You might notice that aside from Hinduism, the largest ones tend to be the ones that say “we think that everyone should be doing this,” rather than the practices associated with specific ethnic groups, which don’t claim to be universal in the same way.
Kind of a big question. In short we are conscious beings and we exist, so naturally we question why we exist and why we are conscious. Reddit atheists of course will point out many religious beliefs are irrational and superstitious, however these big questions can’t be answered by science which is purely material and describes what is, not why anything exists at all or the “hard problem of consciousness”.
Religions however are not all philosophy. They are social systems, people work at their marriages and avoid sinning because they believe there is some greater purpose than pure materialism. Further rulers attempt to influence religion by creating a state religion and indoctrinating everyone into it. Religion can be good or bad in this way, used to motivate people to do good, justify their evil or serve a corrupt ruler. Rulers and religious leaders consequently were eager to formalize religions and spread them all over the world.
“My god is right, your’s doesn’t exist, so therefefore you’re blaspheming and need to die,” is an extremely common theme throughout history, and lead to the world sort of “filtering out,” the smaller/weaker religions, meaning the ones that were left had an easier time growing and becoming even stronger, especially since growth was a major goal for a lot of them.
It depends. Some religions were founded in densely populated areas, so they have many followers without spreading much geography. Others spread across the globe using force.
One, humans are social creatures. Cultural momentum and the human inclination to follow the zeitgeist cannot be discounted. Especially when said religion makes itself synonymous with social events and day to day administration.
Two, colonialism. Sooooooo much colonialism. Show up, kill everyone with authority, install a new chapter of your religion and make them also in charge of keeping your new subjects alive. About a generation later everyone who won’t comply has either been ousted from the region, socially ostracized, or died. Rinse and repeat.
Swords and suppression mostly I think. At least in my fairly uneducated mind.
religions started off peaceful and spread with “missionaries” through trade and exploration. It seems that after a certain amount of time and critical mass of followers, other religions were then suppressed and there have been a lot of incidents of forced conversion over time. Pair that with trying to live, Christian’s wouldn’t do business with non Christians for example and you get a large following. That works for Islam and Christianity at any rate.
IIRC Judaism is normally something you’re born into, in that I don’t think (please correct me if I’m wrong) there are many if any Jewish missionaries.
Christianity got its start in the Roman Empire, which at the time was a massive empire whose influence was centered around the Mediterranean but stretched into the middle east, western europe, and northern africa. Christianity lead to Islam in the middle east primarily. After Rome collapsed and its former territories developed into their own powerful nations, they in turn spread Christianity and Islam to other areas of the world they conquered, colonized, or heavily traded with, and then some of those former colonies like the US further spread their religion around as they became rising powers.
I’m less familiar with Asia, but many of the major nations in asia have been around for a really long time, even if they haven’t always been stable or prosperous, while also having more limited interaction with europe until european colonizing happened. And as such Buddhism and Hinduism easily spread and became embedded into a lot of the cultures there.
Notably the two most wide spreads ones are the ones that tell their folllowers to go out and convert people into following the religion. Most otehr religions aren’t as concerned with spreading there beliefs so remained fairly localised.
Most religions don’t really do conversions. A Buddhist isn’t gonna threaten to kill you for being a heretic. Christianity & Islam in particular on the other hand tend to be a bit more dogmatic, and have a history of saying “join us or die”.
That said, it’s not always through war either. Christianity famously incorporated pagan patron deities & religious figures into the church by calling them “Saints”; making it easier for converts to keep their celebrations while being “good christians”.
This is why St. Patrick, St. Brigid, St. Nicholas, and many others exist; so people could keep their history while the church took power.
Maybe the answer depends upon how you parse the spectrum into distinct religions, as the term “few” probably lumps together many religions that are similar, but not identical. For instance, there are tens of thousands of Christian denominations worldwide.
Religious ideas are some of the best examples of memes—as in actual memetics, not the internet caricature. They mutate and evolve to best survive their environment, and spread.
A local neighborhood god was carried to a remote state, where it evolved into the local pantheon’s war god. That state was conquered, and it’s elite exiled to a foreign country, where the god mutated into a non-local god of oppressed people. That idea incubated in the exiles and took over in their homeland when they returned. Eventually offshoots of this monotheos (singular “universal” god) spread over most of the world because of its fitness in the various cultures, probably mostly to do with its utility for social control.
Because people want to belong to a group that gives them security and meaning. Successful religions build on this, sometimes in positive ways, sometimes in negative. Christianity spread through the Roman Empire and as far as India because Christians were willing to build communities that met people’s needs. Just as Islam has spread in African American communities in the US and Buddhism among Untouchables in India.
But the flip side of group solidarity is that it gives you the ability to impose your will on less organized groups. Islam certainly started out that way. Hinduism, for all its vaunted tolerance, has often been associated with a regressive social order in countries like India. And Christianity has been weaponized by the state since the time of Constantine.
It’s worth noting though that in the absence of religion it would be something else. Which faction of Communism? (Trotsky, Lenin or Mao). Which sports team? (Blues and Greens in Byzantium-look up the Nika riots) Which ethnicity?
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the worlds major religions are the ones that developed along some of the longest trade routes of antiquity. Trade from Europe to Asia has been going on for almost as long as human civilization has been able to develop long-standing cities. As trade spreads, so do ideas.
For the same reason the majority of mutations died off and only a few survived to become the animal species that exist today.
We like to think we know stuff, but some things are VERY HARD to know and we hate admitting to ignorance about these things. So lots of people make up answers to the great mystery of existence, and pretend to have “solved it”. Lots of different approaches are tried, lots of different claims are made, but only the few that really succeeded at spreading like wildfire and sustaining themselves survived. Note, it’s irrelevant whether they succeed in the sense of being correct. What matters is that they “succeed” in the same sense that genes do – they succeed at spreading themselves and not being stamped out. (This is what “meme” meant before younger people tried changing the word to mean “a picture on the internet” (which is ONE relatively minor TYPE of meme, but hardly the only type.))
The reason they don’t all succeed is simply that there isn’t much room for dissent in the kinds of answers they give. So a culture will end up settling on one of them as its common belief, with the others being suppressed into obscurity. It’s only the vast distances of Earth and the difficulty of trying to bring the entire world into one monoculture that allows more than one religion to exist at all. This idea we have now of religions coexisting nicely within the same culture and everyone just agreeing to disagree and still be friends is relatively new. And it was spurred on in no small part due to religions having to get trimmed back to a smaller and smaller jurisdiction over people’s thinking, dropping the claims over things that actually can be investigated and learned today but to our ancestors they were big unknowns. The shrinking jurisdiction of religion has left it in a corner where it’s a lot easier to say “agree to disagree and move on” because it really is dealing with stuff that on some level we are aware we really don’t know and even though nobody seems to be honest enough to admit this, we all know we’re just guessing. It’s a lot easier to tolerate someone else’s random guess when you know that at some level your religion is also just a random guess.
There’s also the fact that as part of the ties to culture, religions tend to absorb other religions and make them become part of themselves. A lot of common moderm Christian traditions would look alien to an early Christian who hadn’t yet brought pagan traditions into the religion to help absorb foreign populations. In one sense it’s not really the same religion. It’s a mutated new religion with the same name.
My potentially controversial opinion: (stolen and paraphrased, because no one has an original thought ever):
I’m fairly sure if you simplify every religion down to it’s core and remove the controlling crap that’s been added: they’re all the same religion and everyone was once just worshipping the sun. It’s always the sun. Which makes sense as it’s directly linked to our food production and happiness.
Jesus: son of god: sun god.
Egypt: ra: sun god
Pagan: alllll about the sun and seasons.
Hindu: Surya, sun god
Sikh: sun representing light and knowledge.
Jump in if I’ve made glaring mistakes. I only know a little bit about a lot of stuff. But basically: it’s all about the sun and they’re all the same. Just some guys started adding extras and shouting louder and those factions stuck around and separated.
Comments
You might notice that aside from Hinduism, the largest ones tend to be the ones that say “we think that everyone should be doing this,” rather than the practices associated with specific ethnic groups, which don’t claim to be universal in the same way.
Kind of a big question. In short we are conscious beings and we exist, so naturally we question why we exist and why we are conscious. Reddit atheists of course will point out many religious beliefs are irrational and superstitious, however these big questions can’t be answered by science which is purely material and describes what is, not why anything exists at all or the “hard problem of consciousness”.
Religions however are not all philosophy. They are social systems, people work at their marriages and avoid sinning because they believe there is some greater purpose than pure materialism. Further rulers attempt to influence religion by creating a state religion and indoctrinating everyone into it. Religion can be good or bad in this way, used to motivate people to do good, justify their evil or serve a corrupt ruler. Rulers and religious leaders consequently were eager to formalize religions and spread them all over the world.
Wars.
“My god is right, your’s doesn’t exist, so therefefore you’re blaspheming and need to die,” is an extremely common theme throughout history, and lead to the world sort of “filtering out,” the smaller/weaker religions, meaning the ones that were left had an easier time growing and becoming even stronger, especially since growth was a major goal for a lot of them.
It depends. Some religions were founded in densely populated areas, so they have many followers without spreading much geography. Others spread across the globe using force.
It’s easy to initiate people into 2 main religions: Christianity and Islam.
Christianity: you need water and to say some words. Water and language are universal.
Islam: you need to say some words and have two people watch you say them. People are everywhere and language is universal.
Once the above is done, you’re officially in.
One, humans are social creatures. Cultural momentum and the human inclination to follow the zeitgeist cannot be discounted. Especially when said religion makes itself synonymous with social events and day to day administration.
Two, colonialism. Sooooooo much colonialism. Show up, kill everyone with authority, install a new chapter of your religion and make them also in charge of keeping your new subjects alive. About a generation later everyone who won’t comply has either been ousted from the region, socially ostracized, or died. Rinse and repeat.
Swords and suppression mostly I think. At least in my fairly uneducated mind.
religions started off peaceful and spread with “missionaries” through trade and exploration. It seems that after a certain amount of time and critical mass of followers, other religions were then suppressed and there have been a lot of incidents of forced conversion over time. Pair that with trying to live, Christian’s wouldn’t do business with non Christians for example and you get a large following. That works for Islam and Christianity at any rate.
IIRC Judaism is normally something you’re born into, in that I don’t think (please correct me if I’m wrong) there are many if any Jewish missionaries.
Christianity got its start in the Roman Empire, which at the time was a massive empire whose influence was centered around the Mediterranean but stretched into the middle east, western europe, and northern africa. Christianity lead to Islam in the middle east primarily. After Rome collapsed and its former territories developed into their own powerful nations, they in turn spread Christianity and Islam to other areas of the world they conquered, colonized, or heavily traded with, and then some of those former colonies like the US further spread their religion around as they became rising powers.
I’m less familiar with Asia, but many of the major nations in asia have been around for a really long time, even if they haven’t always been stable or prosperous, while also having more limited interaction with europe until european colonizing happened. And as such Buddhism and Hinduism easily spread and became embedded into a lot of the cultures there.
“Christianity didn’t become a world religion because of quality of its teachings, but by the quantity of its violence” – Eleanor Ferguson.
Notably the two most wide spreads ones are the ones that tell their folllowers to go out and convert people into following the religion. Most otehr religions aren’t as concerned with spreading there beliefs so remained fairly localised.
Because they tend to kill anyone who disagrees with them. Religion is poision
Most religions don’t really do conversions. A Buddhist isn’t gonna threaten to kill you for being a heretic. Christianity & Islam in particular on the other hand tend to be a bit more dogmatic, and have a history of saying “join us or die”.
That said, it’s not always through war either. Christianity famously incorporated pagan patron deities & religious figures into the church by calling them “Saints”; making it easier for converts to keep their celebrations while being “good christians”.
This is why St. Patrick, St. Brigid, St. Nicholas, and many others exist; so people could keep their history while the church took power.
I know that Christianity used to be very big on sending missionaries around the world to bring people to Jesus Christ.
Maybe the answer depends upon how you parse the spectrum into distinct religions, as the term “few” probably lumps together many religions that are similar, but not identical. For instance, there are tens of thousands of Christian denominations worldwide.
People were killed/proselytized for 1000’s of years if they didn’t conform
not everywhere not always but it happened enough
Lots of them encourage you to have lots of kids specifically too
Religion was a fact not a choice for much of history
Evolution.
Religious ideas are some of the best examples of memes—as in actual memetics, not the internet caricature. They mutate and evolve to best survive their environment, and spread.
A local neighborhood god was carried to a remote state, where it evolved into the local pantheon’s war god. That state was conquered, and it’s elite exiled to a foreign country, where the god mutated into a non-local god of oppressed people. That idea incubated in the exiles and took over in their homeland when they returned. Eventually offshoots of this monotheos (singular “universal” god) spread over most of the world because of its fitness in the various cultures, probably mostly to do with its utility for social control.
Because people want to belong to a group that gives them security and meaning. Successful religions build on this, sometimes in positive ways, sometimes in negative. Christianity spread through the Roman Empire and as far as India because Christians were willing to build communities that met people’s needs. Just as Islam has spread in African American communities in the US and Buddhism among Untouchables in India.
But the flip side of group solidarity is that it gives you the ability to impose your will on less organized groups. Islam certainly started out that way. Hinduism, for all its vaunted tolerance, has often been associated with a regressive social order in countries like India. And Christianity has been weaponized by the state since the time of Constantine.
It’s worth noting though that in the absence of religion it would be something else. Which faction of Communism? (Trotsky, Lenin or Mao). Which sports team? (Blues and Greens in Byzantium-look up the Nika riots) Which ethnicity?
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the worlds major religions are the ones that developed along some of the longest trade routes of antiquity. Trade from Europe to Asia has been going on for almost as long as human civilization has been able to develop long-standing cities. As trade spreads, so do ideas.
For the same reason the majority of mutations died off and only a few survived to become the animal species that exist today.
We like to think we know stuff, but some things are VERY HARD to know and we hate admitting to ignorance about these things. So lots of people make up answers to the great mystery of existence, and pretend to have “solved it”. Lots of different approaches are tried, lots of different claims are made, but only the few that really succeeded at spreading like wildfire and sustaining themselves survived. Note, it’s irrelevant whether they succeed in the sense of being correct. What matters is that they “succeed” in the same sense that genes do – they succeed at spreading themselves and not being stamped out. (This is what “meme” meant before younger people tried changing the word to mean “a picture on the internet” (which is ONE relatively minor TYPE of meme, but hardly the only type.))
The reason they don’t all succeed is simply that there isn’t much room for dissent in the kinds of answers they give. So a culture will end up settling on one of them as its common belief, with the others being suppressed into obscurity. It’s only the vast distances of Earth and the difficulty of trying to bring the entire world into one monoculture that allows more than one religion to exist at all. This idea we have now of religions coexisting nicely within the same culture and everyone just agreeing to disagree and still be friends is relatively new. And it was spurred on in no small part due to religions having to get trimmed back to a smaller and smaller jurisdiction over people’s thinking, dropping the claims over things that actually can be investigated and learned today but to our ancestors they were big unknowns. The shrinking jurisdiction of religion has left it in a corner where it’s a lot easier to say “agree to disagree and move on” because it really is dealing with stuff that on some level we are aware we really don’t know and even though nobody seems to be honest enough to admit this, we all know we’re just guessing. It’s a lot easier to tolerate someone else’s random guess when you know that at some level your religion is also just a random guess.
There’s also the fact that as part of the ties to culture, religions tend to absorb other religions and make them become part of themselves. A lot of common moderm Christian traditions would look alien to an early Christian who hadn’t yet brought pagan traditions into the religion to help absorb foreign populations. In one sense it’s not really the same religion. It’s a mutated new religion with the same name.
My potentially controversial opinion: (stolen and paraphrased, because no one has an original thought ever):
I’m fairly sure if you simplify every religion down to it’s core and remove the controlling crap that’s been added: they’re all the same religion and everyone was once just worshipping the sun. It’s always the sun. Which makes sense as it’s directly linked to our food production and happiness.
Jesus: son of god: sun god.
Egypt: ra: sun god
Pagan: alllll about the sun and seasons.
Hindu: Surya, sun god
Sikh: sun representing light and knowledge.
Jump in if I’ve made glaring mistakes. I only know a little bit about a lot of stuff. But basically: it’s all about the sun and they’re all the same. Just some guys started adding extras and shouting louder and those factions stuck around and separated.
Trade routes and empires spread religions, Roman empire and the Ottoman empire were two key agents of religious spread.
Because the majority of humans are weak minded.