Create your own religion.

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

If you could create a supernatural reality that people could believe in what would it be?

A few ground rules:

  1. What you are creating is actually the truth, not just what you want people to believe is the truth. If your religion says hell exists, there are actually going to be people there suffering.

  2. The truth you create has be be compatible with the reality we observe, so if you create a omnipotent, omniscient benevolent god, you are going to need to explain why bad things happen the world. The only allowed change is that you can make it so that a large percentage of the world believes this truth.

  3. On the other hand your religion doesn’t have to survive Occam’s razor. It just has to fit the observed facts, not necessarily be the most likely explanation for them.
    Bonus points, if your religion can explain something that is currently not understood by science, or if it leads to every treating each other better.

My contribution:

The universe was made by god out of boredom and curiosity. He created it and its physical laws, but more or less lets it run on its own. To experience his creation he moves his consciousness successively between all sentient creatures, but at each time temporarily forgetting all but the knowledge and understanding of the body he is currently inhabiting. Thus all sentient creatures are really just one soul (god), and any actions we take that causes another to suffer is really hurting ourselves. Of course some of our selves are less wise than other parts so it makes sense to take precautions, say imprisoning those whose state of mind would lead to more suffering if allowed free reign.

#2

Irrigationism

The worship of water as the giver of all life.

Adherents build temples within their homes to anoint and purify their bodies with water daily. They even place their waste products in a font of water. They also anoint and purify the food they will eat with water. And, using special machines, the utensils they eat with and the clothing they will wear. In the last century, they have even taken to anointing and purifying their conveyances with water on a regular basis.

#3

NeoReincarnationism.

Everyone gets reincarnated, and for that matter is already a reincarnation of someone else.

Not, however, a reincarnation of, let’s say, one 17th century noble and perhaps also a 13th century nun. That’s not how it works.

Think of your life as one library book on a shelf. When the reader (that’s you) finishes one book, you go on to the next book. Or walk two shelves over and pick one from there, doesn’t matter what order you do them in. Eventually you read them all. Yes, all of them. So, yeah, you’re the reincarnation of everyone, or they of you.

God is the reader. That’s you. You are God having human experiences, much like reading books and getting immersed in them.

So God is a sense of self. We (i.e., God) lose track of that when immersed in the book but sometimes it’s good to sort of come up for air, so to speak. See things from the vast beyond-the-book perspective, get a little distance from the single life that you’re currently [del]reading[/del] living.

There’s no heaven or hell in the conventional sense of “places”. Collectively we, the entire species, always get to live in the world that we, i.e., ourselves in earlier incarnations, created for ourselves. And we will get to live (or have to life) in a future that we help create now, via the activities of our current lives. There’s your karma, right there. But it’s collective. You don’t get to go to heaven and consign others to hell, you have to finagle a way to make life good for everyone because you’re going to get to (or going to have to) live all of those lives, in all those situations and stations and locations.

#4

We are gods who as part of our god power we allowed ourselves to forget that we are gods and believe we are humans in our created world. Since our god powers work only for gods and not for humans we are sort of stuck here. Not that our powers don’t work, because as I say we are gods, but we will not try them since we believe ourselves human which don’t get them so there is no point trying and even if we try we don’t expect god like results so there are no god like results.

Even knowing this much is not enough to allow us to use our god powers.

However there is a way back. And that way back is up to the individual to find. In this there is no structure or ritual, just this truth - they can find it.

The bad things in the world happen because the gods forgot they are gods and no longer understand that karma is a basic element of existence. In human form these gods put out negative karma which radiated throughout human society. The gods that did make it back know about this karma effect and know it would be very bad karma to directly interfere with the will of another god, even the ones trapped in human form and must let it run it’s course, even with all the pain and suffering.

Subverting the will of a god is the ultimate evil, and the will of these gods was to become human, for subverting the will of god creates a paradox, meaning god is not god and was never god, even if one god’s will is subverted then the paradox that god can not exist since god’s will can be subverted, so then there is no god, so no creation, no existence, karma collapses on itself and there is just nothingness. So even though god could subvert the will of another god (as god can do anything), knowing everything, as god knows, this can never be done.

Once a god finds his/her way back they still must appear human, and that was the will of the gods in the illusion they created for themselves. But these gods can, still in human form, but now with their god knowledge, try to help the other gods, or at least help them start their journey back, and may appear as just another person, but they will help lead them back.

So what happens when one of these humans dies. Well humans believe they die, so they do, however gods can not die so they don’t. The death cycle is so final nothing is left, no memory, no recognition, just nothingness just non-existance, then after a eternity which has no basis in time for this god, a sudden connection to life, conception. There is the cycle of reincarnation where as far as humans see we die and that is that and what the human (god) experiences, but for the god being it is starting over as human, as they first commanded it.

The final call:

It is believed and hoped for that all gods will make it back on their own, but that is not assured, some may chose to stay in human form and chose to not find their way back. The earth and sun will pass away, but these gods exercised their will and power that they are human, and that must be preserved. A new path will open up, a bridging of the stars, galaxies, and eventually universes and beyond will be a ever increasing project for those who made it back to those gods who chose to remain human. - This is where you all are now.

#5

That sounds very similar to what I was proposing, although I think you did a better job of explaining it. :slight_smile:

#6

In my religion, Pansetterism, every object, every creature, is an entity and possesses a soul. While it is often necessary for one entity to end the earthly existence of another entity, doing so must be handled with reverance and respect. The entity whose earthly existence has ended will be repatriated into the Great Sentience, where it will rest and recharge before once again occupying an earthly entity. No one earthly entity has any greater significance or status than any other, all are equal and worthy of respect and reverance. There is no hell, because no one is punished after death, merely repatriated and recharged before returning to Earth. Philosophically, I guess that would mean that existence is equivalent to both heaven and hell, as there is no heaven after death either. It is all one great continuum until the end of existence.

Guess you can tell I’m a child of the '60s.

#7

My late brother-in-law and I never got much further than the name but ------- New Reformed Traditional Evangelical Jewish Druids. And the worship site was going to be the Church of the #2 Lead Pencil. But it always struck me as an interesting start.

For a lot of reasons, I wish he had lived a much longer life.

#8

Tricking people into complete altruism by appeal to complete selfishness.

Twisted. I like it.

#9

I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can improve on Vonnegut’s Bokononism.

#10

Given the OP, I was hoping for a mention of The Winslow.

#11

Czarcism: The entire universe was created, whole cloth, the day I was born, and will disappear the day I die. The longer I live, the longer you live, and any attempts to drug or incarcerate me for my own safety could bring on “The Deathly Funk”.

#12

So if you come back as a rock, how long do you stay a rock? If you get broken into two smaller rocks do they each get souls of their own? Inquiring minds want to know before I start spring planting.

Sorry, I follow the “he’s just a small fuzzy alligator get over it”, heresy. As such I’ve been sentenced to death by half the galaxy.

#13

*Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, “Why, why, why?”

Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.*

#14

Mine’s kinda like this except that I am a disembodied consciousnesses. An all powerful god is feeding all my senses. All other things (like you all) only exist long enough to pass into and out of my perception.

Another favorite of mine is that the universe was created about 37 microseconds ago. Each and every one one of us was created at that time complete with full memories of the past. The universe blinks into and out of existence all the time while the all powerful being tweeks it this way and that way.

#15

The Church of mbh will have lots of fertility rituals, involving sky-clad priestesses. :slight_smile:

Somewhere in Africa, there is a tribe who say that the Creator God was masturbating one day, and ejaculated the universe. I like that story. It tells you your place in the grand scheme of things. :slight_smile:

I am also fond of the idea of a clockmaker deity, who created the universe and set it in motion, and now lets it run without interference.

As for an afterlife, I would go with reincarnation. However, unlike the Hindus and Buddhists, I am not really interested in escaping the karmic cycle. The world has lots of problems, but on the whole, I enjoy it. I want to spend more time in it. Endless rebirths, and endless second chances, seems pretty good to me.

#16

Oh, great, another carefree optimist who doesn’t think that life is suffering.

You people make me sick.

#17

We aim to please. :smiley:

#18

[quote=“Buck_Godot, post:12, topic:717755”]

So if you come back as a rock, how long do you stay a rock? If you get broken into two smaller rocks do they each get souls of their own? Inquiring minds want to know before I start spring planting.

(I smell a potential convert. I’m mailing you the pamphlet as I type.)

I have consulted the Pansetterist Guide to the Galaxy and have been enlightened. Yes, once the rock has split it will require a soul for each remaining piece. The tricky part will be deciding which one is temporarily inert and soulless and can be tossed into the trash, and which one still retains the soul and would resent such churlish treatment.

#19

Upon further reflection, I came to a conclusion about the nature of the Deity.

If any deity did create the Universe, the Creator bore little resemblance the the grumpy old curmudgeon described in the New Testament. The Creator of our universe was more of a prankster, like the Coyote or the Monkey King.

If you don’t believe me, study quantum mechanics. Any deity who created that, had to be playing a joke on somebody.

#20

The thing is that I invented TriPolarism a long time ago and then some other guy claimed it was his idea. So now I just worship the TV.