Friday, March 7, 2014

Issue 287 Curch of non-belief 2 March 7, 2014



Well a church of non-belief is about more than just marriage. In fact, the non-believers creating their own church per say gives them opportunities to organize and compete for "worshipers" against the faith based communities. But what would it look like?

United yet divided: Like faith based communities, there will be different groups of non-believers vying for popularity. So we may have the ones that believe that aliens created man kind versus Ayn Rand’s objectivist atheists. Basically, similar competition between various groups of Protestants, Catholics and Baptists. The only thing that would unite them is that they are non-believers in the same way believers can come together around a belief in God.

Moral compass/Ideology: In order to properly compete, the church of non-belief must develop a cohesive foundation that allows people to gather around it as a source of strength. So while one group may revolve around Objectivism, another may revolve around a combination of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism while removing the deity like aspects involved in each. Another may even develop a basis around nature and spirituality. All in all, each would develop a unique group or a single cohesive group based around ideologies and aspects of spiritualism to from the basic moral codes needed for them to compete against the faiths.

Everyday teachings: In addition to a moral compass and ideology to gather behind, the church of non-belief will need basic rules and teachings to follow. So the obvious no killing, steeling or violence against others is a given. However, other teachings will be needed like a ten commandments of logic, exceptions to the rules if any, and a source of punishment that will reinforce these teachings.

The source of punishment is key as if there are no penalties for bad behavior in everyday society then the church of non-belief will fail and so will society along with it. This is the weakness that non-believers have and coming up with the right kinds of punishments like shunning, boycotts and the like would do well to keep people in line with the non-faith. It is important as while faith based communities have God as the person deciding if we go to Heaven or not, there is no fear that can adequately keep non-believers from violating their own moral codes (especially if they beat out the faith based communities in respect to "worshipers").

Conclusion: I have been very disappointed in the non-faith organizations as they currently stand. They seem to attack the faith based communities rather than debate them, as they prefer humiliation and "put downs". In short, they look down on people of faith from my perspective and thus it shows in their advertisements. Meanwhile individual non-believers that I have met never attack, but in fact respect others who believe and do not believe alike. So I think it is a symptom of desiring power at the organized level rather than a blanket snub to all believers. As such, it would be best in my opinion for the non-believers to establish their own churches with masses that advocate humanity, civil rights and personal responsibility. Their gospels could be tales from Aesop's Fables, and Grimm's Fairy tails. Their readings could celebrate mans achievements like discussing how far we have come scientifically or socially by looking at art, science even psychology which would inspire hope for humanities future. They could even have guest speakers and debates by welcoming members of the faith based communities and other groups of non-believers so as to debate and discuss rather than hide or shun differing views. If the non-believers want to compete against the believers come at us by taking our worshipers by showing the merits of embracing non-belief rather than attacking the beliefs of others. I wish you luck and may the truth be ascertained by our competition.

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