Holy Rascals

Foreword by JP Sears

Welcome to the Kali Yuga by Swami Vas iz Das

PART I The Mind of a Rascal: An Unauthorized Autobiography

1 Prologue: A Holy Rascal Manifesto

2 Interview with a Rascal: AltGuru Talks with Rabbi Rami

3 The Making of a Holy Rascal

PART II Religion Unveiled: The Tao of Toto

4 Religion and Language

5 Religions—Healthy and Unhealthy

6 Religiosity and Religion

7 Saints and Scoundrels

8 Few Want to Be Free

9 First There Is Religion, Then There Is No Religion, Then There Is

10 Religions Are Made Up

11 Branded by the Light

12 Endless Curiosity and Boundless Compassion

13 Snake or Belt?

14 Our Motto, Our Guide, Our Mantra, Our Goal

17 Truth Is What’s Common to All

18 Piety and Homicide

19 What Is Exclusive Is Not True; What Is True Is Not Exclusive

21 You Can Know God Directly

22 Knowing God, Acting Godly

23 This Is Why You Are Here

24 God Doesn’t Exist; God Is Existing

26 God Is Dead; Long Live Goding

27 The Ice Cream That Cannot Be Flavored

28 Brand-Name Gods

29 Without God All Things Are Permitted

30 The Greatest Fundraising Gimmick of All Time

31 Father Knows Best

33 God’s Ultimate Escape Hatch

34 Functional Free Will

35 We’ve Got the Power

36 God, the Eternal I

37 Liar, Lunatic, or Lord?

38 Confirmation Bias

40 Et Tu, Krishna?

41 Sacred Dis-Ease

42 Religious Dis-Eases Are Iatrogenic

43 Religion as Munchausen Syndrome

44 Teach Your Children Well: Religion as Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy

45 Doom of the Rock

46 What If Nothing’s Wrong?

47 Here’s What’s Really Wrong with You

48 Ordinary Holiness and Everyday Perfection

49 It Takes a Universe

50 Why Are You Here?

51 Creative Bacteria

52 Religion Noir

53 Dangerous Story

54 Story Denial

55 Drop the Story, Kill the God

56 Reclaiming Metaphor and Parable

57 Parables, Not Proofs

58 Mining a Parable

59 No First, No Last

60 Belief versus Faith

61 Two Kinds of Doubt—Cheap and Costly

62 Alright, Mr. DeMille, I’m Ready for My Close-Up

63 Climb Every Mountain

64 Moses’s Ten Suggestions

65 Take Two Tablets and Climb Back Up to Me in a Few Chapters

66 The Two Most Dangerous Ideas

67 The Work of the Holy Rascal

68 Free Prize Inside

70 Pascal’s Wager

71 What Happens to You When You Die?

72 Is There Life after Beach?

73 To Be or Knot to Be

74 Enjoy the Strawberries

77 I’ll Be Back

78 Enlightenment

79 Enlightenment Is in the I of the Beholder

80 Zeno’s Enlightenment

81 Life One, Phase One

82 Life One, Phase Two

83 It’s All about Me

84 Life One, Phase Two: Confession

85 Life Two: Reality and All That Jazz

86 All Is One and One Is All

87 Möbius World

89 Einstein Is Wrong

90 Don’t Detach—Engage

PART III Hacking the Holy

96 Spiritual Culture Jamming

97 Mockery versus Satire

98 Memes to an End

99 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

100 The Religion That Cannot Be Branded

101 The Art of the Aphorism

102 Five Laws of a Successful Aphorism

103 Jaded Wisdom

104 Thou Hast Mail

105 A Card-Carrying Holy Rascal

106 When All Is Said and Done

107 How to Avoid the Cross, the Stake, Stoning, and Beheading

108 Epilogue: There’s a God at the End of This Book!

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About Sounds True

Praise for Holy Rascals