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Reality through the Lens of Religion |
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.
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