This week’s “hot & cold 10” religions. Part II

This week’s “cold five” religions:

1) Judaism (more than 13 million people)

In Judaism life is the conversation between God and a human being. But judging by the number of prohibitions and restrictions that this belief imposes on its adherents you can imagine how strange this conversation is. Christianity and its modest number of commandments and deadly sins is lost in front of 613 exact instructions that Gog gave to the Jewish people. Despite the fact that the information was allegedly obtained from the single source. 248 out of 613 commandments are prescriptive and remaining 365 are directly prohibitive.  The number of bans is believed to be connected to the number of days in the year. Not a day without a prohibition! God definitely made a smart job of it. But it seems like after 250-300 commandments he had a tough time. Or else how did “The king should not have too many horses” appear in the list? But he got through it. Indeed, it’s hard not to come to believe after such a mighty work of God.

In the past, if what the Bible says is true, communication between God and his beloved sons took place more often and looked more like a dialogue. If you do something unwanted by Jahve, you die. If you are not punished, you can be sure that your relatives or children will be. Nowadays quite the same dialogue is being carried on in South Korea.

2) Christianity (more than 2 billion)

In Christianity it’s incomparably easier to be a believer. As little as 10 commandments, 7 deadly sins and everything cooked up by the Pope, various hierarchs and other people who know the ropes better and understand God’s words more deeply than ordinary Christians. The set of commandments itself is also interesting. The first four clauses regulate relationships between God and a man, and not in a very obvious way (for example “Do not take the Lord’s name in vain”). And it is only the sixth clause where God remembers that murder also flatters no man.

As for deadly sins, they prevent “thought crimes” and this always leads to personality development and society well-being. Read “1984”. 

For the godliest Christians there was introduced one more attraction called the “original sin”. No matter how carefully you abide by the postulates of the religion, you are not going to be sinless because God took offence at the first people due to their desire for the personal growth. 

All in all, “Everything is in God’s hands”. There is no saying about freedom.

3) Islam (more than 1 billion)

I won’t write anything here, because I’m not an idiot. Life instinct, you know.

4) Paganism (no exact information)

First of all, it’s necessary to make it clear which “paganism” we have in mind, as there is not the only one definition of this term. Ancient kinds of polytheism (such as ancient Greek religion, ancient Egyptian religion ect.), animism, shamanism and others. All this will be the talking point in this section. 

Some theologians believe that polytheism is a survival of the primitive and ignorant society.  This statement isn’t reasoned less than the other theories proposed by religious ministers.  It’s not actually clear why the faith in one extremely complicated god holding sway over absolutely everything is less logical than the faith in a lot of more simple-minded gods.  Each god has his own sphere of influence.  Each one has his own strengths and weaknesses.  They are too humane gods…

In the matter of the human role in the world view, paganism is almost the same as Abrahamic religions. The differences are roughly speaking of a similar nature as the difference between monarchy and democracy.  Monarchy – you are forced by one person, democracy – you are closely watched by a group of people who were chosen by somebody.

5) Zoroastrianism (replaced by Islam, only small groups are left)

This concept deserves high attention, albeit it meets the definition of a pagan cult. It is one of the most ancient religions.  But this isn’t why it deserves attention, it’s all about the psychological device used by its creator Zoroaster. It was him who realized that it’s possible to speculate on a person’s fear of death and vagueness after it.  It was him who introduced the notions of hell and heaven. It is predetermined that “good” people go to the “good” place after they die and “bad” people go to the “bad” one. The brilliant idea. If there was the Nobel Prize for Psychology, it would be Zoroaster who would become its first winner. Yes, I know that Zoroaster lived thousands of years before establishing the Nobel Prize but the metaphor was too good.

 Billions of people were brought up with the idea of heaven and hell. Wars are set off because of it. People kill for it. They don’t live as they want to because of it. What horrifies a human most is uncertainty . This is the button that’s being pushed by religions, governments and other honorable society institutions.

Unfortunately, new religions emerge not that often and even less often they acquire hundreds of thousands of followers. Furthermore, it’s necessary for them to meet the serious competition from the old residents. That’s a pity but I won’t be able to make my hit-parade weekly like Billboard hot 100. But it’s not a big deal, see you in a couple of centuries.