Phylogeny of formalised systems of superstition

It’s intriguing that such a breadth of religious-based energy is being focused upon undermining the evolutionary concept when, extrapolated with a modicum of objectivity, the very religious idealisms which they battle so hard to defend against contradiction are themselves the results of a less tangible form of the same phenomenon which they refuse to accept; a sort of conceptual evolution. What makes a religion successful, ie, proliferate fruitfully throughout generations? A combination of things; a conception of no-nonsense, unEdoding moral pragmatism, god- and hell-fear (in the case of theistic religions, and a powerfully effective invention), and a perception of spiritual fulfilment and wisdom. Religious brands which fail to meet these criteria tend to wane and die out, although successful concepts may adapt and branch off. Whereas natural evolution stems from the adaptation of individual organisms as dictated by their genes in the face of changing environmental phenomena, religious evolution is predicated upon the degree to which the individual dogma can synthetically overcome the intellectually self-aware Homo sapiens’ intrinsic fear of mortality and existential worthlessness, influenced by additional pre-existing political and social phenomena which would dictate the extent and variety of geographical propagation. Most successfully theistic religions, such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc, have overcome this stigma via the “Soul” and “Afterlife” concepts, while non-theistic religions such as Buddhism and Scientology utilise a different, more materialistic, tack by generally teaching that concerning the mind with such things is an inherently wasteful action.

It’d be interesting for someone far more informed than I in the area of the history of world religions to assemble known religious brands into a sort of taxonomic tree. The theistic and the non-theistic Classes. The Christian, Islamic, Jewish, etc, Orders. The Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Families. The Lutheran, Anglican, Calvinist and Anabaptist Genera. The countless more specific Species of diocese. The phylogenetic variation (to further stretch a metaphor) is most likely far more complex than that, but as I indicated, I’m no expert on comparative religion (they’re all pretty much the same to me).

If a theoretical meteorite had never slammed into the Gulf of Mexico causing the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass-extinction, it’s highly unlikely that mammals would have happened to become the dominant animal kingdom, and Homo sapiens would probably never have evolved, and the natural landscape of flora and fauna would look inconceivably different. If no-one had cared about the Jesus figure when Paul originally wrote about him, or if the Romans had thrown a few more Christians to the lions, or had Constantine not converted; had Muhammad died of cholera or been hit by a camel as a child; had Buddha’s parents not decided to go for that romantic, moonlit walk through the Nepalese mountains, the spiritual landscape of religions and cults would look inconceivably different. The notion that Homo sapiens are the One True Species by its own members who were always “destined” to evolve (or were fabricated as-is by a Creator), and that we are more than just primates who share a common ancestry with chimpanzees, as opposed to the result of a natural evolution of mammals; alongside the notion that Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc, are perceived to be the One True Faith by their own followers, and that Christianity, for example, is more than just a mythological/philosophical construct which shares a common ancestry with now largely extinct Greco-Babylonian-Canaanite mythology (ie, “Son of God/s”/Creationism/etc), as opposed to the result of an artificial evolution of teleological concepts; are analogously misguided and conceited.