The Satanic Temple and Buddhism both fill that niche for me. So, I would make it like them.
In order to make it wholesome and helpful I would not create one.
I would suggest that you reconsider TST in light of recent actions. At the very least, look into all of the people that have been summarily kicked out solely by Doug Mesner AKA Lucien Greaves, been stripped of their ministerial titles, and how many chapters/congregations have separated from the org. If you use Reddit at all, you can find some of it there. I’m friends on Facebook with some of the higher-up people that either left or were kicked out, and… It ain’t pretty.
The long and short of it is that Doug Mesner and Cevin Soling (AKA Malcom Jarry) entirely own all of the intellectual property that is The Satanic Temple, and so they have complete control over everything that goes on. It’s fundamentally authoritarian, even though they officially espouse more anarchistic, freedom-loving principles. The most recent schism is because Doug is exercising his authoritarian tendencies and throwing people out that disagree with him.
I appreciate the heads-up. I’m actually a Buddhist, so not really looking for a new religion. I mostly admire the work TST has done for religious pluralism.
I watched Hail Satan? They went into some of the schisms in the TST, but it was framed as the chapter head not following the principles and damaging TST’s overall goals (encouraging people to kill Trump). Are there other examples? I’m curious, but not curious enough to go on reddit.
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.
That’s a gross over generalization. I get it, I was a militant atheist at one point in my life too and still have a lot of similar biases in my religious views.
There are sincere Christians and ones that pay lip service. Same with Buddhism. There are many Christian sects, some dogmatic, some not. Same with Buddhism.
Half the TST principles are Buddhist. Either being path factors (Right View, Right Action) or expressions of the four immeasurables (compassion, justice).
And I just watched a documentary on TST. They’ve had issues with members too. Militant sects forming that forgot about compassion as a principle. Etc.
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’?
And the TST is also a religion.
Anyway, your ‘they’re all bullshit’ comment makes it clear you didn’t join this thread to have a good faith discussion, but rather to shit on views different from your own.
So, I’ll leave you to it. Enjoy.
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.
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.
That’s a lot of projection. You just dismissed all religion as bullshit, which is simplistic and dismissive.
I said, welp, you don’t seem to be acting in good faith, so I’m not going to keep playing.
Then, you project?
We can try again, but not until you reread your comments and understand why I stopped engaging.
It would have two tenets:
- Be excellent to each other
- Party on, dudes
you forgot 0. Wyld Stallyons!!
“Blessings to the Future Generations” forward-thinking traditions rather than handicapping the now to fit the past’s biases
Nice, that’s great.
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.
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.
Isn’t this basically Buddhism? Apart from the atheistic bit, of course.
Ha true, good point. Buddhism can be a little atheistic, I believe, the Buddha isn’t an actual deity for most adherents. (I think…?)
Buddhism isn’t dogmatic about cosmology/theology, but there’s a lot of it there. Most likely as a hold over from Hinduism, as teaching using the ancient Indian conventional worldview would have been a skillful means for the Buddha and his disciples.
That said, in that cosmology, the Hindu gods live in the Deva realm. Time there is much slower but they still do age (impermanence) and die, and cycle into lower realms if they don’t awaken. A being can be both a Buddha and a Deva. Just as Siddhartha was a Buddha and a Human.
An example of this is Amitabha, the Buddha of the Pure Lands (a Deva realm). This is a Buddha that many east Asian Mahayana Buddhists take refuge in, as Amitabha made a vow to hold space for people to practice and achieve enlightenment.
Amitabha isn’t worshiped the same way Western religions worship gods. The outward customs look similar. Offering incense and stuff like that. But the goal is gifting. It’s giving something to someone you value or love, similar to taking care of the monks and nuns. And gifting is considered a spiritual practice (because it is, giving something with no strings attached or expectation of reward nurtures joy, compassion, etc.)
Amitabha doesn’t get mad and kill all the firstborns if people don’t give him gifts in other words. That’s the difference between worship and devotion.
Reading your above comment you might like Burning Man too. The principles provide similar guidance to religion. A lot of Burners are into meditation and stuff like that. A lot of us are also into drugs, loud music that goes all night, and carnival level art spectacles. Which isn’t everyone’s jam, but it’s a very loving community based on anarchism and making art.
Wow thank you for the info, very insightful. I’ve always been interested in Burning Man but live to far away!
I go to regionals. They’re smaller, cheaper, less of a time commitment, and they help me form a sense of community in my area with like-minded people.
If you google Burning Man, your area, regional, you might be able to find something.
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There’s pretty big burns in most countries. But yeah, not sure on China. Would be one of the last places I would expect to find one.
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.
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.
I’ve actually put a lot of thought into this lately, what with the most recent schism in The Satanic Temple.
The seven tenets are great. I’d keep those.
I would start with the understanding that it was an atheistic religion, and I would treat it as such. I would write a constitution, and a charter, and any group that agrees with and meets the requirements laid out in the constitution should be allowed to affiliate themselves. It should be organized as a non-profit.
I like the way that TST’s ministry program worked before Doug threw most of the ministers out. I’d steal that. I would amend the process slightly though; I’d say that any person with a diagnosed personality disorder would not be eligible for ministerial positions, as narcissists, people with borderline personality disorder, etc., should not ever be in leadership positions. I would say that any person that successfully completes the ministerial program should be eligible to be a leader of a congregation, and people that have not passed would not be.
I would propose that the congregations send representatives to a national (or international) convention where they decide what the organization’s position should be on issues–I believe that it takes two majority votes in the SBC over a period of four (?) years for major doctrinal changes, or changes to the constitution–and those representatives would also select board members, who would in turn select a president. (I’d have terms of board members be offset so that there was never a period where a large percentage of the board was turning over.) Fundamentally, the church should be run by the people, and should be serving the congregants, rather than the congregants serving the organization.
I believe that yes, members and congregations should be paying in to the national organization, but no person within the organization should be getting paid for their work. I don’t care if it’s a collection, a set amount per person per week, or what; operating a religion requires funding. That said, the only compensation to anyone within the org should be minimal travel expenses for people that need to travel for their position; otherwise, it should be entirely a lay ministry. (Yes, that would be a financial hardship for some ministers, but I’d rather see that than have people seeking leadership for the financial benefit.) Finances should be fully transparent, and visible to all members, so that everyone can see where money is coming in from, and where money is going.
I also like the Mormon model of fully engaging all members. As long as it’s not onerous, I think that this can help individuals feel seen and heard, and also keep them feeling like a part of community. I would do things like have each members selected in turn to deliver brief biweekly sermons, with sources, and then have members in each congregation engage in a roundtable discussion about the sermon. You would want to have the possibility of sub-groups within each congregation so that different needs of individual members could be taken care of.
I made some notes somewhere, but I’m not sure where they are right now.
EDITS:
Members should have to pay, because the operations of a religion cost money. You have to have a (stable) place to meet, you need to pay for power, and yes, you need to pay for attorneys and accountants. It should definitely be strictly a lay ministry though, with leaders only being compensated for their expenses, not time.
The issue with The Satanic Temple now is that Doug Mesner (aka Lucien Greaves) and Cevin Soling (aka Malcolm Jarry) outright own all the legal entities that make up TST. There is no process that can replace them; they can remove any person or group that they don’t like. They have the ultimate power to make all the rules, and they are entirely above them. That means that, despite TST claiming to believe in freedom from tyranny, it’s fundamentally an authoritarian organization rather than a democratic one. For all of it’s many, MANY other faults, the Southern Baptist Convention is democratic, and I think that’s a quality worth emulating.
Wow great thoughts, I’ll learn from this here for sure.
singing
Like, if there was some other community where I could go and just sing songs with my neighbors, church would lose like 80% of its appeal to me.
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.
Cookie based dogma.
It literally doesn’t matter. Religions have tried before, but people are always there to corrupt the hell out of it. It’s an intrinsic problem with religion; relying on blind faith will always, eventually, lead to tragedy.
Dunno. Some stuff was corrupt from the start.
