(June 12, 2014 at 8:38 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Market share.
A good explanation. I prefer to consider a more fundamental level, that markets (businesses, governments) and religions can be considered as self-replicating/perpetuating organisms in a not always friendly environment. They experience variation and selection pressures which result in their evolving to better fit the environs in which they find themselves. These somewhat regular though primarily chaotic environments lead different isolated populations of the replicators to evolve in different directions. Some sects go extinct, others flourish and spread. It's all (inorganic) biology(sic).
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat?