Shia Islam is the second largest denomination of Islam and its adherents believe that Ali succeeded Muhammad and further places emphasis on Muhammad's family. Another key adaptation that may help religious belief derives from our ability to to anthropomorphise objects. Have you ever seen the outline of a person only to realise that it is actually a coat hung on the door? This capacity to attribute human forms and behaviours to non-human things shows we also readily endow non-human entities, such as gods, with the same qualities that we possess and, as such, make it easier to connect with them. Behavioural benefits

Doniger, Wendy, ed. (2006). Britannica Encyclopedia of World Religions. Encyclopaedia Britannica. ISBN 978-1593392666. Unitarian Universalism is a religion characterized by support for a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and has no accepted creed or theology. [181] The Sanskrit word dharma, sometimes translated as religion, [45] also means law. Throughout classical South Asia, the study of law consisted of concepts such as penance through piety and ceremonial as well as practical traditions. Medieval Japan at first had a similar union between imperial law and universal or Buddha law, but these later became independent sources of power. [46] [47] For some religions, following a "path" of goodness, truth and duty is very important. This is called Tao in China. In the teachings of Judaism, people were told to "love your neighbour as yourself". In the teachings of Jesus, people were told to think of every single person as their "neighbour" and treat them with love. Peter Mandaville and Paul James intended to get away from the modernist dualisms or dichotomous understandings of immanence/transcendence, spirituality/materialism, and sacredness/secularity. They define religion as:Scholars have failed to agree on a definition of religion. There are, however, two general definition systems: the sociological/functional and the phenomenological/philosophical. [60] [61] [62] [63] Modern Western Zoroastrianism is based on the teachings of prophet Zoroaster in the 6th century BCE. Zoroastrians worship the creator Ahura Mazda. In Zoroastrianism, good and evil have distinct sources, with evil trying to destroy the creation of Mazda, and good trying to sustain it. Christianity· Islam· Judaism· Bahá'í Faith· Rastafarianism· Samaritanism· Mormonism· Jehovah's Witnesses

Vergote, Antoine, Religion, belief and unbelief: a psychological study, Leuven University Press, 1997, p. 89 Religious practices may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of deities or saints), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, matrimonial and funerary services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, or public service. Religions have sacred histories and narratives, which may be preserved in sacred texts, symbols, and holy places, that primarily aim to give life meaning. Religions may contain symbolic tales that may attempt to explain the origin of life, the universe, and other phenomena; some followers believe these to be true stories; others regard them as myth. Traditionally, both faith and reason have been considered sources of religious beliefs. [8] Some forms of parody religion or fiction-based religion [172] like Jediism, Pastafarianism, Dudeism, "Tolkien religion", [172] and others often develop their own writings, traditions, and cultural expressions, and end up behaving like traditional religions. Bible· Qur'an· Torah· Aqdas· Book of Mormon· Vedas· Wakoklon· Avesta· Numit Kappa· Sakok Lamlen· Tripitaka· Adi Granth· Pravachanasara· Book of Shadows Melton, J. Gordon (2003) [1978]. Encyclopedia of American Religions (7thed.). Farmington Hills, Mi: Gale Group. ISBN 978-0-7876-6384-1.There are many ways to witness. A young person might simply say to their friends "I do not use drugs or get drunk because of my religion". This is a witness. A person may tell their classmates, workmates and friends about their beliefs. A person might go to other people's houses and talk about their beliefs, or invite the people to join in the rituals of the religion, such as going to church or to a religious festival. A person might have printed material such as books or leaflets that they give to other people to read. A person might travel to a different country to teach, to work in a health service or to help people in some other way. (People who do this are called "missionaries".) These are different ways that people witness to their religion. Indian religions are practiced or were founded in the Indian subcontinent. They are sometimes classified as the dharmic religions, as they all feature dharma, the specific law of reality and duties expected according to the religion. [148] Hinduism The Padmanabhaswamy Temple is a significant temple of the Hindu god Vishnu in Thiruvananthapuram, India. Jainism, taught primarily by Rishabhanatha (the founder of ahimsa) is an ancient Indian religion that prescribes a path of non-violence, truth and anekantavada for all forms of living beings in this universe; which helps them to eliminate all the Karmas, and hence to attain freedom from the cycle of birth and death ( saṃsāra), that is, achieving nirvana. Jains are found mostly in India. According to Dundas, outside of the Jain tradition, historians date the Mahavira as about contemporaneous with the Buddha in the 5th-century BCE, and accordingly the historical Parshvanatha, based on the c. 250-year gap, is placed in 8th or 7th century BCE. [153] Morals" are the way a human behaves to other humans. Most religions make rules about human morals. The rules of how people should act to each other are different in different religions. The theologian Antoine Vergote took the term supernatural simply to mean whatever transcends the powers of nature or human agency. He also emphasized the cultural reality of religion, which he defined as:

Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli. Vol. 1-2. Indian Philosophy (1923) Vol. 1, 738 p. (1927) Vol. 2, 807 p. Oxford University Press.Noahidism is a monotheistic ideology based on the Seven Laws of Noah, [171] and on their traditional interpretations within Rabbinic Judaism. almost every known culture [has] a depth dimension in cultural experiences ... toward some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life. When more or less distinct patterns of behavior are built around this depth dimension in a culture, this structure constitutes religion in its historically recognizable form. Religion is the organization of life around the depth dimensions of experience—varied in form, completeness, and clarity in accordance with the environing culture. [72] The concept of religion was formed in the 16th and 17th centuries, [35] [36] despite the fact that ancient sacred texts like the Bible, the Quran, and others did not have a word or even a concept of religion in the original languages and neither did the people or the cultures in which these sacred texts were written. [37] [38] For example, there is no precise equivalent of religion in Hebrew, and Judaism does not distinguish clearly between religious, national, racial, or ethnic identities. [39] [40] [41] One of its central concepts is halakha, meaning the walk or path sometimes translated as law, which guides religious practice and belief and many aspects of daily life. [42] Even though the beliefs and traditions of Judaism are found in the ancient world, ancient Jews saw Jewish identity as being about an ethnic or national identity and did not entail a compulsory belief system or regulated rituals. [43] In the 1st century CE, Josephus had used the Greek term ioudaismos (Judaism) as an ethnic term and was not linked to modern abstract concepts of religion or a set of beliefs. [3] The very concept of "Judaism" was invented by the Christian Church, [44] and it was in the 19th century that Jews began to see their ancestral culture as a religion analogous to Christianity. [43] The Greek word threskeia, which was used by Greek writers such as Herodotus and Josephus, is found in the New Testament. Threskeia is sometimes translated as "religion" in today's translations, but the term was understood as generic "worship" well into the medieval period. [3] In the Quran, the Arabic word din is often translated as religion in modern translations, but up to the mid-1600s translators expressed din as "law". [3] Two notable new Buddhist sects are Hòa Hảo and the Navayana ( Dalit Buddhist movement), which were developed separately in the 20th century.