DU religion survey

[Prophet 451]

82. OK, I'll have a tilt at it

Firstly, it varies by religion. I don't know very much about Buddhism so I can't speak for that but the Bible is so long and includes so many contradictory passages that every Christian has to pick and choose just to get through it. Additionally, Jesus supposedly abolished the old Levitical laws (although fundies love to quote Leviticus against gay people). No Christian follows everything in the Bible. That's simply not possible in the modern world and would probably get you locked up for trying.

Secondly, some religions are highly experiential and the faith is constructed through personal gnosis with the deity. That includes my own faith (Luciferian Satanist), some forms of Wicca and various others.

Thirdly, all religions have always had schisms between followers based on their interpretation of their texts. If Christianity had never had such schisms, every Christian would be Catholic. For Judaism, there's the schism between Orthodox and Reform. For Islam, there's the divisions between Shia, Sufi and Sunni. Wicca, there's Alexandrian and Gardenerian. For Satanism, there's LaVeyan, Setian, Luciferian and the punk kids that give the rest of us a bad name.

Finally, recons (those trying to rebuild lost faiths) simply don't have any other choice. While one can try and rebuilt, say, Druidism, we simply don't know much about them and virtually everything we think we know comes from their enemies (and is therefore highly suspect). Recons try to exclude modern interpretation as much as they can but the patchy information about their faiths means they can't help but disagree on some points.