Imagine a religion that says the highest virtue is to do, well, pretty much nothing.

Not literally nothing, but practically nothing.

Imagine a negative religion, not as much defined by what it believes in, but what it does not do. No harm, no possession,

no ambition. Total renunciation, starvation, silence, and celibacy. No creator, no sustainer,

no transcendent lawgiver, no judge, no sin, at least not in any biblical

sense, and certainly no savior. There is just the perfect immortal souls of the individuals

trapped in an eternal cycle of death and rebirth, samsara, covered in karmic dust, clawing their

way alone towards an undefined liberation. It's a religion where the ideal man literally

starves himself to death, naked and alone, unmoving, speechless. After all, movement might kill a bug,

words might cause harm, and eating might imply desire. Well, you don't have to imagine it.

That religion is Jainism. Jainism is an old, old religion. It emerged in India around the 5th and 6th centuries BC and preaches a number of things, non-violence, a hymsa, asceticism, a periagraha, and a rejection of simplistic one-sided views of truth and reality.

Annie Cantavada. Today, though Janeism is small in

numbers, it is large in influence. Jane temples now rise in North America. Jane philosophy is taught

in universities and thanks to the growth of Eastern spiritualism in the West, evidenced in vegetarianism and the

vegan movement, and especially in the eco-cult of environmentalism. So no wonder in our age of

apostasy, fallen natural man gravitates towards self-righteous religions and what better religion than

Jainism which believes that his soul is essentially perfect and that he himself is

essentially God and all he has to do is a bit of self-help to make himself

righteous enough to set himself free for all of eternity today on the

podcast for Cultural Reformation join me me, Dr. Michael Teeson, as Dr. Joe Boot and I

expose the vain philosophy and empty deceit of Jainism.

Music Welcome to the show, everyone. We're nearing the end of our series on world religions,

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