A serious (read LONG) question on belief structures.?

Question

It seems to me, that at the heart of most religeons are 3 things. The first is , make yourself a better person and lead others to better themselves. The second, live your life as you will but respect the laws of nature. the final, this path leads to perfection.

From those 3 things any religeon can be built. Then culture comes in, and with culture - ignorance. Culture adds rules, and twists the words and meaning of those three things to ensure strife, pain, and more ignorance.

My simple question, How could I, or anyone, go about creating a religeon that would not become corrupted by culture or other people's "interpretation"?

any ideas?

Note - I am an atheist. However, I have found that each religeon for all its faults does have some golden bits of wisdom. I'd like to use part of each to give mankind the gift of a peaceful future.

Answer 1

Religion is defined as the belief in a superhuman controlling power entitled to obedience and worship.

In my opinion, corruption begins when individuals try to control each other's access to what they believe is divine. I think people try to do that because of fear. Many people are scared that another path to the divine might be just as legitimate as theirs. They would then question whether they had the correct set of beliefs, superstitions, or magic.

I think that ultimately it is based in a desire to control our present circumstances. Since we have so little ability to do that, we place our hope in something bigger than us who will give us help and comfort. All we have to do is look at the front page of the paper to know that something isn't working quite the way we want it to, and our prayers aren't having the desired effect.

For me personally, the answer lies in acceptance. I have so little control over my life that I try to concentrate on simply doing the best I can at the tasks in front of me whether that task is brushing my teeth or helping one of my children with a school project.

I don't believe it's possible to create an incorruptible religion.

Theoretically, I suppose you could make one, but it couldn't involve human beings.

Answer 2

You could create a religion where each member was a priest/ess and responsible for their own relationship with the Divine as they perceive it. Further, you could encourage free thinking within the system, even if that thinking leads one back out of the religion again. It would also help if the religion was de-centralized -- no bishops or popes, just a one-on-one communion with the Divine, although people might willingly choose to worship in groups. In this scenario, each member would evaluate material presented to them by others and accept or reject it based on their own intelligence and consideration.

It would also help if the religion had an extremely limited number of hard-and-fast commandments.

Answer 3

I don't know if that's possible. I agree with you about the religion and its wisdoms getting muddled in rules and twists. I think if it's looked at more like a philosophy than a religion it may work better, because religion is most often an organized thing (except for pagan and folk religions, which are more personal) and that means rules.

Love it if you find a way.

Answer 4

You would need to remove religion from the equation.

Destroy the rules, commandments, etc... and replace them with a direction for each person to work through on their own -not to hold their personal views as better or more advanced than any other.

Presumably you'd need some sort of deity to direct this toward.

This will not happen, there will always be people who want to be in control of others.

Answer 5

The only way you could create a religion with out corruption would be to only be in it yourself. Once other people come in that is where the corruption begins because everyone has their own ideas and interpretations of things

Answer 6

It would be up to people to take those ideas to heart. When you add the structure of religion is where things go wrong. People should want to follow those three things on their own.