h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is a good section idea. Books religion. Let's throw in the Bible. Anyone read it?

I read sections of it as a child but found it a bit dull. Having said that some of the parables can make good childrens stories if brought up to date a bit.

Q: Who was the first named maker of Ice Cream?

Q: Walls of Jericho

By the way did you know that the name David appears more than any other name in the bible and that when Jesus says "Friend" he is almost always being ironic.

Friend is a word you write or think more than speak, in a way. Hey friend over here. Sounds like the Simpsons next door neighbour. Maybe Jesus was sincere and like him!

Can anyone suggest books for ten year olds that describe religions other than Christianity. Or maybe books with religious stories from other religions. My neice is interested in finding out stuff but all the books we have in the extended family are from the Christian faith. She is particularly keen to find out stuff about the Muslim faith but we thought as many different religions as we could find would be good.

The books need to be written in English.

One thing that has always confused me is that God made Adam, fair enough, but then he made eve, ok so far. Adam and eve had two sons, and then Cain and Able had hundreds of wives - where did the wives come from, or was God busily making more Adam and Eves all over the place, after he made the original?

I think that perhaps there was some irony in the word friend because he nearly always uses it on people who are trying to harm him (the soldiers and so on who come to arrest him) or who are trying to trick him (paying taxes to Caesar) and that's OK by me (the irony that is not the harm or trickery)

Depending on how good your niece is at reading, you could try the Tao of Pooh (Benjamin Hoff - possibly topical for a ten-year-old, too!) or Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance (Robert Pirsig [?]). For books on the Muslim faith, however, I am stumped.

There are probably quite a few good web sites on the subject of Islam, but something like Amazon would then have to be used if you wanted to limit to children's books, etc. I am certain that somebody would have gone to the trouble of transliterating the Koran for children.

Some more useless data for you.

Adam and Eve had a third son called seth when adam was the ripe age of 127, or thereabouts.

For an alternative to 'organised religion' check out works by Richard Bach - http://www.richardbach.com - especially one. They aren't religious as such - creating a religion out of them would defeat the message, I think - but there are some very interesting concepts there.