Christianity (2.1 billion people): A cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father will torture you forever if you don’t make him your invisible friend and master so he can save your soul from an evil force unleashed on the world when a woman made from a rib was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.
Islam (1.5 billion): Allah sent an angel to an ancient desert shepherd to tell him that thousands of angels keep lists of every good and bad thing each human does, and that when Allah sees fit he will magically reanimate all the dead bodies everywhere and judge them, sending to hell all those who lied, didn’t worship him, or charged interest on loans.
Nonbelief (1.1 billion): You shouldn’t believe weird shit unless there’s evidence for it, so magic powers, magic incantations, magic wishes, magical realms, and magical invisible persons probably don’t exist.
Hinduism (900 million): There is an invisible, cosmic force that rewards goodness by bringing good people back from the dead more privleged than before, and punishes badness by bringing bad people back from the dead as lower lifeforms. Thousands of invisible gods just fuck around for eternity and demand occasional sacrifices, and the ultimate reward for enduring good behavior is the annihilation of your soul.
Buddhism (376 million): Life is full of suffering, so the only escape is to stop wanting to avoid suffering.
Sikhism (23 million): The impersonal god Vahiguru is everywhere at the same time and will save you if you mumble his name to yourself enough times.
Scientology (0.5 million): 75 million years ago, Xenu, dictator of the Galactic Confederacy, brought billions of his people to Earth, stacked them around volcanoes, and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls flew off into the sky, but these alien souls were sucked up into vaccuum zones in Hawaii and the Canary Islands and forced to watch a 36-hour 3D movie which implanted in them all the false ideas that led to Earth’s current religions. After this, these billions of alien souls squeezed themselves into the few bodies that survived the bombs (who are today’s humans), and cause disease and other problems until trained Scientologists can exorcise them. Xenu was later overthrown, and is now imprisoned on Mars behind a force field powered by an eternal battery.
