Adonis Diaries

Select your faith: As easy as ABC by Michael B. Larson?

Michael B. Larson has proposed a funny religious affiliation taxonomy. This flowchart is very traditional and cannot convey the diversity of faiths (religious, natural, ideological, social…).  First study the funny flowchart at the end before reading my comments:

1. Faiths are initially related to community “gastronomical customs” in food ingredients, cooking methods, fiesta ceremonies, intake of alcohol consumption.  Instead of starting with God, let us begin with the varieties of diet programs: Vegan, Vegetarian (excluding fish but including products that do not involve killing the living beings, like milk, honey…), strictly carnivorous, mixed (flesh-eating and vegetarian),  strictly herbs, Halal killing, “who cares how killed”…

We expand the base to include the beverages permitted for consumption (wine, beer, whiskey, frsh water, boiled water, lukewarm water…)  You’ll realize that this first cut will result in about the same results as in the flowchart, with an added bonus of automatic expanded detailed discrimination among the religious and sect beliefs.

2. Community structure and system of organization and sex customs (polygamy, monogamy, patriarchal, matriarchal…): Tribal, rural, urban, caste system, theocratic, oligarchic…Religions transformed over the ages to account for what communities feel more comfortable with revised customs and power “reforms”…

3. The handed down prophets and religious leaders: If you study the civil wars and “religious wars“, you realize that calamities are generated among sects (within a general religion and among specific sects of different religions).  The wars were not for “believing” in one God, several gods, or not believing in any gods…Religious sects are formed around charismatic leaders:  The members are willing to die for this leader but not for any abstract god…

4. Every monolithic religion created its arrays of specialized gods, of double gods, trinity, and several: They always reverted to tacit polytheism, one way or another, for political exigencies and converting the majority of the more natural multi-gods specialized trade and business systems of conviction…Pictures of gods and prophets might be prohibited in public places, but never within homes: People “pray” more frequently in front of a “material” picture, preferably a beautiful and colorful picture of their preferred Saint, martyr…Candlelight offer a more romantic climate for devotion, particularly bonfires…

5. Religion and sects can be differentiated according to weather conditions: Mostly desert region, high plateau, mostly cold, mostly equatorial, mostly rich in water, mostly arid…The environment is master: Living conditions takes precedence over abstract notions that do not fit the environment…

6.  Can you buy this concept of reincarnation when a sect opt for strictly incinerating the dead body? Since antiquity, fallen soldiers in any war were burned for practical reasons, before health consequences were fully understood.  If the dead body is not to follow nature processes of decaying and being devoured by the little insects, how can you claim incarnation?  Anyway, the creation of hell, heaven, and something else in between, has transcended the abstract notion of belief in incarnation into very detailed physical environment of fresh potable rivers (of water, wine, beer, juices…), delicious fruits, beautiful virgins…

It is obvious that the facts are terribly depressing, and religions extend a grain of hope  to keeping the communities from disintegrating in nihilist activities… trampled laws and orders out of controlled could lead to civil wars …

Mankind quest for the Absolute has always survived Temples and religion. Actually, religions exist simply because mankind yearn for the Absolute, uncontaminated by the miseries and shortcomings of reality

Note 1:

Note 2: I had no idea that Mormon consider underwear to have magical effects: Can any sane person deny this most important factor? Once, a group of very beautiful and exquisitely shaped Mormon  girls were dispatched to campus to proselytize a fundamentally “eugenics ideology”, as is the case with all cults. One of these beauties convinced me to quit smoking for just two weeks.

I kept my promise for the duration: The urge for smoking didn’t subside as she claimed and I quickly reverted to my bad habits. If I knew about this “magical stuff” I would have sold my soul for a peek.

In any case, a sect that allow males to marry up to 9 wives is obviously NOT a matriarchal community, and sex is done in the dark, so that the “magical underwear” do not confuse the hard working males into illicit temptations…?

Underwear, specifically female colorful underwear, should not be part of religious beliefs since this attraction is common to all people.  A religion is essentially created to savagely fight against another religion and not to finding common denominators among customs and traditions…

Note 3: It comes to no surprise that Jehovah Witness do not find underwear that” magical”:  They are as boring as their talks…Can you imagine people believing that an Old Book, translated and re-translated, is the word of God and should not be interpreted?  They believe stories of scores of people living to be 900 years, and totally illiterate people (disciples) to have written testaments with their own hand at age of 100…