Create Your Own Religion

Hi everyone. This is a thread topic I've been meaning to start for a while. Ever since my earliest memories I have always been fascinated by (or to be closer to the truth: obsessed with) the topic of religion and God, and how everything fits together. Whew... I know that's a big one. The reason I am posting this, is that the last few years my worldview has gone through a lot of major changes. I'm sure most people have been through a lot of this process, so with that in mind, I'd like to ask the question:

If you could invent a religion, what would it be?

Most of us are familiar with the basic big guns of dogma running out there, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam. This isn't meant to be a war of whose religion is best, or whose holy book trumps the next guys. It's just asking very simply, and honestly: from where you stand now if you could start from scratch and create a religion, what would it be like?

I'll go first. I'll warn you guys - this whole topic has been a long time coming for me. So, in order to give you an understanding of my own version of religion, I thought I would create a brief preface explaining how I got here. Okay, it's long and it's very dry. If you'd rather not slog through it, I'll understand. To make it easier to just cut to the chase, I'll put my preface in this post, so if you want to just skip to my list of ideas, simply go to the post I'll be making right after this.

Again, this isn't meant to create an argument about whose religion is right or wrong. I'm sure there's plenty of people out there more intellectual than I am that could tear my current belief system to shreds. Instead, please look at this as a clean white space for everyone to freely share a list of their views of what would be their own religion, if given the opportunity to create one.

Thanks! So, here I go:

Pre-face:

After studying the body of the world's religious beliefs through the history of man, I have come to conclude that each one has arrived as a consequence of attempting to make sense of the human animal becoming aware of itself in the material world. The dichotomy of stress resulting from survival instincts versus the harsh facts of life, have naturally caused disharmony in the awaking higher awareness of man. The evolution of the higher self, and higher brain functions have produced a mindset that cannot settle on disharmony. All things must be resolved, in order to become removed from nagging uncomfortable thoughts. We are a thinking animal. However, our brain does not filter its calculations based on logic alone. Whether right or wrong, our current condition is that when cognitive evidence is not available, our brain in an effort to rid itself of the feeling of "dissonance", will create new facts based on predetermination, add them to the evidence at hand and attempt to create a sphere of "belief" in which it can safely inhabit.

All things being equal, most of the world's religions come out as being more similar than dissimilar. The two which differ the most from the rest being Christianity and Satanism/Atheism. Christianity, which requires belief in Jesus alone, as a sacrifice from God to atone for his creations fallen nature to attain salvation and freedom from this material world into the next life. Satanism/Atheism, which dispenses in an external God, and replaces it with worship of the self, to attain the fullest amount of pleasure and personal power in this life, as there is no afterlife, reward or punishment for deeds done.

To return to my original point: all religions have come about as an attempt to create a belief system of "Harmony", in an effort to resolve the dualistic state mankind has awakened to in the stressful material world.

Main issues being: death of consciousness, loss of loved ones, sense of overall purpose in a randomly changing landscape, knowledge of origin, connection with a higher source, and supernatural rescue from threatening situations when no other resource is available.

It is evident at this point that each of the world's religious books was written by man, possibly inspired by the will of God. Every leader of every religion claims to have the authority that their dogma is the final truth - the only one revealed by God. But, because of the failure of each of these religious books to become the final outline - self evident and convincing to all of humanity - they reveal their own origin. Because of their incompleteness, it is evident that no such books were ever written by Gods own hand. Each writing at best contains kernels of truth in its attempt to create a sensible worldview, but there is simply NO EVIDENCE that any said writings are the absolute spoken will of any possible higher entity. Such supposed evidence was created by the authors in an effort to substantiate their views upon others.

Organized religion is a result of man's social nature: the need to belong to a larger group in order to find security, and the need to control larger groups from a leader. All religions are headed by men, not a supernatural deity. To believe so would be to reduce such a deity to the framework of man, and subject him to being fraudulent and prone to error.

Efforts to postulate any one religious book over another by claims of prophecy have been revealed through the collective light of evidential study to prove false. Miracles in support of such documents, are only supported themselves by hearsay within the group of believers. Again, there IS NO EVIDENCE whatsoever of the appearance of supernatural occurrences affecting the natural world, outside of the claims of myths and stories.

Recently, in the 21st century, an opportunity has taken place that was never before available to the individual religious seeker. Free knowledge. Knowledge gained from evidence of the entire summation of mankind's recorded history. This knowledge is commonly available now to all through the invention of computers and the Internet. Never before has this opportunity to gain personal insight been available to each and every individual. Religious texts that were held in secret for only the highest priests to delve out bits of "insight" to their followers, are now splayed out, fully revealed with each detail cross-referenced to the whole. Each religious texts statements of belief can be viewed as a chart compared and measured with all others. For the first time in history the light is shining on all of our acquired insights into what the "Truth" may possibly be.

Disclaimers that the claims of any specific religion cannot be deduced by reading the words of their books alone, because their contained truth is hidden and can only be revealed by supernatural revelation, can be refuted by simply looking at those claims in the light of reason and natural evidence. Any truth will only stand when its foundations are not torn down by internal conflict, contradiction and proven factual errors. Conjecture and apologies to twist such contradictions into resolution should be discarded.

The honest searcher who attempts to step into this deep ocean of acquired writings, has the burden of seeing through all the murkiness, by conscientiously purging the huge weight of predetermination that each of us is steeped in depending on our demographic cultural origin of birth. It is no small task indeed to remove the self from these imposed filters, in order to gain a clearer view of any insights that may be available from the history of man's religious writings.

Disclaimer:

The following thoughts are mine and mine alone, based on my current intellectual experiences, and like all belief systems, are subject to change depending on future evidence and events. It is each person's natural right to decide whether there is or is not a supernatural deity overlooking us all. At this point in time the evidence comes out to be pretty much equal either way as the observer chooses to view it, as God is not directly detectable by any of the senses connected to our brain. It is only by deduction of the overall panorama of reality that the individual either falls one way or the other in a personal belief of a supernatural higher realm. Possibly, in the future, revelations of knowledge may come that will undeniably change the nature of these ancient questions.

Personally, I myself (admittedly including my own personal frailties and weaknesses in deducing the truth out of background noise) have weighed the balance, and deduced that there IS, a higher order behind things, and that we have been placed here by the initiation of a higher deity that is outside of natural forces. That statement out of the way, returning to the purpose of this document, I will attempt here to list what my current beliefs of overall supernatural purpose are, although I am aware that just by the act of stating such a list, I thereby become responsible to either acting or not acting on such beliefs, and the restraints that result from the act of believing such.

This list was created after many years of reading, studying, and self reflection. As such, the act of creating such a list reveals the possibility of error, or that Truth itself may not be apparent or attainable to either this individual or to the collective human mind at all. It is an attempt to resolve the current condition one finds himself in, balanced against the historical writings of others who have attempted the same journey.

I fully acknowledge that because of my own susceptibility to error, that any of the below statements of belief may be wrong. The bottom line is that none of us at this point can ever be fully sure that we know what the final truth is. We simply don't have enough information. Unlike others who have claimed that their revelations are the direct result from God, and demand that they MUST be followed, under threat of falling into error, or divine punishment (as in the Apostle Paul), I have created this list of beliefs simply because they have thus proved to be self evident to my own experience, and internal moral resonance, and that they give my own life purpose and comfort of meaning....

My Current Belief System:

1. There is only One. One consciousness. One overall creator of all the material order in the universe.

2. Everything that has consciousness is part of the One.

3. When you look into the eyes of any Sentient creature you are in essence looking back at yourself.

3. There is no separation or loss.

4. There is no "Morality" to the workings of the natural world, although it attempts to constantly grow and better itself through balance.

5. Each of us is charged with the task of creating reality, the "Now" in this moment. In turn, each of us also has the immense power of free will to either create good or evil.

6. The results of being the authors of "Now" is that the universe is continually expanding, and becoming more aware of itself. God is experiencing this ever present moment fully through the experience of "Us". That is the secret to the joy of being. It is the dance of all things.

7. Harmony continually seeks to override dissonance.

8. That consciousness arrived and formed itself out of non-conscious matter, organizing itself against all rationality into infinitely higher and more refined forms. Along with the material self the same is also true with consciousness. That consciousness is evolving and continually refining itself into higher and higher forms. Such higher forms would normally exhibit a higher state of rationality, consciousness, awareness of reality around it, and higher empathy to others outside of itself.

9. The "Will" is the prime motivator, the essence underlying all things. The Will is God himself. It is outside of the forces of nature, yet can impart itself on the material realm. That is the only explanation as to how we arrived here out of a background of nothingness. This in itself is the only current evidence we have of a higher supreme being. Along with the currently known and detectable forces such as gravity and magnetism, the Will is the original impulse that drives the wave action of the fabric of our universe.

10. The attributes of a higher deity or God can only be found truthfully with evidence by studying his creation through science and the observation of nature.

11. Mankind, (and possibly all other conscious animals to some degree) are not only comprised of a material being, but function as a balance of three distinct states that work together: the physical, mental, and spiritual planes.

12. Along with the physical rules that guide our material realm there is a possibility that there is an Emotional plane to the universe which is evident from the high order and purpose of nature, and that this could possibly lead to higher dimensions and other states of being.


OK, there it is. Now let's hear some other peoples ideas.........

Excellent Post....S&F! Although I agree with you on most points, I do have a few questions. Did consciousness create Will (God), or did consciousness possess Will so that it could evolve and expand? Are they separate entities? If consciousness is constantly refining itself, expanding and evolving, why are humans the only sentient beings on this planet?

Personally, I hesitate to use the phrase "I believe" and yet, to say that I will never have convictions would be a conviction in itself. I think that we all search for a truth that we will never find because truth is fluid. What is truth today is based on what we KNOW today. Tomorrow is a whole new ballgame; even scientific "constants" are being called into question these days. If I had a personal religion, I think I would call it "gratefulism". It's what I feel when I wake up every day and come home every night.