Membership
How to join the Church of Reality
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What does it take to join the Church of Reality? It's actually not very hard at all. It's as easy as making a decision that you commit yourself to believing in what is real and that you will forego any current beliefs you have when you find out that what you are believing is not real. The Church of Reality is all about reality, real reality, the way it really is.
This of course sounds deceptively simple. I suppose to describe becoming a Realist as putting down your fiction based cult religion and replacing it with Realism is like telling a cigarette smoker that all you have to do to quit smoking is simply to put the cigarettes down and never pick them up again. But such a description ignores the fact that the smoker is a drug addict and that drug addiction is far more complex than the simple act of not doing something. Becoming a Realist is not so simple in a society that is dominated by religious cults and where you are programmed from birth to worship fictional deities. For most people becoming a realist is the beginning of a process of giving up a lifetime of brainwashing, to embark on a search for the elusive real world.
The real world can be a scary place. I wish that we could offer you all the false promises that other religions make. There is no immortality in reality except to the extent that you are remembered for your contributions to the Tree of Knowledge, or unless we develop the technology to become immortal. We don't have the promise of eternal bliss with an omnipotent father figure who is going to take care of us if we only believe and sacrifice large quantities of personal wealth to the middlemen religions that are selling you the ticket to your next life. On the bright side, we don't threaten you with eternal punishment if you don't fork over your bank account to the church. Our religion is based on the concept that we are here, there's a world out there, so let's explore it and figure it out. Let's do the best with what we have to work with.
Being a Realist starts by taking a personal oath by making the Sacred Choices your life's choices. You accept the Sacred Missions as the missions in your life. You accept the Sacred Principles as the guiding principles of your life. You choose to be intellectually honest and to take responsibility for your role in the real world. You are committing to a life of personal growth, that every day you will do something to make sure that tomorrow you are somehow better than you are today. That you will become a lighthouse to guide those who are lost in the darkness of the cult mind, to welcome them to the real world. This is what becoming a Realist entails.
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Realism is a natural religion which means that you might already be a Realist without knowing it by name. This is different than fiction based religions where the fiction would never occur naturally. For example, if you never heard of Jesus, you would never be a Christian. To be a Christian you have to be told the story of Jesus. And what kind of Christian you become depends on which version of the story you hear.
In contrast, Realism is based on reality. So people who are in touch with reality would come to very similar conclusions. In fact, if independent realists see reality different than the Church of Reality does, it is time to investigate if something is wrong in the church. At least - that applies to church doctrine.
The Church of Reality is also a social institution that is based not just on reality itself, but that is about people and how people relate to reality. Pure reality cares nothing about the human element, but the Church of Reality does. In addition to pure science we are a community. So there is more leeway in how community is implemented. The hard science isn't there to guide us about what social aspects are right and wrong, and what variation there is between different cultures or different kinds of people with different preferences. The way Realists choose to live in San Francisco is likely to be different than the way people choose to live in Mexico City. So different people may find their way to reality naturally but through different paths.
The Church of Reality tries to encompass all the common elements of Realism that everyone would come to naturally, yet be flexible enough culturally to adapt to the human elements of variation between people and cultures. At the same time, the Church of Reality has to be careful not to overstep it's bounds and cross over into areas that invade personal freedom or stifle healthy diversity. We also need to be mindful to stay focused on our Sacred Missions and make sure that reality is never forgotten in the Church of Reality.
As a natural religion we have a lot of people contact us saying, "I'm already a Realist." and that is very true. We are glad to find people who are already Realists and to welcome them to our community. We are also glad when realists say that we are right on track in doing it right, and because of our Sacred Principle of Self Scrutiny, we welcome the criticisms of natural realists who see flaws in our organization and point them out to us. We welcome natural realists to our church. |
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A Realist can be a member of the Church of Reality and a member of another religion at the same time. We don't requires exclusivity in order to be a Realist. There are other religions that are reality compatible religion. They are reality based or reality friendly. One such religion are the Unitarian Universalists who are accepting of all religions and a Realist can thrive in a Unitarian church while maintaining their commitment to reality. Some people have marital or cultural ties to other churches yet still believe in reality. In the Church of Reality we are happy if you can be a part-time Realist because some reality is better than none. Even if a person only thinks about reality for one minute a day they are still a Realist and are as entitled to the right to practice their religion as anyone else.
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Church Membership 