebody's wisdom, but far too often people take them too literally and this leads to the annoying tendency of great theories to shape-shift into sinister dogmas. The jail story is a Taoist inside joke to remind us not to take anybody's words as absolute truths. Not such a bad advice considering how often what begin as benign religions turn dark really fast.

So, here's what you can take away from this. Next time you land in jail, you could just follow Lao Tzu's lead, try to ignore the unsavory characters around you, and kill the time by creating a new religion.

04 THE DISTURBING AND UNLIKELY MARRIAGE BETWEEN ISRAEL AND CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS

In the modern American political landscape, Israel has no supporters who are as loyal and determined as some of the most right-winged fringes among Christian evangelicals. By looking at the current Israeli-Christian fundamentalist love-fest, it would be difficult to imagine that these two were not always best friends. But yet, anyone who managed to stay at least half awake during history class should be a bit puzzled by this odd alliance.

For the better part of 2,000 years, the lives of Jews in any country dominated by conservative Christianity has not exactly been a barrel of monkeys. On the contrary, religious persecution was the name of the game. Rabid anti-Semitism has been the norm whenever and wherever church and state went hand in hand. And over the centuries hardcore Christians have put to use their imagination in coming up with every conceivable way to squash the Jewish religious minority among them: from the brutality of the Inquisition to forced conversions, from confining them to special parts of a city (the original “ghettos”) to downright expelling them from their lands, from the occasional pogroms to ordinary random acts of violence.

To make matters worse, all of this intense oppression has not been the work of one particular Christian denomination, during one particular point in time. Rather, this has been the norm, and the various branches of Christianity have been outdoing each other in the viciousness of their attacks. Martin Luther, for example, when he first gave birth to the Protestant movement harshly criticized Catholics for how mean they had been toward Jews. But when he realized that Jews were not any more eager to convert to his interpretation of Christianity than they had been to convert to Catholicism, Luther had a fit. He eventually penned a treatise going by the less than politically correct title of On the Jews and Their Lies, in which he advocated setting on fire Jewish synagogues, stealing all their wealth, prohibiting rabbis to teach on pain of death, and enslaving Jews … yeah, even a drunken Mel Gibson couldn't top this. Incidentally, about 400 years after Luther was done spitting his venom, Hitler's Nazi minions faithfully adopted Luther's program as part of their “final solution.” The Holocaust itself, in fact, can hardly be explained without considering the Christian anti-Semitism preached for centuries throughout Europe. By driving a wedge between church and state and emphasizing individual rights, the Enlightenment had seemed to offer hope to Jewish people but, as the Holocaust made painfully clear, you can't undo such long-standing hatred in just a few decades.

So, the obvious question is: why do the spiritual descendants of those who persecuted Jews are now so infatuated with Israel? The answer is simple. Actually, no, I take that back. Once you understand it, it's quite simple, but the path to get there is less than straightforward. Simple is definitely not the right word, for the answer is so bizarre as to be funny.

The seeds of the fundamentalist love for Israel were planted just around the time when the 19th century was giving way to the 20th. Back then, new interpretations of one of the most complicated books of the Bible (the book of Revelation) were becoming fashionable among conservative Christians. The book of Revelation is no cakewalk to decode. Written at a time when early Christians suffered terribly under the yoke of the Roman Empire, the book of Revelation is a weirdly symbolic revenge fantasy in which the author gloats at the thought of unbelievers drowning in rivers of blood at the end of times. So, the fact that these new interpretations promised shedding light on this text and offering a new window on the true essence of Christianity attracted much attention. What does this have to do with the modern state of Israel? After all, it hadn't been yet created at this time. Well, the new interpretation of these apocalyptic prophecy went something like this: in order for Jesus to come back, Israel needs to exist, the Temple in Jerusalem needs to be reconstructed, and Israel's enemies need to stage a massive attack against it. So—the Christian fundamentalist thinking went—if we want Jesus to show up in the neighborhood again, we need to support the nation of Israel. If this sounds like less than a newly found love for Jews by conservative Christians, it's because it's not. In this view, Jews are only to be supported in order to act as bait for their enemies, thereby triggering Jesus's return. Once this happens, some Jews will see the light and convert, while the others will die the horrific death that awaits all unbelievers. Ok, under these premises, perhaps even Mel Gibson can learn to love Jews.

05 SEX, SAKE AND ZEN

Most Westerners who become fascinated with Zen Buddhism are intrigued with its reputation as an anti-authoritarian, freedom-loving, individualistic tradition. Books by excellent writers like Alan Watts popularized an image of Zen as a very relaxed, go-with-the-flow type of religion. But even a brief visit to a typical Zen temple is enough to make us painfully aware of the difference between hype and reality. Life in real Zen temples, in fact, is often so structured, regimented and heavily regulated as to quickly dispel the romanticism created by much of the literature about it. Far from being a hippie rendition of Buddhism, Zen discipleship can be demanding and severe.

But sometimes even misguided stereotypes are born from seeds of truth. Enter 15th century Japanese monk Ikkyu Sojun, who was truly as free, wild and allergic to authorities as advertised.

For Ikkyu, Zen was not a spontaneous calling. Rather, he stumbled upon it as an alternative to being murdered in infancy. Given that choice, Zen training didn't seem so bad after all. Ikkyu, in fact, was the illegitimate son of the emperor of Japan, and the object of several conspiracies aimed at thinning out the ranks of potential candidates to the throne. In an effort to have his life spared, his mother entrusted him to a Zen monastery when he was only 5 years old: not the most fun-filled scenario for a little boy, but clearly more appealing than having angry assassins slicing you to pieces.

His early life was extremely tough since the training he received from the Zen monks was brutally stern. Despite some serious bouts of depression in this joyless environment, it became quickly clear to his teachers that Ikkyu possessed an amazing intellect, and that his grasp of Zen was unparalleled. But the fact that he excelled in this setting didn't mean he felt at home in it. Despite genuinely loving Zen (or perhaps because of it), he was less than thrilled with the spiritual bureaucracy of the temples. Also, many of the priests bugged him: too many political games and too much time spent courting the favor of rich patrons. And so when the day came when his master presented him with a certificate of enlightenment—which was both a great honor and the necessary document to begin climbing the Zen hierarchy—Ikkyu promptly decided to wave goodbye to a monastic career and burned it.

This doesn't mean he had given up on Zen. Far from it. In his thinking, it was the entire Zen establishment that had abandoned real Zen by turning it into a dogmatic parody of what it was supposed to be. Life in the temples was stifled by too many rules and not enough fresh air. The so-called professionals of Zen were in Ikkyu's eyes a bunch of posers—too busy acting “spiritual” to be able to really taste spirituality in its rawest forms. Some people believed Zen enlightenment could only be found among clouds of incense in silent meditation. Ikkyu, on the other hand, found sake-drinking and wild sex more to his liking. As he put it in his poems, “The autumn breeze of a single night of love is better than a hundred thousand years of sterile sitting meditation.” Or, even more bluntly, “Don't hesitate: get laid—that's wisdom. Sitting around chanting sutras: that's crap.” Driven by an uncompromising thirst for life, Ikkyu became a wandering monk, testing his Zen insights far away from the seclusion of the monasteries, and earning the nickname of “Crazy Cloud.”

The point of his erotic escapades and wild adventures was to suggest that the “sacred” is nothing other than regular life experienced with 100 percent awareness. Or perhaps, sake-drinking and inordinate amounts of sex didn't need any justification at all other than the fact that they were a hell of a lot of fun. Ikkyu didn't give a rat's ass about what the religious authorities of his day thought of him anyway. But in the course of his travels, Ikkyu managed to influence great numbers of artists, poets, calligraphers, musicians, and actors in such a way that his ideas left a deep mark on the development of several Japanese art forms for centuries to come. Even his love life came to be celebrated through the ages, since his relationship with Lady Mori ended up being among the most famous romances in Japanese history.

But since good old Ikkyu was a man who loved paradoxes, when a civil war had destroyed most Zen temples in the country, he came to the rescue of the very institutions he had ferociously criticized. Just when the future of Zen seemed in peril, he was able to enlist the help of the many acquaintances he had met during a lifetime of travels and mobilized them into rebuilding some of the key temples throughout the country. So, oddly enough, much of modern Zen owes a huge debt for its existence to a man who preferred the company of hookers to that of monks.

06 BANZAI!

When it comes to using theological arguments to encourage brutal wars, monotheistic religions are far ahead of the competition. The history of Christianity and Islam, in particular, is so drenched in bloody violence as to leave everyone else in the dust. Most Asian and tribal religions, on the other hand, utterly lack the concept of “holy war” that is so popular in these faiths. And yet, to every good rule there is an exception. Shintoism—the only religion that is native to Japan—is gracious enough to offer us a sober reminder of this.

At first sight, Shintoism seems a very poor candidate for a religion instigating warfare. Here, after all, is a nature-loving, mellow form of a very loosely organized spirituality mostly concerned with purification rituals and honoring spirits. It doesn't demand that people follow a particular moral code. It doesn't require too many specific beliefs. And it doesn't even have a set of sacred scriptures. Shintoism is so seemingly relaxed in its worldview that it didn't oppose the introduction to Japan of foreign traditions such as Buddhism and Confucianism. On the contrary, most Shinto followers readily adopted elements of Buddhism and Confucianism as part of their own practice to the point that it was nearly impossible to tell where one religion ended and another began.

So what went wrong? I blame it all on Matthew Perry. In case you are wondering, no, I’m not referring to the guy from Friends. The Matthew Perry who's at the center of our story was born at end of the 1700s, had a successful career as a high-ranking officer in the U.S. Navy, and was not nearly as funny. But what he lacked in comedic talent, he made up through sheer force. In the mid-1800s, Perry showed up with several ships in Japan, and promptly informed the Japanese government that the U.S. expected them to open up their ports to foreign trade. “Never”—thought the Japanese—“ We'd rather die than being bullied around in such a way.” “Ok”—replied Perry—“See the cannons here on my ships? If you don't trade with us, we'll blow you to pieces.” “In that case”—the Japanese responded—“ we'd be delighted to trade with you.” (I’m paraphrasing just a bit, but you get the idea ….)

The humiliation of having to give in to the bossy demands of those pesky Americans was so intense that it radically changed Japanese history. Determined to never again suffer such humiliation, Japan jump-started a period of very fast modernization, transforming their society by copying everything that made Western countries successful in order to be able to compete with them on equal footing. This bad mix of wounded pride and desire for revenge dramatically affected Shintoism. The Japanese government made a conscious effort to transform Shintoism, molding it into a state religion supporting an aggressive brand of hyper-nationalism. This was a rather difficult job, since there seemed to be nothing in Shintoism that could be used for the task. But eventually somebody took a second look at the myths telling of a divine origin for the Japanese people in general, and the Imperial family in specific, and decided to zero in on them. By overlooking just about every other aspect of Shintoism and focusing only on this, it didn't take long to create an ideology depicting the emperor as a descendent of the gods, and the Japanese as a sort of “chosen” people. The traditional friendly mixing of Shintoism with Buddhism and Confucianism was legally banned, since it didn't fit a nationalistic agenda to have one's state religion mixed with foreign traditions. Alternative interpretations of Shintoism were similarly squashed. And so the mellow Shintoism of old gave way to a pissed-off new version anxious to kick foreign ass for the sake of restoring the national self-esteem.

The results were nothing but horrific. From the devastation of the Rape of Nanking to the fanaticism of kamikaze pilots, Japanese nationalism took the shape of a hyperactive militarism that unleashed hell everywhere it landed. The end of World War II mercifully euthanized the state-sponsored religion when, as part of the peace agreement, Emperor Hirohito was forced to admit not being a living god. This allowed Shintoism to return to its former relaxed self. But the whole experience was a kick in the groin to any enthusiasm the Japanese may have felt for religion as a whole—a trend that continues to this day.

07 THANK YOU GOD FOR KILLING MY ENEMIES’ CHILDREN

Often, the stories at the origin of many religious holidays sound like sweet fairy tales.

Think of Christmas, for example, with the shooting star, the three wise men bringing gifts, and baby Jesus being born in the midst of all the happy barn animals. It has a “God meets Old-MacDonald-Had-a-Farm” feel to it.

The story at the roots of the Jewish holiday of Passover, on the other hand, doesn't sound quite like a fairy tale—unless perhaps one created by Stephen King. What exactly is celebrated during Passover? Our tale begins in Egypt over 3,000 years ago—or at least so we are told, since there is less historical evidence for the authenticity of this story than for the existence of the Yeti and the Loch Ness monster. No source for its truthfulness exists other than the Torah. For all we know, it could be all exactly true or it could just as well be entirely made up. But in any case, here's what the Torah has to say about the origins of Passover. Over three millennia ago, times were not rosy for Jewish peoples (some things never change …). Being enslaved in ancient Egypt was not the epitome of fun, so Jews were desperately looking for a way out. The one and only God came to the rescue by empowering Moses to threaten the Pharaoh with a series of horrific plagues unless he freed his people. Nine consecutive plagues failed to sway the Pharaoh. So, for the tenth plague, God decided to pull out the big guns. He told good monotheistic Jews to mark their doorposts with the blood of sacrificial lambs. This was to make sure that the angel of death—who apparently could be a bit distracted sometimes—would not make mistakes. The blood on the door was the signal to the angel of death that he was not welcome to come in for a visit: the blood told him to “pass over” those homes and go carry out his murderous homework elsewhere. God's orders, in fact, were pretty specific: all the firstborn children of the Egyptians were to be wiped out in a single night. And just in case that weren't enough, all the firstborn calves were also to be killed (if you are wondering about that, sorry but the Torah doesn't tell us exactly what evil sin Egyptian cows had committed to deserve such punishment).

Since this story was apparently not perverted enough, here's the icing on the cake. It was God all along who had hardened the heart of the Pharaoh to make sure he wouldn't release Jewish people before He had a chance to unleash all ten plagues. “Why?”—you may ask—“What kind of weird game was God playing?”

This whole drama was a publicity stunt set up by the one and only God, “… in order to show you My power and in order that My fame may resound throughout the world.” In other words, the killing of thousands of Egyptian kids was but a way for God to flex His muscles and gain some fame: bloodshed and terror tactics as a strategy to get attention.

Now, ancient Jews were clearly not overly fond of their enemies’ children. In Psalm 137, which begins as a moving lamentation over being exiled from their homelands, we are told with gleeful satisfaction about the joys of smashing the heads of the children of Babylon. During the march to the Promised Land, we are told in multiple occasions about Jewish armies hacking to death all enemy males, including those still suckling. But the lovely tale of the angel of death having a field day with Egyptian kids is the only massacre of babies to get its very celebratory holiday.

08 DEADLY ALLITERATION: MOSES THE MASS MURDERER

When I ask students in my courses on the history of religions if they are familiar with the tale of Moses going up Mount Sinai, and coming down with the tablets of the Ten Commandments, everyone always nods affirmatively. This is such a key archetype in Western religions that it's difficult to ignore. Even those students who look like they spent the best part of the semester sniffing glue manage to wake up from their drug-induced stupor to let me know that even they have an idea of what I’m talking about.

When I tell them that the really juicy part of this story comes after Moses gets the Ten Commandments, and I ask them if they know what I am referring to, the vibe in the class changes drastically. Moses getting the Ten Commandments was the whole point of the story in their mind. What else was there to know? Usually, one or two people venture a tentative answer about smashing the tablets because he is upset with his own people.

Ok, not a bad start—we are on to something now. At this point in Exodus, Moses is indeed mightily pissed off—so pissed off, actually, that he breaks the tablets in an act of spontaneous rage. What sets him off is the sight that awaits him as he comes down from the mountain: many among his own people have openly renounced monotheism and have returned to worshipping other gods. More specifically, Moses arrives as the Jewish tribes are busy staging an orgiastic ritual in honor of a fertility god symbolized by the statue of a golden calf. Seeing naked bodies dancing sensually around the statue sends stern, old Moses in a self-righteous frenzy. You could think that smashing the tablets, breaking up the party, destroying the statue of the golden calf and scolding the dancers severely would be enough, but Moses has something a little more radical on his mind. The story is about to get much, much juicier …

“Who is on the Lord's side?” asks Moses inviting all faithful fans of monotheism to join him. Once enough followers gather by his side, Moses spells out the plan for dealing with those who have different tastes in matters of religion. “Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.”

I’m not making it up—I swear. Check it out for yourself in Exodus 32: Moses, one of the most beloved religious figures in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is the organizer of a religious death squad that hacks and slashes through 3,000 fellow Jews whose only crime is not being sold on monotheism. The fuzzy concept of freedom of religion was clearly nowhere to be found. Had you suggested to Moses the notion that people should be free to practice any religion they want, the odds are that you would have quickly found your head-waving goodbye to your body courtesy of Moses's henchmen. Perhaps—we may wonder—Moses wasn't a mass murderer at heart. Perhaps, he is just having a bad day. Even a prophet of God should be allowed to overreact once in a while. But just to make sure we understand that the golden calf massacre was not an isolated episode, just a few pages later Moses orders his loyalists to massacre the entire population of a neighboring pagan tribe. When the victorious army comes back after having killed all adult males and enslaved women and kids as prisoners of war, Moses goes into a frenzy. What part of “kill them all” did you not understand? Worried about the old man's blood pressure, his soldiers promptly kill most women and all kids, sparing only virgin females (you can imagine for what purpose …).

What these lovely stories seem to teach us is that clearly freedom of religion is not a biblical value. What we have, instead, is the beginning in Western religions of the theology of “holy war” that would eventually spawn all the Crusades, Inquisitions and 9/11s in history.

But, wait. I’m a little confused. Wasn't one of the Ten Commandments about not going around killing people?

09 HOW A FAILED SIEGE SHAPED THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS

Since a story whose lead characters are named Sennacherib and Hezekiah, and happened almost three thousand years ago is not exactly what people talk about at parties, it took a top historian such as William H. McNeill to write an essay shedding light on why we should care. This event, after all, dramatically shaped the course of history as we know it. Our world would be radically different if things between these two guys had gone another way.

The tale we'll play with today takes us back to a time when Jewish monotheism was still in its infancy and required frequent diaper changes. A new Jewish king named Hezekiah had recently renewed a push to impose monotheism among his less than enthusiastic subjects. Polytheism was still running strong among vast numbers of Jews back then, so the jury was still out to decide which side would come up on top. After cracking down on polytheism within his own society, Hezekiah—perhaps emboldened by the thought that the one and only God was on his side—decided to challenge Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians, by refusing to deliver any longer the tributes that Jews had customarily paid.

Sennacherib had a funky name, but was a bad dude. His people, the Assyrians, were the undisputed masters of that part of the world. And it's safe to say that they didn't come to rule over so many nations by being polite. These guys didn't mess around. Twenty years earlier, the ten tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel had pissed them off. After the Assyrians were done with them, they were to be forever known as the “lost tribes of Israel.” The Assyrians, in fact, had promptly run them over with overwhelming military force, invaded them, captured them, and deported whomever they hadn't impaled along the way. Scattered throughout the Assyrian empire, the people from the ten tribes lost their Jewish identity and disappeared from the pages of history.

So, when in 701 BCE the Assyrians took notice of the Jewish rebellion, they immediately set in motion to crush them in the same way they had crushed their cousins a couple of decades earlier. Hezekiah had counted on receiving Egyptian help in the coming war, but the Egyptians decided they had better things to do than being in the path of angry Assyrians. Without further ado, the Assyrian army began putting on the usual rape and pillage show throughout the southern Jewish state of Judah. One by one, all the Jewish towns fell into the hands of the Assyrians. And Hezekiah's gesture of rebellion was looking more and more like a suicidal move by a delusional religious fanatic. By now, only Jerusalem still stood, but probably not for long. The remaining Jews had retreated within the walls of their capital for one desperate last stand. But if there were bookies back then, they certainly wouldn't have given very good odds for the survival of the Jewish people. Fresh from all their victories, the Assyrian army reached the walls of Jerusalem ready to finish up the job and go home. Hezekiah tried to reassure his terrorized people by saying that God was on their side, but this only made the Assyrians laugh. Everywhere we have gone—they told the Jews—we heard people telling us their gods would protect them … well, go ask them now how well that has worked for them … if you can find any of them alive. Hezekiah, realizing he had angered the wrong guys, tried to throw a bunch of gold at them, but by now the Assyrians were out for blood, so they didn't lift the siege.

With Judaism just one step away from being wiped off the face of the earth, the unexpected happened. Within a few days, the Assyrian army was packing and heading back home while Jerusalem still stood. Apparently, some kind of disease had swept the ranks of the invading army forcing them to turn back. Not buying the Jewish theory that this was a plague sent by God to save his chosen people, McNeill suggests that the Assyrians had run out of clean sources of water in the barren countryside surrounding Jerusalem, and had gotten sick when they resorted to drinking from contaminated wells. Whatever it was, it made Jews deliriously happy and dramatically strengthened their faith in monotheism, since their one God had come through for them at a time when only a miracle could save them. Even when decades down the road, the Jews were conquered by the Babylonians, their monotheistic faith was too well rooted to be given up because of exile. No matter what would happen to them, Jews would now survive as a monotheistic people.

This is clearly one of the biggest “what if” in history. Had Jerusalem fallen to the Assyrians as it was more than logical to expect, it is highly likely that Judaism would have disappeared from the map. Had Judaism disappeared, its derivatives—Christianity and Islam—would have never been born, and the entire history of the world would be completely different. So, the trilogy of major Western religions exists only because the army of a guy named Sennacherib didn't have good water to drink.

10 FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN? I’D LOVE TO INTRODUCE YOU TO MY PET KING COBRA

Polls are fickle. Depending on who you listen to, the percentage of Americans who believe that the Bible is literally true, word by word, cover to cover, is anywhere from 30 to 60 percent. Even if we take only the lowest estimate as correct, this still means that almost 100 million people in the United States swear on the absolute truthfulness of every line in the Bible. And this is where the fun begins …

Countless passages in the Bible present problems for those who take them too literally, but for the sake of simplicity let's stick to Mark 16:15–18. In these lines, the resurrected Jesus basically charges his disciples with the task of preaching the Gospel throughout the world. So far so good, but in the next breath Jesus adds that all those who will believe in him will be able to heal the sick, cast out demons, speak in new tongues, handle deadly snakes and drink poison without suffering any harm.

Ok, now, could you repeat that please? Did you say drink poison and handle deadly snakes? This sounds like quite a way to test one's devotion to Jesus. The man, after all, said that if you truly believe, you have nothing to worry, so … shall we bring out king cobras and poison shots? Truth be told, quite a few people through the ages have indeed tried to demonstrate their honest, heartfelt faith in the Bible by doing precisely those things that Jesus promised his loyal followers would be able to do. Needless to say, snakes have had a field day with many of these guys. So, here is the problem: in the real world anybody drinking the strongest poisons in the universe will die—regardless of how much faith they possess. This leaves us with a few options: either, A.) There are no true Christians in the world; B.) The Bible lied; or C.) This passage is not authentic. Option A is clearly problematic for modern Christians because it would mean that they are all a bunch of faithless posers. Option B is almost even worse since it denies the validity of the Bible. Option C seems to offer some hope, and in fact many Christians pick this one by stating that these lines may have not been originally part of the scriptures, but were added later. They may very well be right. This, however, is only marginal consolation, because if we admit that parts of the Bible as we know it are forgeries, then how do we know what's true and what isn't in the Good Book? The idea that “scriptures are absolutely true … except for those parts that are forged” doesn't exactly inspire tremendous confidence in the Bible.

Some Christians have tried to save the day by arguing that these powers were only given to the first disciples post-resurrection. But besides the fact that the quote doesn't specify this, why should Jesus promise them protection from snakes and poisons, but let the Romans behead them (Saint Paul, for example) or crucify them upside down (Saint Peter)?

Running out of arguments but badly wanting to hold on to their claims, some fundamentalist Christians quote another passage from the Bible stating that we should never test God. So Jesus promises wonders to his followers, but we can't test this claim because doing so would be offending God? Now, this sounds like a lame ass excuse for people who deep inside know that they would fall miserably short of success. A biblical prophet like Elijah openly challenged the prophets of rival gods like Baal and Ashera to a “my God is stronger than your gods” competition, in which both sides would try to perform miracles in front of a crowd, in order to show which deities were true and which were frauds. Scriptures tell us that rather than being struck down for “testing” God, Elijah was successful (and incidentally celebrated by having 450 of the rival prophets assassinated). So, here is a good challenge for diehard fundamentalist Christians: show your faith by swallowing the deadliest poison known to men or stop pretending you believe the Bible to be literally true. Better yet, do this in the middle of Yankee Stadium on a pay-per-view event. If you are successful, subscriptions to the Jesus's fan club will skyrocket.

11 MAMMOTH PORN AND THE CAVEMAN’S HIP HOP: THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION

In the minds of most people, Judaism and Hinduism are the oldest faiths in the world, since they have been around far longer than any other surviving organized religion. But with their few thousands of years of history, Judaism and Hinduism are but unruly teenagers in the eyes of the truly ancient traditions—traditions so ancient that they don't even have a name. Scholars sometimes refer to them somewhat interchangeably as tribal religions, or shamanism, or animism, or a myriad other names. But such “catch all” terms are oversimplifications since these traditions are not part of a single organized religion, but rather are thousands of small-scale religions usually sharing a few key characteristics.

Admittedly, trying to put our fingers on the first examples of religious behavior in history is two parts science and eight parts speculation. We are going so far back in time, in fact, that archaeologists get excited if they can find a fragment of a tooth dating to those days. Try putting together a picture of somebody's religion from dental remains, the leftovers of a grave or a few dots of paint, and you get a sense of what we are up against. But this doesn't mean the quest for the origins of religion is completely hopeless.

So, let's roll out the time machine and hit the road. Our first stop takes us to such a distant past as to be outside of human history. Say that again? Religion without humans? Almost. Our evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals, are the proud pioneers of religious behavior on earth. They are, in fact, the first species ever to bury their dead with grave goods suggesting they had rituals for the death of their kinsmen and a likely belief in some kind of afterlife. What else went through their thick Neanderthal skulls we have no idea, but this is an interesting start. Apparently, religion began among a different species!

Once we move to the first Homo sapiens sapiens, the evidence becomes a bit clearer. Tens of thousands of years ago, our most distant ancestors painted the bones of their dead with red ochre—something that clearly had no practical purpose, and indicated some level of symbolic thinking typical of religion. But even cooler is the fact that they left behind complex cave paintings, which give us a window inside their heads. What is that they loved to paint? Animals, animals and more animals. The vast majority of cave paintings depict animals being hunted or animals having sex. If you are wondering what a couple of mammoths humping have to do with religion, hang on. I’m getting there.

It seems that in many cases, these paintings were located in those parts of the caves that had the best acoustic qualities. Add to this the fact that the floor facing the paintings often bore the prints of many feet whose repetitive motions left in the sands what look like complex dance patterns. These clues have convinced some archaeologists that the paintings were not just art for art's sake, but rather props in rituals involving music and dancing. When we consider that most tribal cultures hold dances as their prime forms of religious ritual, this hypothesis is not as farfetched as it may seem at first.

How can animal sex, hunting, and dancing mix to give us religion? It goes something like this. Reports from around the world tell us that even in historical times many hunting and gathering cultures would stage religious dances featuring all of these elements. Success in the hunt to them was the key to survival. So they would often perform elaborate rituals and prayers to gain the favor of powerful spirits who would facilitate the hunt. The belief was that no matter how skillful the hunters were, if the spirits were not pleased, they would drive the animals away. Gaining their cooperation was therefore essential. The paintings and dances simulating hunting were then but elements in a ritual to enlist the spirits’ help. Assuming that the hunt was successful, more rituals were needed. The killing of some animals, in fact, meant that there were less of them in the world, so it was crucial to make sure that the surviving animals would be horny enough to get down to business and make more animals, keeping the cycle going. How to accomplish this? With more paintings and ritual dances this time simulating not hunting but sex, in order to inspire the animals to do the same. So, there you have it, according to some archaeologists religion began with groups of sweaty cavemen and cavewomen moaning and grinding away in dances that looked like the great-grandmother of hip hop.

12 WE LOVE FREEDOM OF RELIGION … EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF THOSE STUPID RELIGIONS WE DON’T LIKE

A common myth about American history holds that the first British colonists came to North America for freedom of religion. As it's often the case, myth is much prettier than reality. It is true that the early Puritans very much resented being persecuted by other Protestants back in England, but this didn't mean they had anything against persecuting others. They just didn't like their place in the persecution-game, not the game itself. This is why when they had power they happily cracked down on Quakers, and on any other religious dissidents. When early Puritanism began to lose its drive, a general acceptance of other forms of Protestantism spread. Many, many decades later, Catholicism was added to the list of tolerated religions, and eventually little by little other religions trickled in as well.

But despite this pleasant trajectory away from its intolerant beginnings, American history sometimes offers sober reminders that the old Puritan spirit is not quite dead. What happened to American Indian religions after all the tribes had been conquered by the United States serves as a perfect example of this. Between the last couple of decades of the 1800s and the first few of the 20th century, in the good old US of A, it was official policy to send American Indians to jail for practicing the wrong religion!

Technically speaking, Congress never passed a federal law prohibiting the practice of Native ceremonies. This, however, didn't stop generations of secretaries of the Interior working in conjunction with other branches of the government from waging war against traditional Native beliefs. “Their stupid heathen ideas are preventing Indians from becoming civilized—these gentlemen argued—So, it's our duty to ban their rituals and change their culture. Once they are civilized, they'll thank us for what we did.” Viewing themselves as parents to senseless children, they honestly believed that criminalizing American Indian traditions was in the Natives’ best interest. Sending offenders to jail was—in their minds—a charitable act of love (incidentally, this is a great reminder that when people want to do something that goes against your will “for your own good” it's time to start running for your life).

This crackdown on Native religions was not an isolated event, but part of a full-scale program of cultural warfare. The same logic was at work behind the policy of making Indian parents to send their children to boarding schools, where the kids were routinely beat up by the teachers for speaking their tribal languages. Forcibly changing their religious beliefs went hand in hand with pushing them to cut their hair, eliminating communal ownership of land, prohibiting their traditional dances, and dozens of other repressive measures. In other words, short of taking a Michael Jackson pill that makes you white overnight, American Indians were legally required to give up every aspect of their cultures and become like whites. In order to survive, American Indian religions had to go underground, being practiced in secret away from the prying eyes of the police. Many of their traditions didn't survive the pressure and went extinct.

I’m confused. Wasn't freedom of religion a constitutional right in the United States? It was. But as far as Native Americans were concerned, freedom of religion hung out with Santa and the Easter Bunny in fairy tale land—a nice idea, but not one applicable to their reality. It wasn't until the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act that Natives could again practice all of their ceremonies without fear of legal persecution.

Yeah, you read right, 1978 … this very recent, often forgotten chapter of religious persecution within the United States was not a mysterious aberration, but the logical side effect of the nation's Puritan heritage. The day we'll fully free ourselves from it can't come soon enough.

13 TO BEAT OR NOT TO BEAT (YOUR WOMEN): THAT IS THE QUESTION

Sometimes, in my history of religions courses, I feel like the bad guy. Here are enthusiastic, sweet students who suddenly look so confused and tortured whenever I highlight the problem areas in their faith of choice. They generally don't give a rat's ass as long as I’m picking on other faiths, but everything changes when they find out that their own cherished tradition includes less than pleasant ideas. When they look at me with their big sad eyes, I feel like I just killed Santa for them, and I’m sure killing Santa is bad karma. But as John Wayne says, “A man's got to do what a man's got to do.”

One of my most recent Santa-killing moments sparked a very enlightening exchange over the following few weeks. It involved a Muslim student of mine who is as much of a good-hearted nice guy as anyone can hope to be. For privacy reasons, we'll call him Sayid (in case you are wondering, yes, I’ve been watching a Lost marathon, and that's why he'll get this name).

Well, good old Sayid has been taking the topic of women in Islam to heart. Being a gentleman who holds fairly progressive ideas about gender roles, he is deeply disturbed by the bad rap Islam gets when it comes to women. When in class we discussed what the Koran has to say about women, he twitched uncomfortably, and brought up the classic objection that the Koran actually improved living conditions for women in 7th century Arabia. So far, so good. Life for women in 7th century Arabia was indeed crap, and the Koran helped making it considerably less crappy. Sayid also argues that the Koran gave women some rights that Christian women would not enjoy until many centuries later. This may not be saying much considering the horrendously low status of women in Judeo-Christian scriptures, but, yes, he is right again.

All this, however, doesn't cancel the fact that the Koran contains some seriously scary examples of patriarchy. When I bring up Sura 4.34, Sayid has to raise the white flag and ask for a timeout, since that's not an easy one to defend. Being a nice guy is a complicated thing to reconcile with Sura 4.34. Here, in fact, Allah seems to tell good Muslims that it's ok to beat your wives if they rebel against the authority of the husband. Incidentally, this is one of the passages of the Koran used by filmmaker Theo Van Gogh and screenwriter Ayaan Hirsi Ali in their very controversial short film Submission. Demonstrating the level-headed, civil response for which fundamentalists in general, and Islamic fundamentalists in particular, are known, an angry Muslim named Mohammed Bouyeri responded to the film's criticism of Islam by shooting and stabbing Van Gogh to death in the streets of Amsterdam.

Unlike Bouyeri, Sayid is a hell of a nice guy who honestly wants to follow the Koran cover to cover as well as being good to everyone. Sura 4.34 is making his job difficult. But he doesn't give up that easy. A few days later he is back after having dutifully done his homework to find a better spin on that passage. He shows me a commentary on the Koran explaining how Sura 4.34 is really a prohibition against wife beating … which is great, except for the fact that it encourages wife beating.

“You misunderstand”—Sayid counters—“Allah here is using subtle psychology.” Come again? Rather than flat out prohibiting beating your wife to a pulp—Sayid explains—Allah invites you to deal with rebellion by talking with your wife first, and sleeping apart from her if talking doesn't work. The fact that hitting her is only allowed as a last resort really means that Allah doesn't want you to hit her at all, and is encouraging you to solve the problems in other ways first. Outlawing hitting would only make you do it more out of rebelliousness, but allowing it only after all other options have been tried will prevent you from doing it without you even noticing.

Weeks after the conversation, my thought remains the same, “Sayid, I like you and all, but what the hell are you talking about? Is it really so bad to take the good out of whatever sacred book you love and reject what's outdated or flat out weird?” Judging from the way many good-hearted believers like Sayid torture logic for the sake of justifying even the most disturbing passages, the answer is apparently a resounding yes.

14 THE DAY GOD STOPPED BEING A RACIST

On September 30, 1978, God got out of bed and decided racism was no longer cool. Evidently, the civil rights movement had convinced not only millions of Americans but even God Himself to kick the habit of virulent racism. So, on that day, God promptly sent a message below to his faithful servant Spencer Kimball, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, the most popular Mormon denomination). In his role as living prophet for LDS, Kimball heard the message loud and clear: racism was to be expelled from Mormon temples, and black skin could no longer prevent people from being eligible for the priesthood.

God had not always being so mellow about racial issues. The 1978 revelation was a complete turnaround from the policies LDS had been embracing as divinely inspired for well over a century. The Book of Mormon, for example—the key Mormon scripture—told the story of a people who had rebelled against God and were forever afterwards punished with dark skin. According to the tale, their descendants would also inherit this curse. If they were to repent, however, the curse could be lifted and their skin could become white again! It's good to remember that the Book of Mormon came out in the early 1800s, so God was very much in tune with the times.

Whereas—despite the passage just mentioned—Mormon founder Joseph Smith had been ambivalent about race (and even ended up supporting the abolition of slavery), his successor Brigham Young made it very clear that neither he nor God was a big fan of African Americans. Young told his followers he had received a memo from God stating that black people should be banned from priesthood, and that interracial marriages were an abomination. In the 1800s, this hardly raised an eyebrow. In the early 1900s, this wasn't a problem either. After all, still in the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan was popular enough to attract five million members. And it wasn't until the 1960s that the last laws against interracial marriages were struck down in the United States. So, Young's pronouncements were not nearly as controversial as they would seem today.

But in the post-civil rights movement, this kind of theology was becoming increasingly more embarrassing and difficult to defend. When in 1960 Spencer Kimball—the same guy who'll later receive the order to scratch racism from the books—openly argued that American Indian Mormons were turning white since God was removing the curse of dark skin from them, non-Mormons couldn't help cracking up. This whole “dark skin equals curse” idea no longer had the enthusiastic support it it once enjoyed in the 1800s. And so in 1978, God worked His magic and changed the rules. Only some splinter groups of fundamentalist Mormons—who must have not heard God's message—kept arguing that black people were the devil's minions. Mainstream Mormons gave racism a goodbye kiss and were done with it for good.

Cynics noted that the timing of the divine revelation opening the priesthood to dark skinned peoples was curious at best. Not only did it happen when the overwhelming majority of Americans frowned on open racism, but it also happened right before LDS began expanding in Brazil, where dark skin and intermarriages are the norm. But such cynical criticisms are obviously unwarranted. Clearly, God is not moved to change His mind by such petty reasons as not wanting to look like a bigot and increasing church membership. Rather, he changes His mind because … He does.

15 PISS-DRINKING, DRUGGIE PRIESTS CREATED HINDUISM

Ok, perhaps I’m exaggerating. Perhaps, piss-drinking, druggie priests didn't create Hinduism. They just greatly contributed to it. This is the honest truth, at least according to R. Gordon Wasson, a banker who got bored of making money and developed instead a rather curious passion for mushrooms. What began as a weird hobby eventually turned into an obsession that sent the man on a quest to unlock one of Hinduism's greatest mysteries.

Some of the most ancient Hindu texts refer repeatedly with the deepest reverence to the trinity of Soma. Unlike the Father-Son-Holy Ghost Trinity proposed by some Christians, the trinity of Soma is god-plant-sacred drink. The term soma in fact, is equally applied to a god, a plant that is the body of said god, and the sacred drink that is obtained by extracting juice from the stalk of the plant and brewing it. During the very early days of Hinduism, the drink was ritually consumed by priests and initiates in an effort to commune with gods and goddesses. Apparently, Soma had some mind-expanding, consciousness-altering properties that allowed believers to achieve deep religious experiences. As the sacred text of the RgVeda poetically describes, “We have drank Soma and become immortal. We have arrived at the light, we have found the gods.” And to emphasize just how important Soma was in the development of Hinduism, the RgVeda even calls Soma the “creator of the gods”—no less.

So what's the mystery that Wasson tried to solve? Over the centuries, the secret to Soma's preparation and botanic identity was lost. Part of the problem had to do with the fact that the Soma plant only grew at high altitudes. So, supplies were limited particularly as Hinduism expanded south into India. But some scholars suggest another reason for the disappearance of Soma. It seems that too many people were more interested in the “high” offered by the plant than in its sacred properties, so some priests decided to let knowledge of the plant's preparation fade away and be forgotten rather than being misused.

Thousands of years later, believers and scholars alike could do little but make educated guesses about what this most important plant/drink/god was. And this is where Gordon Wasson enters the story. Pouring over all the references to Soma found in ancient Hindu texts, Wasson used his botanic expertise trying to gain clues to Soma's identity. In perfect detective fashion, he gathered up all the evidence to come up with a likely “suspect.” Piecing together the puzzle, Wasson began to think Soma might have been a hallucinogenic mushroom. Soma, after all, seemed to produce a psychedelic effect. Plus, its description included stems and caps, but no seeds, flowers, fruits, roots or any of the other features normally associated with plants. But the one piece of evidence that convinced Wasson was … well … just disgusting.

Apparently, Soma could produce some nasty side effects including heavy nausea. The only way to avoid this was to filter it three times—the last one of these filters being a “human filter.” Puzzled by what this could mean, Wasson remembered a story about Siberian shamans using the highly hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria. In order to avoid side effects, these guys apparently would drink the urine of someone who had eaten the mushrooms, since the urine was still hallucinogenic but didn't cause any of the side effects: exactly the same as some Hindu priests apparently did with Soma. So, there you have it, piss-drinking, druggie priests shaped early Hinduism.

16 STEALING IN THE NAME OF GOD

Just about every religion teaches that it is universally wrong to steal from your neighbor … except if you do this in the name of God, in which case stealing on a massive scale is not a sin but a glorious feat of religious piety. Even though it is true that not all religions feel this way, this piece of kleptomaniac theology is particularly popular in Western faiths. All the passages in Jewish scriptures prohibiting theft, in fact, clash head on with the many, many references to God giving the thumb up to the taking of wealth and land from non-monotheistic peoples. We go from the tales of Exodus when Moses's boys fled Egypt, but not before stealing everything that wasn't nailed to a wall, to the wars of extermination against those who dared to live on what Jewish tribes believed should be their Promised Land. Truth be told, for most of the following 3,000 years Jews didn't have the power to act on this idea, but Christianity and Islam gladly borrowed this concept and ran with it.

In the 1400s, for example, the pope channeled Jesus's message to love your enemies by … granting Iberian monarchs full permission to “invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms … and other property … and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery.” Stealing the pagans’ lands, wealth and their very freedom apparently was not considered a violation of “Thou Shall Not Steal.” God had obviously meant “Thou Shall Not Steal From Other Believers.” Unbelievers were fair game.

Inspired by this idea, Spanish conquistadors hacking and slashing their way through the Americas justified the slaughter of American Indians by arguing that they had brought it upon themselves. After all, the Jesus-loving Spaniards had read to them a proclamation—the Requerimiento—asking them to acknowledge the Catholic Church as ruler of the world, and accept Spanish rule and missionaries. If they stubbornly refused the Church to be their new boss, then they clearly deserved being killed, enslaved and dispossessed of their lands. To put it simply, the Spaniards established a principle that would later be enthusiastically picked up by waves of other European colonists: non-Christians had no title to the territories they lived on, since it was a right and a duty for Christians to constantly expand the kingdom of God all over the earth. Endorsed in the 1800s even by the American Supreme Court under the name of “doctrine of discovery,” this notion gave free license to the colonization of all lands inhabited by non-Christians.

It may appear odd that this brand of Christian morality held that stealing an apple from a store was a mortal sin, but stealing entire continents from their legitimate owners was a religious calling.

Never mind that this belief seems more fitting for the characters from Grand Theft Auto than for pious religious people. Once the debate was framed as a competition for real estate between God and the devil, then stealing was no longer stealing. It was an act of devotion to God. When told that any land that is not in the hands of God's people is in the hands of the devil, what's a good Christian to do? This same concept of Christian entitlement to take the lands of inferior people was still popular in the 1800s under the name of “Manifest Destiny.” By enlisting Jesus as an accomplice, Christian colonists could actually feel good about the takeover of other peoples’ land and property. This—in a nutshell—is how Christianity provided the theory for the stealing of the American continent.

So many Christian examples may have given the impression that Christians were unique in this effort, but this is far from true. Muslim states played the same game with equal skill. Muhammad regularly advocated the pillaging of the enemies of Islam. And violent conquest and forced conversions have been the main dishes served throughout history by Muslim armies wherever they have set foot. As it turns out, it is not a coincidence if Christianity and Islam are the most practiced religions in the world. Conquest (which is a fancy name for armed robbery on a large scale) is the most powerful tool for spreading one's religion. And no one has played this game as successfully as members of these faiths.

17 ORGIES FOR JESUS

What if Christian theology dismissed the virgin birth and other miracles as fairy tales? What if your pastor/priest told you to flush the Ten Commandments down the toilet and instead live life to the fullest? What if Sunday service at your local church consisted in a juicy orgy? All of this could have happened had Carpocrates had his way.

Carpo …who? The lead character in our story was the leader of a second century Christian community based in the Greek islands. Back in those days, early Christians couldn't agree on just about anything. Official Christian doctrine hadn't been fully established yet, so an extremely wide range of opinions and teachings fell under the label of “Christianity.” The only thing they had in common was that they all thought Jesus was a cool guy. Other than that, everything else was up for debate since they couldn't even agree on which books should become official scriptures. Some Christians believed their religion was to remain exclusively for Jewish people. Others wanted to open it to all ethnicities. Some believed Jesus and God were one. Others were far from sold about this. Some were strict ascetics. Others enjoyed a very sensual life. Some promoted women as leaders within their groups. Others felt women were good to cook dinner and make babies, but religious leaders? Ha!

In the midst of this very chaotic beginning, Carpocrates emerged as a particularly charismatic preacher, who soon attracted enough of a following as to give birth to his own branch of Christianity. His ideas were just a tad on the wild side. Jesus—Carpocrates argued—was as human as anyone else. He was a visionary whose brilliance and wisdom put him in touch with God, but was not God himself. This didn't diminish Jesus's status in Carpocrates's eyes, since it set him up as a model of behavior that regular human beings could hope to emulate. The whole story of the virgin birth made Carpocrates laugh. In his view, good old Jesus was conceived in the old fashioned way: through sweaty sex. The depth of Jesus's wisdom was enough for Carpocrates to admire and love him, so he felt no need for any supernatural special effects. Since this beginning was apparently not controversial enough, Carpocrates promptly taught his followers to reject Mosaic Law as well as the prevailing morality of his times as mere human opinions, not divine commandments. A goodie-goodie morality was according to Carpocrates nothing but a cage built by those who were too scared by life's intensity. The soul could only achieve freedom and fulfillment by experiencing all of life, without discriminating too much. Only in this way, it would free itself from the cycle of reincarnation …

Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention that? Carpocrates's followers—like the members of many other early Christian sects—fully believed in reincarnation. And just like several tantric schools found in the history of both Hinduism and Buddhism, they also believed that human beings should explore every emotion without holding back. Sensual pleasure in their eyes was not any less sacred than the most spiritual practices, so good food, sex and every other earthly joy was embraced as a stepping stone toward liberation.

This determination to live life to the fullest went hand in hand with another radical notion. Carp considered differences in wealth and social class as unnatural perversions. Since everyone is born naked and equal in front of God, human attempts to gain status at the expense of others were misguided and ultimately against God's plan. The cure for the very human tendency toward ego aggrandizing was to discourage the evil of private property. Instead, everything—from material possessions to sexual partners—was to be held in common. Coupled with Carp's insistence on indulging in sensual pleasures, this idea led his followers to regularly stage sexual orgies as part of their spiritual practices … which makes you wonder: just how different would the world be had mainstream forms of Christianity decided to embrace Carpocrates rather than stern moralists like Saint Paul and Saint Augustine? I think it's a safe bet that church attendance would be much higher.

18 BEING A JEWISH MESSIAH IS NOT AS FUN AS ADVERTISED

Every so often throughout the history of Judaism somebody will steal the spotlight by claiming to be the redeemer that Jewish people have been waiting for. Typically, he gains scores of followers but before long he also meets an early, bloody death. In the course of many centuries, dozens of people have rushed with masochistic enthusiasm to fill the shoes of the expected Messiah. Maybe they really believed they were on a mission from God. Or maybe they just liked the attention. In either case, the point is that there has never been a shortage of volunteers for the job.

Despite dying in the usual gruesome fashion (for the joy of Mel Gibson and S & M fans everywhere), Jesus clearly won the contest for the most famous among the contenders for the Messiah title. What few people know, however, is that Jesus had a serious challenge in the 1600s—a man who set Jewish messianic expectations on fire and looked like he had all the cards to start another new religion that could give Christianity a run for its money. The reason why he didn't is because … well, let's not rush to the end of our story yet.

The man was Sabbatai Zevi, a Kabbalah enthusiast who grew up in the area of modern day Turkey under the shadow of the Ottoman Empire. Among both Christians and Jews, many were those looking for signs of a coming Messiah ushering humanity into a new age and/or the end of the world. After battling for much of his early life some serious manic-depressive tendencies, Sabbatai promptly stepped up to the messianic plate ready to claim the title. In case his proclaiming he was the Messiah wasn't radical enough, Sabbatai also scandalized many fellow Jews by breaking traditional customs by eating nonkosher food and speaking the forbidden name of God. While he was at it, he also took as a wife a beautiful former hooker who in infancy had survived the massacre of Jews in Poland, and who believed she was destined to marry the Messiah. According to his followers (which at the beginning weren't that many), these violations were signs that the old laws no longer applied now that the Messiah had arrived. Many of the higher ups in the Jewish religious hierarchy didn't buy it and opposed him fiercely (which is exactly the same way in which the Jewish religious elite had reacted to Jesus).

Unlike Jesus, however, Sabbatai managed to gain thousands of followers rather quickly from both Europe as well as from the Ottoman Empire. The desperation felt by many Jews because of the extreme anti-Semitism they faced made many ready to embrace this new Messiah, since they felt he couldn't have come at a more opportune time. In 1665, Sabbatai pushed his luck by predicting that within a year he and his right hand man—who, incidentally, was supposed to be a new incarnation of the prophet Elijah—would conquer the world and lead all Jews back to Israel. This bold prediction spurred thousands of Jews to begin selling everything they owned in preparation for their trip back to the Promised Land.

This kind of bravado, however, didn't sit well with the Ottomans, who controlled that part of the world. The grand vizier promptly had him arrested. And this is where Sabbatai found out that being the Messiah was not as fun as advertised. The grand vizier, in fact, told him that the only way he would be freed would be by performing a miracle. First he would be stripped naked, and then the court archers would use him as a target. If his messianic powers could deflect the arrows, then he would be free to go. Faced with the archers, Sabbatai suddenly remembered that his passion for martyrdom had run out, and that he had actually always wanted to convert to Islam. Satisfied with having exposed him as a charlatan, the Ottomans let him live. Some diehards among his followers tried to spin the whole thing as part of a super complicated messianic move to redeem the whole world by sacrificing his convictions—and, by the way, there are a few thousand people who still believe this today—but clearly this was a hard sell. Had Sabbatai been a little crazier or gutsier, it's likely that a fourth major Western religion would have joined Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

19 IF YOU ARE POOR, IT’S BECAUSE GOD HATES YOUR GUTS

The history of Christianity is like a treasure chest for anyone who is fond of contradictions. The Gospels bicker with each other by relating similar tales in very different ways. But even more obviously, Christianity has often so dramatically departed from the words attributed to Jesus as to make you wonder how these glaring contradictions can be justified. Jesus tells you to “Love your enemies” and “Turn the other cheek”? So let's show how much we love Jesus by waging crusades, inquisitions, witch-hunts, and brutal campaigns of repression against anyone who doesn't love Him as much as we do. Jesus's pacifism has drowned in the hyper-violence that has characterized much of Christian history.

But—we may object—most Christians alive today seem to have lost the bloodthirsty enthusiasm of their ancestors, and are no longer inclined to exterminate non-Christians. Even though it is true enough that chopping the unbelievers’ heads off may no longer be a popular pastime, the vast majority of Christians still conveniently forget about another theme that was central to Jesus's ideology, and structure their lives in direct opposition to it. Jesus, in fact, was one of the most anti-capitalist thinkers this side of Karl Marx. Yet, most Christians are capitalists. What gives?

The concept of capitalism may have not existed in its modern forms during Jesus's times, but Jesus's words about accumulation of wealth leave little to the imagination. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke all report Jesus saying: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.”

Damn … does it get any blunter than this?

Just to make sure we are paying attention, Jesus hammers the same point over and over, repeating multiple times his condemnation of accumulation of wealth. We find him telling wannabe followers to sell all their possessions and give the money to the poor (in case you are wondering, this made some decide that following Jesus was not such a hot idea anymore). In another passage, he categorically states that you can't serve God and wealth at the same time. Elsewhere he warns us to focus on spiritual wealth rather than material wealth, and not to “store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy …” In yet a different occasion, he tells “Woe to the rich for you have received your consolation.” And in a series of sentences that are as antithetical to spirit of capitalism as they come, he advises his followers not to make any plans about the future in regards to food and shelter, since God will take care of everyone's basic needs.

Considering how insistent Jesus is on this topic, it is with little surprise that we find out in other parts of the New Testament how his early followers shared everything among each other, and nearly eliminated private property.

In the face of this ultra-radical stance about wealth by their founder, it would be easy to conclude that most Christians live by making vows of poverty and shunning wealth like the plague. But that's not quite the way things play out. God may be cool—most modern Christians think—but so is gold. Why should we have to choose one over the other? Ever since the Protestant Reformation, any qualms any Christian may have had about chasing good, old-fashioned cash began to fade. Many Catholics had maintained a theology frowning on accumulation of wealth, but simply had chosen to ignore it in practice. Plenty of Protestants, instead, decided to feel better about the whole thing and banish hypocrisy by reinventing the economic ideology of Christianity. Step one was to conveniently skip the many, many passages mentioned above. Step two was to focus instead on the biblical passages (mostly in the Old Testament) approving of wealth. Step three was to argue that since nothing in the world happens without God willing it, economic success (or the lack of thereof) is a quantifiable way to judge how much God does or does not favor you.

Voilà! The tables are turned and suddenly the obsession for money making has been recycled as a perfectly acceptable Christian endeavor. In the theology endorsed by some Christians (particularly those espousing the quintessential American “gospel of prosperity”) accumulating wealth is not only justifiable but almost a Christian duty since material prosperity is God's reward for His faithful followers. The obvious corollary is that if you are poor, instead, it is probably because God hates your guts.

What makes this hijacking of Jesus's message even funnier are the ways in which the God & Gold enthusiasts have tried to claim that Jesus was himself wealthy. Only the rich—they reason—could afford to travel around like he did and not work. But my all time favorite is the argument that Roman soldiers gambled for the right to take Jesus's underwear after he died suggesting he was so rich that even his underwear was made of very expensive materials.

Really? Is that what this theology hangs by? Jesus underwear? Memo to self: if I ever try to justify my beliefs by appealing to a divine pair of underwear, it's time to admit defeat.

20 CRAZY WISDOM, LAKOTA-STYLE

Lakota religion is not for sissies: they shed blood during the sacrifice of the Sun Dance, seek visions in the midst of the wilderness while on prolonged fasts, and cook themselves in the extreme heat of the sweat lodge. As members of an American Indian tribe renowned for their skills as warriors and fighting spirit, the Lakota apply this same mindset to their religious ceremonies. Putting their body on the line is their way of praying. But Lakota spiritual life also includes something less well known and infinitely weirder than some of the macho displays of toughness for which they are famous. It is home to the heyoka—one of the most bizarre figures in all of the world's religions.

Heyoka are individuals who received a vision from the spirits of thunder. In exchange for the vision and for the powers that come with it—which can range from the ability to bring rain to healing—the thunder spirits demand that those they bless turn themselves into “sacred clowns.” This is something so at odds with how most religions view the world that it deserves an explanation. In the minds of most people, clowns are strange looking guys who are supposed to make kids laugh—not exactly what we typically connect with the word “sacred.” What the hell is a sacred clown, then?

Heyokas are clowns in the sense that, by violating all the most basic social rules and routinely doing the opposite of what is normally expected, their behavior comes across as hilariously funny. They may say “yes” when they mean “no,” go around half-naked complaining about the heat in the midst of a blizzard, shiver and cover up with blankets on the hottest summer day, laugh at funerals, cry when everyone around them is happy, pretend having sex with anything that has a pulse during sacred ceremonies, and the list goes on …

At the same time, they are also sacred. Not only are they believed to possess supernatural powers beyond the reach of ordinary mortals, but also through their outrageous actions they teach religious lessons of the utmost importance. Although it may not be obvious, there's a method to their madness. Addicted to a sharp dualism, much of humanity likes to divide the universe in neatly divided categories: black or white, masculine or feminine, sacred or funny, etc. The heyoka's message is that this is a dangerous illusion. With all their weird antics, they shake people out of their habits and invite them to look at reality in a different way. By acting contrary to normal expectations and flirting with seeming contradictions, the heyoka are the ambassadors of paradox, the living embodiment of a yin-yang way of perceiving the world, constantly bringing together what regular humans keep separate. In doing this, they remind us that life is always more complex and more beautiful than any doctrine and any simplistic category. It's a never-ending dance of opposites that are not easily divided. Their enemies are the dualism blinding us to the true nature of reality and self-importance from which all dogmas are born. Laughter is their way of giving battle, and cracking people up even in the most atrocious situations is their mission. The more something is sacred and important, the more most people in the world become overly serious and rigid. But the heyoka agrees with Nietzsche when he says that if we don't want to be crushed by the heaviness of it all, the most deadly serious of issues need to be approached with levity and playfulness.

21 A LAWFUL, ISLAMIC MARRIAGE … THAT LASTS AN HOUR

It's a fairly safe bet to assume that if you are looking for a paradise of free love and sexual indulgence, Iran may not be the first country that comes to mind. Ever since the 1979 Revolution ushered rabid fundamentalists to power, the Islamic Republic of Iran has not exactly been known for an enlightened attitude about sex. I mean … hell … any country that has a morality police whose tasks include arresting women whose coats are too short or whose head scarves are not tight enough doesn't sound like the right place if you are looking for a good time. Even if we move past the first impressions, the reality on the ground doesn't get much better. The Iranian legal code, after all, states that unmarried couples having sex or simply dating and hanging out together can be arrested and flogged. And to make things more cheerful, adulterers are to be stoned to death.

But horrendously strict rules go hand in hand with the very Iranian habit of finding creative ways to bypass them. Enters the legal institution of sigheh. A man and a woman can marry with the blessing of a cleric. Nothing strange so far, except that these are marriages that come with an expiration date. The couple, in fact, can and will write down the expected length of their marriage—which can range anywhere from a few minutes to 99 years—and how much money should go to the woman as “dowry.” In honor to the usual double standards popular in the Middle East (and in much of the rest of the world, for that matter), men are free to enter as many temporary marriages as they want, whereas women can only enter one at a time. Sunni Muslims have banned this custom, but the Shi'ites (the majority in Iran) firmly believe that Muhammad was down with temporary marriages. Even though the Koran doesn't seem to even discuss this, its supporters regularly quote a koranic passage that they believe legitimizes this practice. Perhaps knowing that the Koran's backing of temporary marriages rests on very thin ice, they are also quick to add that in any case there exist several traditions about Muhammad's wholehearted approval of this idea. Allah is merciful—they argue—and in His mercy he wouldn't want a man who is on a pilgrimage or otherwise separated from his wife to go without any sex for too long.

Marriages lasting barely an hour? Women being paid for them? In the same ultra-conservative nation where heavy sexual repression is touted as a virtue by Islamic fundamentalists, the very same religious authorities call “temporary marriage” what everyone else would call prostitution. But reality is yet again more complicated than appearances may suggest. Or rather, in many, many cases temporary marriages are indeed just a front for prostitution. Odd? Yes. Hypocritical? Obviously. Why even bother being such hard asses about sex and maintaining that prostitution is a terrible sin if then you turn around and allow it under a different name? I understand it's in the nature of religious fundamentalism to set up rules that no one can live by, and to regularly behave in direct contradiction to one's own moralistic preaching, but still … There is, however, another side to temporary marriages. Many couples that simply want to date freely, without being harassed by the religious fascists of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, use temporary marriages as a license to spend time together and explore with sex outside of regular marriage in a cultural environment in which these options are not allowed. In either case—whether we are talking about prostitution or dating—temporary marriages are proof that Iranian creativity will always be stronger than the most repressive fundamentalist zeal.

22 ENLIGHTENED RELIGIOUS POLICIES AND MASS MURDER

The two elements that make up the title above don't exactly look like they belong hand in hand together. Generally speaking, enlightened religious policies and mass murder are the pastimes of very different kinds of people. So, the logical assumption would be to imagine that our story will contrast an atrocious tale of mass murder committed by some horrible human being against one of enlightened religious policies promoted by a saint. But as it turns out, our story is much weirder than that. The lead character who is about to join us on the page had a peculiar talent for both these hobbies at the same time. The man we are speaking of is Genghis Khan (a.k.a. Temujin).

Few individuals have left a mark on human history as deep as Genghis Khan. Here is a guy who single-handedly created the biggest empire the world had ever seen. He began his career as a hunted down renegade who didn't even control his own, tiny Mongolian tribe and ended up as the ruler of dozens of nations and millions of people. But clearly, no one gets to conquer a huge chunk of the earth without busting a few heads. And in Genghis Khan's case, the heads were not so few after all. It has been estimated that his armies may have massacred somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 million people. From Russia to Iran, from the edges of Western Europe to China, his name used to evoke a very justified, overwhelming fear. His Mongolian hordes made it their profession to level one civilization after another. Anyone who dared to stand against them regularly met the same, predictable, sorry end. In some places, such as the area of modern day Iran, the population wouldn't return to its pre-Genghis Khan-showed-up-in-the-neighborhood size for several hundred years.

But alongside with drowning Eurasia in blood, he also promoted some of the most advanced religious policies anyone could expect in the 1200s—or at any other time for that matter—and, incidentally planted trees wherever he went, thereby removing several million tons of carbon from the atmosphere. Unlike many other world conquerors, he didn't even bother claiming some divine right for taking other peoples’ lands. “I kick your ass”—Genghis reasoned—“because I am a big fish and you are a small fish. The day you get bigger, knock at my door and we'll go at it again. Neither Gods nor morality have anything to do with this.”

But more importantly, unlike what his contemporaries were doing throughout Western Europe and much of the Middle East, Genghis Khan gave full freedom of religion to all people within the lands over which he ruled. Despite being an adept of his tribe's brand of shamanism—which was the staple of the Mongols’ ceremonial life at that time—he was very interested in learning anything useful from other religions. So in this spirit, he encouraged religious syncretism and sponsored many debates between the representatives of different spiritual traditions. Taoists, Buddhist monks, Confucian scholars, Christian missionaries and Muslim traders were regularly invited to exchange ideas in his presence. The same man who had killed a greedy governor by pouring molten gold down his throat was also responsible for a truly enlightened policy of religious toleration. As history would have it, one of the first paladins of freedom and individual rights also happened to be a mass murderer.

23 BILL CLINTON HATES MASTURBATION AND OTHER TALES

Bill Clinton's loyalty to the woman he had appointed as U.S. surgeon general was unwavering. Joyce Elders was the first African-American woman ever to take on this post, and was also a die-hard Clinton supporter. When many called for her head, after she had told abortion opponents to get over their “love affair” with the fetus, Clinton defended her. When controversy erupted after she had openly advocated drug legalization, Clinton again stuck to her. But then came the fateful day when she committed such a grievous sin that even Clinton could not forgive.

Did she secretly torture babies in her basement? Was she plotting against the safety of the nation? Much worse … At an international conference, when she was asked whether she believed that masturbation should be taught as part of sex education courses, she replied, “I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught.” Without thinking about it twice, Clinton promptly fired her.

Sorry for the interruption, Bolelli, but wasn't this book about religion? What does Bill Clinton have to do with it?

The fact that, at the dawn of the 21st century, a supposedly liberal president would consider the topic of masturbation a deal breaker speaks volumes about popular attitudes toward sex in the Western world. This is not just the result of Clinton's weird idiosyncrasies. And it is not about Clinton drinking from the Kool-Aid of hypocrisy, as most politicians are required to do. It would be easy to think so considering that his puritan stance doesn't exactly fit neatly with him having oral sex with a White House intern. But, even though Clinton and hypocrisy are on a first name basis, the roots of this story reach deeper. Clinton's allergy to masturbation is a direct result of centuries of sexually repressive theologies, and of the effects that this religious heritage has left in the psyche of most people.

The Clinton story, in fact, finds many carbon copies in the lives of countless religious leaders preaching a very strict brand of sexual morality. Take the case of Ted Haggard, for example. A seemingly true bastion of Christian ethics, Haggard regularly decried the evils of homosexuality and the virtues of absolute abstinence before marriage, and complete monogamy in marriage. Haggard's popularity among conservative Christians propelled him up the rank to the presidency of the National Association of Evangelicals. But he didn't exactly practiced what he preached. Perhaps figuring that if you stray a little you might as well stray a lot, Haggard went all out. When he didn't don the robes of moral censor of the sex lives of others, Haggard was busy buying crystal meth from a gay hooker with whom he was regularly having sex. Damn … Clinton, with his measly Monica Lewinsky scandal, was an amateur by comparison.

But scores of Catholic priests take the cake when it comes to writing the master text on the clash between theory and practice. To this day, the Catholic Church still considers contraception a sin (incidentally most other forms of Christianity felt the same way until the early 1900s). And much like Bill Clinton, it considers masturbation as a ticket to hell. The willingness to be ultra-strict on these issues, however, didn't extend to raping little kids. Not only so many of these robe wearing men preaching against sexual “immorality” were enthusiastic pedophiles but, even more disturbing, the establishment of the Catholic Church did its best to protect them rather than their victims.

I could go on with examples until I run out of ink, but the point is that it seems as if the more one endorses impossibly severe sexual ideologies, the more likely he or she is to practice the exact opposite. Rather than questioning the unhealthy sexual ethics peddled as normal by their religion of choice, they verbally uphold the party line only to miserably fail in action. After all, Bill Clinton and Ted Haggard find out they are twins separated at birth.

24 WHY WOULD A YOUNG IRISH CATHOLIC WOMAN TEAR UP A PICTURE OF THE POPE ON NATIONAL TV?

On an evening of October of 1992, in the eyes of most Catholics, Sinéad O’Connor turned overnight from the girl who sang beautiful love ballads such as “Nothing Compares 2 U” into the antichrist's employee of the month. Sinéad had gone on Saturday Night Live, and performed a modified version of Bob Marley's “War” which, in her rendition, discussed child abuse. To wrap the night, she pulled out a picture of the pope, and tore it up in front of the camera. “Fight the real enemy,” she told a stunned audience.

Sinéad clearly was not trying to win a popularity contest. Millions of Catholics probably regretted the good, old days when they could have dealt with her by barbecuing her at the stake. And even much of the non-Catholic world responded with equal moral indignation. The following day, cheering protesters crushed hundreds of her CDs with steamrollers outside of Rockefeller Center. Joe Pesci and Frank Sinatra vied with each other for who could proclaim louder their intention of beating her to a pulp. Just a couple of weeks later, she was booed off stage by the audience attending a Bob Dylan tribute! Her very promising career never fully recovered. Just about everyone looked at her as a nut case who didn't know what she was talking about. Her allegation that the upper echelons of the Catholic Church had covered up for decades thousands of cases of child abuse—which was the reason for her gesture—was dismissed as a crazy conspiracy theory created by a virulent anti-Catholic.

But as it turns out, she was neither crazy nor anti-Catholic. As later revelations made abundantly clear, Sinéad was right. Simply, she had dared to speak out about a horrific issue long before doing so would be popular.

In the following years, evidence began to emerge from every corner of the world. The dirty little secret Sinéad was talking about became impossible to ignore. In just about every continent, thousands of kids had been raped by Catholic priests. If the story stopped here, one could push the argument that maybe, just maybe, the Church was not responsible for the action of some awful individuals who just happened to don Catholic robes. But the actual rapes were only the first layer in this sickening tale. In case after case, when reports of the abuses climbed the ladder of the Catholic hierarchy, reaching the ears of those in leadership positions, the reaction was always the same: rather than reporting the rapists to the police, let's just reassign them to a new location where they could continue their child-molesting activities without attracting too much attention. If some victims are too determined to give up, let's just throw some money their way in exchange for their silence. But in all cases, let's make sure that they don't sue us thereby spoiling the good name of Catholicism. Time and time again, the Church's response indicated a greater concern with protecting its image and reputation than with protecting kids. As Sinéad would argue, the fact that so many local churches took the exact same steps to cover up the tracks of the rapists among them was evidence that they were following the same directives from the very top of the Church.

The Church's public relations department certainly botched their damage control operation. Instead of taking responsibility and trying to figure out concrete ways to prevent further abuses, the Church responded by blaming the media coverage that—according to them—had focused excessively on the issue. “Protestants rape kids too”—they screamed loudly—“but the big, bad media only focuses on the kids raped by us poor Catholics …” Not exactly a sympathy-inducing argument. And just to add farce to tragedy, Catholic politicians like the former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum also blamed cultural relativism and sexual permissiveness for these events. The Church itself concluded that the 1960s’ liberal standards, feminism and a growing acceptance of homosexuality went hand in hand with a spike in priestly child abuse cases. The rapist priests—in other words—were just victims of the liberal culture that had caused people to question the Church and its sexual rules. Damned hippies… it was really all their fault.

Sinéad's critics, despite all their smug self-righteousness, were eventually silenced by the mountains of evidence indicating she had been right all along. But clearly they forgot to apologize with the same loudness with which they had attacked her. Not only had they been wrong about her being crazy, but they were also wrong about their portrayal of her as an anti-Catholic zealot. What everybody forgot in the midst of all the confusion was that Sinéad was herself Catholic. To be sure, she disagreed with much of what the Catholic Church had done, but she also believed Catholicism should be rescued by the hands of those who had hijacked it, and should be restored to its rightful glory. This is why she decided to be ordained by a dissident Catholic group that had broken away from the Church. Her mission—she said—was nothing less than rescuing God from religion.

Precisely because she loved what Catholicism could be, she could not tolerate what Catholicism had become. In a 2010 open letter to the pope, Sinéad was as unrepentant as ever. Without missing a beat from her picture-tearing days, she flat out told the pope he was a liar for pretending to be shocked by the scandal, when he had penned a letter to all Catholic bishops in the world reminding them that anyone refusing to take an oath of silence on the matter should be excommunicated. Boycotting the Church—she continued—would be the only way to force it to take responsibility, so that real healing could begin.

Speaking of one of her favorite heroines, Joan of Arc, Sinéad once said, “How you get to be a saint is you speak out against the Church, they murder you, and then a century later they make you a saint.” So, maybe there is still time for a Saint Sinéad. If not, she has my vote to become the next pope.

25 THE TRIAL OF THE ZOMBIE POPE

Nobody likes ending up in front of judge and jury being charged with serious crimes. The hero of our story, however, handled it like a pro. He didn't even move a muscle as the prosecution vilified him in every way. He didn't break a sweat, didn't tense up, and his heart rate didn't climb up at all. Few people in history ever maintained such emotional composure during a trial. The fact that he was already a corpse probably helped.

In case I forgot to mention it, he also happened to be the pope (or at least, he was when he still had a pulse). How did Pope Formosus (I swear I didn't make up the name) end up as a dead body on trial?

The year was 897 CE, and these were the days when powerful rival families battled each other to have one of their own elected as pope. Think of it as a Catholic version of The Godfather movies: intrigues, alliances, murder and dirty tricks were all fair game in this quest for the papacy. Apparently, these rivalries were so intense that they didn't end with death. So, when a certain Stephen VI became the new pope, he promptly had the body of his predecessor dug up and put on trial at the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. After propping Formosus in a chair, Stephen read the charges against him: perjury, serving as bishop while a layman, and trying to usurp the papacy.

Ok, now, let's take a timeout. How does a dead man defend himself from the charges? A deacon was appointed to speak at the trial for the zombie pope, but he clearly didn't do such a good job since (surprise, surprise!) Formosus was found guilty—an outcome which only raises more questions. How exactly do you punish a corpse? What kind of sentence could you possibly impose? Sentencing him to death, in fact, may be a little redundant (I was about to say “overkill” but … ).

Stephen VI was a creative kind of guy so he had the corpse stripped of his papal clothes, had the three fingers he had used for blessings cut off, and declared all his acts invalid. As an added insult, the body was buried in a cemetery for foreigners.

But Pope Stephen quickly changed his mind. Since this episode was not quite macabre enough, Stephen ordered the body to be dug up again, tied with weights and thrown into the river.

And the story doesn't end here. Popular legends began to crop up all over Rome. The word on the streets was that the corpse of the zombie pope had emerged from the river and had begun performing miracles. Perhaps in an effort to appease the apostolic living dead, the populace staged an uprising against Stephen, who was quickly imprisoned and strangled.

The next pope, Theodore II, had a plan to fix the situation. The corpse, which presumably had stopped performing miracles and was again behaving as corpses are legitimately supposed to behave, was to be reburied with honors in St. Peter's Basilica. And so it was. A couple of different later popes annulled the verdict of the trial (and one of them in his infinite wisdom prohibited further trials of corpses … just in case someone felt compelled to try this experiment again). But since any good story needs a sequel, another pope yet (Sergius III) reaffirmed the legitimacy of the zombie trial and, according to at least one source, had Formosus dug up and put on trial again, only to finish the job by chopping his head off and giving him a second dive into the river. Apparently, Pope Sergius III knew what all good zombie killers need to know: the only sure proof way to kill a zombie is decapitation.

26 KILL THE BUDDHA

Most religions are not too keen about people comparing their sacred literature to toilet paper or inviting us to murder their founders. Just consider how the Iranian religious authority sentenced Salman Rushdie to death because of a “blasphemous” novel, or how violence and hatred immediately followed the publication of cartoons making fun of Muhammad, or how many people throughout history have been burned at the stake for not showing the proper respect to religious authorities. Examples of this kind abound enough as to easily convince us that most religions are a tad sensitive about criticisms.

In light of all this, let's take a look at this statement, “There are neither Buddhas nor Patriarchs; Bodhidharma [a legendary leader of Buddhism in China] was only an old bearded barbarian. Sakyamuni and Kasyapa, Manjusri and Samantabhadra [Buddha and some of his main disciples] are only dung-heap coolies … Nirvana and bodhi are dead stumps to tie your donkeys. The twelve divisions of the sacred teachings are only lists of ghosts, sheets of paper fit only for wiping the pus from your boils.”

Or let's try another one. “If you encounter anywhere anyone who impedes your vision, quickly get rid of them.

When you encounter a Buddha, kill the Buddha. When you encounter a Patriarch, kill the Patriarch.”

Or yet again, “Do not take the Buddha for the Ultimate … As I look at him, he is still like the hole in the privy. As to the Bodhisattvas and Arhats, they are all … chains to keep you in bondage.”

If these types of statements don't raise the blood pressure of Buddhists across the globe, I don't know what would. It seems very logical that the Buddhist world would explode in anger and quickly raise a call for the heads of those who dared to speak so disrespectfully. But this is where the story gets complicated. The author of the first quote, in fact, was Hsuan Chien, a famous Buddhist teacher from the 9th century, whereas the author of the second and third quotes was Lin Chi, one of the most influential Buddhist masters in the history of Zen in China.

If you are confused, you are probably not alone. People of different religions regularly talk trash about each other's beliefs, but why would a Buddhist say such things? In the face of so many of their contemporaries turning Buddha into an object of worship, Hsuan Chien and Lin Chi were simply reminding their audience that the goal of Buddhism is not to pray to Buddha, but to become a Buddha yourself. You don't honor Buddha—these guys reasoned—by turning his teachings into a stiff dogma. You honor him by following in his footsteps, developing your own insight and becoming enlightened through your own efforts. Buddhist teachings are but maps to guide you on your journey. Worshipping the map or its author never helped any traveler find her destination.

Buddha's own teachings, after all, emphasized independent inquiry and personal experience over doctrine and strict rules. So, in an odd kind of way, Lin Chi and Hsuan Chien's words were paying homage to Buddha. Their quarrel was not with Buddha himself, but with those Buddhists who were missing the point. Their words were a shock tactic to shake people. Excessive devotion—they believed—is an obstacle to the freedom needed to find yourself, which is the true heart of Buddhism. It's too easy to deify someone else, build altars and drop on your knees praying Buddha for salvation. Get off your ass instead—Lin Chi and Hsuan Chien argued—and work for your own salvation, since neither gods nor buddhas can do it for you.

For the sake of honesty, it's worth mentioning that Lin Chi and Hsuan Chien's radical views scandalized many Buddhists. Already back in the 9th century, other Chinese Buddhist masters were horrified by what they perceived as heresy. But whereas within many other religions this conflict would have sparked holy wars, here it was simply dismissed as a difference of opinions. And so we are left with a religion in which those inviting people to metaphorically kill their founder are as famous and respected as those who spent their lives devoutly praying to his statues.

27 HOW TO GET MONEY AND SEX BY STARTING A RELIGIOUS CULT

Ok, girls and boys, today we'll study the blueprint to get mountains of sex and money by starting a religious cult.

Just to make sure you are suited for the job, let's go through some of the prerequisites: first, you need to be an awful human being who doesn't have the tiniest scruple about preying on the weak. In case you find this first step difficult, at the very least you need to be narcissistic and self-delusional enough as to overcome any moral restraint you may have by convincing yourself that you are not really exploiting your followers, but acting for their own good: turning them into your sex slaves is just a way to help them get over their hang ups; pushing them to donate all their wealth to you is a way to teach them to overcome attachments to the material world so they can become more spiritual …

If you can get through this, you need to have an intense personality and a commanding presence. In the cult game, personal charisma is half the battle.

No one will give you the keys to their lives if you sound like a monotone version of their third grade math teacher.

Bottom line, you need to appear exciting, and sound believable when you promise your followers that their miserable existences will be filled with miracles. Being a little crazy can also help as long as you can spin your insanity as a form of divine enlightenment that only seems crazy to the unenlightened masses. Since most followers, by definition, consider themselves unenlightened, you have a decent shot at selling this bullshit to them.

Oh, yes … bullshit. I almost forgot. Having a black belt in bullshit is probably the most important requirement of all. No matter how wild your claims, and how reality disproves them, you can be shielded by your great skill in bullshitting. Anything can be rationalized. Anything can be spun to your advantage, including failed promises and prophecies. Hell … Christianity began with the expectation that the world would end within a few years, and look how far it has gotten … You need to have an answer to every objection, and seem so sure of yourself as to make it appear that anyone not seeing the truth of your answers is obviously a moron. Since most people don't like being considered morons, they may second-guess their initial opposition, particularly if you have already recruited a few diehard followers on your side. There's strength in numbers. Mob mentality rules. The greater the number of people swallowing your bullshit as if it were gold, the greater the self-confidence required by anyone who wants to question you. “It doesn't seem right”—those on the fence may think—“but can I really be the only one who sees this? Can all these people really be wrong?” Once you get them thinking this way, expect them to be your followers before the day is over.

Being intelligent is not a strict prerequisite but it helps. Alternatively, you just need to find followers who are significantly dumber than you, which will make your job of manipulating them much easier. In either case, foster psychological dependency and use your followers’ insecurities to your benefit (incidentally, this is something that happens on a regular basis within most major organized religions, so remember you have lots of competition).

Which religion you pick is not too important. You can either argue that your message is the true version and fulfillment of an already popular religion, or you can start your own thing from scratch. There are advantages and disadvantages in each. But regardless of what you choose, you need to enlist God on your side. You can't be too moderate here. You are either God's ultimate prophet, or God Himself. Jim Jones (of Jonestown Massacre fame) proclaimed he was the reincarnation of Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha and Lenin. David Koresh more moderately only claimed to be the second coming of Jesus. And Da Free John would simply say he was “the living truth, the way of salvation, and the Eternal Master of Men.” (Mmmhhh … I wonder if this is what he put on his business card ….) It is a lot easier to convince people to part with their cash and spouses if they feel it's God who is asking for them.

Coming up with a flamboyant name may help by making you sound more exotic and out there, but it could also backfire, depending on your audience, so be careful (were there really people who took seriously a dude who called himself Da Free John?!?)

Last, but not least, it may be a good idea to create a sense of urgency. I strongly recommend predicting some cosmic apocalypse about to consume the world (except for your followers, of course) or coming up with a horrible conspiracy by some evil enemy out to get you (anyone who sounds powerful—from the devil to the U.S. government—would do). Nothing brings people together and make them more fanatical than facing some common threat.

If you follow the previous steps and play your cards right, the sky is the limit. You want multiple wives? Done. Your own private island in Fiji? No problem. Just make sure you don't run out of bullshit when some of your followers realize you have been playing them all along. Many major religions have succeeded at this, so it can be done.

28 HEIL JESUS!

Here's today's quiz: who said that the government should regard “Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life”? Saint Paul? The pope? Some evangelical Christian leader? Not exactly. Try Adolf Hitler …

Popular wisdom tells us that Nazism has nothing to do with religion: it was born from a purely secular worldview. If any connection with religion is made at all, it is typically to some weird reinvented form of Nordic paganism, but never to Christianity. Even though there are bits of truths in this, reality is much more complex than one would expect.

Getting inside Hitler's head is obviously a scary proposition and … let's face it … it's impossible since the guy is dead. There really is no way to know for sure what he thought. But his public track record reveals quite a few disturbing facts. Besides the detail that he grew up Catholic and at least nominally he remained Catholic until the end of his life, in his writings and speeches he paid homage to Christianity over and over again with multiple references to “eternal providence” and to the “creator of the universe.” He declared that Protestantism and Catholicism were “essential to the soul of the German people.” He added, “We hold the spiritual forces of Christianity to be indispensable elements in the moral uplift of most of the German people.” And he referred to Jesus as the “one true God” and his “Lord and Savior.” In his interpretation, Jesus was a great fighter who opposed the Jewish hierarchy. And Hitler's own job was to finish what Jesus had started (Mel Gibson probably feels the same way, but this is another story …). Granted that many Christians may have some issues with Hitler's take on Christianity, but still ….

In any case, without the assist served by nearly 2,000 years of anti-Semitic Christian theology—both Catholic and Protestant—the Final Solution would have been impossible to pull off. The genocide bandwagon would simply not have recruited enough support.

If the Church was secretly opposed to Nazism—as many people say—than they were very good at hiding it. Already in the late 1920s, the pope had struck some deals with fascist regimes across Europe. For example, in exchange for having Mussolini name Catholicism as the only official religion of the state, and give them monopoly over issues of birth, death, marriage and education, the pope had encouraged Catholics to support Italian fascism—even going so far as calling Mussolini “a man sent by Providence.” In a similar vein, the Church ended up supporting to varying degrees fascist movements in Spain, Portugal and Croatia. Graduating to making friends with the Nazis was the next logical progression. In the 1933 Concordat, the Church agreed to dismantle a German Catholic party to reduce political competition for Hitler. Both Protestant and Catholic groups regularly staged celebrations for Hitler's birthday. And to add a Catholic cherry to the Nazi cake, a German archbishop went so far as to officially bless the Fuhrer.

But wait … didn't Pope Pius XII harshly condemn Nazism? Yes … with great bravery he did this after Nazism had been defeated. While it was still powerful, Pius XII had preferred silence. Long before most everyone else knew, this pope had seen hard evidence that genocide against Jews was taking place. By the latter years of the war, Jews were rounded up by SS soldiers literally within sight of the pope's windows. And yet he never even threatened to excommunicate the thousands of SS soldiers who were practicing Catholics. Speaking out against the Holocaust may have helped more people realize that the rumors were indeed true, and pushed Western nations to make it easier for Jews to migrate. But Pius XII later said he was afraid speaking out might make things worse … which brings up the obvious question: at what point during the Holocaust did the pope think things were going well? The genocide machine was already working at maximum capacity killing over 6,000 Jews a day. How exactly could have things been worse?

Some argue Hitler's professions of faith are not to be believed since supposedly in his private statements he didn't seem too fond of Christianity. And maybe they are right … but the outright dismissing of any connection between Nazism and Christianity is just a bit over-simplistic.

29 BUDDHIST FUNDAMENTALISM?!?

It would seem like a safe bet to assume Buddhism should be immune to sudden attacks of rabid fundamentalism. Buddha, after all, was the first to state that people shouldn't get overly hung up on his teachings. In the parable of the raft, Buddha had argued his teachings were no different than a raft whose purpose is to carry one across a river. Once you have made your crossing, it doesn't do anybody any good to keep holding on to the raft for the rest of your life, or to worship it as a sacred icon. The raft is just a means to an end—something to carry you from place A to place B. And perhaps you don't even have to use the damn raft in the first place. Maybe you can figure out another way to reach your destination.

Given this unambiguous, all-out attack on dogma, it would seem like fundamentalism could not possibly find any space within Buddhism where to lay its eggs. And, for the most part, this has been the case. But fundamentalism is a crafty beast. And the words and intentions of a founder sometimes have preciously little to do with the religions named after them. Jesus's endless tirades against accumulation of wealth and those in favor of loving one's enemies didn't prevent much of Christianity from becoming infatuated with wealth and war. So, should we really be that surprised to catch Buddhism secretly making out with fundamentalism?

In the 1200s, a young Japanese monk named Zennichimaro grew disillusioned with the forms of Buddhism to which he was exposed, and decided most of the words attributed to Buddha were worthless junk. Only a single composition, the Lotus Sutra, was true and worthy of being revered. After changing his name to Nichiren, he went on the attack. All forms of Buddhism other than his own—he proclaimed—were nothing but heresy. And the only sensible thing to do in the face of heresy was to squash it—with violence, if necessary.

What happened to the parable of the raft? What about Buddhist nonviolence? Nichiren was clearly not a big fan of these concepts. Killing heretics—according to him—was not murder, but self-defense against the poisoning of Buddha's teachings. Over and over, he petitioned military rulers inviting them to impose throughout the land the “only true and correct form of Buddhism”—which is to say, his own. All others should be eliminated. When authorities showed themselves less than enthusiastic about heeding his call, he tried his hand at scare tactics by predicting that failure to impose his views as a state religion would result in famine and war. When even the fear card didn't deliver the desired results, he proclaimed he was the reincarnation of a bodhisatva, or, alternatively, of Buddha himself. And yet, local authorities remained unimpressed. They actually quickly grew annoyed with Nichiren and his fundamentalist dreams, and banished him on a couple of occasions. As a result, Nichiren's brand of Buddhist fundamentalism never had the muscle to back up its theology. But what if Nichiren had been able to find a receptive ear among a particularly powerful warlord? What if the powers that be had actually taken him seriously and followed his theocratic advice? Then, perhaps, Buddhism may have followed the fashion trends of Western religions, and witch hunts and inquisitions would have been launched in the name of Buddha.

30 FREE SPEECH AND ITS ENEMIES

The cast competing for the role of best supporting villain in our story is star-studded. Among the contenders we have the Vatican, Yale University, a few thousand Muslims foaming at the mouth, Bill Clinton, and the TV network Comedy Central.

Back in 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten decided it was a good idea to initiate a debate about censorship and Islam by inviting several cartoonists to draw caricatures of Muhammad—something that is very much a taboo for faithful Muslims.

How do you say, “when the shit hits the fan” in Danish? I’m not quite sure whether they even have this lovely expression in Denmark, but the second the cartoons were published Danish society quickly became acquainted with its meaning. With their usual coolness and inclination for civil debates, fundamentalist Muslims across the globe went nuts. Danish embassies were set on fire in Iran, Syria and Lebanon. Over 100 people were killed in demonstrations around the world. Groups of clerics demanded the death penalty for those editors who had dared to republish the cartoons within Muslim nations. Multiple (luckily failed) bombings were attempted in various strategic spots throughout Europe. A guy broke into the house of one of the cartoonists to express his disapproval with an axe and a knife (the cartoonist and his five-year-old granddaughter managed to barricade themselves until the arrival of the police).

Sharks bite. Fundamentalists love bloodshed. No big surprises so far. More shocking, however, is the way in which many people in the Western world responded to this explosion of rabid intolerance. While hardly anyone justified the violence, plenty were those who made apologies for it by placing the blame on the cartoonists who had “provoked” bombs and arson. In a great show of fundamentalist solidarity, the Vatican promptly declared, “The right to freedom of thought and expression, sanctioned by the Declaration of the Rights of Man, cannot imply the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers.”

Excuse me? According to the Vatican, apparently, freedom of expression is sacred as long as it doesn't touch on religious controversies. In other words, secular society has no right to offend religious sensibilities. You have an absolute right to say what you want—the reasoning goes—unless, of course, you say something that bothers us, in which case we should throw you in jail. Mmmhhh … yeah, a truly heart-warming show of dedication to basic freedoms.

A few years earlier, the Vatican had taken the same stance after the publication of Salman Rushdie's very controversial The Satanic Verses. When the Ayatollah Khomeini, one of the modern MVPs of Islamic fundamentalism, sentenced Rushdie to death for his writings, the Vatican—along with several Protestant and Jewish organizations—reacted with outrage … against Rushdie. He had himself to blame for his blasphemy—they commented. Rather than condemning Khomeini's display of religious fascism, the archbishop of Canterbury demanded that the British government expand and enforce more strictly blasphemy laws.

Ok, so it turns out that behind a facade of respect for democracy many Western religious leaders are still the same wannabe book-burners as their ancestors. But surely this unsavory tendency doesn't extend to secular society, right? Here comes Bill Clinton. Yes, the fundamentalist violence was bad—he admitted when questioned about it. But then he went on to save his harshest criticisms for the cartoonists themselves who were guilty of creating “these totally outrageous cartoons against Islam.”

In a similar vein, demonstrating the bravery for which the academic world is known, Yale University Press decided to publish a book on this controversy entitled The Cartoons that Shook the World without including the cartoons themselves! Why? Because Islamic fundamentalists may get upset, and react violently …

Following the exact same script, the bosses at Comedy Central censored multiple episodes of South Park that featured Muhammad. Now, South Park is notorious for making outrageous statements about everything and everyone, so why this sudden love for censorship? When you make fun of other religions they don't bomb you—Comedy Central figured—Muslims do. So let's not mess with those guys.

The lesson we draw from these sordid stories are: A.) Plenty of religious figures in the West are just as allergic to freedom of speech as Islamic fundamentalists; B.) If someone offends you, react with overwhelming violence, and no one will dare offend you anymore.

31 SAINT AUGUSTINE LOVED HOOKERS

Most people alive today probably don't know that their worldview has been influenced by a mildly psychotic North African who lived about 1600 years ago.

Few individuals, in fact, have had a bigger impact on the development of Christianity than Saint Augustine. Many of his interpretations and personal preferences have become articles of faith for Catholics, Protestants and members of the Orthodox Church alike. His ideas have dramatically affected even quite a few secular philosophies. And so this is how one man's weird idiosyncrasies have seeped into the subconscious of the Western world.

Most regrettable is Augustine's imprint on Christian attitudes about sex. The man was just obsessed with sex, but not in a good way: his instinctual passion for old fashioned, sweaty, animal sex clashed with the ultra strict standards created by Saint Paul and endorsed by Augustine himself. His own attraction to sex repulsed him and, in perfect schizophrenic fashion, made him hate himself. He pretty much wrote the textbook on Catholic guilt. He famously begged God to grant him chastity, but rushed to add “not yet.” Early on, he had plenty of sex wherever he could get it, but then repented in the classic “I was a horrible sinner and a sorry excuse for a human being, but God forgave me” style. Had they been around back then, shrinks would have shed tears of joy at the thought of having him as a patient. He was so weird and disturbed as to provide material for decades of therapy. But rather than making a good shrink happy, Augustine's rants ended up transforming Western culture.

Injecting a monstrous dose of guilt into the consciousness of millions of people, Augustine preached that celibacy was the absolute ideal. Sex within marriage for procreation could be tolerated, since kids—according to him—were the “only worthy fruit of sexual intercourse.” Not only anyone who had sex outside of marriage bought him or herself a ticket straight to hell, but even sex for pleasure within marriage was to be condemned. The sex drive itself, for Augustine, was the proof that we live in a fallen, sinful world.

Ah, Augustine, you sick old bastard …

In light of this morbid and super-severe view of sex, it may come as a surprise to find out that Augustine fully supported legal prostitution.

Mmhh, try again? Yup, the same sexophobic freak who had a fit at the thought of sex for fun was a big fan of prostitution. His logic—I use the word loosely—went something like this: the easy availability of hookers would save good Christian virgins from falling prey to the seductions of sex-crazed men. If they could satisfy their “bestial desires” with professional prostitutes, sinful men would leave innocent Christian girls alone. Building on this idea, Augustine argued that without prostitution, society would collapse due to excessive lust.

And so, faithfully following Augustine's lead, most European cities regulated red lights districts and brothels for many centuries. Just a little less than a thousand years after Augustine, another pillar of the Church, Saint Thomas Aquinas agreed with his verdict: legal prostitution was a necessary evil to be preserved. Sadly, in a stroke of particularly bad judgment, many Western nations moved away from regulated prostitution long before they abandoned Augustine's brand of sexual guilt.

Next time you run into a hooker, remember: she is performing a humanitarian service. She is a social worker, if you will, or some sort of a missionary. Saint Augustine says so.

32 BIBLE PORN

Back in their day, British Puritans hated the loose morals promoted by the plays performed at the London Theatre. Similarly, modern day religious conservatives always thunder against the corrupting influence of Hollywood, and its passion for sex and violence. Apparently, their God—just like the Puritan God—is allergic to boobs and murder.

But wait … is He really? Sometimes, all of this self-righteous outrage makes me wonder if these people ever really read the Bible. If you are looking for sex and extreme violence, the Bible is your friend, for it delivers much more than the average Hollywood flick. Hell … many biblical tales would make Hollywood producers blush, hug their teddy bears and hide under a blanket. Don't believe me? Ok, man, then settle down as I spin for you a few stories taken straight up from the Holy Book.

Genesis 19 offers us a plate full of rape, incest and intrigue. The one and only God is about to wipe out the very naughty cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, but His conscience forces him to send two angels to warn Lot, the only righteous man in town, to get out before all hell breaks loose. As the two angels are hanging out at Lot's place, a crowd of wannabe rapists gather outside of his home demanding that Lot delivers the angelic pair so they can all have sex with them. Lot, being the righteous man that he was pleads with them to reconsider and makes them a counteroffer: I have two virgin daughters in my home. How about you all rape them instead? The angels, however, save the day by kicking the crowd's collective ass, forcing them to give up.

But wait … don't worry … Lot's story is about to get—if at all possible—even more perverted. After Lot and his daughters escaped, and Sodom and Gomorrah are turned to dust, they wander through the desert without seeing a living soul. Worrying that perhaps all of humanity has already been squashed, and they'll never be able to find husbands, Lot's daughters promptly decide to save the human race by getting their father drunk, having sex with him while he is passed out and getting pregnant … Do Hollywood screenwriters really seem that bad now?

Judges 19 gives us a near carbon copy of this story—except worse. This time, we have a Jewish man and his concubine traveling across Israel and being taken in as guests by some old man. A crowd quickly arrives with the usual demand: give us this stranger so we can rape him. Reading from Lot's script, the old man reasons with them by offering instead the man's concubine and his own virgin daughter. This time, however, no angels are there to save the day, so the traveler throws his concubine in the street, where the mob quickly forgets about him, since they are too busy raping her to death.

Rape seems to be one of the Bible's favorite topics since we find it again in the story of Dinah (whose rape leads to a nice genocidal war), in the tale of one of King David's sons raping his own sister (2 Samuel 13) and in Deuteronomy 21 which lays down the rules for legitimately raping war captives (i.e. it seems that God doesn't approve of rape as soon as you capture your enemies’ women. First, you have to let them mourn their relatives you have slaughtered, and only then you can rape them …). Oh … I almost forgot … in one of the weirdest biblical rape scenes, one of King David's sons claims his father's throne (and displays considerable stamina) by raping all of David's concubines on a rooftop in sight of all of Jerusalem (2 Samuel 16).

What about Tamar? The poor girl is Judah's daughter-in-law, but her first husband dies before she can get pregnant. Judah dutifully sends her his second son in marriage, but he quickly dies as well. At this point, Judah has decided that this broad brings bad luck, so he refuses to marry her to his third son. But crafty little Tamar will not be denied an heir from the house of Judah. Covering herself with veils, she meets Judah on the road where she poses as a hooker. The old man doesn't recognize her, but decides that a hooker is just what he needs so he has sex with her in exchange for a goat (I’m not making it up …) and so Tamar finally manages to get pregnant courtesy of her father-in-law.

Damn … I’m running out of space and I haven't even touched on the innumerable examples of extreme violence in the Bible, and have barely scratched the surface of biblical sex. I should really talk about Phinehas who skewers together on the tip of a spear a Jewish prince and his wife while they are having sex. Or perhaps I should discuss the patriarch Abraham who marries his own half sister, but this doesn't prevent him from having sex with a slave girl. Or … I guess there's no time for any of them here for we need to mention the best sex tale of the whole Bible: the Song of Solomon (a.k.a. the Song of Songs). Unlike all the previous S & M stories that present sex in an ugly, disturbing light, here we have a series of super-explicit erotic poems that celebrate the joys of sex, even outside of marriage. Better yet, some of the poems are from the point of view of a woman who enjoys her lover as much he enjoys her. Line after line, these unnamed lovers get lost in the magic of tongues, moans, muscles and breasts, and forget all about the stupid rules established by some old, dried up priests.

Do I need to go on? When it comes to very explicit sex, the Bible clearly kicks Hollywood's ass any day of the week.

33 ONE BRIDE FOR FIVE BROTHERS

Even in the most liberal and permissive society, any woman regularly having sex with five men would be, at the very least, an object of endless gossip. In societies driven by religious fundamentalism, she would probably have a bull's eye on her as the whole village gathers to stone her to death. Most religions, in fact, are quick to make plenty of exceptions to their super-strict sexual customs for men only. In the most classic of patriarchal double standards, the same license is never granted to women. This is why it's quite a bit surprising that Hinduism—not exactly a tradition that can be accused of feminism—praises as models of virtues two women whose sexual escapades are legendary.

Let's begin with Draupadi. In the Mahabharata, the colossal Hindu epic poem, Arjuna wins her hand at an archery tournament organized by her father, the king of Panchala. Things get complicated when the groom returns to his palace and swollen with pride he goes to his mother, Kunti, telling her he brought back with him a great gift. In a twist that would make any porn director happy, before he can go on, Kunti replies, “Whatever it is, share it equally among your brothers.” Since Mama is sacred and can't be disobeyed, Arjuna complies. And Draupadi who was single just a few hours earlier, found herself married to five different guys known as the Pandavas. The Mahabharata doesn't get into the nitty-gritty details of their arrangements, but it does tell us that Draupadi spent one year at a time with each of her husbands, and had five children in five years from her five husbands.

It seems that in a previous life Draupadi had begged the god Shiva to grant her a husband with five very desirable qualities. Shiva had warned her that it would be next to impossible finding a single man possessing all those qualities at the same time, but Draupadi stuck to her request. Unable to find her such a man, Shiva figured that the next best thing was to find her multiple husbands, one for each of the qualities she craved.

And just to add another layer to the already abundant weirdness of this story, Draupadi has the considerable talent of returning a virgin each year before switching to a new husband. She almost makes the Virgin Mary look like an amateur by comparison … Some say this twist may be a later Christian idea superimposed on the original Hindu story, but in any case it's too good to pass …

Let's turn to Draupadi's mother-in-law, Kunti, who is one of the most venerated feminine figures in the Hindu pantheon, despite having three sons from three different fathers—none of them being her husband. The story behind this … well, I’ll leave it up to you to find the right adjectives … Her husband, Pandu, was cursed. One day, while on a hunting expedition, he had come upon a male and female deer having sex, and had promptly shot them full of arrows. Big mistake. As it turns out, the male deer was the sage Kindama, who was gifted with the ability to shape-shift into animal form (and who was apparently fond of kinky sex games with the furry creatures of the forest …). Once shot, Kindama turned himself back into human form and cursed Pandu. Shooting animals while they are having sex is just rude—Kindama argued—so your punishment will be to die if you ever try to have sex with a woman.

Quite bummed out, Pandu became a celibate hermit with his wives, but was constantly worried about dying childless. Kunti, however, knew exactly how to save the day. One of her gifts was the ability to conjure the gods and have kids by them, so puff … three sexual marathons later with three different gods, Kunti popped out three sons.

Anyone who thinks religious stories are prudish, moralizing and boring should seriously check out some Hindu tales.

34 THE GODFATHER OF CHRISTIANITY

The Roman emperor Constantine is one of the great heroes of Christian history. As legend would have it, he singlehandedly put an end to religious persecution and became the first Christian emperor. His impact was nothing short of miraculous, and this is why his name is often adorned with superlatives: he is Constantine “the Great,” or as some branches of Christianity regard him “Saint” Constantine. More than any other figure, he is the true Godfather of Christianity, who helped it turn from a small troubled sect into the dominant religion of the empire.

But the word godfather applies to Constantine in more ways than one. Think Don Vito Corleone kind of Godfather (actually, I like Don Vito Corleone, so more like Michael Corleone). The historical reality is that Constantine was a brutal dictator who used Christianity for his own self-aggrandizing means and probably never even converted (some say he converted on his death bed, while others say he never did).

At the beginning of the 300s, the Roman Empire was a mess: there were too many people following too many religions speaking too many languages. Culturally, politically, religiously and in every other way, hardly anything brought unity to the empire. The confusion was so intense that it was not unusual for multiple people to claim the title of emperor at the same time. Civil wars to settle the squabbles between these contenders were the norm.

Constantine had quickly understood that ruling over such a diverse population, with such divided loyalties, would always be an uphill battle unless he figured out a way to bring them together. Religion seemed to fit the bill: a shared religion would give his citizens a common sense of loyalty and identity.

The old Roman polytheism didn't seem to serve his purposes since few people still believed in it. Christians instead were very enthusiastic about their faith. Perhaps even more attractive, monotheism preached the need for all to worship a single source of authority—a concept that was music to Constantine's ears. By tying religion and imperial power together, Constantine would be able to claim that any rebellion against him was a rebellion against God's right hand man. Saint Paul's writings about political leaders receiving their authority from God gave Constantine plenty of ammunition for his totalitarian project.

Constantine probably didn't give a rat's ass about religion (or if he did, he had a curious way of showing it since—as we will see—his newly found interest for Christianity didn't dampen his passion for murder). He professed devotion to the Church, but he also regularly offered sacrifices to Apollo, Diana and Hercules, and remained head of the official pagan priesthood throughout his life. What he was looking for was a tool that would allow him to tighten his grip on power.

Accordingly, Constantine tested the waters by putting an end to the persecutions against Christians in 313 CE. The infighting among different Christian sects, however, bothered him. Religious disagreements could lead to conflicts and rebellion, and this would mean more people to kill, more heads to be bashed, and nothing but work, work, work. If Christianity were to serve his purpose, only one official version should be allowed. So, in 325, Constantine invited bishops from all over the empire at the Council of Nicaea, where they could get their act straight and vote once and for all regarding which one would the true Christian doctrine, and which should be eliminated as heresies. Once the bishops were done bickering, Constantine immediately moved to repress any alternate versions of Christianity.

Shortly after thus becoming the champion of the new religion, Constantine demonstrated how much religious piety had touched his soul by having his son executed, and his own wife boiled alive, for he feared they may have been plotting against him. Jesus's message to “love your enemies” must have not gotten to destination, since Constantine had some of his rivals beheaded, and others hanged after he had promised them clemency if they surrendered.

Constantine played an incredibly important role in legitimizing Christianity, but considering him a saint may be a tad overoptimistic. The man, in fact, was a gangster with a tiny heart and a Godzilla-sized ego.

35 THE SLAVE OWNER’S BEST FRIEND: THE BIBLE

Back in the 1800s, when abolitionists and defenders of slavery were slugging it out, both sides turned to the Bible for ideological ammunition. Clearly, convincing the world's public opinion that God was on your side could do wonder for your PR campaign, and perhaps help turn the tide of battle.

Now, the obvious question is: how could both sides appeal to the same book to justify opposite conclusions? That's because with its usual clarity, the Bible seems to offer support for mutually contradictory answers. And so, naturally, what people did was pick the passages supporting their position and ignore the others.

Abolitionists, for example, loved Deuteronomy 23:15–16, which stated, “If a slave has taken refuge with you, do not hand him over to his master. Let him live among you wherever he likes and in whatever town he chooses. Do not oppress him.” Sweet, isn't it? And to add more fuel to the abolitionists’ fire, Exodus 21:16 argued, “Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death.”

Sounds like we have settled the debate since God is obviously against slavery, right? Not exactly. Leviticus 25:44–46, in fact, clarifies that this prohibition only applies to enslaving fellow Jews. “However, you may purchase male and female slaves from among the nations around you. You may also purchase the children of temporary residents who live among you, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat them as slaves, but you must never treat your fellow Israelites this way.”

Slaves, incidentally, are part of the prize God gave to Abraham in Genesis, and slavery itself is mentioned without a hint of condemnation within the Ten Commandments. And in case you are still not convinced, Leviticus 19:20 sets down the rules for dutifully raping a slave woman. But the most blood chilling of all passages is found in Exodus 21:20–21. Here, the Word of God tells us, “When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property.” Yes, you read right. God gives you a thumb up for killing your slaves as long as they survive your beating for a couple of days … Lovely.

Ok, you may wonder, but at least the music will change in the New Testament. Jesus will get rid of this barbaric Old Testament crap, right? Some passages, after all, seem encouraging. At least indirectly, the injunction to “Do to others what you would have them do to you” appears to run counter to slavery. Plus, the ideal of the equality of all in front of God—Jew or Gentiles, slave or free, male or female—denies the very hierarchy on which slavery depends.

So how did the defenders of slavery spin the New Testament into a pro-slavery document? Well … it turns out that they didn't have to spin it that much. The first piece of evidence they could use in their favor is that despite being surrounded by slavery, Jesus never openly denounced it (or if he did, the Gospels are silent about this). But even less ambiguously, they could just quote direct passages that don't exactly sound like harsh criticisms of slavery. Titus 2:9–10 counsels, “Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them …” 1 Peter 2:18 adds, “You who are slaves must accept the authority of your masters with all respect. Do what they tell you—not only if they are kind and reasonable, but even if they are cruel.” And in case you weren't paying attention, Ephesians 6:5–6 reminds you, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart.”

Ok, let's stop. I can't take this anymore. If we continue at this rate, I may convince myself that, since God is obviously fine with slavery, maybe I should be as well. After all, that's what the Bible says.

36 TAO IS THE SHIT

Taoists (and their close cousins Zen Buddhists) are funky people. The way they make their point is nearly always weird, and sometimes flat-out gross. Consider this dialogue between some guy (who no doubt regretted ever being part of it) and Chuang Tzu, one of the founding fathers of Taoism.

Having a difficult time understanding what exactly was this universal energy Chuang Tzu was fond of talking of, a man named Tung Kuo Tzu (we'll call him Tung for short) decided to question him about it. Where exactly can I find this mysterious Tao you always speak about? “It's everywhere,” Chuang Tzu replied. Not satisfied Tung asked for an example. Chuang Tzu pointed to an ant crawling on the ground and said, “It's here in this ant.” Tung was taken aback that something so grandiose and elusive as the Tao could be found in something as low as an ant. Now, Tung was probably being just a pain in the ass. The idea that God (or however people conceive of ultimate reality) is everywhere and in everything is something found in many religions. But Tung continued his line of questioning demanding more examples, thus giving Chuang Tzu a chance to let loose. In short order, Chuang Tzu proceeded to explain that, if he wanted to find the Tao, Tung could look in the grass, in some broken tile, and in the steaming pile of shit that a dog had graciously just deposited nearby. Needless to say, Tung was speechless.

Poor Tung. He had come to question a great spiritual master about the secrets of the universe, and instead he was getting a speech about dog shit.

Chuang Tzu, on the other hand, was having a blast. He could have made his point about the Tao being in everything in many, more delicate ways. But they wouldn't have been as much fun. The expression on Tung's face at the end of the speech was priceless.

Probably Zen master Lin Chi was in the same mischievous mood as Chuang Tzu when he advised his disciples that the key to enlightenment was to “Shit, piss, and just be human. Eat when hungry. Sleep when tired.”

What these two sly cats were doing with their scatological speeches was to teach a lesson to the delicate souls who have an overly romanticized notion of spirituality. So busy looking for deep, mystical truths, plenty of starry-eyed searchers begin dividing existence between physical and spiritual, profane and sacred. Many are those who, infatuated with all things “spiritual,” forget that real spirituality is nothing but daily life lived with full awareness. This is the only difference between a Buddha and an ordinary person. One goes through life awake, while the other is sleepwalking.

Annoyed with the many posers who crowd the spirituality-business, Chuang Tzu and Lin Chi have fun shocking them. Lin Chi would always yell at his disciples reminding them not to “love the sacred and disdain the profane.” In a similar vein, when people questioned him why he spent so little time in monasteries, master Tao-Chi would reply, “Drinking in the wine shops and sleeping in brothels—this is where I practice best.” The bowel movements of dogs, wine, hookers, and other seemingly inappropriate subjects are all ways to shake overly rigid “religious” people from their own self-importance. By taking themselves too seriously, these guys ultimately missed the point. And if they didn't get it … well, then might as well have a good time freaking them out with the dog shit speech.

37 WHY A PAGAN EMPEROR WAS THE BEST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN TO CHRISTIANS

When people think of early Christianity under the Roman Empire, the typical images that come to mind are of crucifixions and lions having Christian filet for lunch, while the Roman plebs chant “Die, Christian bastards, die!” and some fat emperor, with an evil laughter looks on while squeezing the asses of his slave girls (and slave boys while he is at it). For the most part, these images are right on the money. Despite a long tradition of religious tolerance (or at least something close to that), the Roman Empire went after Christians with a vengeance. They were considered dangerous atheists, because of their deep hatred for the traditional gods. For good measure, they were also accused of cannibalism, incest and orgies (all that talk of “eating the body of Jesus” and “universal love” was slightly misunderstood). And, most worrisome of all, they refused to pay homage to the emperor, which was taken as a sign of disloyalty to the state. As long you were loyal to the state, the Romans would have no problems with whatever weird beliefs you decided to live by, but even a tiny suspicion of disloyalty … well, maybe it's time to bring out the lions. And this is exactly what the Romans did for over two centuries.

But the relationship between pagan Roman emperors and Christians could also be more complicated than that. Take the example of Julian, the last pagan Roman emperor.

Flavius Claudius Julianus was the lonely survivor of the massacres of possible troublesome claimants to the throne organized by Constantine's very Christian sons. Julian saw his whole family butchered by Christians, and he himself grew up under close watch—the possibility of getting whacked never too far from his mind. So, needless to say, when he finally did manage to become emperor, he didn't exactly have a soft spot for Christianity. Rather, his preferences were for Greek philosophy and classic Greco-Roman paganism.

In just about every way, he did everything opposite to the way Constantine and his evil heirs had run the business. Unlike them (and unlike most other emperors), he insisted on treating others as one of them, as if they were equal—something very odd in the highly hierarchical and class conscious Roman society. He immediately dismantled the secret police that Constantine had used to build his totalitarian state. And in a very dramatic move, he withdrew the empire's support for Christianity. His religious platform was remarkably modern: freedom of worship for all, and no forms of state imposed religion. Despite his strong dislike for Christianity, he refused to systematically persecute them. Simply, he just took away government-paid salaries and other benefits from the bishops.

As surprising as this may sound, most Christians ended up enjoying more freedom of religion under a pagan emperor than they did when one variation of Christianity was in power. Christians, in fact, hated each other. As the Roman writer Ammianus put it, “No wild beasts are so hostile to mankind as are most of the Christians in their savagery toward one another.” The different branches of Christianity were in open war with each other, since most of them vied to be the only official one, and dismissed their rivals as heresies. Whenever one of them had been in power, Christians belonging to any other faction were persecuted just as much as pagans were. Political murders of “heretics” were the norm. By allowing the practice of all religions, instead, Julian actually stopped these persecutions of Christians against other Christians. And he even brought back from exile hundreds of dissident bishops. This move, however, was not particularly well received by most Christians who believed that anything less than giving them full power over society was a form of persecution.

In any case, this state of affairs was not to last since Julian was killed in battle while trying to expand the empire in the Middle East (Christian legends tell that he was speared to death by a saint!) The next emperors returned to a state-imposed form of Christianity and began sentencing to death anyone worshipping in anything but the officially approved manner. Had they taken their clues from Julian, instead, Western history could have spared itself centuries of inquisitions, crusades, witch-hunts, and other pleasantries.

38 GOD’S HIT MAN

Since the dawn of time, God's faithful followers have been locked in a war without mercy against the forces of evil. Christian theology (and Muslim too, for that matter) is clear on this matter. This is a fight that can't stop until the final showdown at the end of times, when God's partisans will drown their enemies once and for all in rivers of blood. Until then, the battle rages on, and the entire earth is divided in opposing armies. Neutrality is just not an option. Much like rust, Evil never sleeps, and its agents are constantly busy trying to hurt the followers of the one true faith. Given this outlook, it then logically follows that it is wise for God's people to strike down the devil's minions wherever they are found: heretics, witches, pagans and other fans of the devil simply have to be stopped.

It would be easy for Christians to despair when they are always surrounded by such scary opponents, but in the Spain of the 1400s, a man rose to their defense. His name?

Fighting out of the red corner, wearing the robes of inquisitor general, he is “The hammer of heretics, the light of Spain, the savior of his country.” Ladies and Gentlemen, representing the Holy Inquisition, and sporting a record of hundreds of heretics killed, I introduce to you, the one and only reigning heavyweight champion of the Catholic faith, Tooooomaaaaaaasss de Torrrrrqueeeeemaaaadaaaaaaaaaa!

A Dominican friar and Queen Isabella's personal confessor, Tomás de Torquemada had become Spain's first inquisitor general, which is to say God's right hand man in His fight against heresy. In his zealous quest, he set up a system that burned to death over 2,000 people (and many, many thousands more when imitators followed his lead in other parts of Europe). Some of his main victims were former Jews and Muslims posing as faithful Catholics but secretly holding on to their old beliefs. But even more broadly, Torquemada's mission was to bring down anybody holding ideas that differed from Catholicism.

His methods were not exactly the embodiment of Christian compassion, but in the fight against the Evil One, a man's got to do what a man's got to do. Whips, hot irons, thumbscrews, stakes and other pearls of creative sadism were holy weapons to be used in defense of the Catholic faith. By the time Torquemada knocked on your door, you were pretty much screwed. It meant that someone had managed to convince him that you were an enemy of the faith who had to be stopped. The good, old rule “innocent until proven guilty” was not yet old and was certainly not considered good. The legal theory of the Inquisition was more along the lines of “guilty until proven innocent.” Actually, even that was too much to ask, since you really couldn't prove yourself innocent. If you confessed, then obviously you were guilty. But if you didn't, then it meant you were truly a lying, sneaky servant of the devil who should be tortured. If you confessed under torture, then it was a done deal. If not, again this only proved your guiltiness since clearly the devil was giving you supernatural power to resist pain: quite literally damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Incidentally, along the way the Inquisition was also a profitable business since all the wealth of those convicted would be seized and split between king and church. But whether inquisitors burned you at the stake because they were greedy, or because they truly believed they were doing God's work, it didn't exactly make a huge practical difference.

Clearly, the devil had many fans since Torquemada's holy mission didn't find universal support. He was so fearful of assassination that he traveled with more than 250 bodyguards (hell … even Mafia bosses are satisfied with less than that …).

But God's hit man also had many admirers. Not only most Catholic inquisitors looked up to him as a model to be followed, but even Protestants ended up following his same recipe. Both Martin Luther and John Calvin, the giants of Protestant theology, were as insistent as Torquemada about the necessity of barbecuing witches and other soldiers of the devil. It was only after the worst of the devil's inventions became popular—that pesky Enlightenment with its emphasis on reason, science and individual rights—that the hands of Torquemada's spiritual descendants were no longer free to strike down heretics. So, these must truly be dark times, now that heroes of the faith like Torquemada are no longer able to carry out their holy mission. If you can't even burn them on the public square, how can society defend itself against the servants of the devil?

39 IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT (AND I FEEL FINE)

If you are reading these lines, it's a safe guess that none of the many gloomy prophets predicting the end of the world has gotten it right yet. But humans are weird. Despite being stood up for its date with Apocalypse time and time again, humanity keeps on giving it one more chance, believing that this time will be different; this time will be the one. The Apocalypse is a player who keeps leading humanity on but, like stereotypical women who love bad boys who barely pay attention to them, humanity's obsession only grows each time she is spurned. And spurned she certainly has been …

Christians, for example, have been waiting for the end of the world since before Jesus was even crucified. Like most lower class Jewish people in those days, early Christians had a tough life. So, there was something appealing in the idea of seeing the whole world destroyed before a Final Judgment that would consign evildoers to eternal damnation and reward the faithful. Many were those looking forward to Armageddon and the Apocalypse. The fact that this revenge fantasy didn't materialize as quickly as advertised didn't deter Saint Paul and his colleagues from continuing to push it as a central piece of Christian theology.

However, throughout history, the temptation to fix a precise date for when the Apocalypse train should pull into the station has induced many wannabe prophets to go public with their doomsday predictions. Here are just a few of the most spectacular.

The book of Revelation, with its reference to a thousand year period until the end of the world, is singlehandedly responsible for a hell of a lot of anxiety among those who lived in Christian Europe close to the end of the first millennium post-Jesus. The fact that in the year 989 CE, the notoriously unlucky Halley's Comet had shown up in the sky had sent masses of people in a panic. The belief that the end was near was so popular that, had bookies existed back then, they could have made bank betting on the world's survival (not a bad bet considering that if the world had indeed ended, no one would have come to collect).

Pope Innocent III tried his hand at the prediction game by suggesting Jesus would come back in 1284. He came up with this date by adding the diabolical 666 to 668 CE (the date when he believed Islam—of which he was not particularly fond—was born). But 1284 came and went: no Jesus's visits, no end of the world.

Wisely, no popes after him picked a date for the Apocalypse, but Martin Luther couldn't resist the urge to proclaim that Judgment Day was about to come any minute. Yet again, minutes turned into days, days turned into years, and still no Apocalypse. Similarly, Anabaptist prophet Melchior Hoffman picked 1533 (and incidentally added that the city of Strasburg would somehow survive the end of it all). The founder of Methodism, John Wesley, placed his bet in the Apocalypse roulette on June 18, 1836. The ultra-fascist Reverend Moon predicted that 1967 would be the end. When that didn't come true, he amended the prediction to 1980. When that didn't come true either, he decided to get out of the prediction business. Most recently, Harold Camping predicted the Rapture for May 21, 2011, and was so bummed out when it didn't happen that he promptly had a stroke.

Competing for the record of the highest number of failed apocalyptic predictions are the members of the sect founded by Joanna Southcott who initially picked 1774, revised it to 1820, and tried their luck one last time for 1977. William Miller's boys, who would later morph into the Seventh Day Adventists, had picked July 7, 1843. By July 8, they were in dire need for a new date, so they pushed it to March 21 1844, and when that didn't pan out either they pushed it to October 22. By October 23, they decided it was a good idea to give up making specific predictions, and they should just consign the Apocalypse to a more generic “some time soon.”

Under the file “some people take the end of the world too seriously,” over 100 Russian members of a group called “Brothers and Sisters of the Red Death” killed themselves in occasion of what they believed to be the end of the world. Along the same lines, in 1978 Jim Jones's apocalyptic beliefs pushed over 900 of his followers to kill themselves as well as other followers who were less than enthusiastic about this plan. And in 1997, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult killed themselves so that their souls could have access to a higher level of existence before an impending Apocalypse destroyed the Earth.

The next time the world is supposed to end is 2012, at least according to the gloomiest interpretations of the Mayan calendar. Sooner or later, someone will get it right. But in the meantime, the beauty of the “end of the world” idea is that as long as you can always push the date further in the future, you never have to give up on it.

40 TELETUBBIES ARE GAY (AND GOD HATES THEM)

According to the always very sweaty conservative evangelical leader, the late Jerry Falwell, the Teletubbies—the funky looking protagonists of a TV show for kids—are the devil's minions. They may look innocent and sweet, but Satan's little helpers are guilty of covertly trying to corrupt the minds of the young by subliminally pushing the message that homosexuality is ok. In fact, according to Falwell—who, by the way, is the same man who had said the 9/11 attacks were the result of God punishing the United States for the feminism, homosexuality and secularism popular in American society—at least one of the Teletubbies is really gay. And Falwell is not the only one to have outed the incriminated Teletubby. Across the world, in Poland, members of a conservative Catholic party also felt the need to comment of the dangers posed by the Teletubby's hidden sexuality. And many others have joined them in pointing their homophobic finger against the Teletubbies.

This may be the only time in life that I find myself in partial agreement with that sorry excuse for a human being that was Jerry Falwell. The Teletubbies are indeed demons straight out of hell. I’ve become convinced of this after being forced by my 2-year-old daughter to sit through more Teletubbies marathons than any adult should ever be subjected to. The experience left me in dire need to go trade punches with heavily tattooed guys in a ring. I grew to hate the damned Teletubbies so much that once I could finally sleep my dreams featured evil-looking Roman soldiers torturing the Teletubbies Mel Gibson-style, before finally crucifying them. Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa, and Po (these are their names) are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—I’m sure of it.

What I don't share with Falwell, however, is the notion that homosexuality is a terrible threat we need to keep at bay. Falwell was clearly obsessed with homosexuality—I mean, when you start worrying about whether a cartoon character named Tinky Winky is gay or not, then you know you really have a problem …

But Falwell is in good company. Traditional wisdom tells us that the most virulent homophobes are really people struggling with their own repressed homosexuality. If this is true, then the world is packed with secret gays made psychotic by being in the closet for too long. Despite hating each other with a passion, in fact, fundamentalist Jews, Christians and Muslims are all united in their deep-seated horror of homosexuality. Apparently, one of the main articles of faith shared by religious fundamentalists of all creeds is gay bashing. In Leviticus, the Bible offered a simple cure for the “disease” of homosexuality: the death penalty. Christians and Muslims quickly followed this Jewish lead with their own severe condemnations. To this day, fundamentalists belonging to the trio of Western religions compete with each other for who can express the deepest disgust for gay people. At one extreme, you have the members of the Westboro Baptist Church, who regularly demonstrate outside the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, with banners advertising their belief that the soldiers died because God is punishing American tolerance for homosexuality. As they tastefully remind us, “God hates fags.” Even though they may not recognize it, these guys have a spiritual twin in Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who famously stated that there are no gays in Iran (the fact that the biblical death penalty against homosexuality is still in use in his country may have something to do with the lack of enthusiastic gay crowds contradicting him openly).

But fundamentalist Jews, Christians and Muslims are also joined by Nazis, who sent gays to concentration camps in large numbers, and Communists, who similarly persecuted homosexuals with gusto (ironically, Stalin accused gays of being Nazis, while the Nazis accused them of being Communists …). In other words, Tinky Winky better watch his back because the entire team of freedom-hating freaks—from religious fundamentalists to secular fans of totalitarianism—is united in hating his purple gay ass.

41 THE SHRINE OF HYPOCRISY

When, in 2001, the fun-loving bunch known as the Taliban decided to show their progressive views on freedom of religion by blowing up colossal, ancient statues of Buddha, the world was horrified. What kind of evil bastards would destroy religious monuments from over a thousand years ago? Not that these guys are unique in this. Muslims and Hindus have been playing the “we'll destroy your temple to build our own” game for a few centuries. In the 1500s, the Spaniards tore down Aztec pyramids and erected their churches right on top of the ruins. Demonstrating they are better with dynamite than at creating, the Taliban didn't really build anything in place of the Buddhas. But the basic idea remains the same: destroying the sacred places of conquered people is a statement of domination and ownership—the religious equivalent of a dog pissing on the ground to mark his territory. What was disturbing about the Taliban case was that it happened not in some distant forgotten past when people were considerably weirder about religion, but in the modern world.

But in all the indignation about the Taliban being the freaks that they are, we forget that similar things have happened even in the United States not that long ago.

Consider for example the national monument of Mount Rushmore—the enormous sculpture of the faces of four American presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt) that was carved out of the Black Hills of South Dakota in the 1930s. The monument was baptized the “shrine of democracy.” Over 2 million tourists every year visit it (which is amazing when you consider it's in damn South Dakota!) and shed patriotic tears in front of what they imagine to be a wonderful symbol of freedom. In the minds of most Americans, Rushmore goes hand in hand with Mom, Bible and cherry pie—an icon of everything that is good and wholesome.

Ok, so what's the problem with it? And what does Rushmore have to do with religion?

The land where Mount Rushmore was built is part of a chain of mountains considered sacred by the Lakota, Cheyenne, and a few other tribes. It is a site of unparalleled religious significance to them—much like Jerusalem is to the Jews, and the Vatican to Catholics. Happily for them, the American government recognized Indian title to the land in a treaty that was supposed to guarantee their property rights forever. Forever, however, turned out to be another way of saying six years, since this is how long it took the Americans to break the treaty, and steal the land. A little over 100 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court openly admitted that the land was stolen and offered the tribes some money as a way to say “sorry.” Despite being among the very poorest people in the United States, the tribes rejected the money, demanding a return of their sacred lands instead. But this was not an option that either the Supreme Court or Congress were enthusiastic about.

In light of this, let's take a look at Mount Rushmore again. Here you have the people who stole your land blast your sacred mountains with dynamite to carve in them the faces of their leaders, and call the result a monument to freedom and democracy. Mmmmhhhh …. the Taliban at least have the decency not to pretend loving freedom.

Needless to say, freedom and democracy are not the first words that come to the minds of American Indians when thinking of Mount Rushmore. Perhaps nothing I can write can clarify Native attitudes toward the sculpture as the story a Lakota man once shared with me. “I’ll tell you about a very sacred Lakota ritual”—he said—“I’ve participated in it a few times and I was spiritually uplifted every time. At night, when the rangers are not around, sometimes we will climb to the top of those big faces, pull down our pants and piss on top of their heads. Very uplifting stuff, really. A beautiful Lakota ceremony.”

42 MY GOD HAS BIGGER BALLS THAN YOURS: THE GOSPEL OF THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER

Most religions appear weird to non-believers. But whatever the dictionary definition of “weird” is, it falls painfully short in trying to describe what we are playing with today. This is what happens when Weird decides to start shooting steroids.

A religion such as Discordianism, which holds that every man, woman and child is a pope, and includes scriptural quotes like “There are no rules anywhere. The Goddess prevails,” seems like a good candidate, but it is not it.

The Church of the SubGenius then? I have to admit I can't help but admire a church that advertises its dedication to “total slack” and promises “eternal salvation or triple your money back,” but they are not our playmates today either.

Knocking at our door, instead, is the religious mother of everything that's weird, the one and only Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

It all began in 2005, when a graduate student in physics from Oregon State University, the one true prophet Bobby Henderson (Peace Be Upon Him) first proclaimed the gospel to the world. At the time, the Kansas State Board of Education had just decided to allow the teaching of intelligent design in schools as an alternative viewpoint to evolution. Henderson promptly wrote them a letter arguing that it would be highly unethical to present only one brand of intelligent design, and that for the sake of fairness his version should be taught alongside the Judeo-Christian one. After all, the supreme deity who had created the universe had appeared to him in a dream revealing him the ultimate truth. The master of time and space, the great God who had breathed life in everything that exists was none other than a flying blob of spaghetti equipped of very sizable meatballs—an anatomical detail prompting Henderson to add that no other god had balls as big as the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM). Other religions promoting intelligent design—Henderson pointed out—struggled trying to explain why a perfect, all-knowing God would create a universe that is so full of evil and imperfections. Their very confused appeals to free will and other equally contorted rationalizations sounded like clueless bullshit to anyone with half a brain. But instead, he alone knew the answer. The FSM had revealed to him that He had been mightily drunk at the time of creation, hence the less than ideal result … how can you argue with that?

With the publication of Henderson's letter, a new religion was born: Pastafarianism had come to set the record straight.

Unbelievers, always ready to discount the deep religious message of new prophets, denounced Pastafarianism as nothing but an elaborate joke—an atheist parody of true religion. But who is to say which one is a “true” religion and which one isn't? Henderson's enthusiastic followers took up the challenge by offering a $1 million reward to anyone with empirical proof that the FSM didn't exist and that He hadn't created the universe. Needless to say, there were no takers. And the legitimacy of Henderson's religion was reinforced by a decision made by the Austrian government: in July 2011 they acknowledged the legal right of an Austrian Pastafarian to wear a pasta strainer on his head for his driving license photo since religious head coverings are legally allowed …

Over time, Pastafarian theology developed to new heights of sophistication. Heaven—the FSM told in later revelations—featured a stripper factory and a volcano erupting beer around the clock. But if your evil behavior bought you a one way ticket to Hell, you would find the environment there a lot less fun: hellish beer is stale and even though the strippers are hot they are plagued with a whole menu's worth of STDs. Now, if this doesn't scare you into being good, I don't know what would …

The Pastafarian religious calendar includes a variety of sacred days of profound mystical significance. We go from the holiday of Pastover, when the faithful consume prodigious amounts of pasta shaped in His image, and celebrate the time when the FSM began touching people with His Noodly Appendage, to Ramendan, when they eat nothing but ramen instant noodles, remember their college days and give thanks for not being starving students any longer. (The importance of such cheap noodles is also underscored by the fact that Pastafarian prayers end in “Ramen.”) But the holiest of holy in the Pastafarian religious calendar is Talk Like a Pirate Day: with infallible logic, in fact, Henderson argues that global warming has increased since the number of pirates has diminished so dressing up like pirates and talking like them is a sacred duty to help the environment.

Now, all this induces me to some musings. I wonder about the day when Pastafarianism will reach my native country. Considering their nearly religious worship of pasta, unconsciously, Italians are already closet Pastafarians. Once Henderson's pirate ship will come to spread the Gospel of Pastafarianism in the Mediterranean, Roman Catholicism may crumble. The pope might as well start packing his bags and selling all the real estate his predecessors accumulated over the centuries, because once the FSM will make its miraculous appearance, I doubt he will stand a chance.

43 HORSES, NIETZSCHE AND THE DESTINY OF THE WORLD

Random Fact #1: They say that when Nietzsche finally lost his mind for good, he was found crying in the middle of the street while hugging a horse.

Random Fact #2: In his masterpiece, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche appropriated the name of the founder of Zoroastrianism for the protagonist of his book—an interesting choice considering that Nietzsche hated with a passion Western religions, and that Zoroastrianism provided the building blocks for them.

Random Fact #3: The legends about Zarathustra tell he was persecuted and couldn't find any converts until one day when he healed the Persian king's favorite horse, thereby gaining royal support for his new religious message. The history of Western monotheism, in other words, turned on a horse.

If you'd be so gracious as to pour me enough tequila, I could start spinning some cool possible connections between the random facts listed above. But regardless of my tequila-inspired musings, the point remains that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all owe much of their theologies to Zoroastrianism. Had Zarathustra not lived or, more simply, had he not received help from the king, Western religions would look very different today. The repercussions on human history would be more than we can even begin to imagine (unless you decide to be more generous with that tequila, in which case I’m sure I could come up with something).

Zoroastrian theology, in fact, injected into Western religions all of their key characteristics: a worldview featuring an eternal struggle between the forces of good and the forces of evil, the idea of an omnipotent God concerned with human affairs, the Apocalypse, Armageddon, Judgment Day, the resurrection of the dead, a savior born from a virgin offering salvation to his followers, heaven and hell, plus the notion of an everlasting soul, and the casting of the devil as God's rival. I mean … if you were to take these things out of Western religions, what would be left?

Considering how monumental is the Zoroastrian contribution to Western religions, it is only fitting that the authors of the Gospels tell a story about Zoroastrian priests, the Magi, visiting baby Jesus at his birth. Without Zoroastrian ideas paving the way for him, Jesus may have decided that being a carpenter suited him just fine.

The origins of Zoroastrianism are pretty much lost in time: some scholars place its beginning around the 6th century BCE, while others push it back to over 3,000 years ago. If legends are true, virgins in the ancient world were always busy popping out babies since Zarathustra, much like Jesus and a few of their prophetic colleagues, is said to have been born from a virgin. Since that was apparently not miraculous enough, they also tell he was born laughing. Continuing the script that Jesus later picked up, Zarathustra began preaching at 30, and was persecuted by the official priesthood of his society (Persian religion at that time was very similar to ancient Hinduism and Greco-Roman religion, with their pantheon of many gods and goddesses). But whereas Jesus ended up being crucified for his troubles, Zarathustra healed the king's beloved horse and all doors began to open for him.

After becoming the main religion practiced throughout the Persian Empire, Zoroastrianism looked like it could have become the world's main monotheistic religion. But destiny sometimes turns on small things. In the same way as a horse had launched the popularity of Zoroastrianism, a failed Persian attempt at invading Greece in 480 BCE began to turn the tide. Later on, the invasion of Persia by Alexander the Great kicked Zoroastrianism in the groin, and later yet Islamic conquests put the nail in the coffin.

But by that point, Zoroastrianism had already come in contact with Judaism, just at the time when Jewish scriptures were being written down, with the result that Judaism ended up borrowing plenty of ideas. And in turn, these would be passed down to Christianity and Islam.

Did Nietzsche lose it thinking about how the very theologies that in his opinion had considerably screwed up life on earth would have never existed had it not been for that damned horse? Nietzsche's head was weird enough that it could be. But regardless of whether this is what drove good, old Friedrich crazy or not, it remains one of the biggest what ifs in history. It is entirely possible that if the Persian king hadn't taken a liking to Zarathustra, the entire history of the world would have turned out very different.

44 I NEED A HOOKER, SO LET’S GO TO THE TEMPLE

Let's say you just invented a time machine and decide to go hang out in Mesopotamia a few thousands of years ago. Let's also say that you find yourself in dire need of the expert services of a hooker. What to do … what to do … ?!? How would you go about finding an honest prostitute in the streets of Ur, or Babylon, or any other Mesopotamian city? Could you buy a copy of the “Babylonian Times” and check out the personal ads in the classified section? Where exactly could you go? As it turns out, your best bet may be to head out to the temple.

Once upon a time I lived in a crappy, overheated town named Claremont (which looks and feels like the kind of place where Los Angeles goes to die). For reasons that are still beyond my understanding, the main businesses in town were Christian bookstores and strip joints—usually located next door to each other (I’ve always wondered if they had the same clientele …).

In ancient Mesopotamia, a similar trend existed, since sex for sale and religion often went hand in hand. Many historians, in fact, tell that the temples were populated by hookers … ehm, I meant to say by priestesses who would routinely get paid for sex. And most of the money would then be offered to the altars of the deities worshipped there—in particular to Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love, who was revered by many Indo-European populations under different names (including Ishtar, Aphrodite, Astarte, Cybele, etc.). Just how hot the cult of the goddess was can be inferred by this Sumerian composition that was supposed to come from the lips of the goddess herself: “Who wants to plow my womb? Who wants to plow the grain that grows so high? Who wants to make my moistened fields bear fruit?”

The Greek historian Herodotus is our main source for this torrid tale of “sacred prostitution.” In his masterpiece, The Histories, he wrote that Babylonian women were required at least once in their lifetime to have sex with unknown men in order to raise money for the temple of Ishtar. Even other writers, who discount Herodotus as an old, horny, Greek bastard whose fantasy made up these titillating stories, are forced to admit that there is indeed some evidence of fertility rituals involving sex with priestesses among many Mediterranean and Middle Eastern peoples. The infamous Hieros Gamos, for example, was a ceremony for the fertility of the earth which featured the king and the high priestess getting it on (how exactly the exchange of bodily fluids between king and priestess was supposed to make the grain grow is a matter we better not speculate too much on …).

One thing you can always count on scholars to do is to squeeze the fun out of anything that's even remotely enjoyable. Most of them love nothing more than to climb out of their academic graves to shake their reproaching finger against popular culture, and anything that could bring a smile on people's faces. Faithful to their reputation, the evil academics do in this case the only thing they know how to do: spoil a good story. In recent times, some of them have attacked the authenticity of all these references to Mesopotamian temple sex by suggesting that Herodotus and several Jewish writers who reported similar tales were just slandering foreign religions with lurid lies. Since the actual evidence pro or con is lost in time, it's a matter of faith whether one wants to trust modern scholars or Herodotus & co. For my part, when the choice is between the joyless ghosts of academia and the tellers of a good sex story … well, do I even have to finish this sentence?

45 IF YOU ARE TOO STUPID FOR TAOISM, YOU CAN ALWAYS TRY CONFUCIANISM

The two main religions born in China, Taoism and Confucianism, couldn't be more at odds with each other. Confucianism is super conservative, frowns on innovation, and emphasizes the need to follow strict traditions. Taoism is often extremely anti-authoritarian, and mocks any tradition that's not able to constantly reinvent itself. Confucianism loves a nerdy approach to life based on accumulation of knowledge and memorization. Taoism despises the accumulation of knowledge for knowledge's sake as an obstacle to spontaneity, and is only interested in what can be transformed in embodied wisdom. Confucianism worships order and conforming to an exacting social etiquette. Taoism invites us to free ourselves from any petty human construct in order to flow in harmony with the cosmos. Confucianism tries to convince all people to live according to its dictates. Taoism couldn't care less to make converts. Confucianism is very concerned with regulating human society. Taoism focuses on nature. Confucianism is hyper-moralistic and preaches obedience to a myriad of rules and regulations. Taoism's idea of morality is extremely flexible, for Taoists believe that what we need is the talent to navigate through a constantly transforming world—not laws.

And yet, despite being polar opposites, Confucianism and Taoism have been often practiced together … Consider this: in much of the world followers of different religions are competing with each other trying to recruit people to their cause. Many Taoists, on the other hand, discourage prospective converts and urge them to join their rivals instead. In order to grasp Taoism—they argue—you need great awareness, an uncommon taste for paradox, and amazing insight. Since most people are too stupid to develop such talents, they are better off following Confucianism with its simplistic moral rules that would prevent idiots from doing too much damage to themselves and others. Elitist? Just a tad.

Now, imagine people in the West deciding to be Muslim and Christian at the same time. Christianity and Islam, after all, are much more similar to each other than Confucianism and Taoism. But whereas an exclusive sense of “owning” the one and only truth prevents Western religions from going hand in hand, the prevailing Chinese mentality has historically encouraged the mixing of religions. If one religion is a good thing—they reasoned—then two, three or four are even better. We'll just take the best from each and mix them together to our liking.

And so, it has been far from unusual for the same individuals to follow Taoism, Confucianism and even Buddhism at the same time.

It is worth noting that perhaps this sympathy for syncretism has been facilitated by a couple of facts. Unlike what happened in the West, Chinese religions don't claim to be absolute truths revealed by a single God. Rather, they began as philosophies of life and only later morphed into full-fledged religions. Taoist and Confucian philosophies, in fact, eventually mixed with the animistic rituals that characterize Chinese folk religion. But even after this happened, none of them believed that one God had entrusted them with the absolute truth. What they offered, instead, were just ceremonies and guidelines to make life easier. Nothing more and nothing less. The result is that whereas in the West mixing religions is pure heresy, in China it has been pretty much the norm.

46 JOHN LOCKE AND THE LIMITS OF TOLERANCE

When I think of John Locke, the first image that comes to mind is a bald dude who roams the island with an enigmatic smile, slaughters wild boars with a hunting knife and yells at people, “Don't tell me what I can't do!” (In case you have never checked out Lost, go repent immediately by racing to get all six seasons and watching them back-to-back.)

But this is not the John Locke we will be playing with today. The John Locke we are concerned with here is the 17th century English philosopher considered by most to be one of the giants of the Enlightenment, a key inspirational figure for the American Revolution, and a paladin of freedom.

His freedom-loving attitude wasn't only applied to politics but also extended to religion. Back in his day, when Catholics and Protestants disagreed (that is to say, always), they didn't do so by engaging in sophisticated discussions but by bashing each other's heads with axes. Writing on the heels of the religious wars that drowned Europe in bloodshed, Locke penned A Letter Concerning Toleration, a seminal essay about the novel idea that perhaps allowing multiple religious viewpoints to exist was a healthy thing to do: a true foundational stone on which the idea of religious toleration was built.

Considering his devotion to freedom in general, and religious freedom in particular, it is perhaps interesting to notice that Locke placed some very clear limits on it. Among those he was suspicious of were atheists for he believed that, by not recognizing any superior authority, they could not be trusted to keep oaths and promises. Later in life, however, Locke began to doubt his initial position and wondered if atheists couldn't also be tolerated after all.

But there were others that Locke just couldn't bring himself to stomach. “Papists—he wrote—are not to enjoy the benefit of toleration, because, where they have power, they think themselves bound to deny it to others. For it is unreasonable that any should have free benefit of their religion who do not acknowledge it as a principle of theirs that nobody ought to persecute or molest another because he dissents from him in religion.”

Here is Locke's paradox. Precisely because he cherished freedom, he refused to extend it to anyone looking for an opportunity to oppress others. To those who complained that freedom should be given to all, Locke replied that Catholics didn't deserve this privilege because of the “cruelty of their own principles and practices.” These were the days when Catholicism was still powerful enough that popes regularly tried to enforce their own ideology as law in all countries under the authority of Catholic rulers. And in Locke's mind, this kind of totalitarian, proto-fascist mentality marked Catholicism as an enemy of freedom. Only those religions that accepted to tolerate other viewpoints were in turn worthy of being tolerated.

Without a doubt, then, Locke would be quite disturbed by the modern policies enacted by many Western European countries that, in the name of multiculturalism and good liberal values, have allowed in their midst the growth of forms of fundamentalism yearning for their destruction. All these people who are supposedly the champions of individual freedoms and minority rights, but who somehow manage to be relatively silent about religious ideologies hating both, would puzzle Locke. Is choosing to tolerate religious ideologies that are intolerant at heart the epitome of open-mindedness or just plain stupid? Guessing correctly Locke's answer to this question isn't exactly complicated.

47 GOD WEARS DRAGON ROBES AND WANTS YOU TO KICK CONFUCIUS’S ASS

My theory that monotheistic religions are responsible for the bloodiest religiously motivated wars in history seems to have run into a stumbling block, since Confucian/Taoist/Buddhist China is home to a religious war that caused the death of over 20 million people. The Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864), in fact, is hands-down one of the goriest conflicts in modern history. 20 million dead are a bit too much to dismiss simply as a minor exception to the rule, so it seems that I may have to revise my theory after all.

But wait … the apologists of monotheism better hold the champagne and call off the celebrations, since the Taiping Rebellion was the brainchild of a fanatical Chinese convert to Christianity.

The lead star in our story is a certain Hong Xiuquan. Hong's early ambitions were simple: he was making a living as a tutor and was hoping to pursue a career as a scholar. Fate, however, had other plans. The imperial examinations—which were required for joining the upper echelons of the country's scholars—were a bitch (only between 1 and 5 percent of those who took them passed). Hong belonged to the other 95–99 percent and failed them multiple times. Not being one to take rejection too well, Hong grew horribly depressed and fell sick. And this is where the visions began …

During one of these visions, angels took Hong for a tour of heaven. There, he met a dude with a golden beard who was wearing a dragon robe. This fashionable guy was none other than God himself who gave Hong a sword and a magic seal before charging him with a divine mission to get rid of the devils roaming the country (the devils were later identified as the worshippers of different religions as well as the ruling Qing Dynasty). All of the religions most practiced in China until that point (Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism) were to become his enemies, but Confucianism in particular was the number one target of Hong's (and God's) hatred.

After studying the Bible with a Southern Baptist missionary, Hong developed further his theology and his interpretation of these life-changing visions. His meeting with the dragon-robed deity had actually been a family reunion since, during another revelation, Hong was told he was God's second son, and Jesus's younger brother … Sounds like a nutcase? Perhaps, except that he was able to gather a huge following of converts called the “God Worshippers.” Hong and his not-so-merry band of pranksters began their journey by waging a crusade to purge any trace of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism from Chinese society. And before long they graduated to armed insurrection against the government that had tried to stop them.

Hong & co. managed to score several impressing military victories, conquering good chunks of southern China, and establishing a new state called the “Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace” with capital in Nanjing. In the best tradition of religious weirdness, the creation of the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace heralded a bloody civil war with a body count that would make most video gamers blush. With the same zeal that characterizes most monotheists who like to mix religion and politics, Hong demanded total obedience to all his moral and religious reforms. Not only did his troops massacre followers of other religions, but they also placed hits on their own if their loyalty was questioned. Yang Xiuqing, for example, had been one of Hong's allies, but his own claim of being the “voice of God” had unnerved Hong and made him see Yang as a potential rival source of authority. Yang's career as God's voice came to a crushing halt when he was murdered along with his family and troops by Hong's henchmen.

Eventually, Hong's military fortunes began to fade. He told his panicked followers not to worry, though. When government troops arrived under the walls of Hong's capital, Hong assured all who would listen that God had guaranteed the city would not fall. God, however, was probably too busy shopping for a whole new wardrobe of dragon clothes since, shortly after this rosy forecast, Hong died of food poisoning from eating the only wild plants he could find during the harsh siege (which, by the way, was successful and resulted in a destruction of the state built by Hong). So died Jesus's younger brother and his dream for a Christian kingdom in China.

48 GOOD CHRISTIANS DEVOUTLY FOLLOW JEWISH LAWS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT… EXCEPT WHEN THEY DON’T

The relationship between Judaism and its problem child, Christianity, is complicated—to say the least. All the early Christians were Jews. Christianity didn't even emerge as a separate religion until several years after Jesus's unhappy meeting with a cross and nails. And yet the differences between Judaism and this Jewish splinter sect became significant enough that they eventually divided into two fully separate religions.

Wait … did I say fully separate? Well, that's not exactly true. Christianity, in fact, borrows huge chunks of its theology from Judaism. Open any Christian Bible, and the first few books are made up of the Torah and other Jewish scriptures, which are considered sacred texts by both Judaism and Christianity.

But this is where the game gets tricky. In terms of just about everything, the New and Old Testament don't always get along. I’ll be nice to you and spare you a horrendously long list of Old vs. New Testament spats, but let's just say that many Christian concepts are at odds with Jewish ones, and vice versa. So, in light of this, what should the Christian attitude be about Jewish customs, traditions, and ideas? Should the Old Testament carry the same weight as the New, or should good Christians just skip the first few hundred pages of their Bibles as a tedious prologue to the good stuff?

Jesus himself seems to answer these questions unambiguously. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, …” he thunders in Matthew 5:17. And in many other passages, Jesus emphasizes his loyalty to Jewish laws.

Case closed then, right? Not exactly, for in a classic case of “Do as I say, not as I do,” Jesus's actions seem to tell a different story. Time and time again, he scandalized the more observant Jews by routinely breaking religious customs. Kosher laws? Screw them. Paying homage to the elite among the official priesthood at the Temple? Jesus states that hookers are much worthier of heaven than priests, and kicks out all the money-lenders from the Temple. Refraining from work on the Sabbath? Jesus lifts his middle finger to that concept, and continues to preach and heal on the Sabbath as he would on any other day (something that, incidentally, was considered blasphemous enough for the death penalty according to Old Testament laws).

Possibly more outrageous than everything else, in my all time favorite New Testament passage Jesus directly interferes with a crowd set on applying Old Testament laws exactly as they were written down. A woman has been caught sleeping around and the law is very clear on this matter: she is to be executed on the public square. Scores of observant citizens promptly oblige by getting ready to stone her to death in the name of upholding morality, but Jesus stops them in their tracks. Standing alone in front of a rock-wielding mob, Jesus stares them down and talks to them until they give up and go home. The fact that the crowd wasn't doing anything unusual, but simply applying Old Testament laws makes Jesus's actions all the more amazing. When the law doesn't match his sense of compassion, Jesus doesn't hesitate to drop the law and follow his instincts.

This makes me like Jesus a hell of a lot more than anything else found in scriptures, but doesn't exactly make the job of faithful Christians easy. Jesus, in fact, never spells out which parts of the Old Testament should be kept and which ones should be abandoned. So, how are good Christians to decide? The typical rule of thumb goes something like this: if the Old Testament says stuff you like but that is not mentioned by Jesus (i.e. that homosexuality is a sin, etc.), then you'll firmly argue that it's clearly an important part of Christian theology since it's found in the Old Testament. If, on the other hand, it says something you don't like, then you can just go ahead and ignore it since real Christianity is about New Testament anyway. The beauty of this game is that you can make the Bible say pretty much anything you want it to say.

49 RELIGION WITHOUT RELIGION

Our guests today are a couple of Indian tricksters who, throughout the 1900s, gained enormous fame as religious leaders … but neither one followed any organized religion, nor wanted to create a new one!

At first sight, the two couldn't be more different. One spent decades preaching against masters, prophets, and any other type of spiritual authoritative figure. The other sported gold watches, legions of adoring fans, an overabundant collection of Rolls-Royces, and all the other trappings typical of the successful guru. But despite this and other differences, they both challenged the existing religious norms of the day, and radically reinvented an approach to spirituality that considered organized religion as a disease to be avoided.

Our first guest is Jiddu Krishnamurti. Born in a Hindu family in 1895, Krishnamurti was “discovered” by members of a mystical organization known as the Theosophical Society, who believed him to be some sort of messiah. Now, if you thought your teenage years were weird, imagine being doted upon by scores of people expecting you to save the world, and lead humanity to a more enlightened state of consciousness … That's stuff heavy enough to give a whole new meaning to teen angst …

For a while, Krishnamurti went along with this. I mean … who wouldn't want to believe it when everyone around you tells you that you are “the one?” But eventually, he took a step that very few individuals finding themselves in his position would ever dare to take. Without mincing his words, he told those who had spent years grooming him for his role that they were delusional. “I maintain that truth is a pathless land”—he said—“and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect …” The belief in messiahs, world teachers, and saviors was—according to him—the pathological weakness of people who are too scared to take responsibility for their own lives. And anyone willing to fulfill those roles is an egomaniac exploiting human insecurities. With that, he kissed goodbye to his role as “the one,” and returned a castle in Holland along with 5,000 acres of land that had been donated to him by his followers (by the way, if the Theosophical Society is looking for a replacement after the Krishnamurti's debacle, I volunteer my services and promise never to return castle and acres).

Throughout the rest of his life, Krishnamurti refused to give his loyalty to any religion or nation. But much like Thomas Paine or Lao Tzu, he argued that it was through communion with nature that human beings could come in contact with the divine. He kept lecturing about spirituality and attracted thousands of “non-followers,” but always stopped short of codifying his teachings into a system (something that, incidentally, inspired Bruce Lee to apply the same idea to the martial arts).

Our second guest was born under the name of Chandra Mohan Jain, but in the course of his life he ended up using more aliases than Jason Bourne (among the most long lasting ones were Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and Osho). From the start, Osho was born with a mischievous streak to him. The man just loved pushing people's buttons. His teaching career as a philosophy university professor was cut short since his lectures attracted plenty of students but horrified administrators who believed he was a threat to religion and morality (by the way, they were probably right …).

Osho, however, never stopped teaching. He just changed setting. Freed from the constraints of institutions, he let himself loose and began instructing disciples in his own brand of rebellious spirituality. His lectures would use the scriptures of world religions as well as the writings of philosophers like Nietzsche and Heraclitus as starting points that Osho could use to put on a show. Half stand up comedian and half spiritual master, Osho delighted in cracking people up and trying to enlighten them at the same time. With smug satisfaction, he offended the average Indian sensibility by attacking organized religion at any chance he had while promoting a very relaxed attitude about sex. The style of meditation that he taught was similarly freer and wilder than anything anybody had seen. In the 1980s, after an attempted assassination by an outraged Hindu fundamentalist and increased hostility by the Indian government, Osho relocated to the United States. And this is where things got really weird …

His followers bought an insanely vast amount of land, and promptly began building a new city in the midst of Oregon. Osho, in the meantime, had the less than spectacular idea to go into an extended period of complete silence and let his secretary, the highly disturbing Ma Anand Sheela run his affairs. Many scandals and a bioterrorist attack later (set up by Sheela against local opponents of Osho's community), Osho decided that maybe giving Sheela so much power had not been his best plan yet. Sheela was promptly kicked out, but still … any moron with a single digit IQ could take a look at Sheela and run for his life. She looked like what happens to an Indian woman if the restless spirit of a Nazi dictator were to take over her body. Watching The Exorcist 17 times in a row is less scary than a single “hello” from Sheela. So, just how the hell someone who was supposedly as smart as Osho chose to hand over his affairs to her?

In any case … Osho's teachings were certainly much more controversial than Krishnamurti's. Whereas people either liked Krishnamurti or simply ignored him, Osho always elicited strong reactions. Some revered him as the most brilliant mind of the 20th century, while others viewed him as a self-aggrandizing charlatan (some also felt both ways and regarded him as the most brilliant charlatan whoever lived ….). But regardless of their differences, both Osho and Krishnamurti uncompromisingly attacked organized religions while simultaneously teaching meditation as the foundation of true spirituality.

50 WHY CAN’T WE MOVE THE STATE OF ISRAEL TO PARAGUAY?

A brief look at Jewish history could make country and blues singers think that their lives are not so bad after all. The whole thing is as cheerful as a funeral invitation: being conquered by everyone who shows up in the neighborhood (from Assyrians to Babylonians, from Greeks to Romans), ending up as a religious minority among people who hate your guts, getting locked up in the original ghetto (not Snoop Dogg's kind of ghetto …), pogroms, inquisitions, and the final touch of the Holocaust wiping out millions of your people.

But in 1948, it looked like all of this could change. After enduring two thousand years of persecution, Jews finally managed to once again have a homeland of their own. Now that they had their own country, they would no longer have to live in fear. The creation of the state of Israel was seen as the dawn of a future of peace.

Things, however, didn't exactly work out that way.

With the usual Jewish luck, the promise of everlasting peace lasted almost a whole day. Barely 24 hours after Israel had become an independent state, the armies of four different countries (Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon) decided that the Jews shouldn't get too spoiled by peace and attacked them. The Israeli army managed to beat down its opponents, but a few more wars, never ending diplomatic efforts and sixty-plus years later, Jews and Muslims are not any closer to get along than they were in 1948.

Most Jews claim that the land belongs to them, since it was promised by God to Abraham, and was to be the “holy land” for his descendants. Most Muslims apparently didn't receive God's memo, and stand by the idea that Jews are squatters onto lands that had been in Muslim hands for hundreds of years. To make things more fun, they also claim that the land holds for them religious importance.

And religion is precisely what makes this conflict next to impossible to resolve peacefully. If this was only about some random piece of land, it wouldn't be too hard to find a compromise. Hell … just to avoid the headache, the United Nations could just dump insane amounts of money on any country poor economically but rich in acres, and buy a different land base for a new state of Israel. Perhaps, we could just move Israel to Paraguay and be done with it.

But once you throw religion into the mix, then the game changes, since giving up even one cubic inch of “holy land” would be a betrayal of a deal made with God. And so my brilliant Paraguayan solution is bound not to work (which kind of sucks, since I had a perfect spot on my bookshelf for the Nobel Peace Prize I would have undoubtedly received for solving the Israeli-Arab conflict).

The more extreme factions among Palestinians and allied Arabs deny Israel's very right to exist. The more extreme fundamentalist Jews will not be satisfied until they conquer every foot of the land they believed was set aside for them by God. This is why with absolute regularity, whenever cooler heads on both sides try to work some kind of compromise, their own people sabotage the peace process. Just go ask Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister, who was working on a peace agreement with the Palestinians … On second thought, don't go ask him, since he probably wouldn't be very loquacious. A Jewish fundamentalist, in fact, gunned him down to prevent any hope of peace with the “enemy.”

This is why, so many years after the beginning of this story, we are nowhere closer to finding a solution. The Israeli-Arab conflict is a source of never ending trouble with global repercussions. And I’m afraid that as long as religious attitudes don't change, it is not going to be solved any time soon.

Being realistic about the odds of either side abandoning their religious attachment to that piece of desert, but not having given up about my Nobel Peace Prize nomination, I offer a Plan B. Let's call it “gladiators for world peace.” Israeli and Palestinian hardliners should be given swords and locked in a cage together where they could slaughter each other on pay-per-view until only one man would be left standing. They would be happy since they could kill God's enemies, and the rest of the world would be happy since their religious bloodbaths wouldn't involve everyone else—a brilliant plan, if there ever was one. I’d love to stick around and add more chapters to this book, but I believe I’m hearing a phone call from Stockholm …

FURTHER READING

Zen And The Art Of Chopping Your Enemies’ Heads Off

I have chatted about Zen and the martial arts quite a bit in my first book, On the Warrior's Path: Philosophy, Fighting, and Martial Arts Mythology (Blue Snake Books, 2008). Two among the many, many great books about martial arts and Zen Buddhism are the Hagakure by Tsunetomo Yamamoto (any edition is good) and particularly John Stevens's biography of Tesshu, The Sword of No Sword: Life of the Master Warrior Tesshu (Shambhala, 2001).

The Filthy Little Atheist … Founding Father

The best source for Thomas Paine is Paine himself. Check out for yourself some of his most famous writings: Common Sense, The Rights of Man, and the infamous The Age of Reason. There are also more biographies narrating the main events of his life than I have space to reference here.

The Tao Of Being In Jail: How The Tao Te Ching Was Created

Considering that there really are no reliable sources about Lao Tzu's life, nothing beats reading the Tao Te Ching itself. I have read a dozen translations of it, and among the better ones I recommend the one by John C. H. Wu.

The Disturbing and Unlikely Marriage Between Israel And Christian Fundamentalists

For the contemporary part of this story, keeping up with current events from a variety of news sources is a good start. In terms of primary sources, Martin Luther's On the Jews And Their Lies and the biblical book of Revelation are your best bets.

Sex, Sake and Zen

Here are the main works about Ikkyu published in English:

• Stevens, John. Three Zen Masters: Ikkyu, Hakuin, Ryokan (Kodansha International, 1993). (This was later reprinted under the title Zen Masters: A Maverick, a Master of Masters, and a Wandering Poet.)

• Stevens, John. Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu (White Pine Press, 2007).

• Sanford, James. Zen-Man Ikkyu (Scholars Press, 1981).

• Covell, Jon Carter and Sobin Yamada. Unraveling Zen's Red Thread: Ikkyu's Controversial Way (Hollym Intl, 1981). (This was also published under the title Zen's Core: Ikkyu's Freedom.)

• Covell, Jon Carter and Sobin Yamada. Zen at Daitoku-Ji (Kodansha International Ltd. Tokyo, 1974).

• Besserman, Perle and Manfred Steger. Crazy Clouds: Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers (Shambhala, 1991).

• Berg, Stephen. Crow with No Mouth: Ikkyu (Copper Canyon Press, 1989).

Banzai!

I have seen a few discussions of Shinto and WWII but they tend to be overly scholarly for my taste. The best—atrociously graphic—example of the fanaticism of Japanese ideology in WWII is offered by Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (Penguin, 1998).

Thank You God For Killing My Enemies’ Children

The Torah speaks for itself. See Exodus.

Deadly Alliteration: Moses The Mass Murderer

See Exodus 24–34 as well as Numbers 31.

How A Failed Siege Shaped The History Of Religions

This story is beautifully told in the first essay of Robert Cowley's (editor) What If?: The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1999).

Fundamentalist Christian? I’d Love To Introduce You To My Pet King Cobra

See Mark 16:15–18.

Mammoth Porn And The Caveman's Hip Hop: The Origins Of Religion

The whole debate about the origins of religion can be found in any introductory textbook on world religions (albeit not always with the juicy details). Demonstrating the creativity for which academics are renowned, just about every one of them is entitled either “World Religions” or “The Religions of the World.” One that deserves to be mentioned—if nothing else because it comes up with a different title—is John Loftin's The Big Picture: A Short World History of Religions (McFarland & Company, 2000).

We Love Freedom of Religion … Except In The Case of Those Stupid Religions We Don't Like

Many books discuss in passing the religious oppression of American Indians in North America. However, very few focus on it exclusively or in a satisfactory manner. A good intro to the discussion is found at http://ili.nativeweb.org/newstudy.html. John Loftin's The Big Picture also touches on this.

To Beat Or Not To Beat (Your Women): That Is the Question

The obvious primary source is the Koran itself.

The Day God Stopped Being A Racist

The Book of Mormon is a good starting point. An extremely long list of sources on the topic is found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_and_The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints.

Piss-Drinking, Druggie Priests Created Hinduism

The classic text on this is R. Gordon Wasson's Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, (Harcourt, 1972). Another title worth checking out is Huston Smith's Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals (Sentient Publications, 2003).

Stealing In The Name Of God

An interesting discussion on the connection between the stealing of the American continent and Christianity is found in David Stannard's American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World (Oxford University Press, 1993).

Orgies For Jesus

The bizarre tale of Carpocrates is referenced in Jonathan Kirsch's God Against Gods: The History of the War between Monotheism and Polytheism (Penguin, 2005).

Being A Jewish Messiah Is Not As Fun As Advertised

Among the many good books that deal with this topic at least for a few pages is Karen Armstrong's A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Ballantine Books, 1994).

If You Are Poor, It's Because God Hates Your Guts

The theory about the connection between Christianity and capitalism has been made famous by Max Weber in his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The Gospels also offer great primary sources for Jesus's quotes about wealth.

Crazy Wisdom, Lakota-Style

The figure of the Heyoka is discussed in plenty books about Lakota culture. Among them are Richard Erdoes's Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions (Simon & Schuster, 1994) as well as Joseph Marshall's The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History (Penguin, 2005).

Enlightened Religious Policies And Mass Murder

Among the many biographies of Genghis Khan, I enjoyed Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (Broadway, 2005). There are also a few translations of the main primary source for Genghis Khan's story, which is called The Secret History of the Mongols.

Kill The Buddha

A monograph about Lin chi is found in Burton Watson's The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-Chi (Columbia University Press, 1999). I refer to Lin Chi and his “Kill the Buddha” concept both in On the Warrior's Path as well as in an upcoming book about world religions (published in Italy in 2011 under the title iGod ).

Heil Jesus!

See the great essay by Robert Katz found in What If? 2: The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2001).

Free Speech and Its Enemies

Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (Viking Press, 1989) is the most obvious reference here. Jytte Klausen's The Cartoons that Shook the World (Yale University Press, 2009) is also worth checking out.

Saint Augustine Loved Hookers

Among the many works by St. Augustine the most famous is The Confessions (read it if you seriously want to hurt yourself …). Equally painful are The City of God and On Grace and Free Will as well as a bunch of his sermons.

Bible Porn

The Old Testament is the perfect source here. Jonathan Kirsch highlights some of these stories in his The Harlot by the Side of the Road (Ballantine Books, 1998).

The Godfather of Christianity

I dedicate quite a bit of space to Constantine in iGod (which was published in Italy in 2011 but not yet in the U.S.). If you decide you don't want to learn Italian just to read about this, one of the best sources is Jonathan Kirsch's God Against Gods: The History of the War between Monotheism and Polytheism.

Tao Is the Shit

The works of Chuang Tzu have been translated many times in English. Mark Forstater's The Tao (Plume, 2003) is a very decent reference.

Why a Pagan Emperor Was the Best Thing that Could Happen to Christians

This story is beautifully told in Jonathan Kirsch's God Against Gods.

The Shrine of Hypocrisy

See Jesse Larner's Mount Rushmore: An Icon Reconsidered (Nation Books, 2003). Also, see John Taliaferro's Great White Fathers: The Story of the Obsessive Quest to Create Mount Rushmore (PublicAffairs, 2002). And the always fun Richard Erdoes's Lame Deer: Seeker of Vision.

My God Has Bigger Balls Than Yours: The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Hear it from the man himself: Bobby Henderson's The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (Villard, 2006).

Horses, Nietzsche And The Destiny Of The World

Read Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and then read it again! The basic tales about Zoroastrianism are found in any self-respecting introductory textbook on the history of world religions.

I Need a Hooker, So Let's Go To the Temple

See Nils Johan Ringdal's Love for Sale: A World History of Prostitution (Grove Press, 2005).

If You Are Too Stupid for Taoism, You Can Always Try Confucianism

I discuss this quite a bit in iGod. Needless to say, the key books of Taoism (the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu) and Confucianism (The Analects) are essential readings.

John Locke and the Limits of Tolerance

In the later editions of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke mellows out about atheism. Bruce Bawer's While Europe Slept (Anchor, 2007) raises some of the same issues as they apply to the relationship between European multiculturalism and Islamic fundamentalism.

God Wears Dragon Robes And Wants You To Kick Confucius's Ass

Jonathan Spence's God's Chinese Son (W. W. Norton & Company, 1996) provides a good overview of the Taiping Rebellion.

Religion without Religion

Osho's speeches have been transcribed resulting into hundreds of books. The same goes for Krishnamurti.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daniele Bolelli is a writer, college professor and martial artist. Born in Milan, Italy, he is part of a family of writers. His father, Franco Bolelli, is one of the most influential modern Italian philosophers, while his mother, Gloria, is the author of four books and a freelance journalist.

His first book published in the United States was On the Warrior's Path: Philosophy, Fighting, and Martial Arts Mythology. It is one of the top modern bestsellers on the philosophy of martial arts and has been used as a textbook in several universities in the United States, Canada and Italy. His second book, iGod, was published in Italy in 2011. A fourth-degree black belt, Bolelli has taught seminars about martial arts in schools around the world and has coached and fought professionally in mixed martial arts (MMA).

Bolelli is a lecturer at several major universities in Southern California. He is a professor in the History Department at Santa Monica College, teaching courses on the history of religions. He also teaches in the History Department and the American-Indian Studies Department at California State University, Long Beach.

Bolelli is a regular contributor for several magazines both in Italy and in the United States. A graduate of UCLA with bachelors and masters degrees, he lives in Los Angeles.

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