The Church Of LOTU
Posted on 05. Jan, 2008 by Cameron Reilly in Atheism, LOTU
As you know, over the last year I’ve been working on a book about religion. During this time, while I’ve been debating the subject with people on the show and in person, one of the common arguments I’ve heard for keeping religion is “people need something to believe in”. I used to scoff at this statement. I certainly don’t feel that need. I’m happy with my own assessments of what’s right, what’s wrong, what is true and what is false. However, it struck me recently that perhaps other people aren’t like me. Perhaps they do need help figuring answers to the big questions. Perhaps they would like a place to gather on a regular basis with like-minded people to discuss the subjects of life, the universe and everything. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons religion continues to survive in the 21st century.
Atheism doesn’t have such a place. As an atheist, I don’t have a place where I can gather with other atheists to discuss “the big questions”. And, while this isn’t a problem for me, I got to thinking that perhaps it might be a hurdle for the new atheists, the people who are reading Dawkins and Hitchens and are preparing themselves to let go of superstition and mythology to embrace critical thinking and logic.
Scientific literature, and working scientists, rarely seem to attempt to play the role of answering the big questions either. There are exceptions, such as Carl Sagan, but these are truly the exceptions to the rule. Scientists provide us with the best information they have about how it all works and they leave it up to us to decide what that means to our individual lives.
So… I’ve decided to start a new religion which I’m calling
THE CHURCH OF LOTU.
“LOTU” stands for the “Laws Of The Universe”. The idea is that this religion, this church, will be fully based in science and critical thinking. It will not worship any mythological deity but will respect, and try to interpret, the laws of the universe as delivered to us by the latest scientific research. LOTU will also endorse the United Nations Charter on Human Rights. Unlike every other religion on the planet today, LOTU will not condemn people who do not agree with us to an eternity of torture and vilification. LOTU doesn’t care what you believe. LOTU respects your right to believe whatever makes you feel good. We may disagree with you. We may debate you vigorously. We may even chide you for believing in bronze age mythologies in the 21st century. We will also, however, fight for your right to believe whatever you want.
Yes, I know that the words “religion” and “church” seem to be incongruent with atheism but they need not. Wikipedia define ‘religion’ as:
“A religion is a set of common beliefs and practices generally held by a group of people, often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and mystic experience. The term “religion” refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction.”
LOTU may well have all of those things. Note there is no mention of a supernatural deity in that description.
Wikipedia defines ‘church’ as:
“A church is an association of people with a common belief system, especially one that is based on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.”
LOTU is definitely the first but also, obviously, NOT the second. Christians have always been fond of stealing ideas from older traditions (Easter, Christians, monotheism… hell, even the Jesus story is a rip-off of Mithra), so I feel quite comfortable stealing one of their words.
At the moment, I’m working on writing the “scripture” for LOTU but, as I’ve leaked word of it to a few people over the last week, I thought I should throw the doors open and let those of you who wish to join me in the creation of the first new religion for the 21st century. This is Religion 2.0.
To start with, I’ve created a Facebook group (I know, BOO! HISS!) for us to discuss the idea. I hope a few of you will join me.
Cam, leave the Christians alone.
Remember that they are essentially mentally retarded people – I know, I know, I have no understanding of the Bible, I´m forced to act childish.
I have tried to read the bible though. Has anyone ever printed a serious version of the Bible, or are they all pisstakes? I don´t see how we can have an open discussion on the Bible untill someone writes the serious version.
When can we start pulling apart Islam, Hinduism, Budhism, Judaism? I´m sharpening my ill informed knives for Krishna and Moses. I wonder if they ever met?
Also Will there be a LOTU Ten Commandments?
Can we just do the opposite of the Biblical Ten Commandments?
Though shall not covet thy neighbours wife
Though shall covet they neighbours wife
Easily changed.
Marcelo, I’ve seen my neighbour’s wife and… no thanks.
I doubt LOTU will have “commandments”. We have no need to tell people what to do with their life. LOTU does accept the UN Human Rights charter though.
As for tackling Islam, etc, I think we tackle the majority of the religious people in the so-called “civilized” countries before we go after the others. If we can get the West to act rationally, perhaps we can inspire the others to sort themselves out? But while we have educated people in the West still running around believing in fairy tales, it makes it hard to tell the rest of the world anything.
Not even ONE commandment Cam:
Thou shalt think for thyself
?
I like that one Nat.
Yeah… my neighbours wife is dead and female – we can scratch that commandment then.
During the Christmas period I did think of a new day to takeover Xmas. I call it ISNESS Day. It´s a celebration of what is.
A day that you don´t consume or buy buy buy, but merely appreciate.
Yeah… i recieved just as much response when I said it to my secular friends too. No one wants to give up christ mass, or all those Christian xmas songs that seep into our brains while we are children and vulnerable.
Marcelo, I hate Xmas and I have for years. I find the whole day hard work – the forced consumerism of it, the inane biblical connotations, the eating like a pig until you want to burst… I’m not sure “isness” day is very catchy though.
I joined up over at facebook, found myself refered to tangler, and linked back here. It’s all a bit confusing.
perhaps a good start might be to actually HAVE a thelotu website at http://www.lotu.com and some explaination, as well as some sort of unified forum that people can access rather than have to open accounts at a half dozen sites.
I know this is just getting off the ground, but it seems that with 30 something members already on facebook this could go somewhere.
HI Dorid. I’d love to have just the one site but I haven’t found anything that does everything I want. Facebook is good for some things, Tangler for others. Got any suggestions?
hey Cam..
“taking seriously” isn’t necessarily the same as “believing in”… Joseph Campbell doesn’t dismiss the utility of mythology for us “primitive” people, to inspire acts of creativity or compassion, or to build foundations of a complex relating with each other, to mark the passing of major life events with acknowledgement of our solidarity with a broader millieu than a community of academics and scientismic enthusiasts. a varied and adaptable inner life requires something bigger than our small egoic selves to measure responses to some of the strange phenomena that come our way, which for many people aren’t as simple as a cup of coffee and a new gadget. you can talk about principles of ‘uncertainty’ approved by the mainstream scientific establishment, and up to a point this covers the big picture, even substitute the *word* “Strings” for “God, Allah, Shiva, Brahman, Tao, Yahweh, etc.” to be a bit different from the rest, just as scientific materialism covers some part of reality represented by various religions, as most do not deny outright that *at some level*, matter exists. yet denying credence to the subtle realms of emotion, creativity, love, empathy, and further still, dreamforms, hypnogogic visionary occurances, subjective *feelings* of connection to powers and forces larger than the small egoic self, is not so easy for “Science” and “Critical Thinking”. seems you are to pray to an Anglocentric Deity of Theory formed by words and starkly delineated images, instead of the intricately detailed and humane, drawn and modelled *representations* of inner states and mysterious transhumanistic forces many of which science is a far cry from recognising as existent, let alone adequately describing, as the deeply loved Theistic constructions of just about every non-Anglo culture on this earth, and from all the history of just about all the people who ever were.
this is to be a religion of criticism – a denial of religious forms, ironically in the form of religion. the proposal is to do away with the 84,000 books of canonical Buddhist *Science*, and the Taoist *Sciences* of longevity and health in the disciplines of TaiChi, QiGong, GongFu, FengShui. and of the Hindu *Science* of Yoga in its many forms of Raja, Bhakti, Karma, Jnana, the last a form of which you personally subscribe to as a proponant of neo-Advaita on this very network, having spent time talking with Bob Adamson, who learned his trade from Nisargadatta Maharaj, who in turn says “Give up trying to evaluate the real I or the counterfeit I, but associate the I with the Brahman, I am the Brahman.” (Consciousness and the Absolute, p.92) which, for the less informed, is the Hindu naming of the formless Divinity of everything without exception. true, it is “not two, and nor is it one, for it has nothing against which to measure its solitary divinity”, and yet is a god, though without the form characteristic of the Western gods favoured by the reactionary atheist movement. that the Advaitin Divine is so closely akin to the Spinozan Absolute will doubtless be glossed over, and that Spinoza developed his ideas after exposure to the deeply religious cultures of the East is doubtless an “unscientific” facet of the basis of this new religion, and thus should be omitted along with the other aspects of the not-quite-Theism this new ‘religion’ is built upon. as Bob Adamson names this “unnameable” quality “Presence-Awareness”, are we to assume that because he has discarded the nomenclature of his teacher in these matters, that he has disavowed the foundation upon which the edifice of his intellectual formulations are based? even the Zenists have a name for it, although “that which shall remain nameless” being too negative and close to a Nihilist conception of existence, phrasing it “Buddha-mind” or “Self-shining emptiness” often suffices. still, there are in the traditions of Advaita, Zen and Taoism many indications that the ultimate knowable is not a knowing by name, and the knowing by living it is conveniently put into word form anyway. because people need a name for that which they have always experienced as their meaning of life, and the most true way of feeling that they have ever experienced. and “Strings” is as good as any of their names IMHO, as is “Uncertainty”, a mighty fine one. yet, if we are to be strictly “scientific”, even in the mainstream Secular Western sense of the word, are we to ignore the effect of the observer in all this, and deny simultaneously the postmodern slant which science has recently adopted as it increasingly recognises the legitimate place of Subjectivism? so, since *your* subjective viewpoint that the gods do not exist, nor any “non-scientismic” attributes of reality, then surely the subjective viewpoints of other people who believe the contrary are equally valid. or, is this a selective Religion of “That part of Science Chosen to Support our Dogmatic A-Theism”, although globally by numbers still, and this measured by the scientific faculties operated by each human being – ~95% of present humanity and more like 99.9% of humans throughout the ages – whose conclusions refute your own. but this is “bad science” i suppose. and we can make it go away by saying the words loud enough, that “it doesn’t exist”, and that everyone who opposes our new Deity of Reason is less than human – they are to a very last one “Primitive”. and therefore, it doesn’t, to you. but maybe, despite you advocating that people join your Religion, with the potential outcome of destroying cultures based upon a knowing of mysterious events concerning the human system as it relates to the environment for which “Science” has no names, and may be of some future utilty to even the Atheist scientismic community, just as it is of immeasurable consolation in times of grief, tradgedy, birth, growth, kinship ceremonies, describing more effectively than any modern psychology life stage markings, orientation to living conditions in areas not analysed by science for the purposes of which the deities of elements, climatic conditions, the behaviour patterns of plant and animal species have developed… maybe, an A-Theism is not as practical for people not already as reliant as you are on a state dissociated from the mythology of a tribe, of a natural environment, and not as disconnected from their roots as are not a few scienticians, locked away in ivory towers far from a need to orient themselves to a crisis of weather in their air-conditioned laboratories and studies, and numbed by information coming in at such a rapid rate through their eyes via a computer screen, that they need not respond with their whole selves physically to the conditions of life, and dance the evil spirits away, because they have modern pharmaceuticals for that, and instead of praying to a deity for grace or freedom from suffering, they pray for an answer to a question, and the answer is as limited as the question, just as those who ask the world for riches will become rich, as those who offer respect to a “super-worldly” power have the chance for riches beyond the ken of one content with the very “facted-up” life comprised entirely of matter, some very elementary subtle attributes of existence such as rudimentary emoting and intellectual theorising. see, the gods live in the world of vision, and we just might need the boons of the world of vision, which is also the realm of creativity and new ideas, to prevent the deterioration implied in a certainty about a given set of theories, which gradually as people cease believing in, and being devoted to, their gods, will tend towards a state of entropy and dissolution of all that is most vital, leaving an army of grey “thinkers”, speculating about powerful modes of *feeling* the world denied to them because they do not believe enough to risk an *experience* of divinity, just as their followers will suffer likewise from the dearth of numinosity brought about by a closed system of *Non-Belief*, which of course is really belief in mainstream science, clothed in a reactive terminology.
“Science is not Absolute” you say. and this is a Religion of Science. well, what then of the blanket denial, an *Absolute* denial of any and all gods, with no proof of their non-existence aside from your own faith – since that is the meaning of A-Theism, being not just a counter-argument to Christianity, but a clear statement that “There exist absolutely no gods”. So we are looking at the prospect of accepting on faith your word (sorry, “your approved brand of science”) as an *objective* reality, while the subjective feelings, traditions, ways of life and ritual practices, are “championed” by you, who “will defend your right” to argue for what you, Cameron, are arguing to convince people is absolutely wrong…?
i feel some deja vu coming on – stop me if i get all radical on your good self, but there have been some notable others throughout the century just passed who also believed they would promote the “truth” to the “primitives”… and failing that, different wings of the assertive, empowered and organised philosophical groups would, on the one hand “defend the freedoms” of speech, and deal with the “problem” in other ways than talking.
i don’t even pretend to “defend to the death your right to say it”. i think your pretty far up your own arse and either shit-stirring a lot of people potentially influenced by the online mouthpiece of your acquistive successes, or you are fighting, like Conrad’s Kurtz, in a jungle of mystery you haven’t even seen a part of, except in your imagination via a casual purusal of some old books by dead white guys and translators, facilitated by a capacity for sporadic creativity fostered by early years of limited human companionship, and exacerbated by a disconnection from the life-giving forces of natural power that being fucked around for a few decades in the harsh terrain of the streets and jungles of the world will teach a person.
in short, getting a life of your own worth surrendering to a higher power requires humanitarian goals somewhat more sweeping than accumulating followers to boost traffic, with a sideline of riding on the coattails of the popularity and general egalitarianism of the Human Rights charter, using it as an article of slogan to gain adherents, not for the people it seeks to protect, for they are discriminated against as “incorrect primitives” by your new “Religion”, but for selfish aims. have some personal experiences that truly test the limits of what your scientism can explain, before you go messing with mass dissemination of half-baked messianic aspirations.
so saying, it is understandable that the power of numbers you’ve acquired lately is being used for this end – who hasn’t considered themselves infallible at some point or another…
Eloquently written, “Con”. Whether or not I am doing this for traffic, ego or any of your other criticisms I guess only time will tell. You seem to have totally dismissed the possibility that my motivations could be genuine and ethical. You seem to assume that I’m either naive, stupid, a liar or a crook. Fair enough. People who know me, however, would (I hope) know that none of those accusations hold much water.
Hey Cam, just catching up on your blog.
I have to say I am very pleased to see you open up to the different ways people feel they fit into this world. That perhaps our strong individualistic way of living is not for everyone, and that many need to identify with something larger than them selves.
I also wanted to say something about whether LOTU needs to be a “religion” or “church”. There are advantages, such as tax ones which certainly can assist the process. But the belief many people seek does not neccessarily need to be religion. For example, the Environmental movement displays all the hall marks of religion. People take what is given by the institutional authorities as truth and without question, there are ceremonies and “Holly Days”, people who do not believe are not listened to, and can be considered heretics or even worse, evil. There is psychological reward for practicing environmentalism and a desire to enlist others to the belief system.
The point i am trying to make is that all people are meme machines, and for many of these meme machines there is a section of their brain that needs to have meme programs running that are specifically around belief. These programs do not have to be religion, but they do have to have all the same factors of religion.
Lotu is still only via facebook?
I quit facebook a few weeks ago because it was too damn annoying. But I’ll sign up again…
Ah… got any other suggestions? I’m open to better ways of doing it.
Certainly, the reason why people joing Religions is because it gives them something that they can’t get anywhere else… that usually is community, unfortunately facebook, is like a community brought to us by Fox8.
Give me a cool church to go to and I’d go.
A website would be better, with forums and DIGG style news on pertinent issues, opinions, interviews, podcasts etc
a home away from home
Like G’day world except targeted directly at LOTU
Am willing to offer free time to it : ) whatever I can do
P.S.
I know that your straight and you probably wouldn’t like my blog or podcast, but I’m getting better at doing the podcasts (I think – I’m not the smartest bloke in the room – at least, no one has said that it’s absolutely shit anyway) so I might have something to offer.
yeah all sounds good mate, when you’re ready, build it for me.
What’s the URL of your podcast?
http://www.switchpod.com/users/marcelo/Episode6PodcastMarceloCastro.mp3
It’s not professional, and it’s definately not for a wide audience – it’s just a honest simple blogcast. I’d like to start doing interviews with people in the community at some point, that is, the Bear community or homo’s that don’t associate themselves with that homogenized camp effeminate will and grace culture.
As for the website – mate if I were more of a geek, i’d do it for you… Surely we can find a LOTU geek that could knock up something like that? I’ll put my hand up to do things like ads and musical stuff (i try to do music production in my free time)
Alright… I am the first member!
Mate, can you cancel my membership to the church – I tried doing it but can’t work it out.