Looking Inward

My mind has been focused on religion again. I finished a book about religion and found some interesting websites.

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I enjoyed reading, "Oriental Religions In Roman Paganism" by Franz Cumont. The book discusses the ancient Near Eastern religions and their effect on Roman religion. Cumont shows how each religion spread through the empire and then goes on to explain how these religions prepared the way for the dominance of Christianity. Basically the eastern religions shared many ideas with Judaism and Christianity. As each new religion was accepted into Roman society it modified the Roman philosophical values so that other more foreign ideas could be accommodated.

Cumont's style is a bit stilted and academic but it isn't impenetrable. I found my copy in a used bookstore so it may be hard to find. It is an interesting book and worth reading if you are interested in the subject.

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Have you prepared for your afterlife? If not you may want to check out EternityTravel.com. This is just the place for budding pharaohs to stock up.

Rather than dwell too much on death I headed over to Belief.net and took a quiz to discover my spiritual type. I scored 50 - 59 which means I am a Spiritual Straddler - One foot in traditional religion, one foot in free-form spirituality.

I kept looking inward and used the Belief - O - Matic. These are my scores:

1. Neo-Pagan (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (90%)
3. New Age (83%)
4. Reform Judaism (83%)
5. Mahayana Buddhism (76%)
6. Sikhism (74%)
7. Liberal Quakers (74%)
8. Jainism (72%)
9. Hinduism (65%)
10. Theravada Buddhism (64%)
11. New Thought (64%)
12. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (62%)
13. Scientology (62%)
14. Orthodox Judaism (60%)
15. Secular Humanism (59%)
16. Bahá'í Faith (54%)
17. Islam (50%)
18. Nontheist (43%)
19. Taoism (41%)
20. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (37%)
21. Orthodox Quaker (35%)
22. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (27%)
23. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (26%)
24. Eastern Orthodox (24%)
25. Roman Catholic (24%)
26. Seventh Day Adventist (20%)
27. Jehovah's Witness (10%)

This isn't surprising. This is quite a change from my younger days as a Catholic altar boy.