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The History of our Root Axiom |
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.
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