The statistics available about religions indicate that there are around eight thousand, and the number of their followers varies a lot from one to the other.
 
Encyclopaedia Britannica from 1989 points the most important ones: Catholics (900 million), Muslims (880 million), Hindus (663 million), Protestants (407 million), Confucians (350 million), Buddhists (311 million), Orthodox Christians (161 million), Animists (92 million), Shintoists (30 million), Jews (18 million).
 
The Universal Supreme Intelligence must have created everything. And if it did so, it must also have created men.
 
Using their creative (but not having the power to create) capacity, they – men – invented a reasonable quantity of gods. During the last milleniums, after the primitive stages of animism and polytheism, human beings have created and worshipped gods according to their environmental conditions and physical and mental characteristics, which are similar to their own.
 
These gods have been created with many different ornaments and have been served by sometimes complex mystical practices, all according to a common and profound sense of adulation. You worship to ask for favours and protection, so that others can do what your mental laziness doesn’t allow you to do.
 
As time goes by, there is a clear evolution of concepts that seems to approximate the different religions. With the revolution of the media, those local gods (for example, with a white face for Europeans or with almond eyes for Asians) become ridiculous. With scientific and technological investigation, some phenomena, which were considered “occult” or even impossible, have been explained. A lot of taboos have disappeared, as well as a lot of popular superstitions.
 
As far as men have access to more and more areas of knowledge and grow in terms of  developing their logical thinking, mysticism disappears and reason rules. And this evolution towards knowledge will probably not be quicker because of the great economic interests that have been hiding behind religions.
 
When we face armed conflicts, like the Gulf War, we ponder whether these great economic interests have gone beyond reason or not; we wonder whether religious fanaticism hasn’t also gone beyond what is allowed by the laws that rule the universe.
 
Will an argument like this one be less acceptable than the anti-imperialistic ideas (long dis-credited in Europe) or the campaigns that make us believe that the leaders from the Middle East are crazy (Saddam Hussein, who is now considered “crazy”, was once armed by westerners and orientals against the one who was then called crazy, Komeiny)?
 
If one goes beyond the limits of the universal law, some problematic or catastrophic situations will naturally arise, but they will curb men’s economic ambition and religious-fanatic nonsense.
We will then regret having lost meanwhile a considerable number of men and destroyed an area of the globe, which will hopefully not be too big.
 
But, finally, Humanity will be able to evolve significantly. Maybe then, there will be a convergence of points of view, a union of efforts and the true respect for the Universal Intelligence.  
 
 

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