I’d create an apathetic religion for slackers…if you didn’t follow the doctrines, no big deal. Converting people? Whatever. Regularly going to church? Maybe next Friday. (Oh yeah, Friday would be a sacred day. Nobody has to work on Fridays, and therefore all members shall always get three-day weekends! :D)
Who’s the guy on the right?
PALADIN ALEXANDER ARMSTRONG FROM THE LEGION OF JUDE ISCARIOT (VATICAN SECRET SERVICE SECTION XIII)
Oh. Well, grats on being European
I sorta fail to see how exactly money = making a religion. The only use it serves is funding missions and building churches and paying people. But the thing is, unless these people actually believe the religion themselves, they could be working just for money, and the religion will fall flat because the workers don’t put their heart into it. It seems to me that having money doesn’t exactly work when starting religion. You instead, need to not have money but a good message. That convinces people to give you money to spread the message, and they become more devout or something. I dunno, think i had a point but that looks like babbling.
That said, I agree with Val’s posts mostly.
I agree more with Sin than I do with Cid. No one religion is perfect. Every holy book in the world has been rewritten and rewritten hundreds of times and seeing as they were all written by humans to begin with (not god, Jehovah, Allah or whatever you want to call him) the message will have been lost long ago. And as if that isn’t bad enough, who is it preaching all these “holy” words? Yet more humans, each with his or her own agenda. No one religion is perfectly honest because no religious leaders, ministers or even followers are perfectly honest. All it boils down to are power-hungry men and women leading men and women who are only too happy to kiss arse and give them the power they crave.
Right, now that I’ve got half a megaton of flame coming my way, I’ll attempt to answer the question initially posed. Starting a religion overnight, no matter how much money you have, is impossible to the power “fuck off”. Your best bet is to go for the long-term option, start with a minor street following then set up a base of operations, somewhere with a large population of extremely gullible people. Start out by telling them exactly what they want to hear, get them onside and get them funding your regime. Eventually, you can spread “prophets” out into other major population centres, build up a power base in several countries, then just go from there, countries, continents, the world. Look at Scientology- the biggest pile of bollocks the world has ever seen yet people still believe in it.
Preparing asbestos underpants
No one religion is perfect.
I never said it was. But claiming that every religion is dishonest simply proves that you’ve got a chip on your shoulder and aren’t interested in religious knowledge at all. Other than Scientology, perhaps, no religion was started with the intent of duping people or oppressing them. Every major religion had laudable goals - spirituality, kindness, unity, loyalty, survival - which in some cases were later corrupted.
I think a statement like “every religion is dishonest” because it’s run by humans is the same as saying “every company is dishonest”, “every government is dishonest”, or “every charity is dishonest”, which are all patently false (well, except possibly for governments).
Can’t argue with that- alas, these are the times we live in and many religions, specifically the religious leaders, need kicks up their arse.
Ah but I never said every religion was dishonest. 
I said “no religion is perfectly honest”, which it isn’t. And yes, same applies for charities, definitely companies and especially governments. Everyone has their own particular agenda, it just depends on how they go about getting what they want.
Ah but I never said every religion was dishonest.
You said you agreed with Sinistral, whose statement was “there’s no such thing as an honest religion”.
And if your statement applies to religions, companies, charities, and pretty much anything involving people, it doesn’t actually mean much in a discussion about religions, does it? I don’t think anyone ever claimed that any religion is “perfectly honest”, so making that statement just diverts attention from what we’re talking about.
To be more accurate, I said I agreed more with him than I did with you, nowhere did I mean to imply I was 100% on his side. I like my grey areas and I’m sticking with them.
Fucking hell man, you’re the one who brought that up as an aside, I treated it as an aside, now things are starting to get daft. :-/
What were we talking about? I just voiced an opinion and you latched onto it so it seems we are talking about what we were talking about.
Right, I’ve got a headache now (more due to illness than this thread, to be fair). Someone want to take over? Please?
All right, all right, I have a tendency to nitpick. 8p Consider yourself un-headached.