The late social advice columnist Ann Landers published in 1996 this handy-dandy list of dates when various religions and Christian denominations were founded.

1. Judaism. Established by Abraham 2,000 years before Christ.

2. Hinduism. Developed in India in 1500 BC.

3. Buddhism split from Hinduism and was founded by Buddha, Prince Siddhartha Gautama of India, about 500 BC.

4. Christianity. Founded by Jesus Christ in 30 AD.

5. Islam. Founded by Mohammed in what is now Saudi Arabia in 600 AD.

6. Eastern Orthodox. Founded around 1000 AD after separating from the Roman Catholic Church.

7. Lutheranism was founded in 1517 when ex-monk Martin Luther crossed swords with the Roman Catholic Church because of a church policy which allows followers to shorten purgatory time by buying indulgences. Luther was unsettled because the drive for indulgence money he was ordered to support was used to build the Vatican in Rome. Luther also raised the ire of the RCC hierarchy when he publicly proclaimed that the Bible shows that salvation is by faith in Jesus Christ alone and not by faith plus works, as Roman Catholicism did and still does insist as being biblical.

8. Church of England (Anglican Church). Founded by King Henry VIII in 1534 because, it is reported, the pope would not grant him a divorce with the right to re-marry.

9. Presbyterian. Established when John Knox brought the teachings of John Calvin to Scotland in 1560.

10. Unitarian. Developed in Europe in the 1500s.

11. Congregationalist. Branched off from Puritanism in England in the early 1600s.

12. Baptists. Tenants came from John Smyth who founded the denomination in Amsterdam, Holland, in 1607.

13. Methodist. Founded by John and Charles Wesley in England in 1744.

14. Episcopal. The tenets were brought to the American colonies from England by Samuel Seabury in 1789.

15. Mormon Church (Church of Latter-Day Saints). Developed by Joseph Smith in Palmyra, New York, in 1830.

16. Salvation Army. Founded by William Booth in London in 1865.

17. Christian Science. Founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879.

18. Jehovah's Witness. Developed by Charles Taze Russell in Pennsylvania in the 1870s.

19. Pentecostal. Launched in the US in 1901.

If you are an agnostic, you are skeptical about the existence of God.

If you are an atheist, you reject the thought that there is a God.