The Evolution of Religion

The Evolution of Religion

No cladogram, because there is horizontal information transfer as well as purely vertical transfer from ancestor to descendantposted by orthogonality at 3:32 PM on December 6, 2008

Its also tricky to assemble because various groups may claim to be the real version of a given main branch of a religion, while others call them an offshoot. For example, numerous Christian faiths each claim to operate the way the early church did, or the way Jesus intended, or some other variant of the oldest. Do you branch Conservative Judaism off of Reform, which it was a response to? Off of Orthodox Judaism? Off of some central/hypothetical primal Judaism branch that some of the Orthodox claim theyre the sole practitioners of, while others claim theyre all valid?

Thats not to say that none of these questions have answers, and Im sure such trees exist, but any one of them is going to be potentially very flawed, and prone to serious and legitimate disagreementposted by Tomorrowful at 3:47 PM on December 6, 2008

This should be doable at least for all the divisions within the JudeoChristianMuslim tradition. You probably need to put together a bunch of them, including:

Chart of major branches of Christianity scroll down

Yes, there is kind of. Somewhere in a box, I have a timeline map about 1 meter wide by half a meter high, which starts with paganism and ends up with today actually the 1940s, from when the timeline was made. It does a decent job of showing how the various religions flow into one another when they do, at least . . . so obviously, Judaism begets Christianity, Zoroastrianisms influence of the good/evil duality of other religions is evident, and so on. Id post it, but I dont know how it would be possibleposted by Dee Xtrovert at 5:20 PM on December 6, 2008

Dee Xtrovert, Id be very interested to see your timeline. Where did you get it? Is there anything on it that would make it easy to find another one?

There is a really neat map that shows the development of the worlds major religions animated against a historical timeline. The most significant events that led to the development or expansion of each major religion is inidcated. Its cool Heres another one incorporating both Western and Eastern religions in one chartHeres something similar on a timeline click to enlargeA nice version with symbols rather than words. float cursor over symbols to read notes.