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We don't know why (at this time) that anything exists. But for some reason there is something rather than nothing and we are part of existence. Reality created us and here we are. Now what do we do? Does our existence matter? Do we have a purpose? Or are we just pond scum on a planet that is but a speck of dust in the Universe? One planet amongst a trillion trillion planets.
Our existence might be totally insignificant or we might be the only life form that ever existed that has made it this far. We simply do not know and at this point and we have no way to know. We could just sit here and watch our planet orbit the sun 80 times till we die or we can choose to dedicate our lives to some purpose which might in the long run be meaningless but might have some meaning to us. We can at least choose to attempt to give meaning to an otherwise meaningless existence.
So here we are. We exist. So what are we going to do?
The purpose of a religion is to give some sort of meaning and understanding of our existence and our roll in the universe. As a reality based religion we don't have the benefit of an omnipotent rule giver who writes an owner's manual for us. Nor can we just make something up out of thin air. We have to have somewhere to start, a root axiom, that isn't arbitrary. We have to start with some sort of premise than makes sense. Something that we can explain in a way that stands up to Scrutiny.
In this section we lay the groundwork for the purpose of the Church of Reality by creating a root axiom that becomes a starting point that we can build on. In our case we are the observer. We exist. If we want to continue to exist and be the observer we have to survive. Our existence is valuable to us, and if we as a species are going to continue then we have to protect our status as a member of reality by continuing to exist. If we become extinct then we are no longer in the game and we become meaningless.
Thus our root axiom must include our survival, the survival of humanity. To survive we have to understand ourselves and the universe we exist in. We need to create a purpose for our existence and figure out what tools we have to work with. Once we have a root axiom in place we can build on that to create a platform for the Positive Evolution of the human race. It becomes the fundamental great truth that we can build upon as the basis for society, law, government, ethics, and morality. |
Every religion has a starting point. They all have some basis for what they believe in. Some religions are inspired by the wisdom of some great leader or a prophet who has a connection to a deity. Often there is some holy book involved that is believed to contain divine knowledge that is considered the word of the creator of the universe. Whatever the story is, every religion has one that creates a starting point and an authority which belief is based upon.
So what is the starting point for the Church of Reality? As a reality based religion we can't just make something up and just choose to believe it. Nor can we base it on someone's subjective opinion. Because we are reality based we have an additional burden of having to explain why we do what we do in terms that will stand up to Scrutiny. That way other great minds can look at our work from an independent perspective and determine if we are on the right track.
The first of the Sacred Contemplations is Contemplating the Name. If you were going to create a "Church of Reality" - what would you do? One of the reasons behind this test is to see if other people working independently would create a Church of Reality that is at least similar to the one we have. We want to ensure the Church of Reality is in fact a logical extension of reality itself. Accomplishing this task is no small feat, but nonetheless, we endeavor to do so.
Although the Church of Reality has a higher burden of proof when it comes to church doctrine, in some ways we have an advantage. Since we are not sponsored by an infallible deity if we get something wrong we can fix it. If we come up with a better idea we can replace the old idea with the new one. All religions are evolving but the Church of Reality embraces its evolution. As we better understand the universe we live in we will continue to improve and refine our positions. |
In the Church of Reality even our root axiom evolves over time. At the inception our root axiom was that we believe in everything that is real. This lead to one of our simplistic slogans that expresses what we are about, "If it's real, we believe in it!"
Although it's a good slogan and a simple description of what the Church of Reality is about, it presumes we know what is real and what isn't. In reality, our understanding of what reality itself is and what things are real are limited by our human perspective. The fact is that we know very little about our universe. So the root axiom was refined and improved. The new axiom became "The Pursuit of the Understanding of Reality by Humans has value."
"If it's real, we believe in it!" evolves into "The pursuit of the understanding of reality by humans has value."
The new version is better in that we don't have to have the Church of Reality itself figure out everything that is real and make a list of settled scientific theories. The pursuit of the understanding of reality became our religious value system. We are religiously committed to believing what has been reasonably determined to be real and not believing was has been reasonably determined to be false, or believing in something without any reasonable basis for belief merely because we want to believe in it. It is our commitment to putting reality first that defines us as a religion.
However, our root axiom in some ways is like discovering what matter is made of. In primitive times we believed that everything was made of earth, air, fire, and water. Then we discovered the elements which are made up of what we called atoms. But word atom come from the Greek word atomos, which means that which can't be split. but when science looked deeper we found that the atom was itself made of electrons, protons, and neutrons. Many of us we very comfortable with our three subatomic particles but then they started looking deeper and found lots of other stuff that will make your brain hurt to think about. Similarly, the idea that the Church of Reality is based on the pursuit of the understanding of reality, although elegant in itself, there might be based on a deeper and more fundamental truth to explain why the pursuit of the understanding of reality has value.
The bare declaration that the understanding of reality by humans has value, while elegant, is technically arbitrary. Why does the universe care what we understand? Why does it matter if we even exist? Like the atom, is there some deeper truth that supports our arbitrary assumption? Or shall we just say that all religions are based on a arbitrary assumption and that's what makes us a religion?
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As it turns out there is a deeper truth to support our assumption. The deeper truth is that we have to continue to exist to stay in the game. If we become extinct then we no longer understand anything. Everything we are is gone. Thus we have to continue to survive into the future. And we have to do more that just survive. We have to evolve forward. This planet is temporary. We could get wiped out at any time. So we have to eventually move out into space and hope we aren't wiped out before we develop the ability to live some place other than the Earth. We are going to have to evolve so that our future is something like the Star Trek Future.
If we cease to exist then we are out of the game. Therefore the continuation of the existence of humanity is necessary.
In order to develop that kind of technology we, as the human species, are going to have to have a tight relationship with reality. This the understanding of reality is more than just a religious hobby and somehow equivalent to Extinctionist religions that believe in fictional deities and the end of the world. The pursuit of the understanding of reality is what keeps us in the game. If we become extinct then all religions end. Our pursuit of the understanding of reality ends. Survival then becomes the deeper truth that makes our pursuit of the understanding of reality more than just an arbitrary religious position. |
The first thing we need to do is figure out who we are and what we have to work with. Clearly we have the ability to choose, or at least a very good illusion that we have the ability to choose. Even if reality itself is some kind of programmed simulation or illusion our ability to make choices is sufficiently real to us to say that we have the ability to choose at least in the context of whatever the nature of or existence is. Ultimately all choices might be equally meaningless. Tomorrow a gamma ray burst could instantly vaporize our solar system and the records that humanity ever existed might never come to the attention of life that has evolved the ability to detect us. But we are here now. What are we going to do? We're going to choose something.
Our Life Story is everything we do from the moment we are born to the moment we die. It also includes how we effect reality while we existed. So we can achieve some level of immortality to the extent we are noteworthy enough to be remembered. Or even if we aren't remembered what we did still affects society. We don't remember the person who invested the wheel. But the wheel is still with us and as long as humanity survives the wheel will still be with us.
We are what we do. What we do will become what we did. Our story is part of the Story of Humanity which is part of the Story of Life which is part of the Story of the Earth which is part of the Story of the Universe. Our existence has some effect and our choices determine what that effect will be. Choice makes us who we are. Without choice, we are just meat living in MeatSpace. Our choices define us as an individual.
We not only have a choice as an individual, we have a choice as humanity. As an individual I can choose to take my own life and exit the game, or I can do something stupid that results in the end of my existence. But we collectively have the same choice. Humanity has two paths, evolution or extinction. We have the technology to eradicate ourselves from existence. If we are going to be around we have to choose not to do that. |
So - I have choice. But what am I? What are we? How do I relate to we? I am a Human, an individual that is part of Humanity. Humanity is more than the sum total of autonomous individuals. We are an interdependent species. We humans are organized more like a hive of bees.
When we are born we know little more than how to suck on a nipple. Who we become depends on the society that we are born into. We are fed the food they give us. We learn the language they teach us. We exist in a society of other humans that was created by them and they ancestors. We are integrated into society.
We think that our thoughts are our thoughts but they are not. What you are reading right now are my thoughts. I am expressing my thoughts using words that we invented by other people whose individual existences are, for the most part, long forgotten. My awareness was crafted in large part by the society and culture where we were created. If I had been cloned at birth and moved across the planet after I was born I would have been taught a different language, raised in a different culture. That person would not really be me. Who I am is in a large part who we are.
Although we exist as individuals we also exist as a part of humanity. Just as our cells are individual life forms, they combine to make the human individual. Similarly we are the cells of the human race. Who we are as humans is the result of the choices make by our ancestors, all the way back to the original pond scum that we all came from.
As an individual my existence is limited to the scope of my individual life. As a member of humanity however I am but a small part of a greater individual called humanity. Humanity isn't immortal but is far longer lived that individuals are. Humanity descended from other life. We will continue to exist until we become extinct.
Our individual minds are very limited. We think we are smart but without our connection to the hive mind our understanding of the universe is no more that sticks and stones. What we know isn't as much of what e know individually but what we know collectively. In the Church of Reality we refer to this as the Tree of Knowledge which represents the sum total of human understanding.
We as humans can travel to the moon. We can fly better and faster than any other species. We can swim to the bottom of the ocean. We can communicate instantly across the planet. We can take the heart out of one person and implant it into another person. We can measure time to billionths of billionths of a second accurately. And we can see objects that are 13 billion light years away. But it's not individuals doing these things on their own. There is not a person on the planet that if dumped on a dessert island could build a cell phone. All these things are done collectively.
A few hundred years ago humans couldn't do these things. But our biology has remained the same. What has changed is that we have grown out Tree of Knowledge. We are evolving through human software. To the extent that we are humanity and humanity is the individual that is evolving over time, then if we care that humanity continues to evolve then we succeed in being part of the process. If humanity dies, we become extinct, then everything that any human has accomplished is lost forever and we become meaningless.
So what we are is actually more than one thing. We are individuals with individual choices. We are also part of humanity, a greater life form, that is nearly immortal from our perspective. We have the ability to choose and what we choose affect our small piece of a much larger picture.
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Unlike many religions the Church of Reality focuses on this world. Other religions often focus on some "next world" that doesn't exist at the expense of our real reality in this world that does actually exist.
In simple terms everything has one of two states. It is either real or it is not real. Something either exists or it does not exist. We currently exist. We are a part of reality. We have evolved to the point where we can begin to comprehend what it means to exist, what reality is. If we want to continue to do that then we have to continue to exist.
If however we become extinct then all is lost. Everything that everyone ever did will become forgotten. We can imagine that maybe a billion years from now that some other life form evolves and finds our ruins and utilizes our technology, but realistically when we are gone, were gone. We go back to being the lifeless dust that we evolved from. If we had meaning it is gone. Extinction is the end of everything for us.
We might be the only life in the universe that has evolved to understand that the universe exists. We might be all there is. We simply do not know.
We do not know if advanced life exists on other planets. From what we know there is a very high likelihood that microbial life is common in the universe. But what about live that has evolved to the point of comprehending reality itself? Are there others out there? We simply do not know. The universe might be teaming with advanced life and there might be civilizations that are so advanced that we can't even comprehend them. On the other hand we might be alone. We might be the only place in the universe where life evolved. We simply do not know.
What if we are alone? What if we are it? What would it mean if we were the only life form in the universe that has evolved to this point? What if we are the sole species through which the universe contemplates its own existence. If we become extinct then the universe would go back to being a dumb universe. Since we don't know if we are alone do we not have a responsibility to survive to find out what we potentially could become? Is that not our higher purpose?
What we do know is that advanced life requires billions of years of a somewhat stable environment. A 10 mile wide asteroid hit and we're gone. Primitive life like the cockroaches might survive but not humans. We actually have the technology now (or soon will have) to defend Earth from an asteroid hit. But if a nearby star goes supernova, we're back to space dust. We could have a super volcano erupt like the one that created Yellowstone Caldera could take out the human race.
In the long run we are going to have to be able to move to other planets because something is going to eventually happen to this planet to wipe it out. We are going to have to evolve forward so that we can travel the vast distances between stars and find new planets to colonize.
We also could wipe ourselves out from just being stupid. We have enough nuclear weapons to kill everyone on the planet. We can create a genetically engineered virus to wipe ourselves out. We could change our environment to the point where we can no longer survive in it. It is a fact that most species on our planet don't make it. We are here because all our ancestors all the way back to pond scum made the right choices or was just lucky enough to survive. But there is nothing that insures that will continue. Although it may be our fate to eventually become extinct, we can at least decide to not destroy ourselves.
We can also decide that our existence in this world is valuable to us and that we are going to, as a species, decide together to continue to evolve, learn to better survive, and cheat extinction for as long as we can. |
Since we are aware of the universe and we were created by the universe and are part of the universe, then the universe is contemplating itself through us. If by some chance we are the only life in the universe that has evolved to the point of contemplating universe then the universe contemplates itself only through us. Through us the universe becomes a Smart Universe as opposed to a Dumb Universe.
The universe itself has no central mind. In the beginning the universe was without life but over time life evolved on this planet. We are reasonably confident that microbial life is common occurrence on planets that have liquid water. As to life that can contemplate the concept of reality, that is a lot more rare. Objectively as of now science has not yet detected any other reality aware life forms in the universe. We make be one of trillions of planets with advanced life. There may be life forms on other planets that are so far advanced that we can not comprehend them. Or - we might be all there is.
Our planet is one of some trillion trillion planets in the universe. This is a really big number, but it is not an infinite number. It might be that highly evolved life is common. Or it might be fairly rare, maybe one planet per galaxy on the average. If, for example, we were the only advanced life form in our galaxy, but there was another planet in Andromeda, some 2.2 million light years from here, then it would take 4.4 million years for the first message to be sent and acknowledged between our two species. So even if there is other advanced life out there we may never come in contact with it.
When we say that the universe contemplates itself through us doesn't mean that the universe has a mind of it's own and it looking down at us like some deity would. (So Atheists - don't freak out!) It is more like the universe is some lower life form and we are sort of the universe's first few brain cells. In fact, we are so primitive that it's been less than 100 years that we were even aware of other galaxies and that the universe had a beginning.
Although we are so insignificant that the concept that the sum total of human consciousness represents the self awareness of reality itself, imagine us evolving for the next billion years at the rate our understanding of the universe has evolved over the last 100 years. With another billion years of positive evolution we might have a highly organized universe teaming with extremely advanced life descended from us. Then the idea of reality contemplating itself through us wouldn't seem as far fetched as it does now.
In fact, that is the vision of the Church of Reality - to continue to evolve forward for the next billion years and beyond. If we don't yet deserve it, we can become reality contemplating itself through humanity. But we can't do that if we cease to exist and become extinct. In order for us to become reality contemplating its own existence through us, we have to survive and evolve. We have to make the right choices to avoid extinction. That is the choice as we see it from the Church of Reality's perspective and we in the Church of Reality choose existence over extinction.
Think about this. What if we are the only life form in the universe who has gotten this far? What if we are unique? Do we not have some grand purpose in continuing to exist? Or - maybe there's other life in the universe like us and if we go extinct they will become the universe becoming self aware. What that would mean is that some other life form embraced reality, stayed in the game, and made the choices we as humans should have made.
So why should we hope there are space aliens out there who will pick up the task if we humans decide to go extinct instead of survive? Why don't we survive and do it ourselves? Maybe in a billion years we'll run into other species out there in the cosmos and exchange information with them. Maybe we'll figure out how to get passed the speed of light limitation and find them in a mere 10,000 years. Or maybe in a billion years one of them will land on our planet and find an extinct civilization that made bad choices and they will just say, "Too bad. They should have taken reality seriously."
That is why we in the Church of Reality choose to stay in the game and pursue the understanding of reality so we can continue to exist and explore this amazing universe that created us. We are the universe becoming self aware. And that is our higher purpose. |
Humanity has reached a point where we have become self aware and aware of the universe we live in. We are the product of evolution but humanity is coming into a period where we have the power to determine what we will evolve into, or if we will evolve at all. We have to choose between evolution and extinction, and if we choose to evolve forward, evolve forward into what? How are we going to make those choices?
When a child is born it just plops out into existence. All it knows is to cry when it needs attention and to suck on a nipple. As the child ages and develops language and integrates into society, at some point the child contemplates, "What do I want to be when I grow up?" The child realizes that it has choices to make about its future, to decide what it will become. Those choices determine their life Story and the choices have consequences. Bad choices lead to a miserable life, even perhaps an early death. Good choices tend to lead to a happy productive life that one can look back upon and be proud that they made the right choices early on.
Humanity is faced with this same choice. Now that we are coming of age where we can alter our genetics and add machine technology to who we are, we have to decide as a species what we are going to be when we grow up. What are we going to choose to evolve into? What will humanity look like 100 years from now? What will be be 1000 years from now? What will we be 10,000,000 years from now? Or will we even be here?
We, as humanity, have choices to make. But how do we make those choices? Unlike the example of a child deciding what it will be when it grows up, we don't have parents to guide us or career choices laid out for us to choose from. There is no omnipotent parent to tell us what to do. We are more like a child that was raised in the wild. We not only have to figure out what we want to become, we have to figure out how we are going to figure that out. What are our choices for the future and how do we determine what is a better choice? How do we know when we choose correctly?
One of the things we need to do first is to put value in this reality. If, for example, we focus on a "next world" or some other imaginary reality over the real world then we might find ourselves extinct and with no reality or world at all. This is our reality. It is our home. It might not be what we want but it is the way it is. It is the hand we were dealt. We either play the hand or we fold and leave the game. In the church of Reality we choose to stay in the game, play the hand we're dealt, and do the best we can with it. We may end up extinct anyway, but we're not going down without a fight. We choose to continue to exist in this world, the real world.
In order for humanity to survive and thrive, and to continue to evolve forward, humanity has to choose to have an intimate relationship with reality. We have to continue to understand this world we live in so as to avoid extinction and develop the technology for our continued survival. When that big asteroid comes heading to collide with our planet we are going to need rockets, not prayer, to push it out of the way. Some day before this planet gets wiped out by something we can't control we need to get out of here and spread out to the rest of the galaxy, or perhaps to other galaxies. There is only one way to do that and that's to continue to have an intimate relationship with reality and to evolve forward so that our understanding of reality increases over time.
Thus the pursuit of the understanding of reality is not just a religious hobby for realists. it is the key to the survival of humanity. It is what keeps us in the game. |
Where does right and wrong come from. What makes one choice better than another choice? Many religious people fear that without the guidance of an omnipotent deity that all morality would go away. They fear that without God that society would deteriorate into a Darwinian "survival of the fittest" ethic where the strong males kill the other males so they can breed more females. They fear that the reality based world has no answers to where right and wrong come from.
Morality is important to a society. It serves to be a guide in determining what laws of society are fair and just. We all know that murder is wrong, but why is it wrong? In the religious world they have an answer, "Because God says so!" But in the reality based world we also know murder is wrong. But because we are the Church of Reality we have to have a reason to explain why, and that reason has to be objective and not just someone's opinion or some vague explanation that can't be proven. We are a reality based religion and we are therefore subject to Scrutiny. But fortunately, we have an answer.
Our morality goes back to our root axiom - the pursuit of the understanding of reality by humans has value. We have supported this root axiom by showing that this is necessary for the human race to continue to exist. A moral system is the agreement of a society as to what is right and wrong. You therefore need to have a society for a moral system to exist. If we become extinct then our morality goes extinct with us. Morality therefore must lead to survival.
If morality depends on survival and Survival depends on Positive Evolution, and positive evolution depends on the continued progress humanity understanding reality, then right and wrong, morality, is a function of what helps humanity evolve forward. Morality is about what helps humanity understand reality better tomorrow than we do today.
So the reason murder is wrong is because if we go around killing each other then we won't be able to cooperate and build space telescopes so that we can pear back to the beginning of time. We won't be able to contemplate contemplation if people are running around stealing all our stuff.
In order to evolve forward we need a safe stable society where people can work together to expand the Tree of Knowledge. In order to do that we need schools, roads, power, clean air and water, good governments, just laws, world peace, and a fair and cooperative environment where we all can thrive in. These core beliefs of the Church of Reality lead to a basis for morality that is more accurate than that of deity based belief systems. People converting to a realist perspective need not worry that right and wrong are going away. |
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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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Please link to us, discuss us in online forums, and blog about us. Every time anyone thinks about reality the world becomes a little smarter.
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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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The Root Axiom