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Not completely safe there with Buddhism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_violence
I don’t have anything to back this up, but I wonder if there’s a strong correlation between a religion being minority in a region and how “peaceful” it is, because my suspicion is that majority/power of any kind will always come at the risk of attracting chuds or corrupting the fearful into protecting themselves by attacking others. Literally “others” I guess.
Pet hypothesis just held up by vibes though so
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In order to make it wholesome and helpful I would not create one.
No, it’s the satanic temple. Buddhism as practiced in Buddhist countries is the same shit different god, they dgaf, and have not read any scripture.
The western perception of Buddhism versus what Buddhists believe is totally different.
You kill a dog for meat? You drown it so it experiences terror and fights for its life, then you take its strength when you eat it.
It’s just like any other religion, you adhere when it suits you, and you probably know nothing about its precepts.
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My point was that Buddhism is religion, they are all the same.
First, they’re all bullshit.
Second, a tiny percentage actually adhere to scripture.
So if you say ‘I believe in X’, but your actions are contrary to that scripture should I really think you believe in ‘X’?
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That’s rather simplistic and dismissive.
I would love it if there was some kind of unifying force to make the world better.
Religion does not seem to be it though.
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Religion/Community. In a brighter world those words would be interchangeable.
I am an atheist at heart, but you still have to acknowledge that the core values of a lot of religions are for the betterment of others.
People don’t seem to be capable of being uncorruptable. You can have a perfect religion, or one that only adheres to goodness (like tst) and it will be PEOPLE who abuse it. Not the religion itself, just people cherry picking what they want.
It could be laws, it could be a cult, it could be a religion, it could be a government. Some people just fucking suck, end of story.
Any particular reason that you think we need more religion?
I think it’s just a thought exercise
I don’t think we need more religion, no. I think people would like options with less archaic ideas, and that they would like the community and activity that religious groups can offer if the strange belief requirements can be left behind.
It would have two tenets:
- Be excellent to each other
- Party on, dudes
you forgot 0. Wyld Stallyons!!
The most fun parts of religion are the camaraderie and intricate, abstracted rituals that used to serve one purpose but now serve a different, often symbolic one.
So lots of that. Spaced out throughout the year as to give followers a way of marking the passing of time and a reason to call out of work at regular intervals.
Oh, let’s toss in a lil religious specific language to aid as a group identifier and how about some arbitrary rules/guidelines that aren’t strictly enforced and vary by region but give those rules loving peoples something to grab onto.
Oh oh oh and unique cuisine! Food goods made in certain ways at certain times, with some slight variation so followers could have techniques and recipes to share and mild, inconsequential things to disagree and hold frivolous, memetic arguments about.
The details don’t really matter all that much, as long as it can serve as a way to find community and camaraderie in new places, reinforce solidarity with your fellow humans, and give some rituals for timekeeping and distraction from modern life.
You just described the Esperanto community 😅
I’d like to think these are just some of the universal things of what makes a community fulfilling and fun, as I was mostly trying to abstract some of my favorite things about being Jewish from the faith component.
I think you did a great job distilling it. I can see many parallels with other communities I know too.
Ah gotta get Festivus on the calendar! I like the rules idea too, maybe a few super random things just to be quirky.
For some people, it’s important to have rules!! Of course you need the standard social construct rules, but the less necessary ones are important too. I think they give structure and consistency to people, so even if they’re arbitrary, it fulfils that need and as long as isn’t disruptive to society, I don’t see the harm. Plus, knowing someone also follows the same rules, rituals and holidays you do gives you instant rapport with them, so it aids in building a sense of community. Polite people outside of the new religion will also be curious and interested in hearing about these rules/rituals and whatever reasoning could uphold them, and the followers likely will enjoy explaining them, so this helps them build friendships outside of the religious group as well.
Tho it’s crucial that others aren’t ostracized for not following the more arbitrary ones and that those that do follow them don’t feel any actionable feelings of superior devotion or what-not. I think you can ostracize people who violate rules that relate to already well established social constructs (theft, murder, etc), but not the more frivolous restrictions and behavioral requirements we’d invent here.
Make my god a well-meaning fuckup.
You got cancer? Shit! Aw, fuck man, that keeps happening, I’m sorry. I keep trying to tune this thing better, but I’ll level with you, I never actually set out to be a god, things just got kinda out of hand, and… oh fuck! The stratosphere! Nonononono don’t be on fire, look, I gotta take this, we’ll talk later, ok?
That sounds like a writing prompt.
Bruce Somemighty
Sure, but y’know it’d be so much easier to cope with the random shit life threw at you if you knew it wasn’t a gigantic fuck-you, eg. you’re going to die horribly to teach your loved ones an important lesson about faith lol.
There’s a fantasy series that has part of this as a plot point. A normal person becomes god with all the godly powers but only for a very short time do they get ALL the power. Its overwhelming in the first few moments and they almost destroy the planet with a mere thought. They realize their mistake a few seconds later, but only have half the power by then, so they put in an ugly workaround, before most of their power runs out. Now that ugly workaround is just “life as we know it” on the planet for the people that live there.
This is a deep spoiler for a popular book series so I don’t want to post the series name and I don’t think we have a spoiler tag yet.
I’d make it atheistic, include meditation and be proactive with volunteering or useful projects.
i feel like “religion” may not be the word you’re looking for, something closer to “system of belief” maybe?
In high school I made up a pretend religion (order of the gecko) with some friends as a joke that had a positive take without the baggage that the religions we were familiar with. The tenets were about actually being accepting and opposing intolerance.
A couple decades later I heard about the Satanic Temple and other than the symboligy it was basically the same!
General tenants about being excellent to eachother, none of that smiting bullshit for people to cherrypick.
Multitheistic with different gods responsible for different aspects of reality with the general commandment of the religion being that the best way to become closer to the gods (or specific god of preference) is to understand their creation and thus understand them (go do science!)
Throw in some enjoyable aspects like funerals being a celebration rather than a sombre occasion; colour code the gods so we don’t even up with everything being fucking gray or gilded; And have a neat little offering ceremony for each god thats simple but unique and inexpensive so people can go all starsigny on it, offerings being a good luck thing rather than mandatory.
Buddhism is effectively a “how to” guide to satisfaction , it just goes against everything corporations preach. To be fair, I’m not strong enough to be a Buddhist, but of the religions I’ve studied, it seems pretty open and shut, “follow these instructions and you will have a good life”. Buddhism wins. But it doesn’t involve parties and such
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I don’t think it matters what you include, people are perfectly OK taking parts as they will and leaving others behind when it suits them. Organized religion creates a hierarchy, and there is always someone who will want to bend the hierarchy for themselves but not others.
Just worship cats.
Didn’t this exist already?
Bast is best
honestly I don’t know. When you look at the religions of the world all of them say “love and help each other please :) be good to your fellow human beings, be kind, be gentle” and then you look at the execution of those ideas by the majority of religious people- and it’s all twisted and used for hate & you see people saying that without the threat of eternal punishment there is nothing holding them back from hurting others
instead of religion forcing compassion I’d say we should just teach compassion really
That’s wise, good ideas!
That does sound wise. Let’s make a religion out of teaching compassion! /j
Two tenants
- You must protect those weaker than you
- You may only punch up or in self defense.
I don’t think there is a religion that can be overwhelmingly beneficial today.
Most religions already emphasize kindness, generosity and compassion but it is ultimately easily corruptable. Every religious group seemingly has to hate somebody.
Long ago it would have imperative to human development, to explain the world around us and to motivate people to work cooperatively. Science has fulfilled that role however and now it seems religion makes individuals closer minded, refusing to believe in reason.
If religious people sternly stuck to their principles (looking at American Christians) I don’t even think we’d be having this conversation in the first place.
Smoking weed to resolve differences
Peace pipe or death sentence, either way, someone has a good time.
