thread: 2007-01-10 : Some questions about worship
On 2007-01-16, Brand Robins wrote:
Sydney,
Right there you hit one of the big problems of categorization of religions: any given religion will have splits within itself and will fit into multiple categories. It pretty much doesn't matter how you set them, they'll still end up spilling constantly. For example, many branches of Christianity fit into the Gnostic branch you set forth, and some of the Dualistic religions (some branches of Zoroastrianism) don't.
This doesn't have to be a problem, when everyone remembers what the labels are for. However, as humans we have an unfortunate tendency to mistake the label for the actual thing and have a need to simplify to common denominators. When those two things happen together, someone's belief is going to get squeezed.
