On new religions

I knew about Manichaeism a little from remembering that St Augustine has attacked it a lot (I had sort of forgotten he was a former follower), but this great explanation from Religion for Breakfast enlightened me as to how eccentric some of its beliefs were.  (It's the talking vegetables that really threw me!)

 

But beyond the whole vegetable issue, which seems almost to be a way a priest class could get food delivered to them for free, the religion seems to have had no great problematic elements, and represented a real effort towards a syncretic amalgamation of two or three of the then current great religions.  (Christianity was still finding its way at the time, though.)

The thing is, I feel broadly sympathetic towards syncretic religions, while at the same time somewhat  bemused by how someone goes about inventing a new religious explanation of the universe without feeling any hesitation about how they are, well, just making stuff up.   

I mean, one can be cynical and say that the creators of new religions are usually just self interested con men (*cough* L Ron Hubbard, and - probably - Joseph Smith), but it feels harder to see other creators of big religions as being as self interested as them.   I suppose dreaming up stories under the influence of hallucinogens, or actual mental illness, is one way of explaining it.  Or - possibly - followers who take something more seriously than the originator? 

In my lifetime, if you accept that Scientology is not exactly taking over the world, there seems to be a distinct lack of successful innovation in syncretic new religions.   Perhaps George Lucas had a chance here, with the Force, but as I have said before, he really blew the potential by being thoroughly inconsistent in the approach to it in his invented universe.   No doubt, he would say he doesn't see it as desirable to be the inadvertent creator of a new religion, and I get that.   But I still think it's a bit of a pity, the way the world's old religions are going...