re suggestion for resources faq date mon apr gmt from bruce stephens bruce liverpool ac uk i think a good book summarizing and comparing religions would be good i confess i don t know of any indeed that s why i checked the faq to see if it had one but i m sure some alert reader does i think the list of books suffers far too much from being christian based i agree that most of the traffic is of this nature although a few islamic references might be good but i still think an overview would be nice one book i have which presents a fairly unbiased account of many religions is called man s religions by john b noss it was a textbook in a class i had on comparative religion or some such thing it has some decent bibliographies on each chapter as a jumping off point for further reading it doesn t compare religions directly but describes each one individually and notes a few similarities but nothing i have read in it could be even remotely described as preachy or christian based in fact christianity mercifully consumes only or so of its nearly pages the book is divided according to major regions of the world where the biggies began india east asia near east there is nothing about new world religions from the aztecs mayas incas etc just the stuff people kill each other over nowadays and a few of the older religions snuffed out along the way if you like the old stuff then a couple of books called the ancient near east by james b pritchard are pretty cool got the epic of gilgamesh code of hammurabi all the stuff from way back when men were gods and gods were men essential reading for anyone who wishes to make up their own religion and make it sound real good
