I recently asked Barrett what he has learned about religious change in his decades of working on the encyclopedia. “The main thing we've discovered,” he said, “is that there is enormous religious change going on across the world, all the time. It's massive, it's complex, and it's continual. We have identified nine thousand and nine hundred distinct and separate religions in the world, increasing by two or three new religions every day. What this means is that new religious movements are not just a curiosity, which is what people in the older denominations usually think they are. They are a very serious subject.”
Via InstaPundit.Com, [1] Oh, Gods! [2]
A very long, but very interesting, article on religion in our modern world.
Me? I find it fascinating that people feel compelled to believe in something; there's a compulsion towards a spirituality that we humans seem to crave. Spring, [3] for instance, found a comfort in the rituals and ceremonies of Judaism even though she cares not one whit for the politics of Israel. My best friend Hoade has become a Budhist. Even my Dad follows some Eastern thought (and plays golf religiously but that's another thing … I think) and he's about as cynical as you can get.
[1] http://www.instapundit.com/