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Basis of Church Doctrine
The Logical Structure of our World View
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An axiom is a self-evident truth upon which other knowledge must rest, from which other knowledge is built up. Even though we still question our axioms, a religion has to start somewhere and declare that certain assumptions are true. These axioms make up the roots of the Tree of Knowledge upon which our religion is founded. They form the basis for our world view.
Reality exists. The Earth exists. The Human race exists. Life on this planet evolved over billions of years. We exist. We function as a society. We share knowledge. There exists a wealth of knowledge that we as a human race share. We are self-aware. We have the ability to make decisions. We have comprehension. Our decisions have consequences. Our species is continuing to evolve. Our technology is growing. We have the technology to exterminate ourselves. We are aware of time. We are aware of the past, the present, and the future. We know that many life forms on this planet became extinct. We are the descendents of species that continued to evolve.
This is a description of the reality we live in. In many important ways it sums up our existence. It is what we have to work with. Will we survive and continue to evolve, or will we become extinct? If we continue to evolve, what will we evolve into? Do we have control over what we will become? If we do have control over our evolution, what shall we choose? Or should we choose extinction? Since we can exterminate ourselves, should we?
This is reality. Welcome to the real world. Welcome to the world where everything is the way it really is. A world where there are no fictional beings to fix our mistakes. A world where we are alone and responsible for our own decisions, responsible both individually and collectively. A world of great wonderment, unlimited possibilities, or terrifying consequences. A world that we can turn into whatever we want it to become. This is the real world. The way things really are.
In pure science the universe is just stars exploding and rocks in space bumping into each other. The universe doesn't care if we evolve or become extinct. It only matters to us in that we choose evolution over extinction.
The universe doesn't care about us. Stars explode. Solar systems are sucked into black holes. This planet is but a speck of dust in the universe. Our entire galaxy is but a speck of dust in the universe. If our galaxy blew up tomorrow it would take 2.2 million years before anyone in the next galaxy even knew it happened. If there were anyone in the next galaxy, that is. And there are trillions of galaxies. We live for just a moment in time. There is no universal right or wrong. Whatever happens is whatever happens. If the sun explodes, then it is just one of trillions of stars that explode.
The human race is very young and we are just beginning to become aware of what we are, how we relate to the reality around us, and the responsibilities we face in determining our future. We have choice, so what do we do with that? What shall we choose for ourselves? How will we decide to relate to reality?
Not all of the axioms of the Church of Reality are based only on objective truth. That's because the Church of Reality isn't a religion of science. The Church of Reality is about people who are exploring reality from a human perspective. We have created a set of arbitrary axioms, choosing to give value to the human experience. We have made a religious choice to create a doctrine based on the premise that humanity should progress forward and continue to evolve into something greater than it is today.
What we choose to do is subjective. And the definition of right and wrong become defined in relation to the choices we make. If, for example, we choose to end our existence, to become extinct, then anything that leads to extinction becomes right and anything that leads to evolution becomes wrong. If we decide to make up a fictional story and to dedicate ourselves to the fictional story, then anything that we do that supports the fiction becomes right and anything we do that goes against the fiction becomes wrong.
The concepts of right and wrong are relative to the choices we make and the principles that support those choices. These are arbitrary choices and, since we have free will, we can do anything we want to do. Different people have made different choices about their own lives, the lives in their group, and the future of the human race. Some people choose extinction. Most people have settled for a fiction. Some people have chosen reality. These are religious choices. In fact - the definition of religion is the choices we make in how we are going to relate to our existence.
The Church of Reality is a religion and in our religion we have made the following religious choices. These are the subjective axioms that form the basis of Church of Reality doctrine.
- We Choose to Understand Reality and to Believe in what is Really Real - We choose to reject fictional beliefs and to use the abilities that we have evolved and to take the knowledge that has been handed down to us (the Tree of Knowledge as we call it) and use it to know more about the reality around us. We seek real truth and understanding and we choose to dedicate our lives and our existence, both individually and as a society, to this purpose. Because we dedicate ourselves to the exploration of reality, we call ourselves Realists.
- We Choose Evolution over Extinction - We are Realists in the practice of Realism, and to explore our reality we have to continue to survive, to evolve forward, and to continue our course of evolution in a positive direction. We call this the Sacred Direction.
- We Accept Responsibility - We understand that our actions, and inactions, have consequences. We accept the laws of cause and effect; we comprehend that we have choice and that the choices we make have results and consequences. Therefore, we commit to expend the effort to determine the right and wrong choices in relation to our goals to survive, to understand reality, and to evolve forward. We will work toward making the right choices.
- We Own Ourselves - Our lives are our own. We have ownership of our own lives. This means that we have the right to make the choices that affect our lives, to control our own destiny, to be free to speak out, to take action in our own interests and in the interest of our society. We have the right to personal privacy, and to be secure in our person and our property. We are not the subjects of any nation state nor are our rights limited to what nation state allow us to do. Nations are an artificial construct that exist only for the purpose of serving the needs of humanity. Self ownership is a personal commitment to think for ourselves, to resist control and oppression by other people. To take back our lives and our reality. Because we assert our rights so do we respect the same rights of other individuals.
- We are a Society - We can not achieve our objectives if we allow Extinctionist religions to succeed or allow fiction-based religions, which envision a future of annihilation, to prevail over our choice to survive and to flourish. To the extent that the goals of their religions deny us our goals, we commit to doing whatever it takes to ensure that we prevail. We can not allow ourselves, as a society, to destroy our existence and to become extinct. We support the creation and maintenance of a healthy society that is design for the sole purpose of serving the advancement of the human race.
- We are Humanity - We are dedicated to the Positive Evolution of people--not government, not machines, not corporations, not monarchies, not religions, and not fictional deities. Our loyalties lie with people. Furthermore, this religion isn't just about reality itself, but about reality as experienced by the human race. We are people who are exploring reality together, as a society. Therefore, we have to take care of the human factor to enable humans to explore reality.
These arbitrary choices, our religious choices, form the basis for the Sacred Choices, the Sacred Principles, and the Sacred Missions. Together these religious choices form the basis for separating right from wrong, good from evil. They create a standard against which to test our choices so that we can achieve our religious goals. The religious doctrine of the Church of Reality grows out of the facts and choices upon which we base our religion. |
The initial premise for the Church of Reality leads to several logical conclusions. Our church doctrine isn't just a random collection of personal opinions. What we believe in forms a logical structure based on our commitment to the pursuit of reality.
Since we choose to explore reality and we know that one person does not build a Hubble Telescope in the back yard, we know the exploration of reality requires an organized effort by many people. It is logical to conclude that a strong functional society is required in order to achieve our objectives.
We evolve forward through advancing human understanding. We therefore are interested in issues that promote education and the sciences. We encourage freedom of ideas that are not inhibited by intellectual property barriers. We are concerned about fiction-based cults obtaining weapons of mass destruction to fulfill their Armageddon fantasies. Times of peace create a better environment for advancing our understanding of reality than times of war. Individuality and diversity inspire creativity and avoid Intellectual Incest.
The Church of Reality doctrine is the logical extension of our goals and our axioms. It is the set of rules that supports our world view.
Doctrine is first based on our missions. We define what it is that we want to accomplish. It starts with the name of our church. We are the Church of Reality. We believe in what's real. This a nice phrase but how do we live that? Since we don't know all that's real it's logical to conclude that we don't really believe in what's real, but we aspire to discover what is real and we commit to choosing reality over fiction. What we are really doing is making a religious commitment to the disciplines that keep the mind focused on distinguishing reality from fiction. This is the basis for church doctrine relating to personal improvement.
We also have a mission to expand our knowledge of what's real. We identify ourselves as explorers. So it's not just a commitment to what we presently know to be real, but to expand that to grow and evolve. The more reality we discover the more we can build on that to discover even more reality. Thus our doctrines relating to intellectual property, education, individuality, and freedom serve the mission to expand our understanding.
The doctrine is to our religion as what an operating system is to a computer. The doctrine is the collection of principles that make our religion work.
The human race is a collection of individuals who share knowledge. We explore reality as a society and share our knowledge with each other in a vast network of minds. The better society functions the better we can explore reality. Since our mission to explore reality depends on society, we have to build a strong social structure to fulfill our religious goals. Like all other religions we have a stake in what is right and wrong, laws, social justice, fairness, honesty, integrity, accountability and individualism so that we can flourish together and progress as a species. We also have to make sure the electricity stays on so that we can run our computers. Everyone needs to eat, drink clean water, breathe clean air, have medicine and health care, roads and bridges, and all the day-to-day stuff that makes life work. Without society there can be no cooperative exploration of reality. So the Church of Reality doctrine must cover issues of society so that we can better explore reality together.
Since the human mind is an imperfect tool to explore reality with and humans often make mistakes we can not explore reality unless we embrace change. That change being to move towards more accuracy. Stagnation doesn't accomplish advancement. We therefore must not only change but change in a positive direction. Thus the Principle of Positive Evolution is the cornerstone of our sacred principles and forward is our Sacred Direction. We embrace evolution as the process by which we move forward. Our world view is that we can choose to take control of our evolution and choose what we will become. Since our missions involve the exploration of reality we choose to evolve forward making tomorrow better than today and the next generation better than this generation. Our doctrine therefore covers issues relating to the positive evolution of humanity.
The Church of Reality isn't about science. We are about people.
The Church of Reality isn't about science. Science is for scientists. Religion is about people. The Church of Reality isn't just about reality itself. It's about people exploring reality from a human perspective. In addition to the objective facts of the universe we have chosen to accept some purely subjective axioms for purely selfish reasons that have nothing to do with objective reality. These subjective axioms are what makes the Church of Reality a religion and form the basis for our world view. In the cold darkness of space there is no right and wrong. Nothing has value. Nothing is important. Nothing is interesting. Concepts like right and wrong, good and evil, worth, value, importance, these are all totally subjective in nature and are based on our own selfish choices from a human perspective. We choose evolution over extinction. Other religions choose extinction over evolution. Our axioms are the basis for our world view which form the basis for the doctrine of this religion. Even though we choose to explore reality as it really is doesn't mean that reality has chosen us. Science doesn't care about us. We care about science. Our doctrine is a logical extension of our subjective axioms.
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Newsflash |
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The IRS has approved the 501(C)3 tax exempt status of the Church of Reality. |
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Please link to us, discuss us in online forums, and blog about us. Every time anyone thinks about reality the world becomes a little smarter.
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The Church of Reality is a non-prophet organization.
"RealityŽ" and "Church of RealityŽ" are registered trademarks of the Church of Reality.
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Church Doctrine