It is impossible to say how many religions there are across the world from old age religions like christianity and buddhism to the increasing number of new ones evolving like the Jedi knights to humanists. This input really opened my eyes up to this and how religion is not as clear cut as it may have been in the past.

Religion can either be looked at from the ‘inside’ where a person is physically practising their beliefs and faith or from the ‘outside’ where a person from a neutral background looks at religion in a neutral way. I see myself as someone who looks at religion from the ‘outside’ as I have never followed a faith or believed in a God. As a teacher I also feel this is the best way to look at it as I will need to have a sound knowledge of many of the prominent religions and teach them without any bias.

I found it interesting learning about the classifications of types of religions  there is. Especially learning about what a cult is and the example of the cult of death. This showed me how if one person gets so caught up in a belief then they are able to turn so many others to believe in this usually radical way and in this case lead to many people ‘sacrificing’ themselves for the significant other they look up to. I was shocked by the almost brainwashed characteristics these people were showing and goes to show that some in the group may not even see it as a cult and feel their behaviour is normal.

This look into religion has made me want to further investigate more into the subject as it interests me.