Based on various other thread discussions, a thought occurred to me that I think is worthy of discussing at some length.

When one looks at things carefully, one can discern a rather broad variety of religious ideas and practices across tamriel.

Take the race of Men, for example. As a rule, they align with the Aedra. However, the Skald do not - they have their own, very unique monotheism.

The Mer show much greater variety in their religious beliefs, to the point that they are diametrically opposed to each other. Notice how the Dunmer split off from the Altmer so completely that they aligned themselves with Daedra, which is anathema to the Aedra-aligned Altmer. The Orsimer did as well, though only one Daedra in particular. The Bosmer aren't clear to me, though I get the sense that they don't really align with the Altmer standard pantheon of Aedra. And the Dwemer are the most contrarian of all, having forsworn all deities in favor of trying to build their own!

When it comes to the beast races,though, the variance from Mer and Men is complete - the Argonians and Khajiit simply march to their own unique drumbeats.

My question is:

Why is that?

Why were the breaks between the Mer so profound? What provoked such incredible ruptures?

Contrarily, why are the Men so uniform?

And what about the beast races? Why didn't men and/or mer adopt any of their divinities and practices? And on the flip side, why haven't the beast races 'updated' to any of the other more 'popular' religions?

Before anyone comments:

My knowledge of lore is OK, but not great. Maybe some of the answers to these questions are obvious to some of you. I openly profess ignorance, which is why I'm posing these questions. Please don't anyone take anything I've written about the lore in a negative light, because I don't mean it that way. I'm really just trying to elicit discussion on these topics because I think they could be interesting.

That being said: I invite you happily to share your thoughts.