Want to get rich quick, never pay taxes, reach a level of popularity akin to the Beatles, Elvis, or
Jesus, and wield incredible amounts of unearned power, control people, or influence politics. If the
answer to any of these questions is yes, then today is your lucky day. By following this simple
five step program, you can easily and economically start a new religion from scratch, and make all
your dreams true.

Step One: Creating & Contacting God: Historically one of the best ways to get people to join a
religious organization is a claim of some form of direct contact with THE ONE AND ALL POWERFUL GOD
OF THE UNIVERSE. Since we are starting an original religion you will have to invent this creature
and give it a name, paint some pictures of it; write a back story, and so on. Once you've got a
good idea of the god you want to invent the next step is to flesh him or her out to meet the needs
of your market. You will need to target a segment of society in a perpetual identity crisis,
confused and looking for something new and chic to believe in.

Step Two: God's Founding Documents: Keep in mind that a non judgmental god is utterly useless from
a profit angle. It also helps to give this guy considerable amounts of intangible power . This
generally will need to be backed up with some sort of physical proof. Dubiously creditable proof is
all the rage today. Humanity's natural fascination with exceptionally old things shall also be
exploited. The last ingredient to your proof is to make it so excessively convoluted that full
understanding would take several lifetimes. Basically you will need to write a Bible. Then you get a
guy who looks and sounds credible to say it's old, like really old, and your home free. Step
Three: Revisionist History: Since you have a bible people are going to assume it includes some sort
of content. Generally this will be god's views on basically everything, with the inclusion of a
quick history of all time. Dealing with a group of prospective clients who will be more convinced by
your ability to cry on demand than anything science has to say shall allow you to go buck wild. Once
you've crafted your God, heaven, hell, and history of time all you have left is the rules. Once
all of that is finished you're ready go down to the greyhound station and start recruiting.

Step Four: Invincible God, Fragile Ego, Dire Consequences: In order for the holy rules to work these
guys will need a set of standards so ridiculous and convoluted that no human could come close to
understanding or adherence. Just to be safe you can toss in a couple of rules that seem to
contradict each other. For good measure you should toss in a couple dozen rules that simply
reinforce the moral behaviors expected of all civilized humans. You know the ones: don't steal....
Then cap that with a bunch of nonsense rules that were delivered right from your own god for reasons
that no one can comprehend. Since logic and common will always be a threat to your membership rolls
and profits they are also against the rules and among the most dire of sins. Science is witchcraft!
Once you've fashioned yourself a set of rules that no human on Earth has any chance of being able
to follow it's only logical that you devise some form of atonement for violators. If you'd like
to spice things up you can add any one of more of the following to tailor the cult to your liking:
A mythical predatory being of pure evil who's existence can't be proven, as many holidays a year
as you want, for whatever reasons you want, or the South Beach Diet.

Step Five: Selling It to the Constipated: Optimally you can gather a group of such people into a
semicircle (If you're serious about this you've already taken acting lessons and spent
considerable time studying human psychology and how to manipulate it; or at least watched a good
deal of televangelism.) Start with a joke. Preachers never miss with a joke. Then ease into
reminding them that they will die, and how scary that is. Go on to talk about eternal hell. Their
feeble and needy minds will have just placed loving your religion right after breathing on their
list of things to do. Good job, you should be in politics. And this is how you make your own
religion.