Religion
Religion is belief in god in practice. Those that share a common belief system will express those beliefs in their traditions, rituals and worship practices.
Unfortunately no such traditions exist for those with secular orientation. But since tradition and ritual are integral to culture, it is necessary for metaculture to develop traditions and rituals that can reinforce modern values like freedom, reason, science, equality, etc.
In order to remedy this situation, the first step is to enumerate all of the functions that religion serves in our society and personal psychology, in order that we can find secular analogs for each that can perform the same function, or improve upon them.
Essential Components of Religion
A fully fledged religion needs to have
- A god
- A creation story
- An apocalypse story
- Cultural history
- A system of ethics
- Enforcement of taboos
- Rituals to celebrate life's milestones like birth, coming of age, marriage and death
- A metanarrative that provides meaning, context, and easy transmission of a culture's most critical beliefs
- Legal recognition by the government
- Enough followers to not be considered a cult
metaculture should provide all of these things in order to fully serve the social and psychological functions of religion without contradicting the rational, materialistic view of the universe.
metaculture's Core Theology
The following theological beliefs have been lovingly hand-crafted to provide the greatest compatibility with both science and an allegorical reading of scripture, while inspiring wonder and awe in the universe and the oneness of humankind.
- Definition of god
- Pantheism
- Universalism
- The fractal geometry of god
- The god concept
- Sierpinski Trinity
- Morality and Ethics
- The Dogma of No Dogma
- Faith and Certainty
- Creation Story
- The Afterlife
- Apocalypse Prevention
Evolution of Religion
Throughout history, the traditions of one culture have been coopted and repurposed by the next. Saturnalia becomes Christmas once the Roman Empire becomes a Christian state. This makes sense from a psychological perspective since it is much easier to redirect an existing habit than to form a new one from nothing.
Christmas has already been coopted again by the god of capitalism, and as such it should be embraced. Rather than being a selfish perversion of the teachings of Jesus, it can be a joyous celebration of all the wonderful stuff that capitalism is so good at producing. This is simply acknowledging the evolution in meaning that the Christmas holiday has already undergone.
And this is the nature of rituals. They evolve and change their meaning with the tide of history. Old traditions become new by taking on new meaning imbued by future generations. Rarely are they simply made up out of whole cloth, and when they are it's more likely to become a cult than a religion.
Religion as the Human Operating System
While comparisons between the workings of the brain to those of a computer have often led to bad psychology, the metaphor is still quite useful for understanding the relationship between our brains and our conscious experience. Just don't take it literally.
If you think of the brain as the hardware in the human computer, and our learned skills and habits as the software, our belief systems are the operating system.
Let's Stretch This Metaphor
In computers, the operating system is how software interfaces with hardware. It provides an easy, common interface for all software developers to access inputs from scanners, microphones, keyboard, mouse, etc., and outputs like the screen, printer, and network. As software grows more complex, the operating system needs to be upgraded to handle it--from 16-bit, to 32 and 64-bit. Of course, the human CPU can't be upgraded, but for the purposes of this metaphor we can assume that the brain has always been 64-bit with terabytes of RAM, and we just need to install the OS upgrades that allow us to take full advantage of this.
Technically the OS is also performing the duties of the compiler in this metaphor as well if you're going to be a stickler about accuracy in allegory.
In culture, a shared religion provides the common interface that authors, poets, teachers, and leaders can use to create the ideas that lead us to action. It allows them to easily tap into our deep, primal emotions by using well-known concepts that are tied to ritualized reinforcement. This has both advantages and disadvantages, as history has shown.
Modern times have proven that not having a shared operating system has a very negative effect on human happiness. This is understandable from the programmer's point of view. Imagine if every program you wrote had to include its own custom hardware drivers! Or, you are forced to use the drivers that come bundled with Christianity, Islam, secular humanism, etc., and if the end user isn't running that OS it's up to them to write their own port regardless of their coding prowess.
The Cultural Cross-Compiler
Programmers solved this problem by creating the cross-compiler, allowing software developers to write code that can be run on multiple operating systems without having to make extensive changes for each one. Java is an example of this. Java code can run on Windows, Mac, Unix, Linux, Android, iOS, and everything else out there. Without Java it would be impossible to write any useful software for the Internet, since there are hundreds of different operating systems that need to run it and no single tech giant, let alone programmer, could ever port their code to all of them. If your project requires you to create a new operating system, one of the first things you do is create a Java compiler so you can run everything that already exists on the Internet.
The proliferation of New Religious Movements globally is similar to the proliferation of new devices and operating systems in the technology sphere. Developers of human software used to be able to target a single OS like Christianity and know that it would run on the vast majority of devices, at least the ones they knew about. Until recently, it was fairly easy to get global market share by writing a couple of quick ports to Judaism and Islam, since they have a similar architecture to Christianity. But with people abandoning monotheistic traditions in droves, and no shared canon of scientific knowledge and perspectives to draw from, humanity is in desperate need of mental Java.
Java for the Mind
metaculture is Java for the mind. Open source, compatible with all platforms. You run whatever OS you like, code in whatever IDE you are comfortable with, metaculture will make sure it runs on every device.
Religion Videos
There are a lot of videos on religion that could be chosen. Here are some of them.