what should religion look like?
- lots of rituals to satisfy the irrational desires of peasants
- simplify! make it barely look like a religion at all
- that weird eastern stuff (explain)
to prevent people from calling me a hypocrite, im not officially a quaker, i just say that they got it all correct.
George Fox just decided one day in the 16 or 17 hundreds i forget, that the church is wrong, and he is right. hes my hero. he made quakerism, which i believe to be perfect in every way, except for the fact that pascifism doesnt work when lots of people disagree and want to kill you.
there are no dogmas besides the golden rule, and the idea that god gave us all the ability to figure out what to do on our own. all humans have the same amount of ‘godness’ in them, kind of like what xanderman says about everybodys ‘being’ being the same, regardless of their ‘doing’. there are no superholy priests, maybe a smart old guy will lead the meetings, but not neccesarily.
they dont care if you read the bible or not. they call themselves christian because of their adherence to jesus’ golden rule. there is no knowledge about the universe and morality that requires gods interference, you should just be able to figure it out yourself, since you do all have the potential to be as great as the greatest pope. there is no solid church dogma on any ideas.
me and my boss at the quaker information center were pretty much the popes, people would call us occasionally asking what quakers say about abortion or stem cells and all we could say is “talk to your local meeting”
your just supposed to figure it out yourself. and you go to church in order to discuss issues with your neighbors. anybody can just stand up and start talking. they say that god compels people to talk when they are in the meetinghouse, but i think this is merely an appeal to humanitys desire to be guided by something supernatural. or a slick play on words, since they say that god is in all of us, we compel ourselves to say our own ideas that we have.
there are no rituals! they meditate at the meeting and maybe chant something, but this is not an irrational thing, it is truly relaxing and truly produces benefits.
one thing i love about them is that the quaker vatican of north america, the Friends Center at 15th and cherry in philadelphia, where william penn and many famous quakers came to worship, it looks pretty much exactly the same as all others. plain red carpet, wood benches, a bench at the front of the room instead of an altar, nothing on the walls at all. “live simply so that others may simply live” is one of their mantras. if everybody agreed with this, and went about business as usual, and donated their extra crap, imagine that world.
imagine the world where your religion doesnt subconciously preach to you that shiny objects and sanctimonious adherence to tradition is the ultimate goal. imagine if everyone practiced a faith that accepts all foreigners and the downtrodden as completely equal. imagine if people actually cared about whether or not their neighbors cared.
just listen to “christians” on this board talking about how people dont need to be treated equally as far as money is concerned, but as long as they are converted to “christianity” they will be saved and perfectly happy in heaven. “christians” are saying that the welfare of their neighbors doesnt matter as long as they are proselytized. i dont think this particular avatar of the cross represents what any good christian thinks about the subject, but clearly christian dogmas and preachings have allowed one single person to have this ridiculous attitude.
if its not perfect, why is anybody still listening to it? dont christians see the difference between the authority of god and the authority of priests? dont you think god would say something to YOU if he really wanted you to know it? why would he tell some guy thousands of years ago and not you? why would he expect you to trust anybody?
so lets say that you invent a time machine and you go back to buy a sports almanac, but it malfunctions and sends you back to 20AD and 12 guys are there shitting their pants at this fantastic object that just zapped out of thin air in a fantastic lightning show. you have your first aid kit, a computer and matter replicator and you are in a position to change how the world thinks about god. what exactly do you tell people to do? how ould you safeguard against jerks twisting your words? what should a religion look like?