Founding a Religion for Dummies
A complete step by step guide to establishing and running a religion

§5. The Free Will Issue

The best way to handle the free will issue (FWI) is to admit that everyone is completely, unconditionally free, then instantly mention a dozen of freedom-limiting commandments that you 'have been handed' in one of your revelations (See Contriving a Proper Revelation).

Now watch the customers' reaction closely.

If there are no exclamations like "Hey, man, you received those commandments—you stick to them", the road is clear. Now you can gradually throw in more and more laws, rules, customs and so on. Should the exclamations arise, immediately kill all trouble-makers and tell the crowd that the God ordered you to remove the wicked from their midst. Now kill some more customers to make the number of the wicked more or less impressive. Paradoxically, periodical purges are known to boost obedience in the remaining clients.

Remember the brilliant example of Moses, long-time CEO and President of Judaism. He started with 10 laws, but later managed to introduce and enforce hundreds of regulations. He was lucky to be dealing with physically very able, but otherwise feeble customers who never bothered to read and understand the End User License Agreement, or question the interests and concerns of Moses himself.

For the FWI to work as you want — i.e., to help you successfully eradicate every trace of freedom by offering a series of pseudo-choices, — you will need to introduce the concepts of eternal reward and eternal suffering. For details see the next section.



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