I used to know a lot more the history of world religions. Studied it informally for a time out of a purely historical interest rather than a spiritual one.
When you study it for a long time, you begin to see that it eventually boils down to a deperate attempt to get people who will be born long after you're gone to conform to your idea of good behaviour.
Sometimes, those views were well-intentioned and fair, sometimes they were horribly biased, other times they were mostly okay, but had odd idosyncrasies thrown in.
Over time, ceremony and idol worship creeps in and the hairsplitting starts as unforseen situations come up. People try to hijack the original message which can be too vague, too specific, or both at the same time. Your words are interpreted and reinterpreted a million times over by everyone in their own personal way. In the worst cases, the spirit of the thing dies off and the edifice of a religion becomes a tomb for its own values.
It's this tragic, fumbling attempt to build something that will outlive you, for what you think is the betterment of the species. Or at least your tribe.
It's a big part of why I'm so disdainful of arguments on sematics, quantification, hairsplitting, and other tools of the theologian, lawyer, or bureaucrat. It's also a part of why I refuse to rely excessively on any system of rules or belief in particular.
That stuff is useful in it's own way, but it just tends too much toward the small minded, short-term thinking of those who refuse to take responsibility for themselves.
