Your guide to the world's top religions…
God saw fit to create man in His image. Man saw fit to create hundreds of creeds. You know, to thank Him.
Buddhism: Founded in the 5th century BC by a skinny rich Indian kid named Gautma. No, not whoowhoowhoo Indian, rikkitikkitavvi Indian. He was bummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmed about having a super rich king father who tried to shield him from life’s suffering. His mean jerk father built him many palaces and gave him every little thing he ever wanted. Wine, women and song. A real piece of shit. Eventually, Gautma escaped his father’s velvet oppression and saw that life sucks balls. He saw an old man, a dead man, and a monk. Maybe he saw a sick man too, I’m a little hazy. Anyhow, he decided to go solve the problem of suffering. So he sat under a sacred fig tree and thought and thought and VOILA! He figured that shit out! There are four noble truths and an eightfold path. If you try reallllly hard, like Gautma did, you reach Nirvana. Kurt Cobain comes out of the clouds and tells you about the true nature of reality. No more allusions/disillusions. Life without suffering, amen. The real trick, though, was how the Buddha went from being a skinny rikkitikkivavi to an obese Chinaman. Eh? Eh?
Christianity: The Western Buddhism. Just kidding. No one has ever called Christianity the Western Buddhism (except Richard Gere who is mistaken about lots of things). Christianity came on the scene exactly at 0 AD. It’s awesome like that. Jesus was born on Christmas day (awesome) and didn’t do anything until he was in his thirties. Remember the horrible TV show thirtysomething. Uh, it was hideous, but Jesus’ thirtysomethings were cool. He walked around turning water into wine, multiplying everyone’s lunches and talking about peace and love. Oh yeah, and he said he was God. Sounds like a real hippie-fest, and maybe it was. Anyhow, Jesus was Jewish and the Jews didn’t like all this “peace and love and I’m God” garbage so they put a hit out on him. As usual, Italians took care of the situation.
Jesus wasn’t done though. He came back to life (like AC/DC did on Back in Black after Bon Scott died) and then went to heaven. His followers took the peace and love and ran with it…by becoming the most bloodthirsty batch of nuts in history. Seriously, When, in the 1500s, Christians had successfully destroyed all-comers they had to split in order for them to keep drawing blood. Thus, Catholics and Protestants kicked each other in the crotch until they rediscovered Islam in the 1970s.
Mormonism: Mormonism is to religion what Miss Sixty is to haute couture. Not. It started as a purely American “doctrine” in New York and I, literally, can’t think of anything worse. Joseph Smith, the first prophet of the Momos, found some buried golden tablets that spoke of ancient Israelite inhabitants of America and their dealing with God. He magically translated the tablets while hiding under a black sheet and using seer stones. Ugh.
The basic tenants of Mormonism are weird and pointless. They involve holy underpants, spirit babies, black people being cursed and three-hour church services.
None of this matters at all and I wouldn’t even have dignified bringing it up save one fact. The next leader of the free world will be a Mormon. Ugh. Seriously, Hillary Clinton doesn’t stand a chance and Mitt Romney will skate right through to the ’08 Presidency of the United States. The next four years will feel like a giant Leave it to Beaver episode. Except instead of Wally and the Beav it’ll be Wally, the Beav and fifteen other siblings. Gaudy Greek revival architecture will be the norm, two sizes too big black pants and white short sleeve button ups will replace skinny jeans, bikes will replace cars and it’ll be a felony offense to ride without a hideous plastic helmet. The word ‘modesty’ will be used with abandon along with archaic slang like, “You’re such a stud muffin.”
Soon you will be dreaming of those heady years from ‘01 through ’07 when a real God fought a real Allah and rejects like the Angel Moroni, Charles Taze Russell, and L. Ron Hubbard weren’t even let in to the auditorium.
Judaism: Do I have to? Judaism is not very pretty, I’m sorry. This has nothing to do with the belief system; it has everything to do with their skullcaps. I don’t like, on purely aesthetic grounds.
Ok Ok Ok, Judaism is the first of the big three (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). Abraham lived in Iraq and God chose him to be his person. Abraham motored around the Middle East and had lots of kids who also became God’s people.
Later, all of Abraham’s children became slaves in Egypt for hundreds of years, then Moses came along and you’ve seen the DreamWorks hit cartoon, “The Prince of Egypt.”
So all the Jews, as they were now called, ended up in Israel and lived happily ever after. JUST KIDDING! They’ve been butchered by everyone from Adolf Hitler to Zadolf Zitler (he was an evil Persian king).
The basic belief structure is centered on one God who will someday send a Messiah to save the world. His name was Jesus and he was born in 0 AD.
Islam: Islam is hot hot hot right now. I think it’s the fastest growing religion in the world, or that’s what they say. In the year 700 AD a nice, young merchant named Mohammed wandered off to a cave on the Arabian Peninsula and Allah (through the angel Gabriel) told him some stuff. No he didn’t need a black sheet and seer stones, all he needed was a brain and mouth, like regular folk.
Mohammed ran back to his hot wife (he married a very attractive older lady) and told her, his friends and everyone what he had learned. Pretty soon, BAM, Islam! (Think Christianity minus Jesus is God and Judaism minus crappy sweet wine).
The new Muslims were persecuted by mean pagan villagers but Allah sent birds to drop rocks on them and they were smooshed. Today the Muslims are being persecuted by mean Republican Americans. Allah is sending birds (airplanes) carrying rocks (illegal aliens) to drop on them.
Atheism: Atheists don’t believe in God. They believe in the power of human reason and worship the internal combustion engine and Intel Pentium processors.
Hinduism: Wow. Hinduism, literally, didn’t know when to stop. It’s the world’s oldest religion and sometimes has billions of gods and sometimes has just one God sometimes named Brahman and sometimes Vishnu and sometimes Shakti. It grew on the Indian subcontinent around 5000 BC. I think all I can say about Hindus is that they believe stuff. If I say, for instance, that they believe the soul is eternal…lots of them don’t. And if I say they believe in grace…lots of them don’t. So they believe stuff. The stuff usually includes ideas of reincarnation and fucking up your reincarnation by doing stupid shit (karma). When you finally bust out of the cycle of birth and re-birth it’s sometimes called Moksha and sometimes called going to McDonalds for a vanilla milkshake.
Cows are popular in Hinduism. So are burning dead bodies on the Ganges River, doodling swastikas, doing Yoga, convincing Gwen Stefani to wear a bindi (the red forehead dot) and your religion. Yup, in Hinduism all roads lead to God or Vishnu or Shakti or Allah…
Scientology: Is the religion founded by the science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbard. Human beings are actually thetans (spirits) who are trapped in a meat body, or carbon-oxygen machine. Each thetan has many past lives on earth and in extraterrestrial cultures. It’s the job of the thetan to purge engrams (negative experiences), become a Clear and control the universe (you do this by hooking up to an E-meter).
You see, millions of years ago, Xenu, the leader of the Galactic Confederacy, brought millions of humans to earth in DC-8s and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. All of these became body thetans and cause trouble by attaching to other thetans, creating engrams.
When you become a Clear or Operating Thetan of a high level, you help others. Eventually you will go to space but you can find your way back because the Trementina Base is visible from satellites. L. Ron Hubbard is in a galaxy next to ours. Tom Cruise is a Sea Org. 80 trillion years ago people on earth wore the same clothing and drove, pretty much, the same cars. In 6235 BC Earth was invaded by aliens with horrible-looking hands. The Marcab Confederacy is still active. The Maw Confederation accomplished total psychiatric control by smashing meat body faces into super cooled sheets of glass. Earth was originally called Teegeeack. Your first stop after death is Venus (at a landing station). Moses used a disintegrator pistol on Pharaoh.
I can’t top this shit.
Shinto: Is awesome. You never have to actually become a Shintoist to be a Shintoist. All yous gots to be is born in Japan. Booorn in the Nippon-koku, I’m a cool rocking papa-san in the Nippon-koku… . There are no commandments except to live simply with nature. After you die you become a kami, or spirit and eat fruit off high little shelves in people’s houses or Japanese restaurants. Super quaint and well behaved.
It wasn’t always that way, though. Back before and during World War II Shinto was the state religion, and boy was it ever! All Japanese school children had to swear their li’l bods to the state, worship the emperor and fly airplanes into battleships. Kaaaamikazeeee. Hirohito, the emperor during WWII and well after (since he lived to be 137) feasted on the worship of his Shinto people, then feasted on their radiation-poisoned flesh…that’s just rude and uncalled for. I’m sorry. Shinto is nice.
The Dalai Lama: Dude gets his own religious write-up. He’s supposed to be a Buddhist, but right now he’s more hip than Gautma Buddha ever was. Dalai Lamas are actually ancient reincarnations (not from Helotrubus or Targ, either) and the present one is number 14. His name is Tenzin. The Lamas are also supposed to be in Tibet, but China is being a cranky little bitty and not letting this one come home. Oh will, there’s always the next incarnation.
Lots of famous people really groove on him, including the Beastie Boys. That’s lame of me. Twice in a row. First I talked about Hirohito feasting on radiated flesh and now the Beasties? I really apologize. The Beastie Boys aren’t famous and it’s uncool to juxtapose them with anyone, much less a Dalai Lama. Anyhow, he’s rad and peaceful… unless the Tibetan national soccer team is taking on China then he’s black with rage.