Book excerpt: Human beings are uniquely equipped with a capacity and curiosity to consider mystery. Four countless generations, people have asked and answered existentially urgent and provocative questions: What is the meaning of life? Is there some ultimate being at work in the universe, or is the world as we experience it entirely arbitrary? What does it mean to be a good person, and how do we do it? Religions of the world have traditionally been an outlet for dealing with mystery, though at different times and in different places, people have responded to these time-honored questions with various stories, myths, rituals, symbols, and even scientific exploration. In this book, Michael Horace Barnes presents a chronicle of the human quest to make sense of these mysteries through religious traditions. Tracing this quest from the mythic tales of hunter-gatherers to modern scientific atheism, this text sheds light not only on the mysteries people face, but also--more importantly--on the people who face them. With charts, pictures, and discussion questions at the conclusion of each chapter, the book makes questions of ultimate meaning accessible and engaging for any audience.--