My uneducated guess is that it is because Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Judaism were all backed by governments and military forces during the initial stages of expansion. I don’t believe there are any large religions for which this is not true—Hinduism is too old for us to say much about its origins, but there was a time when Buddhism was becoming extremely popular, and power was involved in re-establishing Hinduism.
If I’m right, then the thing that causes small memeplexes to become big memeplexes is the successful conversion of a few powerful and influential people (and that process happens through random drift in the case of religion)
Also, I think Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are the only religions which care about whether or not you believe them. (As in, members think that belief itself has consequences and so they aught to care what others believe). It’s harder to leave these religions, with shadows of hell hanging over you. I think that in most other religions, people can sort of vaguely redirect worship from one set of symbols to another without really rejecting old beliefs and accepting new ones in a way that is consistent with “brainwashing”—it’s more or less immaterial which religion they are following. I’ve got relatives who pray to little pictures of Jesus along with other Hindu idols, and I don’t think they realize how odd this would seem to a Christian. The notion that deviation from a religious orthodoxy is bad tends to be absent, and I imagine that this makes conversion easier.
My uneducated guess is that it is because Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Judaism were all backed by governments and military forces during the initial stages of expansion. I don’t believe there are any large religions for which this is not true—Hinduism is too old for us to say much about its origins, but there was a time when Buddhism was becoming extremely popular, and power was involved in re-establishing Hinduism.
If I’m right, then the thing that causes small memeplexes to become big memeplexes is the successful conversion of a few powerful and influential people (and that process happens through random drift in the case of religion)
Also, I think Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are the only religions which care about whether or not you believe them. (As in, members think that belief itself has consequences and so they aught to care what others believe). It’s harder to leave these religions, with shadows of hell hanging over you. I think that in most other religions, people can sort of vaguely redirect worship from one set of symbols to another without really rejecting old beliefs and accepting new ones in a way that is consistent with “brainwashing”—it’s more or less immaterial which religion they are following. I’ve got relatives who pray to little pictures of Jesus along with other Hindu idols, and I don’t think they realize how odd this would seem to a Christian. The notion that deviation from a religious orthodoxy is bad tends to be absent, and I imagine that this makes conversion easier.