Every religion has a culture. There is a standard of behavior that is considered to be a template or role model that a member of the religion should aspire to. The Church of Reality is no different. Our religion is about people and the communities we form together. Since humans don't come with instructions we have to figure out the instructions on our own. We do so based on the values and goals of the Church of Reality.
Our cultural identity defines who we are in the world community.
Unlike some religions that are based upon what you believe in, the Church of Reality is based on what you do. You are what you do and what you do becomes your Life Story. Our morals and ethics are reality based rather than scripture based. We have to figure out right and wrong for ourselves and the understanding of ethics is a continuous and evolving process. We will never get it right. We can always make it better. To that end we produced this list of things that we generally consider to be good traits and things we consider to be bad traits.
These are not hard and fast rules that you are required to adhere to. In fact, there may be some aspects that you disagree with. There may also be situations where the rules don't apply. The idea here is to create an overall picture or template of what a Realist should aspire to. It's a collection of suggestions to teach people about what is likely to be the right way to live. And it is also a public statement to people of other religions as to what kind of people we are and what our values are.
It is often stated by theistic religions that good and bad are defined by their deity. That, if the deity goes away, then right and wrong go away and chaos ensues. Without commandments nothing will stop people from slaughtering each other in a "survival of the fittest" evolutionary frenzy where the strong males kill the weak males and mate with the females in an evolutionary frenzy. These fears are unfounded because right and wrong don't come from deities and we survive best as a society. Our world view is that our morals are superior to theistic moral systems because our values are reality based and they are evolving. If we get it wrong, we fix it. But if scripture gets it wrong, you're stuck with the mistake forever.
Therefore if you are thinking about making the move to Realism, you are not going to have to give up moral standards. In fact the standards we hold are an upgrade from that of any other religion. And if we find another religion that has better standards than ours, we'll learn from them and copy theirs. So even though we are Atheists, we are good people. Realists are the kind of people you want to have as your neighbors. We are a people who you can trust. We are good for society and good for civilization. Even if you are not a Realist, these are good values to apply to any religion.
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