Political Memes

5429 readers

1948 users here now

Welcome to politcal memes!

These are our rules:

Be civil

Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.

No misinformation

Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.

Posts should be memes

Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.

No bots, spam or self-promotion

Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

1543

It'S bEen suPeR SuCcSessFuL bEfoRe, sO wHy NoT? (i.imgur.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

74 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Yeah... "thousands of them" is overexaggerated. That being said, there have been a lot of faiths, myths, and mysticism throughout human history..

Here's an interesting timeline of belief systems.

I grew up Mormon and had a hard time believing that we were the "true church," "taught the true teachings.," etc., when I learned about how many different current and old religions and beliefs people had throughout human history. Cracks started to form in my faith foundation then. The following thoughts throw me for a loop back then. Exibit A. Exibit B. Exibit C.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

There are over 40,000 sects of christianity last I knew. I'm going to say thousands isn't an overexageration. I won't consider religions the same if they have different beliefs.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Part of it is probably what determines what counts as “a religion.” My mind went to indigenous groups in the Americas, Australia, and Africa - thousands seems appropriate there!

Historically, religions as practiced on the ground were very syncretistic - like in the late medieval Muslim world, a Christian might carry a verse from the Koran as a charm or Muslim might visit a rabbi. Not to say that there wasn’t religious persecution and attempts by religious authorities to make sure that everyone was following the rules, but the species of religious fundamentalism we see today is a product of the 19th century and widespread literacy.

Even within a modern Protestant church of a specific denomination, there’s probably a mix of people who are universalists, into spiritualism, etc.

I don’t really think religions can be considered discrete in a way that one could report “there are X religions in the world.”

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

That timeline leaves off The Babis, The Baha'is, The Mormons, and tons of fracturing among Christians and Muslims, that I am aware of.

It also ignores Shintoism, Daoism, and the other far eastern belief systems.

Also I am intentionally not counting Scientology, because that was a bet.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I wasn't able to find Babi, but did find Bahai and Mormon in the tree. I don't have the time right now to try to find the others, but I'm going to guess that they're in there or didn't make the cut when making the tree.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

No surprise on the Babi. They either became Baha'is, or got massacred by the Persian Army.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Do you happen to know where a higher resolution version of this image is?

I am not very knowledgeable about religion but that chart buckets European Animism as one "Religion" while I think it was not organized and refers to the disparate beliefs of folks in the area at the time, so one could argue that there were lots of version I think.

Regardless really fascinating info.