Church of Reality - How it Started And why it's Important Toady

How it all Began

The Church of Reality began with an idea I had on evening of November 7th 1998. I was sitting at home Smoking a Joint, thinking about all the problems that religions cause in the world, and the idea just hit me - why not have a religion based on believing in everything that's real? What and idea! Can Reality be a Religion? Do you have to believe in something fictional to be a religion? The more I thought about it - the better I liked the idea.

The next day I went into the office and the idea still seemed like a good idea. I was only half serious about it at first, but it was at least a good way to tweak all those people who think the have God by the short hairs and need to impress me with their moral superiority. Personally - I hate religion. But it seems to be everywhere and constantly trying to intrude into my life. So - it's always been something you have to deal with - people who take their fiction seriously. So I registered the domain name - churchofreality.org - and started building a web page.

In the process of building the page I had to make some early decisions. Was I going to write some "holy book" to go by? How long would that last before it became obsolete - even if I did do a good job on it? It became apparent that telling people what reality is - as if I knew - was definitely a mistake. But - exploring reality and changing as the exploration continued - that made sense. So what we believe in is what's real - and what's real is really the best effort guess at the time. Obviously this opens us up to mistake - but mistakes happen. It's about if you correct your mistakes when you realize you are wrong. So the Church of Reality became more of a commitment to the pursuit of reality than then understanding of reality itself. It's about the hunt for reality.

As I was thinking about the pursuit of reality - I started wondering about how that is really done. What is understanding? How does new knowledge relate to existing knowledge. How much knowledge can be gained? Will we ever know everything? It became clear to me that the pursuit of knowledge - the exploration of reality - is something that we as a society all do together. It became clear how interconnected we are and how who we are as a society - as the human race - what separates us from the animals - what that we have this vast amount of common knowledge that we all use on a daily basis. I realized that language itself - words - were all invested by other people and were handed down to me. As I type this I am aware that I am using words and concepts that came from other people - and that you are reading this using those same words and concepts. Stealing the term for other religions - I called this the Tree of Knowledge.

Discovering the Tree

The Tree of Knowledge is a really powerful concept. The tree really represents a mathematical tree in that all knowledge is understood by interconnecting it with other knowledge. New words are defined in terms of old words. It much like the way that software is developed. A word is defined and is passed around in the vocabulary. Once the word becomes common then that word represents a reference to everything that went into the definition of that word. So if I say "democracy" I invoke volumes of thought with a single word. We all know - more or less - what that word means. But someone had to invent that word - create a concept around it - and educate society why it means. Thousands of years ago there was no word that represented the concept of democracy. Now we have it. I inherited that word from the Tree of Knowledge. Not it is time for me to give back to the Tree. I have created the name "Tree of Knowledge" so that I can talk about our shared knowledge structure in a single phrase. And - one of the missions of the Church of Reality is to make this phrases - and many others - part of the vocabulary.

With the discovery of the Tree I realized that if we are going to be explorers and explore the reality we live in - that we are going to have to all do that together. We are only partially individual minds. In reality we are all socially interconnected and our whole lives are spent interacting with others, exchanging ideas, and learning. We are all in this together, so the better the support structures are and the better society works - the better we can explore reality together. And that exploring reality and growing the Tree of Knowledge is really the same thing.

The IRS Helped Too

As time went on I kept coming up with new ideas. I think about this a lot. I have somewhat of a unique mind in that I'm a "big picture" type of guy. Trying to fit it all into systems that interrelate. I think I have good pattern matching skills. In August of 2003 I decided that I really needed to start moving towards doing this full time and make the Church of Reality into a real religion. It was already becoming somewhat popular on the net - but I could see the world was moving further away from reality into a cult mind set. A trend I found to be very disturbing. So I started the process of getting the IRS recognition. I applied for that in December of 2003 and a year later - I'm still waiting.

The IRS process really helped me develop my web site and concepts of reality as a church even further. In theory - the IRS doesn't care what your religion believes - but it has to really be a religion as opposed to some scam or someone living out their personal insanity. Religion is sort of like porn - you can't define it - but you know it when you see it (sometimes). So they ask questions to see if you can come up with some sort of answer. They want to know what you believe in. What do members do? Is there some sort of an oath involved. A lot of what I considered to be really good and thought provoking questions that caused me to write many new pages. I worked on the Church of Reality web site for several months as I was working on the 501c3 application. It was during that time that I came up with the Sacred Principles and Sacred Choices.

Positive Evolution and the Sacred Principles

The IRS inspired me to write the Sacred Principles and the Sacred Choices what are a commitment to the mission of the church. Since the Church of Reality was about the pursuit of reality and the pursuit of reality was about growing the Tree of Knowledge - and growing the Tree of Knowledge depended on the progress of the human race to move forward - it was obvious that the Sacred Principle of Positive Evolution had to come first. If we aren't evolving forward - in the Sacred Direction - that there's now way we are going to explore the universe. One does not launch a Hubble Telescope from one's backyard and explore the Big Bang all by themselves. It take the cooperation of millions of minds to do something like that so that billions of people can all learn together.

But - what kind of society supports positive evolution? And what is the role of the church of Reality in relation to building that kind of society? What "absolute" principles can I come up with that I was confident enough in to declare as "Sacred Principles"? Those are hard question - but - since everything is subject to change when better ideas come along I decided to take a stab at it and add other sacred principles, like Learning, Freedom, Peace, Speech, Justice, Inclusiveness, Self Scrutiny, Wisdom, Personal Responsibility, Humility, Curiosity, Bullshit, Activism, Privacy, and Historical Preservation. This isn't the end all of principles - but it's my best guess at what I hope is a good start based on my limited abilities. They may not bet perfect - but they are a hell of a lot better than the Ten Commandments - so the way I see it - if I can do better than God - that's not a bad start.

Since the exploration of reality is the core of the church beliefs and that it requires growing the Tree and Positive Evolution which requires a better society - this all leads to a code of morality - a sense of right and wrong - a sense of justice and fair play based on the sacred principles. We don't have a "holy book" to misinterpret like many other religions do. We have to do the hard work and figure it out ourselves. But you can have law and right and wrong based on the Sacred Principles and do a better job of it than other religions that still believe it's ok to stone people to death.

The Moral Imperative of the Church of Reality

One of the main motivating factors in pursuing this is that there is a moral imperative to do so. If people were in touch with reality and were living in a safe world where we all got along then there wouldn't be a great need for the Church of Reality. But that's not the kind of world we live in.

We live in a world that is turning it's back on reality. We are a world that has nuclear weapons and the number of nations with nuclear capabilities are increasing. Many of the nations who have these weapons are unstable and irresponsible. Many are in the control of fiction based religions that envision a future of Armageddon. The see us as living in the "Latter Days" which is a code word for the destruction of the world. These people are Extinctionists and they are acquiring the technology to make it happen.

The reality of what is happening is that a world wide religious war is brewing. The Christians claim to have seized control of the United States. We have a president who seriously contemplated using nuclear weapons against a disarmed Muslim state that they invaded without cause - and in spite of the United Nations and the world community. Christian aggression is scaring and inflaming the Muslim world and half of the Jewish world. It also is scaring the non-religious world and really scaring the hell out of us Realists. I'm not ready to accept the destruction of the human race and handing the planet over to the cockroaches just because all these people who claim to be affiliated with God can't figure out how to live in peace.

The Muslims control several wealthy countries and are working towards getting nuclear weapons. These are countries who stone children to death because they were forced to commit sex crimes for money. The Supreme Court of Iran upholds this kind of atrocities and they want to spread this kind of barbarism throughout the civilized world. Although Muslims give lip service to peace - anyone who can see the terrorism in the Muslim culture knows that peace is not the dominate force at work. We are realists and what you do it what you believe. If you commit terrorism then you are a terrorist. If you are part of a religion that has a vast and powerful terrorist wing and you sit silently and allow it to happen and remain part of that culture - then you are part of the problem.

The Jewish religion used to be the good guys - the exception to the rule - but no more. Their callous disregard for life is equivalent to the Palestinians callous disregard for life. And the wall looks more ominous to me than the Berlin wall. And what is really scary is that the abomination was built by the State of Israel - not the Soviet Union.

Similarly the Christian Right is trying to turn America into a theocracy. The want control of the schools so that they can teach primitive religious concepts like Creationism to children and use cult type brainwashing techniques to perpetuate their mythical religion. Evolution is not a theory - it's a absolute fact. They are trying to exclude science - force their prayers on us - and try to drive out the non-believers, and turn the world into a giant cult. I for one will not live under cult rule. They have formed an alliance with the Republican party and the multinational corporations to steal election leaving America with a simulation of a Democracy.

As the most powerful nation on the planet America has gone from the largest surplus in the history of the world to the biggest deficit in the history of the world. At present America is losing million dollars a minute. When happens when the country with the most guns can't pay their bills and is in the hands of an Extinctionist religion? America is a nation that is Living the Lie. We have turned out back on the real world - and we risk being punished. It is my position that you can't keep spending borrowed money forever without serious and dangerous consequence.

America has embraced war crimes and torture and we have allowed it to occur. To think of our nation as a country that tortures innocent people to death is unthinkable.

I can go on but the reality is that the world is heading downhill fast. We are on the Path of Destruction and we have to stop it. There are too many people who are ignoring reality and trying to brainwash everyone else into going along with it. We are accepting far too much evil and corruption. That is something that is very wrong and it is time that all Realists step forward and start taking about what is really going on and what we have to do to fix it. We can not - will not - live the lie. Thus it have become a moral imperative to reverse course and take back reality and make reality important again.

As Realists we have the responsibility of stewardship to society. We are the ones who have to do the maintenance work - to figure it all out and fix what's broken. It is up to us to restore the importance of reality in society and repair the damage. It is up to us to help others think things through. We have to ask our Christian neighbors - "Do you really want Armageddon to happen in your lifetime? What if you destroy the world and Jesus DOESN'T show up? What then?"

So - What are we going to do about it?

We're going to get real. We're going to figure it out. We're going to make it work. We're going to talk about reality. We're going to challenge other people on their beliefs on the basis of what is real. We're going to ask the tough questions - questions that religions haven't been asked before. We're going to be Realist. We're going to make reality important again. We're going to ask people to prove it. We won't stand for lie lies and corruption. We so no to the cult mind. We will not let you steal reality from us. We are one people - one planet - and we are all here together. We will not sit back and let anyone destroy our world. We are all in this together and we are going to figure out how to make it work.

Many of the Christians believe that these are the "End Times". It is our job to ensure that these Christians are wrong about this.

There's a new kid in town and it's name is Reality - and we're here to stay. We are the Church of Reality. We are dedicated to reality the way it really is. We will compete for the religious mind space and we will convert you one minute at a time. Reality is something you can't run from and you can't hide from. We are the Realists - and we are now going to talk about what is and isn't real. The paradigm has shifted and reality is coming back.

We do need to watch that we don't get too arrogant in our relations with other cultures and religions. We have all been misled at some time or another and there are a lot of good people out there trying to do the right thing - but are honestly mistaking about what the right thing is. Some people have accepted bad information based on faith and trust in the wrong people. As you can see in the tone of what I'm writing here that I do have some anger about the state of religion. Quite frankly - I would rather be writing spam filters.