ArchivedAtheists, Buddhism, Pagan, or the Jewish religionPlease understand I will do my best to answer your question but it is a very good question and a very very very hard one to answer.
Chritianity is one of the larger religians world wild and there are many differant christian religians.
Some belive in jesus some do not there are several differant versions of the bible which nearly all christians follow.
The most used bible in the United states is the king james version.
Which most baptist.methodist use.
Catholics are divided into 2 sects Roman catholic and what is being more known as standard.
I was raised Roman catholic untill the age of 7 and its a very complicated system of belife though I can tell you that catholics border very much on being a pagan religian.
A good source of information is the Oxford History of Christianity
written by those at Oxford school and it is a comprihensive book on the belifes and history as written by christians.
It is actually full of old documents that the people from Oxford got together its a wonderfull source.
Forget reading the bible for infor mation on christianity as a whole there are to many variances between all the bibles to doa study on all christianity but each bible does give great insight onto each section of christianity.
If your doing a search on information look under Judism not christianity.
Buddism oh my I wish I could tell you more about it but I havent had much direct contact with it .
Paganism ..oh boy which kind?
Pagan means country folk it wasnt untill the 19 century that the word was given to any religians that were not part of judism.
Pagan is a broad term basicly meaning none christian anymore.
But lets give an overview.
Shamonistic Pagan is a religian of a native people base and there are hundreds of those from the american indians to austrailias native people.
The thing they all share is the belife everything has a spirit from humans to animals to tree's other than that you really cant compair them.
Wicce` or Wicca as its called today is also a pagan religian consiting of a god and goddess and though there are hundreds of differant kinds they all follow one creed and that is .
Do as though wilt but harm none.
In otherwords its much like christian saying of do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
There isnt a belife in heaven or hell but rather your born you die you return to the goddess for rebirth.
Now what happens when you do something wrong?
well christians you go to hell
Wicce` belive for every action you do it is returned to you 3 fold..therefor good comes back three times stronger and so does evil ..so you might wanna just do good
Athiest they are a rare breed and few who say they are actually are.
Athiest dont belive in God or any god at all they dont belive in any sort of higher power.
There is another you should think of there is a huge amount of agnostic people in the world.
These are people who belive in a higher power but give it no name or form they are often mistaken for pagans.
The Jewish people are another type of christians and one of the few I belive to be true to thier religian as a whole of the people.
You can go to one of thier sinagogs (sp?) and talk to them openly they are very nice people though not forth comming at first and you can hardly blame them looking back over the years at what other religians including thier own christians brothers have done to them but they do open up and talk if your nice.
But above all if your truly looking for enlightenment on all these belifes then read books written by the people you wish to study.
Here are some wonderfull referances
Oxford history of christianity
(for learning about christian relgians)
The Spiral Dance
(for pagans) auther of this one is Starhawk
this one focus;s mainly on wicce`
for egyptian insight
The Egyptian book of the dead
this is as good as it gets the actuall pictures of the compleate Papyrus of Ani with translation.
For american indians you must understand thier culture and thier interation with nature to understand thier religian so
Native American Traditions bt Authur Versluis
is a great way to learn about them.
Any other questions feel free to e mail me at LilyUO@yahoo.com
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