“But most people believe in God…” – You’ve probably heard this winning argument in one of your endless discussions with some religious preacher.

The calculation done by our partner to the discussion is pretty obvious: Let’s take the number of Christians in the world (say about 2 billion) together with the number of world’s Muslims (some additional 2 billion), add the number of Jews (a few more millions) – and you get a decent amount of billions of people. On top of this we should add some other cultures whose rituals are evidently directed toward “a creator”, and, lo and behold we have more or less most of humanity.

— * — * —

Following this line of thought – most of humanity also believes that Asians are smarter than Europeans. Simply said: Most people believe they are smarter than others, and since most of humanity is Asian… do the math yourself. Most of humanity also believes that bowing toward the East – does them good. It goes like this: On one hand, billions of Muslims pray that way. On the other hand, billions of Asians bow politely downward while they’re already… in the East.

Except that the bowing to the East of Palestinians on the Temple Mount – is nothing like the bowing downward of Samurais in Tokyo. And very similarly, the god of Paul from Italy is nothing like the god of Shloime from Jerusalem. The former checks his preferred people for being baptized, while the latter examines they don’t eat cheeseburgers. The former rests on Sunday while the latter – on Saturday. The former has a son born out of the womb of a woman, while the latter is childless, God forbid. After all there’s no way the same entity can possess all those characteristics simultaneously!

If you really think about it, we can also make such a comparison between, say, the Greek Zeus and the Muslim Allah. Both are fond of certain live offerings, but the former has a big family, while the latter has to settle for the company of angels.

Actually, the segmentation into “Christians, Muslims, Jews” is rather artificial. The Shiite Allah likes people to beat themselves fiercely once a year and rejects traditions later to the Quran. The Sunni Allah, however, promotes some later traditions. The god of Satmar Jewish Hasidic group considers all Zionists as heretics, and will punish them when they get to Heaven. The god of “Bnei Akiva”, however, has a lot of affection for Zionists. They can’t all be the same god, even if by coincidence they carry similar names, derived from the ancient Phoenician “El”.

— * — * —

I must say, even two Vizhnitz “Hasid’s” do not exactly believe in the same god. Each one of them – in their minds – has a whole different perception of the world. There’s no way they both imagine exactly the same god, not to mention the same Heaven or Hell or Messiah. The number of gods in the optimistic case is equal to the number of believers. Considering all those who frequently change their minds, those with split personality and the polytheists – the number is probably much bigger.

“But most people believe in God…” – That’s a good joke.