I question a often see on religion forums is whether someone can be a member of two different religions. Now, some religions can easily accommodate other religions, but others cannot, but that's not really the question here.

The real question is why these people think they need to be part of two religions. In most cases, these are people who find spiritual truths in multiple religions, but feel that in order to identify with some teachings, they have to support the entire religion.

The fact is while having a formal name for your faith makes it easier to explain to others, there's no reason why one has to fit neatly into a labeled box. Some people's beliefs simply don't fit into any widely organized school of thought. There's nothing wrong with that. After all, forcing yourself to fit into a formal religion is little more than that feeling you had in junior high that you had to be just like everyone else.

A recent Baha'i blog post gives a great explanation on how one can be true to the tenets of one's faith without diminishing the choices made by others.

The Baha'i Faith holds that all sex outside of marriage is adultery, including homosexual sex. The faith also holds that marriage is a union between man and woman.

Yet this Baha'i has no issue with the government making gay marriages legal. Why? For one, he sees a difference between religious marriage and legal marriage. Legal marriages is something organized by the state and involves paperwork. If lawmakers want to include homosexuals in this shuffle of paperwork, so be it.

Second, he sees himself responsible only for his own behavior, not for everyone else's. He gives alcohol consumption as an example. He never drinks, yet has no objection to other people drinking. The rules of the Baha'i do not apply to non-Baha'i, and even if a Baha'i chooses to drink, that choice is personal.

Rael, head of the Raelian Movement, has essentially suggested that rights to religious freedom are nothing more than public relations and that countries with real teeth would hand out such freedom only to certain religions after being officially scrutinized.

Specifically, he speaks of Islam, accusing followers of hypocrisy for expecting fair treatment in Western countries while not affording the same treatment to non-Muslims in Middle Eastern countries.

Rights are not something you sparingly hand out. Once you do, they are no longer "rights." They are privileges. Western countries allow Muslims religious freedom because we consider it the ethical choice for us to make. It is a right deserved by all humans. That fact that some other countries disagree shouldn't impact our own opinion of right and wrong.

Moreover, Rael's suggestion treats the entire Muslim population as a sort of hive mind, where every Muslim is expected to have the same position on matters. Why on earth should we blame an individual Muslim in the US or Switzerland or wherever, for something being done by, for example, the Islamic government of Iran?

Outrageous accusations against the Church of Scientology are coming to light in Australia, including the use of labor camps, torture and pressure to get abortions.

There's a lot of people who want to automatically believe every horrible tale about the CoS. To them, its obvious that the CoS is a monster, willing to do anything and everything to keep followers under control.

Let me remind people than in the Middle Ages, it was also "obvious" to many people that wells poisoned by Jews caused the Black Death. In the Renaissance it was "obvious" that tens of thousands of people were working in league with Satan to magically destroy Christendom. And just a few years again it was "obvious" to many people that JonBenet Ramsey was killed by her parents, both of which have now been cleared by police.

Also, as tales of these accusations spread, they get embellished. In some articles about these newest allegations, there is mention of pressure to have abortions. Pregnant women are told that having a child is contrary to the aims of their organization. But other articles imply women are forced to have abortions. There's a world of difference between the two scenarios. And as people get more and more angry, they tend to repeat the most foul version of the tales they hear. That ultimately doesn't accomplish anything positive.