This book is a guided tour through the experience mankind calls religion.  Along the journey you will encounter a fascinating array of religious beliefs as diverse as the people on this planet who experience them.  And, more importantly, you will uncover why people were, and still are, so receptive to religious inspiration.  In most educational curricula, very little emphasis is placed on the reasons behind religious beliefs.  History classes teach children numerous lessons about religion’s effect on mankind.  Children learn about the compassion and ambition that spiritual faith brings an individual through studying the examples of Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, and the missionaries in the New World.  They also learn about cruelties sparked by religious prejudices such as the Aztec Indian’s human sacrifices, Nazi Germany’s holocaust, and the Spanish Inquisition.  Even today, watching CNN or reading the news, we daily see religion’s grip on people’s lives demonstrated in extraordinary heroics and brutal conflicts as they try to live their lives by a set of sacred rules in which they firmly believe.