What strengths and weaknesses do all Hindu sects share?

In terms of products ‘sold’ and services provided, including life insurance services, I think they all look the same - when you think about the way they function and the similarity in customers’ behaviours. That’s where it gets really interesting.

It’s just the detail they don’t agree on, because they are all looking at the same elephant. The question is how to encourage people to think about why that might be so.

The best things all religions do are about giving help when it’s needed, and they do so to the parts of their communities that need it (mostly) regardless of cultural background. In both cases, humans are helping each other to help themselves, and to facilitate the articulation of inner thoughts which many people have difficulty in dealing with. They’d probably continue to do it - and to be continuously valued for it - even if it turned out their deity didn’t exist in quite the same way they thought it had. That’s why religion sprang back immediately after the Soviet Union fell. The USSR was an attempt to replace diverse religions with a single object of reverence - the State, personified as Lenin, then Stalin.

Some religions have a few extremists on the side, of course, and maybe that’s a major weakness. I thought there might be more people articulating the strengths however….