The religions of the world consist of religious images and religious behaviour. The images of the religions from the past and of present day religions, like gods, ghosts and worshipped ancestors, concepts of guilt, dogmatic teachings and ideas of the hereafter, are generally quite well known. Religious behaviour on the other hand, the actions which believers of a specific religion do or do not do, is often not that well known. For an understanding of religion however, religious behaviour is at least as important as the religious images.

Religious behaviour consists of both religious actions and religious avoidances. Religious actions are also called 'ritual'. Religious avoidances are called taboos or ritual prohibitions.

The two best known religious actions are prayer and sacrifice. The most general religious action is prayer. It can be done quietly by a person all alone, but people can also pray in groups using songs. Sacrifice is also a widely spread religious action. Prayer and sacrifice often form the basis of other, more complicated religious actions like pilgrimage, processions, or consulting an oracle. There are many rituals connected to a certain purpose, like initiation, purification and rituals in preparation of an important happening or task. Among these are also the so-called rituals of transition, which occur in important moments of the human life cycle, like birth, adulthood/marriage, sickness and death. A special religious action is possession and ecstasy. In many religious actions religious specialists like priests, vicars, rabbis, imams and pandits are involved.

Sam Harris may refer to:

Steven Weinberg (born May 3, 1933) is an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles.

Steven Weinberg was born in 1933 in New York City to Jewish immigrants Frederick and Eva Weinberg. He graduated from Bronx High School of Science in 1950 in the same graduating class as Sheldon Glashow, whose own research, independent of Weinberg's, would result in them (and Abdus Salam) sharing the same 1979 Nobel in Physics (see below).

Weinberg received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University in 1954, living at the Cornell branch of the Telluride Association. He left Cornell and went to the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen where he started his graduate studies and research. After one year, Weinberg returned to Princeton University where he earned his Ph.D. degree in Physics in 1957, studying under Sam Treiman. Weinberg is an atheist.

Jacque Fresco (born March 13, 1916), is a self-educated structural designer, architectural designer, philosopher of science, concept artist, educator, and futurist. His interests span a wide range of disciplines including several in philosophy, science, architecture and engineering. Fresco writes and lectures extensively on his view of subjects ranging from the holistic design of sustainable cities, energy efficiency, natural resource management, cybernated technology, advanced automation, and the role of science in society, focusing on the benefits he thinks they may bring. With his colleague, Roxanne Meadows, he is the founder and director of an organization known as The Venus Project, located in Venus, Florida. He currently promotes a fundamental change in anthropic organization through the global implementation of a novel socio-economic system predicated on social cooperation, technological automation, and scientific methodology, called a Resource-based economy.

In contemporary culture he has been popularized by three documentaries, Future By Design,Zeitgeist Addendum, and Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, His Venus Project has been inspirational worldwide, especially to activists.