We've had polytheism in the Egyptian gods, the Greek gods, the Roman gods, and now we have monotheism in Judaism Christianity, Islam and Mormonism. Religion is always evolving in strange and mysteriously stupid ways.

What makes a religion successful?

After looking at assorted religions around the world, I devised a list that you might consider for your future religion.

Religion is a form of tribalism (group thought) with a set of beliefs to grow the tribe and create a homogeous enviroment around themselves.

  • Write a book about your God in order to give his non-existence substance so that the idiots will believe his is real, not like those fake gods from the Aztecs, Mayans, Incas, Anastasi, Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks. They never had books about their gods.

  • Your religion must offer an afterlife, otherwise, it offers nothing. Everlasting life is a pillar of religion. Of course, there is the bad everlasting life and the good everlasting life.

  • Your religion must have a place like Heaven to reward true believers in the afterlife.

    True believers must be constantly told that they will have a better afterlife. In fact, it must be important to have the believers focus more attention on their next life over their current miserable existence of hell on earth.

  • Your religion must have a place like Hell to punish the unbelievers (the firewood of Hell), pagans, etc... Hell is also an excellent psychological control mechanism that easily allow you to manipulate the great unwashed masses san cullote.

  • The God of your religion must be responsible for creating mankind. It's not clear what it would mean to have a religion where God does not create you, the believer. What sense would there be to believe in someone that was not involved in your creation.

  • Having a mean angry vicious genocidal maniac of a God means that you can better threaten the non-believers and pagans with his vengeance. Having a nice benevolent loving God would not threaten pagans and non-believers.

    It's hard to convince believers that you really have a loving merciful God when the believers always see war, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades.

    Monotheism is better than polytheism.

    The Holy Trinity, the hybrid three-headed God from the Micene Conference might have been created to draw in the pagans who practiced polytheism.

    Feel free in being creative with your God.

  • Despite the fact that your religion actually expouses a mean angry vicious genocidal maniac of a God, he must never be described as such. He must be described as loving, merciful, benevolent and beneficient.

  • Conversion to another religion, apostasy must be discouraged. Excommunication might work, but death by stoning should be sufficient.

    Kill the unbelievers (those who war against God). This makes your religion bigger and stronger and theirs smaller and weaker.

    As an alternative, take them in as slaves to your society and feel free to rape their women and make more true believers.

  • Sex among believers must be encouraged at all times.

    Let every sperm count.

    The following people will be sent to Hell via an express tunnel:

    In western Massachusetts, the Shakers doomed themselves by not allowing sex within the congregation. They did not think this out very well.

  • Those who are not helpful in reproduction must be killed, like the homosexuals.

    It should however be pointed out that for people who don't reproduce, there sure are a lot of them.

  • True believers of your religion must proselytize fervently, especially the young ones who are relatively clueless and mindless zombies ready to do your bidding, including martyrdom. Proselytizing definitely increases the size of the tribe or herd by acquiring more pagans and theft from those other religions which are not the true religion like yours..

    Becoming a martyr for your religion should be rewarded well. Clearly, 72 virgins are a greater reward than 16 virgins. To be at the right hand of God (for all eternity) doesn't sound appealing, unless that is where the virgins are.

    Of course, 72 virgins for each martyr requires a large stockpile of young virgins ( girls or boys in waiting, depending on the sexual preference of the martyr).

  • Your religion must offer plenty of holidays to protect you from the ravages of capitalism.

  • The initiation process to become a member of your religion should be relatively easy. You should avoid butchery like circumcision or virgin sacrifice as an entry requirement.

  • Depending on your point of view, the religion must either be hard or soft on morality (mostly sex, lust and other criminal activities). Religions with lax morality seem more popular, but it's your call.

  • Your religion should have good music and decent art.

The true horror of religion is that it allows perfectly sane people to believe by the billions what only lunatics could believe on their own.

Send comments to: hjw2001@gmail.com