A New Religion

How is that praying working for you?

There seems to be a lot of wars and killings over religion. It seems to have gone on for year, decades, centuries, and eons. Much of our history is about religions.

So it would seem that we Homo sapiens need a religion to survive or to continue to evolve.

Religion, as defined, is a cultural system of behaviors and practices, world views, sacred texts, holy places, ethics, and societal organization that relate humanity to what an anthropologist has called “an order of existence”. Different religions may or may not contain various elements, ranging from the “divine”, “sacred things”, “faith”, a “supernatural being or supernatural beings” or “...some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life.”

Religious practices may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of a God or deities), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture.

Religions have sacred histories and narratives, which may be preserved in sacred scriptures, and symbols and holy places, that aim mostly to give a meaning to life. Religions may contain symbolic stories, which are sometimes said by followers to be true, that have the side purpose of explaining the origin of life, the Universe, and other things.

Traditionally, faith, in addition to reason, has been considered a source of religious beliefs.

There are an estimated 10,000 distinct religions worldwide. About 84% of the world's population is affiliated with one of the five largest religions, namely Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or forms of folk religion.

With the onset of the modernization of and the scientific revolution in the western world, some aspects of religion have cumulatively been criticized.

Though the religiously unaffiliated, including atheism (the rejection of belief in the existence of deities) and agnosticism (the belief that the truth of certain claims – especially metaphysical and religious claims such as whether God, the divine or the supernatural exist – are unknown and perhaps unknowable), have grown globally, many of the unaffiliated still have various religious beliefs. About 16% of the world's population is religiously unaffiliated.

So it seems so many of us must have a religion.

Even with all the different variations, religion seems to fill a void in our being. Faith explains all that is unexplainable.

Unfortunately it also seems we do not like those whose choice of beliefs differ from us are bad. Difference is bad enough to slaughter them.

Then ‘they’ respond by killing us.

And now every killing or mass murders or explosions that fills our daily news are assumed caused by a religious zealot. A religious zealot from the ‘other’ religion caused all the carnage.

So here is an idea!

Let us form a new religion.

Let’s scrap all that old text and paintings and obvious has been ideas and come up with a new religion.

Shoot, we wrote all the old ones so we can do better this time.

It seems we need a ‘God’ or an omniscience (infinite knowledge), omnipotence (unlimited power), omnipresence (present everywhere), divine simplicity, and as having an eternal and necessary existence. Many theologians also describe God as being Omni benevolent (perfectly good), and all loving excuse for our mental or emotional malfunction.

So however you want to visualize this supreme all-knowing being that is either a super hero or a cloud, there has to be a name.

Maybe instead of a name, we could come up with a letter or a symbol. No, that didn’t work so well for Prince. A letter would have to look good in any cursive writing from any language and not sound offensive because we don’t speak the same.

Now if we pick and choose lots of good things from all the deviations this “new religion” can become wonderful and everyone will want to follow. Don’t kill people is a good point because no one wants to die because that place in the sky might not be there. Don’t steal and rape and mess with your neighbor’s property or wife seems pretty good points.

Some of the stories are nice and inspiring but there is so much that some angry persons put in to create prejudice between us. If we have a single religion how can be disputing each other.

With the global environment, can we all agree to get along with each other? We don’t mind tweeting with people on the other side of the globe. We don’t mind posting photos of our families and our pets to the world. We don’t mind uploading embarrassing videos or making repugnant comments on others political ideals.

So why do people die because they believe they are a Christian or Muslin? Or a Methodist or a Baptist or a Jew?

With only one religion, a global religion, we couldn’t use that as an excuse to kill each other.

So if this ‘new religion’ was accepted like air or water could we get along?

Probably not because you have a big nose and she has red hair and that one is short and who colored you?

Well it is a good idea and maybe someone can make it work.

Now let us move onto the political circus.