Extra Credit

I am talking a comparative religions class and this was my extra credit assignment. We were supposed to create our own religion but I decided to just make an outline of the things needed to create one. The structure of this mildly inspired by Don Baker's lecture "rolling up your own religion" but the satire and most of the content is original.



Marco Otero
Mr. sodano
People and Religion
Monday, May 31, 2009
Make your own religion

Have you ever felt like an outcast? Have you felt like a singularity among your fellow human beings? Have you felt like a loser because all your friends are out there having sex with their girlfriends but you just can’t even make it past first base with a blind girl? Do you want to be able to offend others and hide behind some lame excuse? Do not wait any longer! A representative at Marco Otero’s Religion Manufacturer is waiting for your phone call and your money to help you have sex, get stoned and be a bigot in no time! Call now, our representatives are standing by!

We have the secrets to allow you to make your own religion and start destroying everything humanity has achieved during the past centuries TONIGHT. With us, you will learn the secret techniques used by false prophets, lunatics, copy cats and people who just wanted to see how gullible people were and the most common breed of religion creators: plain ignorant fools. Just give us a call and we will send you a free brochure with a complementary DVD absolutely free (1*)

But wait! If you call within the next ten minutes we will make this succulent offer even better by sending you a little plastic bottle that you can fill up with cat urine and say it is holy and spray it on people absolutely free! This will bring so much laughter and joy into your life that it will basically pay itself during the first use! Absolutely priceless! (2*)

But why would you want to do this in the first place? Well one of the reasons is that if you follow our steps you will probably end up with a lot of tax-free income and if you are lucky also a lot of sex. You will never have to work for a penny in your life, you might as well join the dozens of intelligent people who started their own religions and are currently enjoying the luxuries everyone desires at the expense of the ignorant and the sick!

You may be saying to yourself as this moment “But Marco, exactly what are you selling?” it is a great question and I am glad you asked. You see, over the course of human history humanity has developed a need to answer questions, but unfortunately for people out there, we have not yet developed the mental capacities to answer them. Luckily for us, our ancestors developed long and intricate answers that could not be investigated and are usually supported by no evidence at all. This is where the first of the ten secrets for a highly successful religion comes in!


Secret one:

Find a complicated question that has no answer… and make an answer up! This really is the easiest step, all you have to do is look for a real scientist, preferably in a physics branch of science or biology and ask him/her what question is still unanswered in his or her field of work! You have dozens of unanswered questions at your disposal! You can ask a scientist or pick one of the following: Abiogenesis, What is the universe made of? What is the biological basis of consciousness? How long can the human life span be extended? It doesn’t have to be an unanswered question, you can also pick a question for which science has answers but that is generally ignored by the average person such as quantum mechanics, quantum physics, and in the most third world countries you can also use evolution (3*).

Once you find the unanswered question make sure you make up an explanation, but not just any explanation if you know what I mean. Whatever story you make up to explain your question make sure that the facts cannot be independently confirmed; this is big because here is where the whole faith comes in. if your story involves a prophet, make sure the prophet talks to a god or special person while no one else is watching, or make sure that your story terminates the lives of the witnesses before any secular contemporary historian can get to them. We highly recommend you go with the alien intergalactic community, that is way better than the walking on water deal and the Immaculate Conception refried stories that have infested most religions already. We suggest the alien thing because it certainly is much more likely than the deity thing and smarter people will probably be more likely to believe it over the overrated son of god thing. Do not worry about the dumb ones; they will come to you like flies to rotten cabbages in no time.

If you ever get writers block, find a way to tie your religion to an already existing religion. Do not feel bad if you get to this point, almost every single religion out there has done this, and it works wonders. If you can’t find how to get from point A to point B in your story look in the bible and find some detail that was not really given and make it up! Fulfill a prophecy in the Quran! Mormons did it with Muslims, Muslims did it with Christians, Christians did it with Jews and Jews did it with the pagan religions of the Mediterranean. Look at the most successful religion to ever come out of Marco Otero’s Religion Manufacturer enterprises – the Raelians. They created a religion using Elohim, a term in Christian religion that refers to the race of people that Yahweh belonged to.
Once you have a good, detailed and unverifiable story to your unanswered question you may move on to the next step.


Secret two:

Get and maintain a following. This will be harder now, but certainly not impossible. If you call us now you will be able to know the secrets to help your religion grow and start having sex with women near you! Get people around you to come and follow, call your friends and tell them about your story and make sure that the friends of the ones that do not reject you and cast you out as a lunatic are inserted into the equation soon. Get the family members of your friends and then the friends of their family members and so on. Eventually you will have enough people and enough money to build institutions around them and make the growth exponential. Whenever you encounter a problem look at the other religions around you and try to understand how they solved their problems to get a better perspective of how to go around people’s intellects. Remember, one man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh, make sure you learn all you can from the other religions around you and start getting your own flock of sheep today!
How do you get believers in the door though? This will take us to the third secret in our program.


Secret three:

Make yourself special. After you finish concocting your random story make sure that somewhere in there you are anointed as special or as the chosen one. You can use the label “prophet” if you want and saying that something was “divinely inspired” seems to get a lot of people behind any silly story so make sure you also use some kind of supernatural explanation for your unusual and out of the ordinary knowledge. You can say that some angel or alien visited you during the night while no one was watching or you can say that you turned to the heavens and asked for rain and it did. Whatever you chose make sure you keep in mind that nothing you say can be verified, only those who manage to forge an incredible story and still make is unverifiable survive. When was the last time you saw a person literally worshiping a tree?! NEVER! It just doesn’t happen anymore! As soon as you make the mistake to make a verifiable claim your religion will be left with just a few more years to live. If that.

You may also find a couple buddies to help you here. You can say that aliens visited you and that you were chosen as the new messiah of the human race or something along those lines. Ask your friends for help, tell them to play along for a while and to tell people that they were there and that they say the aliens you speak about. After you get enough people to believe them, make sure you get rid of them, we are not suggesting you kill them but… it may help. After all the less people who really know the truth behind your religion the better, because that way you can keep all the money and sex for yourself.
Be creative! When people ask about the witnesses and their disappearances you can say something like “well… the umm… aliens took them last night!”. Make sure you hide the bodies deep inside a forest and don’t forget to spray deer urine on the bodies to prevent hound dogs from finding them.

Once you insert yourself into the story as the special guy with special knowledge you may move on to the next step which is even trickier.


Secret four:

Link people to the story. Once your story manages to answer some big question make sure you find a way to give people a sense of place in the universe, a sense of direction or maybe even just the feeling of well being. It doesn’t matter if you answer the questions truthfully, as long as they believe that you did and as long as they believe that it is important to believe it. Remember, you are now the prophet! Find a way to make the revelation of the story a dramatic scene, tell them it is a sacrifice that you are making or at least make them think it is. This secret is closely tied to the fifth secret.

Secret Five:

Divide people. Make sure you create the story in a way that divides those who believe in from those who do not or those who believe in another story. Create the “us and them” mentality and you can get away with everything. Some key concepts to keep in mind that may help you are the following:

1. Refer to those who do not believe in derogatory ways such as fool, infidel, ignorant, close-minded or anything that makes them “incomplete”.
2. Make the believer think that he or she is being persecuted. You can get people to believe anything, but in order for them to be ready to give more they have to believe that they are being persecuted for believing it.
3. Those who tell your believers that their religion is a fraud are liars and should not be trusted
4. Those who mock or criticize the religion are evil and only care about hating.
5. People who believe the story are special, they are the chosen ones. A special fate awaits those who believe.
Remember to follow all the previous steps before you get to this one!

Step Six:

Give people hope. You can do this by telling them that if they believe in your story they will be rewarded after they die of that the more money they give the happier they will be. Whatever you do, make sure that people get a sense of security or justice even if it is completely fabricated. One of your followers has a problem at worked and asked you for advice? Tell them that if they pray with their whole heart the problem will be resolved. Is anybody in your congregation sick and about to die and there is nothing anybody can do? Tell them that faith will cure their disease and that if it doesn’t maybe it was part of a grander plan!

People don’t want to know the truth, the truth is not consoling and they will believe whatever you tell them if they feel something warm and fuzzy inside of them. Tell them that if they feel something (make sure you do not define the feeling, ever) that that is irrefutable proof that the belief is true.


Secret Seven:

Develop a never ending cycle of emotional manipulation. Once you get a solid base of believers and a workable story with no independent confirmation make sure that you find a way to make your story circular. Maybe the alien in your religion loves his or her creation but hates them just enough to expect them to do silly things periodically and on a regular basis. Make sure you go after those who are weak or ill and those who are away from home. Hospital folk are great; they are tired of their sickness and would like to know why it happened to them. Look at people at airports, universities and other places where you would expect to find young, naïve and lonely people.
Sexual repression is another good way to keep them in a loop. Make sure you make some sort of taboo around their sexuality. You can either tell them that they cant have sex altogether or the complete opposite, tell them that they are expected to have several partners and lots of sex. Tell them that masturbation is wrong or tell them that no matter what they do or think, a higher being knows, that way they will be in inner conflict all the time and some will come back to you over and over again. Again, be creative.

This is a very good secret because you can now start to tie in several secrets. Tell them that they are supposed to hate those who do not agree with them, tell them that the only way to be a good person is to convert and “enlighten” those near them or around them. Manipulate their emotions and manipulate the information around them. Tell them that people out there will be trying to reconverts them and that people out there who are full of hate will come to them with facts and numbers but that they are doing the work of some evil being and to ignore them at once.

Secret Eight:

Go after the children. Encourage the members to bring their families into the religion. Praise those who manage to convert their entire families and treat them better than those who show up alone. Tell them that they cannot be moral families if they are not of your particular religion. Go after the children, it is a lot easier to convince a 5 year old that the invisible alien is real because they are not old enough to think for themselves and around that age they accept most of what authority figures tell them about the world. Take advantage of their gullibility. Most children who are indoctrinated at an early age tend to stay in that religion and are more likely to indoctrinate their children when they are older. Keep in mind that religions are much like a mind virus, make sure you get the children infected, the younger they are the harder it will be to cure the disease.

Religion is intertwined with the family structure because it is a parasite of the family structure. Once you have these rules taken care of… retire! Let your sheep do your work for you now! Tell them to go to other countries and covert people, tell them to create rites of passage, myths, legends, moral panics, secret handshakes, and even lobby political candidates to pass laws allowing your religion to be considered as a special religion. Once you get to this point you are done, the religion will now have a life of its own.
These rules are guaranteed to make you a millionaire in no time and to have as many sexual partners as you want if you follow them. We can only give you a few of the rules but if you call now you will receive the entire set of rules and complementary twister board to enjoy your remaining months as a hard worker before you become lazy, overfed and supported by the poor.
We hope you enjoyed the introduction and we expect your check in the mail soon. Have a blast.










1* the brochure and DVD are free with a 5 dollar sign up fee. Shipping and handling fees may apply.
2*Marco Otero’s Religion Manufacturer does not endorse physical assault on people including but not limited to spraying people with cat urine, moose urine, deer urine, pubic hair warm beer or anything of the like. Marco Otero’s Religion Manufacturer and none of its affiliates assume no responsibility for any laws that are infringed with the knowledge acquired in the course.
3* The evolution scam will only work in underdeveloped democracies with the exception of the United States.