Open Origin Religions?

[watchamadoodle]

Hate to be persnickety, but the Mormon church has evolved sufficiently that old Horny Joe would:

A) no longer recognize his church

B) he would be excommunicated for polygamy, and believing in his original versions of all the revelations, and probably 50 other things.


I guess this means LDS is a committee formed religion.

That's a good point IMO. The same would be true of Christianity and Judaism.

In fact, with every religion there is not only revision after the founder's revelations, there is revision before too.

Of course there are also the theories that Jesus and Muhammad were mythical. That would make those religions created by committee possibly.

[Angrboda]

Ti and Doe started Heaven's Gate cult together. Not a committee, but somewhat unusual.

[ReptilianPeon]

What about Hinduism? It's a collection of different believes and is a name given to several religions. It has no known founder and no single authority.

Here is my oversimplified attempt at describing Hinduism:
Hinduism in Bali is so much different from the Hinduism in Mauritius. For a start, they are at different ends of the Indian Ocean but it's actually a mistake to think of Hinduism as being polytheistic. Hinduism is divided into different sects and each sect has their own deity. People pick their favoruite deity to worship.

Also, Sikhism may be another. In Sikhism there are several Gurus and each seems to a built upon the teachings of the previous Gurus. That's if my memory isn't failing.

Jainism could be another. It's so old, much older than Judaism I think, that, like Hinduism, there is no record of a founder. That doesn't mean to said it wasn't founded by a single person but odds are it wasn't.

[robvalue]

Christianity may not have been founded by a committee, but it was certainly heavily edited by one!

[AFTT47]

There is the Church of Reality.

http://www.churchofreality.org/wisdom/welcome_home/

It is mostly the work of one man but it is like an open source religion.

[Aractus]

Quick question for you all:

a.) Judaism was founded when Moses went up Mt. Sinai on his own, and received the 2 stone tablets with the 10 commandments written on them.
b.) Christianity was founded, at best in Jesus' mind, or at worst in Paul's.
c.) Mormonism was founded when Joseph Smith got special glasses to read his magical rock.
d.) Islam was founded when Muhammed singularly received revelation from Allah.

It seems to me that all religions I am aware of were formed by single people, with experiences that only they experienced. Do you know of any religion that was formed by committee, meaning it was open-source, and many people experienced whatever phenomenal thing was being reported?

Judaism was not founded by Moses, it's an archaeological fact that he never set foot on Mt. Sinai. It was founded by collaboration, as evidenced by the fact that each of the books of the Pentateuch were written down by multiple authors, sometime around the 8th century BC.

Christianity was founded by the followers of Jesus, between Peter, Paul, James the Just, Luke, and other early figures. It was founded by collaboration. Note that in Acts a decision is reached not to require Greeks to be circumcised, this was not something suggested at anytime by Jesus it was decided at the Jerusalem Council. In fact until the Jerusalem Council you would say there were several competing "brands" of early followers of Jesus and that that's the point they became a unified religion. That was the point from which things started being written down, circulated, copied, and then put into the Bible or discarded as heresies.

Mormonism and Islam were founded by single figures as you suggest, as was Scientology.

[Aractus]

Also, Judaism was the first religion we know of to be based on a written text.

[Brian37]

The Hebrew religion was a splinter sect of Canaanite polytheism. El, Elohim and Yahweh were all characters in a "divine family". Yahweh started out as a lesser god in that family. The splinter Hebrews simply stole that character and elevated it to a monotheistic god.

There is not one single original religion in our species history. It always gets started by someone taking motifs and concepts from surrounding and or prior things around them, changing the characters and details and marketing it as the patent holder of good and morality.

No religion on the face of the planet own's a patent on human morality, our species behavior is in our evolution, not in the labels we assign ourselves or others. Religion is poison because it tries to do that, it may create group evolutionary survival, but that is a placebo and the poison is that it creates mythological reasons for morality claims and turns our morality into a comic book with the deadly result of setting up "in group vs out group".

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Also, Judaism was the first religion we know of to be based on a written text.

Um no, that is patent bullshit tactic, and it still does not matter if it was.. Humans started writing long before the Hebrews, and regardless had religious beliefs still at the earliest known written language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform 4,000 years BCE are the first known human writing. Those earliest humans still had religious beliefs regardless of organizing them.

Even the Egyptian Polytheism is much older.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pharaohs

Also older. AND NOTICE the list of gods "El" (God most high) and Down to the bottom of the list "Yahweh".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaanite_religion


Jewish historians do what every religion does, retrofit after the fact. They take their polytheist roots which are much older then claim it was the Hebrew god's plan and the fact that it has those characters in it proves their religion is true. The opposite is true. They created a new religion from older polytheism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-Hebrew_alphabet

The article above says 10th century BCE, but dishonestly paints like all religions do, that they are original. The people of that time were NOT monotheists, but polytheists, monotheism followed so the truth is Hebrews are simply a splinter sect of polytheism.

It is a common tactic for someone, or a group of people to start a new group by competing with ideas of morality and hero claims and use the ideas and names and characters of surrounding and or prior groups.

[Aractus]

Yes, but they didn't base their religions on texts. The Egyptians and the Romans for instance wrote extensively about their deities, but their religion wasn't based on a text rather the text documented what the rulers were saying.

[Brian37]

Way to miss the point once again. That is a dishonest tactic. Not because Jews are bad, but because humans have flawed perceptions.

The point is it still remains that Hebrews were NOT the first religion, they still are merely a result of splitting off prior polytheism.

Same stupid argument Christians make trying to claim to be the one true religion arguing the new character of Jesus in the NT, admitting he was a Jew himself, but move the goal posts when you point out that would make Christianity not original.

The point is there is NO SUCH THING as an "original" religion. All of them stem from surrounding and or prior traditions. and are only successful through marketing and or force.

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Arguing that a religion was the first is like arguing which soda was the first beverage, knowing damned well that water existed before any soda.

Religion competes just like Coke vs Pepsi. Pepsi comes out with a cherry soda, Coke looks at it, creates it's own version, gives it a different name incorporates the flavor, changes the color of the can. But it still is soda.

Arguing a religion was the first or original is like Coke arguing it was the first beverage because it's can is red. Meaningless and bullshit again, because water would still be prior to soda.  Polytheism came before Hebrew monotheism and that means Hebrews merely were tired of the old ways and decided to market a new club by incorporating old ideas and characters of the prior religions.