The World Religions Tree (huge visualization)
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For example it has a bizarre split of Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai and even more bizarrely continues the lines to modern times as if there are actually two separate branches.
When the parts that I know best are inaccurate, it seems likely to me that everything else will be just as bad.
It seems like an compelling idea undertaken by somebody vastly under qualified to implement it properly. (Which is not altogether surprising given the enormity of the task)
It is cool to see all the "branches" laid out like this but it does lend itself to presenting more divisions than are actually there because that's what we naturally think of when we see a tree structure.
For example, Christianity borrows elements of Zoroastrianism and Judaism is actually derived from ancient Babylonian polytheism. Maybe I just didn't see it, but Confucianism seems to be missing too.
That isn't true. At best, and even this is debated, there are some traces, but it's not in the slightest "derived from".
Yahweh was the national god of the Israelites, who were part of the Canaanite polytheistic system. In the context of Yahweh being a warrior deity in a polytheistic system, the phrase "there are no other gods like our god," and also the crusades against neighboring settlements seem to take on more meaning.
Interesting reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh
Also no.
Yahweh is clearly at a level "above all gods", i.e. on his own level as omnipotent creator of all things. Angels and fallen angels (aka demons/ heavenly hosts and other "gods") are on a second level of power/influence, and then earthly creations below that.
As such, Yahweh doesn't "compete" against other (lower-case) gods, because they're not omnipotent creators and he is.
Although the Israelites were pretty famous for rejecting him and worshiping lower-case gods, (and subsequently incurring Yahweh's wrath), there's never a question that he is the I AM and not any derivation.
So yes, Judaism is descended and evolved from Canaanite religion.
Your own links make no claim at all that the religion itself has any relationship with the Canaanite religions.
Regarding the direction, do not forget that Abraham was very active in the region, and proselytized extensively. It is hardly surprising if the Canaanites took some concepts from him.
Whoah. Be careful slinging around the F-bomb, bro.
When talking about causation of events where there is no data, much less reproducible data, you certainly have room to disagree with some evidence and prefer others, but it goes too far to claim "Judaism is actually derived from ancient Babylonian polytheism" is unassailable fact.
That may your belief--and you may interpret some evidence to support your belief--but as you'll be quick to point out to others, having a belief doesn't mean it's true.
The bar for something being a fact is higher than that.
I understand that you are simply repeating what you learned, but you learned inaccurate information.
It's possible your mistake is because there are some that believe that the Canaanite religions and Judaism were practiced in parallel by the same peoples, but one is not descended from other.
But it isn't really because the map isn't "complete enough", I'd say the whole taxonomy is a bit weird. It makes it look like there were several "major" religions like "Chinese folk Taoism" and "Japanese Mythology" which produced everything else, when if fact they are not "major" at all: it would be more accurate to start from general spiritual cults, where every concrete local religion would be thin line as well. Of course it wouldn't look like real tree, and it shouldn't.
Wikipedia, as always can provide somewhat decent insight: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_religion
My religion and main area of knowledge of Catholicism shows a limited number of picked and chosen orders of priests, (i.e. Franciscans, Cistercians, Capuchins). These are not separate religions by any means whatsoever; they are all members of the Catholic faith. They certainly don't belong on a chart that is meant to display different religions and schisms.
Schisms are shown by ovoids with white fill and appear to make some sense.
I guess the chart is trying to show practices that have a lot of adherents, not just a diagram of religions. Much of the problem is probably just using the word "branch", which isn't a great description of what is shown.
Deleted comment
Specifically in the graph, different orders of priests aren't schismatic offshoots of the Catholic religion by any means.
After looking at the graph a little more closely, I also see various Catholic traditions listed as separate religions (i.e. Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, Ruthenian Catholic Church, Melkite Greek Catholic Church). I understand the idea of listing these as separate from the Church, but they are in "full communion" with the Catholic Church and also shouldn't be mistaken as separate religions. We all believe the same important things, different cultures and traditions have brought their own gifts to the faith.
Catholics profess the Nicene Creed each mass and in it are the "Four Marks of the Church", something every Catholic grade schooler has to memorize at some point. One, holy, catholic, and apostolic. The word "Catholic" itself is greek for "universal".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_communion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Marks_of_the_Church#.22Cat...
https://www.serviamministries.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03...
For example, the Bahá'í Wold Center is not a branch, though. It's just the spiritual and administrative center of the Bahá'í Faith [0][1]. Likewise, the Universal House of Justice [2][3] is the supreme governing institution of the Bahá'í Faith (and its seat is located at the Bahá'í World Centre), so it's not a branch either.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C3%A1%27%C3%AD_World_Centre
1. Cite sources
2. Make it an SVGEdit, for clarity:
* 000024.org is owned by my friend, Alex Fink
* The 000024.org website is hosted on one of my servers, along with a few other static sites belonging to friends. I have been doing this for free as a favor to those friends for many years.
* The submitted link was not the intended landing page, but is now redirecting to it.
* The intended landing page explains where the images came from.
(at least, if I understand correctly, you are friends with the person hosting the jpg of the image that was extracted from the pdf that had the image that was pieced together from the original).
edit: You've made an edit, but you missed what I meant. Alex Fink is not really an author here where the point of the link is the image, he is the "page owner" or something like that. There is plenty of attribution and I don't mean to imply any attempts at obfuscation, but egwynn was talking to the original creator of the image, not to the hoster of this version of the image.
I've been a little scatterbrained due to commenting while trying to get the bandwidth usage under control (sorted now), and I apologize for anything unclear in my comments here.
Anyway, you are here: http://i.imgur.com/WNkmN.jpg
* "Wasted" is a value judgment. Arguably anything humans do with their lives that's valuable to them isn't wasted.
* Creating narratives that provide context and serve a starting/exploration point for value judgments seems to be something humans just do (the astute might even notice the author of the comment I'm replying to is hardly immune). Religion isn't that different from the rest of the liberal arts in that respect, though the way people inhabit it arguably is (and everyone inhabits one narrative/cosmology or another).
* Given those things, it looks like you might be confusing religion with a kind of folk cosmology (as that's the easiest explanation for a flat judgment of religion as a waste of time).
I only know because they told everyone within two minutes.
I heard people are going to the church (or synagoge, or mosque, or whatever) every Sunday (Saturday / Friday) (or they should ...), and they are very freely and openly telling everybody how much they believe in their choice of god.
Compared to the publicity with which believers are living their faith, atheist's non-faith is very introvert.
Which is according to the nature of the thing - why would you be talking about your non-beliefs all the time? Basically, we all have so many non-believes (an atheist has only one more than a believer) that there is no material time to talk about them.
Of course whenever an atheist breaks this code of silence (like poor madengr just did above) with a single sentence (not a three hours prayer - mind you!), it clearly proves that atheists are exhibitionists.
All this makes your joke a very stupid joke (since its logic is broken)
EDIT: added more ranting
You feel hook line and..
B) In case the joke was meant to include ranters, the same case can be made that religious people are generally more ranting inclined. BAD joke.
C) I do not say anywhere that I (the ranter) am an atheist, which makes the whole point moot
Religion can provide a sense of community and support that society can otherwise lack. Personal faith can also be a means of support for people in troubled times.
my/mine imaginary deity/deities is/are the one true deity/deities, because, er, I say so, and so did my parents!
how people can buy into the fairy-tales which is religion has always baffles me, atleast unless you are indoctrinated from a young age and shielded from critical thinking.
That tree includes Confucianism, for instance. Although it's considered a religion, it's secular and closer to philosophy.
Most religions are also mixed with creation mythologies, which have a bonding function inside cultures and ethnic groups.
So, the `religion` subject is much more complex than a simple pissing contest.
Exhaustive, lawyer-proof arguments are fairly tedious. Obviously some generalizations and shortcuts are taken.
The "my imaginary deity" argument was (hopefully) meant as criticism regarding institutionalized denial of truth to uphold supernatural aspects and claims to power for various religions.
Creation mythologies don't just have a bonding function, they may also serve as a justification for monarchy or caste systems if some people are descended from/treated preferentially by some aspect of that creation. X's chosen people.
Of course religions did fulfill social roles, as glue for people who needed answers for things that could not be answered at the time. And maybe they still do to some extent to this day. But that shouldn't keep anyone from highlighting anachronistic aspects.
SCNR
So this chart lists a couple of major sources: Chinese folk Taoism, Japanese mythology, Shramana traditions (non-vedic), Early Vedic period, and Ancient Israelite religion. Most of these traditions have been cross-pollinating, merging, and re-dividing for millenia. Yet this kind of visualization can only depict schism, not influence.
Given the existence of horizontal gene transfer [0], neither are the biological systems traditionally described that way. Nevertheless, the schism model can be a useful illustrative approximation even when its not a completely accurate model.
Edit: browser zoom works well. There's a legend in the lower left.
Or to have 50" display.
There are thousands of religions not represented, most significantly older than the oldest concrete points on this graph.
I do recognize though that this focuses on fairly modern religions of the last two millennia. Still, what a small, narrow, and uninteresting group of beliefs that is.
Edit:
Mods, please adjust link to point to http://000024.org/religions_tree/
I've done an emergency move of the images to another server that's better able to handle the load and re-written the image links (I host his site).
Also "Ancient Isrealite Religion" should probably be "Ancient Caananite Religion". And a lot of things happened there before 500 BC - such as Yahweh becoming the dominant deity and King Hezekiah forbidding the worship of any other gods.
Must have missed it on first parse.
* Green for Islam
* Red for Hinduism
* Yellow for Buddhism
* Blue for Christianity
It sure is a good thing there is only one true religion eh? /s