Let's talk about religions and let's talk about their positive and neutral traits instead of their negative traits. We want to be nice and friendly, don't we?
What are the things you notice about different religions?
My background: I was raised a taoist. I also was into confucianism while being a taoist. Then, I became a christian for 7 years in a charismatic church. After that, I explored with Satanism for about 6 months. Then, I read up on Buddhism for about two months. Now, I am without religions and am merely a free thinker, who simply believes in God. God, as in Most High God who creates the world. He is more or less the christian God, only difference is I believe in him but don't worship him.
What I observe:
Christianity: They set up a lot of halfway houses for drug addicts. They run many programmes for yound children and teenager.
Christianity, as a religion, seems to be very commited in helping people who do bad deeds turn over a new leaf. It is a forgiving religion for people who tend to do bad deeds earlier in their lives and later want to change over a new leaf.
Christianity totally forgives such a person, and does not ever hold such a person to atone for his or her past evil deeds.
Christianity also tends to value the life of the unborn babies, the foetus. Abortion is a sin in christian eyes, and I think that is a sweet thing for christianity. I think it is nice for a religion to regard foetus as life.
Buddhism: I do not know why, but it seems that buddhists really take care of the old people. Most of the old folk homes or medical centres which offer free medical treatments to old people tend to come from buddhist organisation.
Buddhism also believes in karma, that is good people get good things and bad people get bad things, and this is a religion that encourages people to do good over evil.
Buddhism is good for people who do not usually do bad deeds. For people who had been very evil in their life and wanted to turn over a new leaf, Buddhism is not as tolerant as christianity. Yes, they can atone abit for their bad deeds, but they still need to answer for what they had done in the past.
Buddhism also strikes me as a very tolerant religion, that respects other religions.
Taoism: Even though I was raised a Taoist, I knew too little about this religion to give any comment here.
Satanism: This religion fascinated me during my angry moments with the christian god. Since I was a believing Satanist for about 6 months, I will talk a little bit about it.
Satanism's good point is that it encourages its members to think for themselves. It encourages its beliver to question all sources of knowledge and to seek wisdom. The greatest sin to a satanist is stupidity. And therefore, Satanism encourages people to find up more about everything. In fact, it is encouraged in Satanism even to read up on other religions, including even Christianity. Satanists, therefore, tend to donate more of their money to intellectual kind of organisations.
I do not know about Islam or Hinduism, and therefore I will not comment on them here.
(Of all the religions, I think I am the most familiar with Christianity. I used to read up a lot on the bible, pray often, go to church and do missionary kind of works.)