Taxonomia Religionum

A Comparative Taxonomy for the World's Life Frameworks

29 traditions across 11 families, analyzed through 13 functional dimensions

Introductory~2 hours9 lessons

What Twenty-Nine Worldviews Taught Us About Each Other

A guided exploration of the Taxonomia Religionum findings. Discover why peoples separated by oceans and millennia arrive at identical answers to humanity's deepest questions — and what that tells us about the architecture of human meaning-making.

Lessons

1

The Question — Introduction & Methodology

~10 min
  • Define the 13 dimensions used to compare traditions
  • Explain functional vs. content-level comparison
  • Understand the attribute-by-attribute scoring methodology
  • +1 more objectives
2

The Mirror Image — The Diné-Māori Match

~20 min
  • Explain the Diné-Māori 7/7 theological match
  • Describe each of the 7 theological dimensions using concrete examples from both traditions
  • Articulate why identical scores do not mean identical content
  • +1 more objectives
3

The Hidden Pattern — The Inuit-Yoruba Pairing

~15 min
  • Explain the Inuit-Yoruba 6/7 theological match
  • Describe how ecological opposites produce theological near-twins
  • Identify the one dimension where they diverge and explain why
  • +1 more objectives
4

The Founders' Shadow — The 81% Rule

~15 min
  • Explain the 81% variance finding and why it is extraordinary
  • Classify traditions by their four founder types
  • Predict agency model from founder type
  • +1 more objectives
5

The Modernity Myth — When Doesn't Matter

~12 min
  • Debunk the "modernity → individualism" assumption with data
  • Identify what actually predicts communalism (subsistence mode)
  • Explain why non-findings matter as much as positive findings
  • +1 more objectives
6

Two Independent Axes — The Split

~12 min
  • Distinguish the ecological cluster from the theological cluster
  • Identify the single bridge correlation connecting them
  • Explain why eschatological traditions view nature instrumentally
  • +1 more objectives
7

Sikhism, Tenrikyo & the Reform Template

~12 min
  • Explain the Sikhism-Tenrikyo convergence (8/11 dimensions)
  • Identify the "prophetic reform template" shared by both traditions
  • Describe how new synthesis traditions borrow and recombine existing elements
  • +1 more objectives
8

What Doesn't Correlate — And Why That Matters

~10 min
  • Identify expected-but-absent correlations in the dataset
  • Explain why null results constrain the space of valid theories
  • Articulate the "monolithic package" fallacy
  • +1 more objectives
9

Synthesis — Stories Are the Data

~15 min
  • Articulate the four major findings of the study
  • Explain the "stable configuration" concept using convergent evolution as analogy
  • Connect statistical patterns back to narrative evidence through the creation story parallel
  • +1 more objectives
Source: FINDINGS.md (V4 bivariate analysis)