What are the different religions and their views on worship?

Answer 1

There are many different religions. They can, however, be classified to be part of four major groups:

-Abrahamic (or Semitic) religions, including Christianity, Islam, Judaism and their off-shoots (including possibly Bahaism).

-Indic religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism and other groups (including many new religious movements headed by a Hindu-ic guru, such as Osho).

-East Asian religions, including Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto, Tenrikyo, Chondogyo, Xian Tian Tao (includes I-Kuan Tao) and other groups.

Abrahamic religions are monotheistic. They worship the god of the Jews, known as Yahweh. They believe in heaven and hell, angels, demons, etc. They generally attest to the veracity of the Hebrew Bible - the Jews add a variety of other books (including the Talmud), the Christians add the New Testament and the Muslims add the Quran (which is said to be an "uncorrupted" Bible). They all venerate the Jewish prophets.

Indic religions can be monotheistic, polytheistic and even nontheistic! Buddhism generally falls into the latter category, but there are many theistic Buddhists. Many Hindus claim Hinduism as a monotheistic religion in that all of the gods are only different incarnations of Brahman, but most people in generally see it as a polytheistic religion. Jainism is the same as Hinduism, while Sikhism is monotheistic due to Islamic influence. The Indic religions all believe in reincarnation (or rebirth) and karma. All of these religions are called "Dharmas" - they are considered to be the "Way" to escape Samsara. Jains, Hindus and Buddhists believe in moksa or nirvana, but Sikhs believe that one ascends to the Abrahamic heaven when you become a Sikh (non-Sikhs have to die and wait to become Sikhs in a later life to get to heaven). In Buddhism, nirvana is more like "cessation", or death.

The East Asian religions are as theistically diverse as the Indic religions. Within Taoism it's not very clear, although Taoists do venerate many "immortals" and other greater beings, parts of the Tao Te Ching can be interpreted as monotheistic. Confucianism is generally seen to be nontheistic, although Confucius did believed in a "Tian" deity (well, more of a supernatural force, it's sometimes translated as "Heaven"). Shinto is the shamanistic religion native to Japan (it has Confucian and Buddhist influence), it is definitely polytheistic. All of these religions believe in the "Tao", roughly translated as the "Way" or "Path". Confucianism and Taoism, as with Mahayana Buddhism, are heavily mixed in with the so-called "Chinese folk religion".