2005-07-27 10:45![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldisciplineIn the fine spirit of L. Ron Hubbard, the Pentecostals, and Aleister Crowley, I'm here today to start a new religion. Fortunately for everyone involved (all none of them), there are no silly initiations, hidden costs, or even tax loopholes. No, this is much more insidious.
Everyone Think.
Honestly, I think one of my biggest stumbling blocks to religion, among both those who discount it and those who practice it, is the branding of the Big G. Is there something out there? Maybe, but don't go slapping a crucifix logo or a six-pointed star logo or pentacle logo on it. Home-Brewed, For Personal Use Only.
People need divinity in a plain brown wraper. It'd keep them from having to smite the Joneses.
If everyone contemplated what they saw as the divine (capitalized or not) on a personal level, it wouldn't matter if the guy across the street did it a different way, as long as each person's version worked for them.
Not everyone needs something bigger than themselves to turn to; looking inwards, towards self-reliance, is just as valid.
From a conversation:
Nobody needs to prove that their god can beat up somebody else's god.
It's the same impossible approach I have to politics - delete the lazy intellectual shorthand of the formal parties, and make everyone reach for their own conclusions instead of blindly ascribing to a label that encompasses things inaccurately and incompletely.
Initially, people will probably feel lonely and isolated, "I don't have anyone else to share my faith with, or show me the way." But that will change. As people discover their own personal take on the divine, be it Buddy Christ, Foamy the Squirrel, or a small glow in the vicinity of their fourth rib, they will cherish how precise and perfect their discovery is for them. Church would be supplanted by get-togethers where people could talk about how their faith works for them, rather than being told how to do it, and that they'd be punished for doing it wrong.
Encourage somebody to craft something for themselves, and it will be more meaningful. Any boob with opposable thumbs and $68.75 can slap together something from IKEA. But there's pride in craftsmanship when make it yourself, and that can never be stripped away.
That's what's going to be weird about evanglizing - with nothing to market it, the idea needs to sell itself.
"I have the body of a God. Bacchus was a God, right?"
Everyone Think.
Honestly, I think one of my biggest stumbling blocks to religion, among both those who discount it and those who practice it, is the branding of the Big G. Is there something out there? Maybe, but don't go slapping a crucifix logo or a six-pointed star logo or pentacle logo on it. Home-Brewed, For Personal Use Only.
People need divinity in a plain brown wraper. It'd keep them from having to smite the Joneses.
If everyone contemplated what they saw as the divine (capitalized or not) on a personal level, it wouldn't matter if the guy across the street did it a different way, as long as each person's version worked for them.
Not everyone needs something bigger than themselves to turn to; looking inwards, towards self-reliance, is just as valid.
From a conversation:
H: Turning to oneself--the centerpoint of my atheism-- made me arrogant and self-righteous and at times utterly unbearable to be around.
Me: Hey, I resemble that remark! ;-)
H: It was like faith out of tune. Sounded right to my ears, but everyone around me was cringing.
Me: What's that old line about dancing and insanity. . . ?
Nobody needs to prove that their god can beat up somebody else's god.
It's the same impossible approach I have to politics - delete the lazy intellectual shorthand of the formal parties, and make everyone reach for their own conclusions instead of blindly ascribing to a label that encompasses things inaccurately and incompletely.
Initially, people will probably feel lonely and isolated, "I don't have anyone else to share my faith with, or show me the way." But that will change. As people discover their own personal take on the divine, be it Buddy Christ, Foamy the Squirrel, or a small glow in the vicinity of their fourth rib, they will cherish how precise and perfect their discovery is for them. Church would be supplanted by get-togethers where people could talk about how their faith works for them, rather than being told how to do it, and that they'd be punished for doing it wrong.
Encourage somebody to craft something for themselves, and it will be more meaningful. Any boob with opposable thumbs and $68.75 can slap together something from IKEA. But there's pride in craftsmanship when make it yourself, and that can never be stripped away.
That's what's going to be weird about evanglizing - with nothing to market it, the idea needs to sell itself.
"I have the body of a God. Bacchus was a God, right?"
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(no subject)
A few incidentals for ya in light of various and sundry comments above (read: brief reading list for comparison, discussion, and launch-pad cognitive models which others might get some use out of, if only in the throwing away of them):
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience. Pretty much what it sounds like. Brilliant work. Thought-provoking, not stultifying.
Nag Hammadi Library and nearly anything by Elaine Pagels for a quick n' dirty on Gnosticism.
Wikipedia's entry on Quakers for a quick intro. If you know who/what they are, cool. If you don't, or only think you do, they probably aren't like it at all, heh. Quaker at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaker)
Oh, and cuz I think everyone that's ever inspired me in any way is a saint (getting mighty crowded in those ranks), I'd recommend the gospels of Harry Harrison as revealed in the Stainless Steel Rat :>
Praise Bob! 93! 23! Hut, hut, hut!