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Relativism and Reality
Objective and Personal Realities
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What is Reality? Is there an absolute reality or do we all have our own personal realities? Different religions all claim to be real but believe in opposite things. Is there a real reality out there that is independent of our own experience? Is there a way to determine objectively which reality is the true reality? And from what viewpoint do we assess reality from? These are some of the great questions facing all people of all religions, and one thing about us Realists is that we love the great questions.
We Realist believe there is an absolute reality which is the way things really are. Our religious doctrine, the Kernel, says that one of our Sacred Missions is the pursuit and understanding of this absolute reality. Since reality itself is presumed to be infinite we are committed to making the best attempt at understanding it. We also realize that we are limited in our pursuit of reality because we are not infinitely knowledgeable and we are exploring reality through the lens of humanity. We have only our human brains and the computers we build as tools with which to explore reality. That's not much to work with, but that is what we have so we'll just have to make due and take into account our limited perspective on absolute reality.
Reality itself is absolute, or at least we think it is, but our perception of reality will always be relative because of our limitations both collectively as the human race perceiving reality through the Tree of Knowledge, and individually perceiving reality individually. Our perception of reality will always be a subset of absolute reality, with a number of mistakes that we will inevitably make, and limited by the human perspective that will always reveal a human flavor on our understanding. |
Personal Reality is the viewpoint of the individual experiencing reality personally. Personal reality has a local element to it. My reality is my little island of perception and my experiences. Personal reality is reality relative to me. It's reality from my perspective.
From my perspective the universe was created on October 10th 1955 and will cease to exist the moment I die. I am the only person in the universe that is real and everything else is just part of my dream. People only exist if they are in my presence. If you are reading this for the first time and never had any contact with me before then you didn't exist until this very moment. You were instantly created with a false memory of having a life to give you a false sense of continuity, but you only exist to serve me. When you are not in my presence you cease to exist.
Or - maybe it's the other way around. You are the one who really exists and it is I who only exists in your presence and I am the one who has a fake memory of having lived an entire life. You - the reader - are the only real person that exists and reality itself exists solely to serve you. But which one of us is the real one? Or - do we all share some common reality that we all live in? How do we tell?
Although there is some evidence that this is all just my dream, I seem to be stuck here, so I am going to presume that reality is bigger than me.
Well, this can be hard. Is there a real reality or is my brain floating in a jar in a laboratory somewhere and this is all a computer generated illusion? Perhaps the movie "The Matrix" was a personal message to me - a hint that this is all just a dream. I am the one who is creating the Church of Reality and the United States government granted me a trademark on Reality, I own reality, if that isn't a hint that this is all my dream, I don't know what is. There seems to be some evidence that you all don't exist and I am in fact the only person who really is real and this is all my personal illusion.
However, since I can't seem to wake up from this dream of reality it seems that I am at least stuck having to play the game that the rest of you are as real as I am. And there seems to be a lot of evidence that the universe actually existed before October 10th 1955, so I am going to accept that I am but one of billions of real people on the planet who are as real as I am and that the universe is bigger than me. I didn't invent reality, reality invented me. |
Personal perception isn't the only lens out there that distorts our quest for absolute reality. Our brains are imperfect and as humans we rely on other people to figure out things for us. We are raised with knowledge passed on to us by our parents and the community we are raised in. Much of the Tree of Knowledge that we inherit contains a lot of wrong information and much of that wrong information comes from religious cults. The cult mind distorts our perception of reality and causes people who are otherwise intelligent people to come to wrong conclusions.
When it comes to praising the importance of reality and to verbalizing a commitment to reality as it really is, the Church of Reality comes in first place. No other religion has stated a commitment to reality as strongly and clearly as we have.
The Church of Reality is just one of thousands of religions that claim that what they believe is real. We are encouraged that most all these religions at least consider the element of reality to be an important aspect of their belief system. They assert that they are the one, "true" religion and that what they believe in is real. To us in the Church of Reality this is a good thing because it implies that reality is very important to them. Reality is of course very important to us as well. It is so important to us that reality is the name of our church and is the central theme of our doctrine. In fact I think it is safe to say that of all the religions on the planet that the Church of Reality is number one in our verbal commitment to reality. One can question, and should question, our real commitment to reality. But when it comes to our stated position as to our intent to commit to reality as it really is, I believe that all objective observers would pick us as the winner in the praising reality contest.
But being first in chest beating about reality or reality worshiping is just a step in the right direction. We might be fooling ourselves. We might be reality in name only. (RINO) How do we know if we are right and they are wrong? And if we are wrong, which one of the tens of thousands of religions out there, if any, is right? In fact I can tell you for sure that we are in fact wrong in some areas. I know this because we are humans with limited perceptions and we make mistakes. So what do we have wrong? I don't know. If I knew I would fix it.
Fiction in - fiction out. If you base your belief system on fiction you will never get to reality.
The reason there are so many religions that have very different claims as to what is real is because there is a huge difference between the factual assumptions from which they were formed and the principles that they commit to that are based on those assumptions. The reason we have so many religions is because there are so many fictional narratives out there that these religions are based on. Some of these fictional narratives have spawned thousands of religions based upon different interpretations of the fictional narrative or different and conflicting version of the fictional narrative. Many religions include a mix of cultural tradition and fictional narrative or combine narratives from multiple religions. If you start with fiction as the basis for your view of reality then you are going to get fiction for the result.
Fiction based religions are based upon the holy books. The sacred texts are written under the evince inspiration of the omnipotent beings that are referenced in the text. Generally the omnipotent being inspires an autobiography of itself and the set of rules that the omnipotent being demands be followed. These rules are used to form the moral code of the religion and include the usual sacrifices that the omnipotent being imposes including everything from throwing virgins into volcanoes to a 10% tithe to be collected by the church. The reward for compliance is eternal life in paradise and the punishment for noncompliance is external torture in Hell. Talk about a carrot and a stick - Wow!
Relativism, or relative reality, is reality that is based on your initial assumptions. It can never be more accurate than the presumptions you start with.
The religious belief creates a lens through which reality is tested. If your basic assumptions are sound then when you build on those assumptions what you build is likely to be sound as well. If your basic assumptions are unsound then what you build on those assumptions are likely to be unsound as well. If a religion is based on reality then the belief system should return reality itself. It should return real reality. If however the religion is fiction based then it will return relative reality or reality as seen through the lens of the underlying fiction. So the real question becomes whether or not your foundation is reliable. |
We now know that all religions are relative to their foundations. Lets take a look at this and see what this means to us in our quest for reality the way it really is. I am again going to pick on the Christians because I'm more familiar with them. I know Judaism too, but they don't take their holy books as seriously as Christians do. At least not the Jews I'm familiar with, and the ones who do take it really serious, I don't care to meet them.
How do we know if we are right or if they are right? There is a lot of text out on the Internet by Christian authors claiming that God and the Bible are the real absolute truth and that the rest of us are engaging in Relativism, that we are being irresponsible with reality and that we are therefore immoral because we shun their truth and take the position that reality is whatever we want it to be. Our position is that God and the Bible are fiction and their reality is relative to their fictional beliefs and therefore they are just flat out wrong. So - who is right, us - or them?
Christianity is supposedly based on the Bible. The Bible defines God and everything we know about God comes from the Bible. The Bible is the sole source of information about God and the Bible claims to be the word of God. There are no other books that God wrote. So the Bible and God are supported only by a circular reference. That in itself is highly suspect.
Through the Bible God demands blind faith from his followers. If you believe, all sins are forgiven, except for the one unforgivable sin which is to doubt. In order to believe you have to suspend all logic and reason because if you doubt you will lose eternal life in paradise and be thrown into eternal punishment. God remains hidden perhaps as a test of faith because if you have proof then you won't have faith. It's only through the suspension of logic and reason that you are saved.
The Bible has a LOT of things in it that are inconsistent with reality. But these are easily explained away. Whatever the Bible says, it could mean anything else. For example, a day to God could be 1000 years. Therefore, the Bible can be adjusted to say whatever you wish. This is why there are tens of thousands of Christian denominations.
And if changing the meaning of words doesn't get it, then there's the omnipotence factor. God is all powerful, can perform any miracle, is far smarter than you and he is beyond your comprehension, and Satan is controlling you making you have doubt. How do you argue with that?
Unlike most religions, the Church of Reality is unburdened with the challenge of having to defend ancient holy texts. Our assumptions are far more modest and reasonable.
In contrast, the Church of Reality does not rely on ancient fiction. We have no Bible to defend. Our base assumptions are far more modest and logical. We assume that we exist. We choose to explore reality. We choose positive evolution over extinction. We have to work as a community to best explore reality. We embrace doubt and self scrutiny. We commit to changing our minds if we discover that we are wrong. This is a far cleaner place to come from as a starting point.
In fact, I would argue that it is nearly impossible for the Church of Reality to be wrong because even if the Christians are 100% right and the Bible actually is the word of God then the Church of Reality will eventually figure that out and we will all become Christians. Unless of course God hates Realists because of the doubt thing and that God will allow Satan to trick us into never finding our way to salvation. In that situation, all I can say is that we were tricked by God and we did the best we could under the circumstances. |
Another important difference between the Church of Reality and most other religions is the processes that we use to evaluate what is real and what isn't. How do we know for sure if what we believe in is real? How do Christians know for sure if what they believe in is real? How do the different religions fix mistakes?
These issues are a real problem for Christianity because Christians are prohibited by God from questioning their faith. To doubt is the unforgivable sin. Christians are prohibited from self scrutiny. They are not allowed to question if any of this is really real or if the stuff in the Bible really did happen. In contrast, the Church of Reality takes the exact opposite position. The Church of Reality requires that you doubt everything and that you take nothing on faith. The Principle of Self Scrutiny is one of our most sacred principles because we accept the fact that we are absolutely sure that we will make mistakes and by embracing doubt and self scrutiny we hope to catch our mistakes and fix them.
The only teaching in the Church of Reality that can never be questioned is that we must question everything!
If God inspired the Bible and the Bible is the Word of God then it has to be 100% word for word accurate. "God said it - I believe it - and that is that!" is what I've read on bumper stickers. God being omnipotent and infallible has the limitation that he can never make a mistake. (I can make mistakes, so I can do something God can't do.) And since God is omnipotent, we have to assume that he is a good writer and that he has the ability to get his point across clearly to the reader. So whatever the Bible says is what God means. Some people have raised issues with the chain of custody of the Bible. Has it been tampered with? Has it been altered? If it has, then that introduces error into the process and introduces the element that the Bible might not be 100% reliable. If that is the case then how much of the Bible is unreliable and what parts? How do we test the Bible to determine what parts are reliable and what isn't? That is why perhaps we have thousands of Christian denominations fighting over those very points.
Christians have to be 100% right because they don't have a process for correcting their mistakes.
The problem with Christianity is that they have to be 100% right to start with because they don't have any way to correct their mistakes if they are wrong. If it was ever proved, for example, that Jesus never existed, then Christianity would in theory cease to exist. If, on the other hand, Jesus or God showed up and came out into objective reality, then we would still be Realists, we would change our minds and God and Jesus would become part of our reality. Hopefully we can get God into an anger management class before someone pisses him off and he destroys the world. |
Relativism has a direct affect on morality. If you start with basic assumptions about reality and those assumptions are wrong, and then you base your principles on those wrong assumptions, you are going to end up with a set of very twisted morals. Christians claim to have true reality and therefore their moral standards are correct because they come from God and God is always right. In their arguments that position everyone else's morals as being based on whatever they want to call reality and therefore right and wrong are whatever you want them to be. The presumption is that if there is no God to tell you what is right and what is wrong, then there is no right and wrong.
However - quite frankly - right and wrong are in fact completely subjective. In pure science there is no right and wrong. In pure science the universe is stars exploding and galaxies colliding and suns being sucked into black holes. Whatever happens, happens. We humans have artificially created right and wrong and it is in relation to what we need or what we want. For example, if you aren't a vegetarian, it's moral to eat cows. But suppose that cows were intelligent like us and they were the ones writing the rules of morality. Do you think cows would consider it moral for humans to eat them? I rather doubt it. To cows, we are predators who kill and eat them. From their moral perspective killing humans would be a noble deed because they are protecting themselves from predators. Our morality is based solely on what is good for us. And even if you believe it is moral to protect other species, it's only because protecting other species is good for humans.
The Church of Reality understands this concept and we have made certain choices that create the foundation of our moral code. We have decided that our existence is important to us and that we choose to explore and to understand our reality and our existence. We have chosen positive evolution over extinction. Since we are humans, the right and wrong are based on humans evolving forward and exploring reality. Whatever helps that to happen is generally good and what prevents that from happening is generally bad. From these assumptions and choices we derived the Sacred Principles and the Sacred Missions. Our moral code and the basis for civil law is a logical extension of this process.
Christian morality is totally different than the natural morality of the Church of Reality. It is based loosely on a wide variety of interpretations of the Bible. The problem with using the Bible for your moral code is that the Bible says some really bizarre and dangerous things. For example, people quote the Ten Commandments, which are from the Old Testament. But the same books that the Ten Commandments come from say that people who work on the Sabbath should be put to death. Christian morality includes a mandate to impose their religion on the entire planet and it envisions the world ending in Armageddon, what would be the extinction of the human race. They are anti-science, against free thought, and they consider doubt to be an unforgivable sin. In contrast, mass murder is a forgivable sin.
Christian moral standards prohibit free thinking.
Relativism in morality and law, especially if it is Christian relativism, is not only wrong but is dangerous. The moral standards of the Church of Reality are in direct conflict with the relativistic moral standards of pure Christianity. Fortunately, most Christians don't know what their own religion is about and don't take it that seriously. However radical Christian fundamentalists, who call themselves Dominionists, are trying to make a world wide power grab to enslave the world as they attempted to do during the Crusades. It is part of our moral mandate to ensure that never happens. |
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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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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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