If we analyze adaptation and conversion two important attributes of a religion have to be distinguished. The type of religion and the ideology. The ideology describes the set of rules while type defines how these rules come into existance. Consequently, type is the more abstract term. It is the common denominator. Several quite contradictory religious ideologies can be hosted by the same type.
There are the following rules.
1. Rule
The most fierce competition is among different ideologies of the same type. While different ideologies of different type can easily tolerate each other.
For example: Judaism and Islam are of the same type, so they hate each other while both can easily accept or being accepted by Christianity that is of a different type.
2. Rule
While ideologies of the same type of religion have a fierce competition. The members of such a religion, actually the people, have not such a problem to switch to an other ideology if it is of the same type.
Example: (1) The well established religions know this quite well. Therefore they use perpetual indoctrination to prevent such conversions. (2) After WW2 German Nazis, all of them devoted stateists, had a few problems to assume a new stateist ideology both in the Western and the Eastern part.
3. Rule
For a member to change the type of religion even if the ideology resembles is difficult, as the way how rules come into existence is deeply engrained in a human’s behavior and social traditions. It either takes several generations or a genius to perform this step up the evolutionary ladder. It is easier to drop down.
Example: It is a well known fact that before changing the type of religion people rather adapt the new ideology the type already assumed. This was why so many Christian missionaries failed. This is also why in African countries, even with dominating Christian religion, satanism and other forms of superstition thrive. Finally, this also explains why the exclusively black American evangelical believer adhere to stateism.
These rules can be easily deduced from Fauceir Theory because of its analogy to biological evolution.
This work by Paul Netman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Fauceir theory is developed and © by Mato Nagel and available at www.fauceir.org.
