How many people here have read the major religious texts of the major religions?
 

This is a question which has likely been done to death, but a search turned up nothing.

I'm just wondering, with all the religious discussion on here, how many people have actually read the holy books of other religions to their own (if they have a religious ID at all) or studied the culture, theology and background to those religions.

It just seems that there's an awful lot of misunderstanding going on about some religions (especially Islam) which could be sorted out by some basic research into that religion or that particular theology.

I can say that I've read most of the major religious texts, including some in their original language.

What about my fellow MBers?

Nope. The religions I'm most curious about are those that relate to my heritage; which would be Hinduism, Christianity, European pagan religions (specifically the germanic), and - to a lesser extent - Judaism.

Regarding ignorance of Islam, there certainly is no shortage of it, but I'd say it's mostly on the side of it's apologists. LINK <---**** like that, to me, is disgusting.

Read bits of Leviticus just to see the ****ed up things the bible actually tells people to do. Same with Dueteronomy.

Honestly, I'd love to, but I never can bring myself to read them. Most religions tend to have a smaller pile of total crap spread amongst their bigger pile of good stuff, and every time I hit that crap I just give up.

Not even Orthodox Jews keep some of the rules in those two books, especially with regard to stuff which carries the death penalty.

Well, it'd require them to be genocidally homophobic which even if they wanted to, they couldn't get away with in the modern world.

I have read many in my 50 yrs on earth and I can proudly say I am as confused as when I started . . . LOL!

Nope. All I can say that I've done is read up on the misconceptions surrounding some of them, and then read the relevant parts that originally caused all the controversy. That's about it really.

Perhaps I should, but I have no real desire to. It all looks like crap to me, and I've never met anyone who made me think otherwise. I guess it's like getting shot. I've never been shot so I don't technically know how it feels, but I don't have any desire to find out either.

Not only that, but the system of the mitzvot, some of which are only specific to some people, would mean you'd have to be male, female, a Levi (essentially a priest), a Cohen (another type of priest with claim to direct descendency from Aaron) and a Yisraelim (a term for anyone considered Jewish) all at the same time (and these groups have within them restrictions and priveliges all of their own).