The fastest growing religion group in Iceland is Zuism, that has already outstripped the number of Muslims in that country. What is Zuism?
Zuism is based on ancient Sumeran texts and the Sumeran religion is one of the world’s oldest religions, believed to be the basis of the world’s religions. It survived for instance in the mythologies and religions of ancient cultures such as the Babylonians, Assyrians, Hurrians, Akkadians, Egyptians, Romans and other culture groups.
According to Sumerian mythology, the primordial union of An and Ki produced Enlil, who became leader of the Sumerian pantheon. After the deities banished Enlil from the home of the Gods, Dilmun for raping the goddess Ninlil, she had a child, Nanna, god of the moon, Nanna and Ningal gave birth to Inanna, the goddess of war and fertility and to Utu, the god of the sun.
All that is no doubt fascinating but it appears that the popularity of this religion may be due to more prosaic reasons.
Iceland is one of those European countries that requires you to state your religious affiliation and the government then imposes a tax called a ‘parish fee’ and gives that money to your church. If you say you are an atheist, the government taxes you anyway and puts the money in a pool that is then shared among the churches.
This state subsidizing of religion is what enables churches in many countries to survive despite the decline in their numbers and there are moves in Iceland to create a separation of church and state. But meanwhile, if you say that you are a Zuist, the church of Zuism has promised that the money it gets from the government will be given back to its members.
So the Zuists are somewhat like the Satanist religion in the US, using their religious status to advance the cause of church-state separation.
It’s a shame that people have to combat stupidity with more stupidity.
Zuist? I was expecting Zuulist. it seems all churches need help to survive, belying the claims of how great their gods are.
Icelandic people are amazing and resilient.
Now they have a God who can kick ass on those young whippersnapper Gods and put them in their place.
They also told the financial world to go to hell during the global financial crisis and put the bank managers in jail.
Go Iceland!
>”If you say you are an atheist, the government taxes you anyway and puts the money in a pool that is then shared among the churches.”
This is incorrect.
Basically the state just gives a certain amount of money (~10.000 ISK) per year to registered religions for each registered members. Nobody actually pays any “parish fee”.
The state church and some politicians insist that everyone actually pays this fee. If that were true, then atheist would indeed pay the equivalent to a “parish fee” to the state (since the income tax is the same). But it doesn’t go into any “church fund”.
@4 Herro
Well…it may not be accurate, but it may be a stretch to say it is incorrect. It seems you are basically saying everyone contributes as part of their normal taxes and there is no specific “parish fee.” OK…so…what, really, is the difference?
What gets really confusing is you then say, “state church and some politicians insist that everyone actually pays this fee.” What fee? The fee you just said doesn’t exist???
Much the same could be said of you claiming, “it doesn’t go into any “church fund.”” OK, but you admit there is a set amount of money that goes to the churches. How is that significantly different than a fund?
Your comment really seems to be a quibble over semantics rather than any serious inaccuracies in what Mano said. Would that be a fair assessment?