Starting Your Own Religion: a Practical Guide

22Feb07

Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.

- Attributed to L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology

Disclaimer: this guide has been written based on studies of existing religions. It has not been tried out in practice. By reading this guide, you guarantee that you will not invoke your god in disfavor of this guide’s author, should you be dissatisfied with the advice.

There are other guides to creating your own religion. Uncyclopedia has one. However, Uncyclopedia is a joke encyclopedia. If you follow their advice, nobody will take your religion seriously and will instead think you’re an atheist making a sarcastic statement about religion in general. That will win you a lot of atheist suppoters, but few believers. The last thing you want to is make fun of religion, given that your mission is to create a religion.

Step I: the Idea

If you take away the lie of life from an average human, you take away his happiness at the same time.

- Doctor Relling, in Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck

The first step is to come up with a good idea, a founding principle on which the rest of your religion can be built. For instance, Christianity has the character of Jesus Christ, who is part of the Holy Trinity and savior. As mentioned above, you must not give anyone the idea that you’re making a parody of religion. If you claim that the world was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster, you’re guaranteed to be laughed at. Instead, opt for something a bit more subtle. The current major religions in the world where founded in a time where people were a lot more superstitious and people had a lot less knowledge of the world. You must choose something close to what they’re used to, but at the same time removed from their current beliefs enough that they’ll consider converting.

At the same time, strategically remove any claims you make from the reach of scientific inquiry in the foreseeable future.

Good ideas are difficult to come by. Aliens have a large untapped potential, but until someone beaks the market with an aliens-based religion that’s not connected with religious nutjobs, nobody will take it seriously. Revelations have always been popular. The Book of Mormon was published as late as in 1830. Sadly, today’s scientific climate doesn’t bode well for revelation stories. They’re guaranteed to be subjected to skeptical inquiry (provided that you get someone to believe in them in the first place), and that’s something you want to avoid at all costs in the early days of your religion. When your religion has gained some followers, this isn’t as dangerous to its reputation.

Alternate planes of existence have a long history, yet there’s so many possible variations that you’ll have no trouble coming up with something unique to your religion. Luckily, modern science helps out the budding religious founder by introducing some counterintuitive ideas about reality. The theory of relativity and quantum mechanics are both accepted theories about reality that introduce notions guaranteed to bend the minds of the average believer. String theory, which has held the focus in theoretical physics the last 25 years, has evolved into hypotheses about “brane-worlds” and higher-dimensional membranes colliding to make the universe. You can easily use this to your advantage. Adding a religious element and distorting these scientific theories and speculations, you can use accepted science to delude the public into believing your religion is actually supported by science.

If you – as noted above – manage to conveniently remove your claims from the reach of science while at the same time give the impression that your religion has scientific evidence in its favor, you have a winner idea.

Step II: Polishing the Idea and Finding Your Role in It

The masses are far more likely to believe a big lie than several small ones.

- Adolf Hitler

When you have a good idea, you need to polish it and more impotantly, find your place in it. As the founder of your religion, you will obviously get some fame, but unless you work yourself into a high position, your contribution runs the risk of getting lost under the influence of ealy adopters. To get early followers before you reach a citical mass of adherents, you must be charismatic and make promises. Therefore, it’s important that you position yourself in such a way that nobody can come and take over leadership of your religion and cut off your stream of money, fame and hot chicks.

One way is to have beings from other planes of existence hail you as king. This way, you can avoid skeptics trying to find the true author of your holy books. You can just insist that you have a divine inspiration, but that your books are all your own. The tricky part is how to manifest beings from other planes of existence should you have none available. You could have them speak though you, and also suggest that famous oracles such as the Oracle in Delphi were also under the influence of higher-dimensional beings.

To found a successful religion, you must have personal charisma. Like it or not, Adolf Hitler was such a man. Try studying famous leaders. Don’t just study the ones you look up to; all successful leaders, whether you approve of their leadership and actions or not, are examples to follow. Some of them just got lucky and were at the right place at the right time. Others could have succeeded in almost any time at almost any place.

I’ll let you in on a trade secret: the spiritual, religious feeling people experience when participating in religious happenings can be induced by a strong leader character and some “starters” – your (paid or unpaid) co-conspiratorists strategically placed in the crowd and adept at simulating spiritual experiences – and even by some drugs. I haven’t tried drugs, though, and they hurt your brain, but they’re pretty popular in some religions as a means to get closer to the spiritual realm.

Step III: Creating a Doctrine

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

- Mahatma Gandhi

When you’ve established your leadership role and your religion has some followers, you must come up with a doctrine. It’s good not to impose too much on early adopters, because before they’ve invested much in your religion they’ll hesitate to follow unpleasant rules. You must accomplish the seemingly incompatible goals of being both convenient and inconvenient at the same time. Adherents must not be required to do or refrain from doing something they have strong feelings against or for. On the other hand, they must be required to be involved, because a religion that asks nothing of its adherents will not be taken seriously. You must avoid the trap of being seen as a religious extremist, but at the same time avoid the tap of being seen not as a religion but merely a useful philosophy or worldview that must be coupled with an existing religion to be useful.

As Gandhi says in the quote above, one must have the freedom to commit mistakes. Christianity is a great example of a religion where mistakes are accepted. As long as you sincerely ask for forgiveness, Jesus will forgive you. Under no circumstances must you let anyone be in a situation where they have done something which will exclude them from the religion forever. If that happens, they’ll turn to another religion. Build in some kind of escape route for sinners in your doctrine. The moral rules must be precise, but at the same time not so condemning that nobody will ever be forgiven anything. If you want some advice on where to look for inspiration, have a look at what black freedom fighters (e.g. Martin Luther King), hippies, Socrates and the founding fathers of the USA have to say about freedom and equality. At the same time, make sure you twist the message a bit so that your group of followers don’t view those outside the group the same way they view those inside the group. Some “us-versus-them” mentality only strengthens the feeling of belonging within a group, and by extension the faith your followers have in you and your doctrine.

You have a great advantage compared to the older religions. Their doctrine is centuries or even millenia old, and therefore don’t have any strong positions on ethical questions that their inventors couldn’t think of, but that now is or will soon be reality. As a result, the followers of these religions must interpret and guess what their founders would have thought or how what they said could apply to what they didn’t say anything about because it wasn’t even a fantasy at the time they said it. This leads to different subgroups within the religion going in different directions on modern questions. Make sure you have a strong position on abortion, cloning and possible modifications of human genetic material. Global warming is an issue. Vegans and animal rights activists didn’t really have any presence or political power back when most religions were founded, so make sure you condemn or support them wholeheartedly. The same goes for other issues where your competition lacks concensus; capitalize on the unified community and views your religion can provide.

Step IV: Marketing Your Religion

Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.

- Mother Theresa

When you’ve decided on the core values and rules in your religion and gained a small, but growing base of devoted fans, the real marketing begins. For religions, word of mouth is the overwhelmingly most successful marketing method. Conveniently, it’s also the cheapest, and when you’re just starting out money is not gonna be something you have much of, unless you’re already rich, in which case you probably don’t need to start a religion anyway (unless you’re rich but not famous). Whatever you’re gonna do to get followers, you’re not gonna have the luxury of being able to buy them.

The crazies are probably the easiest ones to convince, but they’re also the least likely ones to attact more followers. Until your religion reaches critical mass of followers, you’re gonna have to work hard, unless you’re extraordinarily lucky (or the gods actually have appointed you to savior; something you can’t count on). The best ones are those with lots of family and friends, who appear normal in every respect. They must be devoted, but the moment they neglect the outside world or distance themselves from it, friends and family will start to see it as a negative sign. This becomes less improtant later on. Remember: when one person has a delusion, it’s called insanity. When a hundred share the delusion, it’s called a cult. You need at least 500 – 1000 followers before anyone will regard you as a religious leader proper.

Make public appearances, but do not push yourself too much on people in public (it’s OK to do so in private settings). You need to be memorable, quotable and charismatic. Your quotes must be applicable not only to you and your religion, but other religions too. You could even make them apply to atheists. Remember, you want to be an idol not only to your followers but also those who aren’t convinced or don’t dare to take the first step. Make frequent references to admirable and famous people who held views close to those you hold. Out-of-context quotes are great for that.

Emphasize happiness and how healthy your followers are. Hush down any deconversion stories. When someone challenges your views, talk in vague terms but make it clear that you disagree with their objections. Study politicians; they’ve perfected the art of making sleazy answers that avoid the original question yet convinces the audience. The challenge is to be both sleazy and enthusiastic at the same time. You must appear in every respect as though you are not only believing every word you say with your heart, you’re also benefitting greatly from it (which you probably are, if you’re doing it right).

Many people in the west are drawn to eastern religions because they de-emphasize superficial values and seek happiness without harming others. Appeal to these feelings, but remember: these people are lying to themselves. They might fantasize about leaving the country, joining a Buddhist monastery and meditate there until they achieve enlightenment, but in reality they can’t live without their TVs and cars and jewelry and good food and social esteem.

Any fantastic elements your religion contains, such as healings, must be frequently mentioned but never investigated. Cite “recent studies” and “classical experiments”. Show pictures. Briefly flash graphs and hope nobody captured it on film. Always smile. Remember, 77% of all statistics are made up on the spot and often nobody notices.

Step V: Dealing with Unexpected Events

Organized psychomaterial concentration on non-trivial complex theological edge-cases provides an adequate understanding of the concepts discussed herein.

- Simen

Sooner or later, something unexpected will happen. Some of your supporters blow up a building, new scientific evidence disproves the claims you thought were safe from science or one of your leaders are exposed as hypocrites. Whatever the case, you’ll need to have a plan. These events often lead to serious investigations both from press and government, and this will almost always turn up some old unfavorable material about your religion. Perhaps someone sees you doing something you condemn or finds that you bookmarked this guide before starting your religion. Perhaps some of your writings can be taken to encourage terrorism. Perhaps your vague, generic claims turn out to be falsifiable after all.

When it comes to scientific objections, practice your vague, general and jargon-heavy responses. Sound serious. Sound as if you know perfectly well what you’re talking about while the scientists who raise objections are clueless (this is usually the case when you invent jargon). Drop hints that the subconscious parts of the brain will piece together to something the brain thinks is coherent, but in reality is not.

When some of your followers turn violent, always codemn them right away and then start removing any traces of them in your organization. Do not support them. The right thing to do is not to support them if they ever turn away from their evil tendencies. This is in direct opposition to the point made earlier that nobody must ever be able to make themselves permanently rejected from your religion. That rule doesn’t apply to terrorists, of course. If you support them, people will come to associate your religion with violence. If you let them back in later, people will think you’re a weak leader who doesn’t have strong principles.

When all else fails, focus exclusively on the good sides of your religion. Shamelessly bash the bad sides of other religions. All this must be done through people below the top of the organization (in case it backfires, your reputation is clean), but not at the bottom, because the ordinary believers will be clueless or even fondly remembering the good days of their old religion.

General Hints and Advice

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.

- Richard Dawkins

Here’s some general advice:

• Don’t buy that luxurious yacht just yet; spend your first money on advertisement and missionaries to get the ball rolling. Once you’ve reached a critical mass of followers, you can spend as much as you want and still have the money pouring in.
• Speak in tongues.
• Build spectacular buildings. Support religious art. Generally give the impression that the loss of your religion would be a great loss for your culture, because of all the buildings, art, books and science founded on it.
• Support evolution.
• Make promises. People are afraid of death, and have always been. Take advantage of that. Promise them they’ll transcend to the next stage of existence. Scare them by telling them they’ll go to hell or be reborn as an icky mosquito if they don’t believe.
• If everything’s about to blow up in your face, run. Responsibility is for cowards.
• Don’t tell Richard Dawkins.

Have fun conquering the world!

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