Thank you! I haven't seen the show Rome, but appreciate your view.
Yep, thanks for the reminder!
Good points, I recall these now as well.
Religion to many people speaking English with the Abrahamic European conception of religion, especially Christian, seems obvious, when many of its features are not inherent. The idea of eternal judgment (many religions have moral judgment but it´s not necessarily something the principal god does), that this judgment is always extreme torment, that justice follows the principal god, and a lot of different things.
Judaism for instance has a very different conception of what happens following a person´s death, and frankly its actually very odd that Christianity developed such a different view. It would be a year (query what a year meant in that sense given the way religion can use metaphors a lot) of cleansing, a cyclone perhaps, of one´s sins. It could also be said that evil enough souls are destroyed in an absolute sense, that there literally is nothing for them to experience thereafter. Christianity has a few strains that suggest this might be the case too, based on the way Christianity uses the words eternal life and eternal death even after one´s current body has died, but the main depiction most Christians have is very different, although some of this is more so the cultural influence of its artists and writers like Hieronymus Bosch and Dante for their terrifying drawings than being true to scripture and doctrine.
Islam in many ways was an attempt to be a social revolution, immediately, led by a prophet who would achieve the social community of God, to do away with things seen to be unjust in the day like usury, providing for social pensions for widowers and orphans, providing a fund to pay for that pension and for freeing slaves (even more important given that slavery was done by nearly all societies with a sufficient food surplus and even a strong king rarely if ever could defeat it, at best reform it like Justinian or Khosrow who ruled shortly before Mohammed was born), and create a law code and faith that could not be broken up into extremely complicated doctrinal problems with a Trinity as Christianity very often had (the Quran spends a lot of time emphasizing the unity of God and that Islam did not have a Trinity to end any doubt), did not need any wealth or displays of it (their ban on idolotry), and that transcended tribes, skin colour, language, and geographic location, did not need a clergy dependent on political rulers and anything like wealth but only on the social acceptance by a community of any imam who held no role, privileges or title except what weight the people gave their interpretations of the law, such laws of God even binding kings and caliphs where Roman law, Christians and followers of God though they were, had not bound the emperors who issued them (the Byzantines were never not Romans to themselves or to the Muslims), and quickly did away with the old ruling classes of Yathrib (Medina), Mecca, and shortly after Mohammed died, defeated the Romans and Sassanids to take over Iran, Egypt, Syria, and even go out to Spain.
Well meaning idea in its day perhaps, or at least many of its own followers thought they were doing a reasonably obvious thing to do. It was the communism of its day for many people left aside from the 30 year long war between the Romans and Persians leaving the people vulnerable in its wake, where the Plague of Justinian killed at least a quarter of both empires and swept through Arabia too, and where civil war, gang conflict, arguments between merchants and the old priestly classes and their kings, and ethnic conflict wrecked the city states near the Red Sea like Mecca. It doesn´t really feature in Sailor Moon, although Arabic culture does a few times like the Moonlight Knight and his sabre and the Islamic domes that Silver Millennium was apparently fond of.
Buddhism is in many ways an attempt to find a middle path, where a prince, Siddhartha Gautama, the heir to a great state, isolated from society, went out and witnessed firsthand life´s hardships having been secluded from them, and which shocked him for the first time whereas everyone else had seen it all and grown used to it, forgetting to remember the hardships they were and so many of them were avoidable. He thought of secluding himself again, but didn´t bring him any benefit, and nearly starved to death, but neither did his excess of joy. He found that when life is fleeting, bind yourself to not need to have anything, you will never have it forever, and treat others justly and there is nothing about you for them to hate or for you to hate about them, accept that, and you can be free, and allow for when death takes you, you are not afraid for you didn´t need this life anyway and miss nothing about it, have no grudges left unfinished, and are ready for whatever is next. There is no caste system in Buddhism as India had and still has, anyone could achieve these goals if they follow the eightfold path. The gods themselves are just as subject to this cycle, as are the creatures of the world. Nothing lasts forever, not even hell (Naraka), but neither does anything good. Buddhism´s perspective on the end of the world, eschatology, is actually much closer to what scientists thing will happen to the Earth than pretty much any other religion I know (Seven Sun Sermon).
Japan´s indigenous religion is much like an animist one, not pantheistic, but also much like many religions in the past for many tribes and societies. A set of gods awoke from some reason, and organized Japan and the other lands it knew. They were important, but the biggest thing to deal with is ensuring the kami, for lack of a good translation, are satiated and are not angry. It doesn´t matter much what you think of them, or even believe they exist, but as a precaution, you can leave things around to preclude a problem later on, and one should live purely to avoid disease and dangers, remembering of course that epidemic disease was by far the biggest killer in human history and was until a few decades ago when cardiovascular diseases and cancer took over which do not spread from person to person or as a result of an infection. It is not important what an individual believes, but the community as a whole would be wise to prevent a dead ancestor from having wishes unfulfilled or their reputation being dishnoured.
Not even Rei necessarily believes in the Kami actually being gods of any kind, but likely does acts which make sure they are satisfied if they are, IE orthopraxy (right acts), not orthodoxy (right beliefs). Rei knows well how a volcano works from tectonic activity, why the Sun shines with the power of nuclear fusion, why diseases spread, all sorts of things that make it not as interesting to religiously believe in anything, but the fables and myths they have are repeated to us to help us learn how to behave well in a social community just as we tell ourselves Greek and Roman myths and Norse myths too (oddly enough not the Anglo-Saxon versions all that much except maybe Beowülf) even though almost nobody believes in those religions anymore.
Extra Credits: Mythology, has an interesting definition of myth that I like. Myths are not stories that are untrue, rather they are tales that don´t fit neatly into the historical record that serve as the foundation of a culture. I really like that definition. Perhaps it is not true that Romulus founded the city of Rome and was never their first king. So what? The city bears his name regardless, and the people of Rome today see the legacy of the city itself the world over thousands of years later. So what if it isn´t true that Venus was having sex with Mars on a bed somewhere and Vulcan got mad and so forged a chain to ensnare them and invited the other gods to laugh at the two. People still see Mars and Venus, easily with their naked eye by just looking up at night. And I imagine many SM fans would smile if they saw Venus and Mars doing that...
). Pluto has said a couple of times that she calls for Chronos, or the god of time in Greek mythology. They seem to exist in the SM universe, but their relationship to the Senshi is vague. Then again, I imagine a lot of women who would volunteer to be part of the cult around 
.
