The Religion Overlap

December 9, 2008 By Guest Contributor 7 Comments

This comic from Quantz is posing a Venn Diagram challenge:

Of course, it would still be based in mythology and faulty reasoning… Clearly, something to strive for.

I do like the Venn Diagram idea, though.

Jessica Hagy, I’m looking at you.

(Thanks to Patrick and Rose for the link!)

Filed Under: General 7 Comments
  • Aj

    Babylon 5 was a sci-fi tv show written by an atheist, it had a fictional religion called Foundationalism.

    Dr. Franklin explains that “the idea behind the Foundation is to get back to the roots of all the earth religions, past the doctrines to the core of each belief system to find out what they have in common; and they have a lot more in common than you think. It’s just when politics and money and nationalism get in the way that things get a little messed up.”

  • http://www.otmatheist.com/ hoverFrog

    It’d probably be “worship this god and not any of those other ones (that aren’t really real anyway)” or something similar.

  • http://intrinsicallyknotted.wordpress.com Susan B.

    In order to make this rigorous, you’d have to take into account the fact that there are many religions closely related to one another that have similar precepts. There are all those different denominations of Christianity, for one thing, but even the fact that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam come from the same roots would have an effect, I think. Where do we draw the line between two closely-related sects and consider them as different sects?

    I think a weighting scheme of some sort is what’s needed–so that an action that satisfies all denominations of Christianity does not counted higher than an action that satisfies five vastly different faiths. Then of course there’s the fact that some actions may have more or less importance to different faiths. What is really needed is some sort of function that takes the relative importance of an action in each religion and multiplies it by the importance of that religion as a whole, then sums the whole thing up. Calculus may be involved.

  • Eliza

    What is really needed is some sort of function that takes the relative importance of an action in each religion and multiplies it by the importance of that religion as a whole, then sums the whole thing up.

    I’d be tempted to multiple the whole thing by zero & leave it at that.

  • http://religiouscomics.net Jeff

    The intersection of all religions will probably be a subset of secular humanism.

  • https://www.google.com/reader/shared/03285257443185929989 Scotty B

    I just want to say that I Dinosaur Comics and I recommend everyone add it to your RSS feeder right now:

    http://rsspect.com/rss/qwantz.xml

    Note also that there are several ‘Easter Eggs’ in each comic.

  • Ellen Eames

    Well, there are quite a few options for precepts:
    Always obey what God says.
    Always have somebody special interpret what God says.
    Give money to the church so it can build a big building.
    Give money to the church so it can pay for a special person to interpret what God says.
    Give money to the church so it can give some of that money to the poor.
    Shun those people who don’t do what God says.
    Shun those people who don’t follow your special person’s interpretation of what God says.
    Charge interest on loans to people who don’t obey God like you do.