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Logical Basis of Church Doctrine |
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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