The Church of Reality is different in that we are not dedicated to a fictional world view. Our world view is to see reality the way it really is. Other religions' world views are based on mythology. All religions have some basis in reality. Most would agree that murder is bad. On those universal concepts we in the Church of Reality agree. But in those other religions, if their world view contradicts reality, they are expected to reject reality in favor of their world view. Rarely are other religions dedicated to the pursuit of reality the way it really is. In this church, if you come to realize that what you currently believe is wrong, you are expected to change your mind. That's what's different about the Church of Reality. The beliefs are not static. Reality is a learning process. We are an evolving religion. Of all the religious choices out there, we believe that Reality should be one of those choices.
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The Church of Reality is a religion based on the practice of Realism. It is a religion that is based on believing in everything that is real. Our motto is, "If it's real, we believe in it." Since no one knows all of reality, the Church of Reality is about the pursuit of reality the way it really is. We commit to being intellectually honest with ourselves, and with others, so that we can cut through the mythology and understand the understanding of understanding.
Our world view is that religion is evolving in the Sacred Direction and that the Church of Reality is a blueprint for religious evolution. We want to inject reality into the world view of other religions so that we are all improved through Realism.
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The Church of Reality began with an idea I had in the 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 an 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 it 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 they 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 mistakes - but mistakes happen. It's about correcting your mistakes when you realize you are wrong. So the Church of Reality became more of a commitment to the pursuit of reality than the 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 as a society - as the human race - what separates us from the animals - we have this vast amount of common knowledge that we all use on a daily basis. I realized that language itself - words - were all invented by other people and were handed down to us. 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 . |
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The Tree of Knowledge is a very 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 is 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 as to what 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. Now 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 phrase - 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. Exploring reality and growing the Tree of Knowledge is really the same thing. |
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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? They asked 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. |
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