Religions need the perfect recipe to succeed and become popular.

Promise an afterlife. Not only should you claim that people will rise from the dead, but they will live in a new world; a paradise.

Empower all followers. Encourage the followers to condemn those that do not follow your faith. Your faith is the one true religion.

Dress code. Set a dress code so that your people are walking advertisements for your religion. It also makes those wearing the correct dress code feel superior.

Set a harsh punishment for leaving. Ostracise those that leave. Encourage families to stop all contact with those that leave.

Demonstrate doing good. Support the needy using some of the regular donations made by your followers. The ignorance paradox delves deeply into the dynamics of giving and how that makes us feel.

Subjugate the women. Inform all concerned that women are for ‘making babies’. Surprisingly this will be accepted as there are enough women who gravitate towards a traditional way of life. They will feel that they are doing what is right.

Evangelism. Spread the word across the globe. Try to encourage people to put religion above politics. The job of the followers is not done until the entire world has heard your message. All must be convinced.

There are at least 4000 religions in existence today. Most religions have roots in ancient beliefs and traditions. Those traditions and beliefs hark back to ideas that formed 5000 or more years ago.

To sum it up cleanly and neatly, people did not know. They did not understand what we know today. It is quick and easy to satisfy our curiosity with the simple idea that there is god that made the universe and us too. A god that has always existed. That explanation of things satisfies vast numbers of people. From that premise we can lay out a framework for how we should behave. The trick is to formulate the framework in such a way that people feel better for complying and worse for not.

Are you ‘allowed’ to start a new religion? Of course you can. The Mormon church for example was started in 1830 - quite recent compared with many others.

Do I need someone to claim to have a connection with a ‘god’? That can help but it needs validation. It may hinder rather than help as we ask for much more proof these days compared to the proof people accepted centuries ago.

We know the origins of morality and that morality existed for 10s of thousands of years before religions were created.

We know how the universe came to pass.

We know how things form from basic building blocks leading to complex structures – evolution.

We know that we can have a life full of purpose and reason without any faith. We have faith in our knowledge and understanding.

We can only know if we spend time getting to grips with key knowledge. That takes about the same time as it does to learn how to drive a car.