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We believe in Reality - the way it really is! |
If it's real - we believe in it. The name defines the religion. The Church of Reality is a Personal Commitment to the Truth. We believe in real reality, not the way we want reality to be, not our personal reality, but real objective reality the way it really is. We Realists are explorers and we explore the universe together with our minds. We think about thinking. We wonder about wondering. We attempt to understand the Understanding of Understanding. We ponder the Great Questions. We are a curious people and we are bound together in our quest to know the real world that we really live in.
We do not claim to know everything about reality. In fact we have to assume that we will get things wrong from time to time. Still we are committed to trying to figure out what is real. If we get it wrong, then we change our minds to accept what is real. The Church of Reality isn't science. We are more like the scientific method. It is a commitment to a discipline of purging erroneous information from our minds and replacing it with reality. As Realists practicing Realism, we accept that our minds are flawed and we strive to understand ourselves and how our minds work so that we can improve ourselves and develop the tools and the disciplines to filter out the bullshit and to confirm what is real.
From childhood we are taught what we know by our parents and the community we live in. Information is passed on from generation to generation. Much of the information is true and useful. But some of it is not. Sometimes people just get it wrong and pass on the wrong information. If we are taught inaccurate information as children, we grow up believing in things that are fictional. Because of our nature, it is often difficult for us to accept reality because it differs from the things we were taught to believe. In many cases, a person's community and personal identity are wrapped around a belief system that just isn't true. Accepting reality the way it really is can have serious consequences because it is difficult to give up an illusion with which one has become comfortable.
Reality can be a scary place. There is no promise of an afterlife. It is most likely that you cease to exist after you die. We can't promise eternal life in paradise with an omnipotent father figure. On the other hand, you don't have to worry about burning in Hell either. In reality, if you want eternal life, you have to go out and develop the technology to make that happen. In the real world, we are here on this planet, a speck of dust in the universe, and we exist for but an instant in time. Our limited existence is all we have and there is no more. We survive only to the extent that we are remembered for adding our distinctiveness to the Tree of Knowledge and contributing to the wisdom of the human race.
We do not know if we exist for any grand purpose. It is most likely that we just exist, and that is all. So what are we supposed to do with our limited existence? We in the Church of Reality choose to explore reality with it. Reality might not always be pretty but it is at least real. We don't want to waste our lives believing in things that just aren't real. If this is all there is, let's not waste it on a fictional world view. |
