Friday, July 06, 2007

CREATE YOUR OWN RELIGION IN TEN EASY STEPS!

I was surfing the net and came upon this amusing article. . .

HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN RELIGION IN TEN EASY STEPS!

1) Create a God. One with a catchy name is best. Should be simple and out of the ordinary, but not too far out that people can’t remember it.

2) Make it in charge of something people already focus on, but don’t have a target for that focus.

3) Make it something that people will be reminded of frequently.

4) Make it easy for them to “buy into” the worship of your New God.

5) Make it ambiguous. Let both sides of an argument claim it as their own. Why define it when you can let people fight it out themselves. People are funny. They’ll fight over anything. Even something you just made up. Enjoy the show and try not to think too much about the Karmic issues you are creating for yourself.

6) Establish some standards by which the God should be referred to, creating an intrinsic reverence right from the start. Make sure that the Full Title and Name are Always Capitalized. This is because that everybody knows that something that has Capital Letters Is Much More Important than something that isn’t.

7) Make cool symbols. They should be things that people already know and see everywhere. And they should be easy to draw and say.

Okay, we’ve now created our first God.

Now, let’s see how easy it is to turn it into a Religion!

You can’t have a cool religion with just a single character, so….

8) You need an opposing force. Not necessarily an arch-enemy, but an opposite perspective so that people can pick sides and fight over things.

9) You need to confuse everybody. This will make sure that nobody can be really certain WHAT they believe, because it is all so non-sensical to begin with. And when you don’t spell it out exactly (or even if you do) you know how those funny humans will all magically just get along, right!

And last but certainly not least:

10) The Big Reward. You know everything you always wished you had in this life? After you die, you’ll get it! We promise! Hot women. Cute Guys. Flying Cars. Washboard abs. Rivers of Chocolate that won’t add an ounce or an inch to your perfectly fit, weightless body. And lots of cute, adorable fluffy bunnies to frolic with in virgin green pastures.

In our case, we guarantee that you’ll get everything listed above. And then some!

But wait! There’s more! All the people you love in this life will be there. But not the people you don’t like. They all go to “The Other Place”. Don’t worry. They’ll get theirs. And you’ll spend eternity in Paradise. Really. We Promise.

Oh yeah, one last thing:

The always present but never written down (written down here because I can’t whisper it in your ear) Eleventh Rule:

11) Get The Word Out!

What good is creating your own religion if you can’t get people to worship your Gods and beg you for guidance because they don’t trust themselves to navigate their own way through life? They’ll be much better having an uninformed random someone else tell them what to do than looking at their own situation objectively and determining a logical path to take that is likely to help them improve their lot in life.

And don’t forget the money!

4 comments:

Joe said...

yep, don't forget the money!

Stardust said...

joe, yep...god can't operate without money! Without it no one would even know about god.

I saw a news segment yesterday where churches are now installing credit card machines in churches, and using direct deposit for people do donate directly and automatically from their bank accounts. It's all about the money and providing an income for pastors and staff...big business. How many congregations do we know of who are satisfied to worship their god in nature...parks, etc? I know of none.

Andrea said...

Wow, that's embarrassing.

The confusion issue is what really gets me. It's understandable why nonbelievers should be confused, but why are believers confused and not in total agreement? Shouldn't their god have made everything crystal clear to them? Free will cannot be used as an excuse because the disciples' free will was not violated, so why would ours be if some deity should directly and physically tell us the proper way to live or whatever?

But back to the money, I was thinking the other day, comparing two images: one was a serene little temple tucked away in the wooded mountains of northern Japan, which I saw when I was camping one time - and the large, ugly eyesore megachurches in various American locales, with their acres of parking lot and their expensive sound systems inside, on which lame attempts at rock music are played.

Peaceful solitude on a mountain.

Huge garish building filled with people who do not read their entire holy book and do not know/care about the history of their religion.

zooplah said...

Hmmm, how come in the afterlife, the women are hot but the men are only cute? I want 40 hot guys when I die. I don't care for them being virgins, though. I'd like them to know what they're doing.

See, my religion is already better than Islam. :)