so, other religions find ways of spreading thier ideas around and getting new converts; i mean, if we are a church we should have a set of do's and don'ts when it comes to spreading the word. wouldn't want to make a bad impression.
for intance, what's the CoV equivalent of a christian priest? and how does one go about becoming one?
how will this church its ideas past the boundries of the internet into the world and minds of the theists? will we ever have a book that is equivalent to the bible? a printed magazine perhaps. written editorials in newspapers or other e-zines.
Re:becoming a priest?
« Reply #1 on: 2003-07-15 11:11:52 »
One of the notorious weaknesses of conventional religions is ossified doctrine, attributable to the inability to amend holy texts (e.g. the judaic proscription of pork, ). Of course, some religions reform these matters by stealth (e.g. the christian proscription of usury), but having a formalised text seems generally to be a bad idea.
Re:becoming a priest?
« Reply #2 on: 2003-07-15 17:05:24 »
the book would serve as a guide to the newly inaugurated, not as an end all be all answer book that people would follow blindly.
there is no god in our church for priests to claim has absolute authority on what is right. atheists in have only ideals and ethics to guide them. so it would be normal to accept that church doctrine is going to change with the times and to meet the needs of its practitioners.
this forum will eventually become to big for people who have never been here before to sort though and read it all. one day a summation of the teachings here will be required. first an HTML document and then eventually a book in printed form people could use to further the memes of virus.
most people don't even know what the scientific method implies or just what it means to doubt. even though these things are pivotal to understanding why the concept of god is flawed.
the book would serve as a guide to the newly inaugurated, not as an end all be all answer book that people would follow blindly.
I don't think Virus needs to compile a book such as the one you speak of. There is already a reading list available on the site with books that are reccommended to people who want to understand Virion ideas. At the top of that list is Darwins Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett. It's an excellent book about Darwinian evolution and it's implications on philosophy. Virus seems to be based a lot on the formulations found in that book so you can reccommend that to aspirants if they are interested in it.
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there is no god in our church for priests to claim has absolute authority on what is right. atheists in have only ideals and ethics to guide them.
Agreed.
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so it would be normal to accept that church doctrine is going to change with the times and to meet the needs of its practitioners.
I don't know about this. Do we want to become like various New Age and Occult religions that have sprung up over the past century? I rather don't think so, as they've all became distorted beyond recognition and have abandoned their origional teachings. This coming "New Age" will be full of religions that embrace science and skepticism, and don't focus on mysticism or spiritual pipe dreams. The goal should not be to have it flexible for the wishes of it's practitioners but changes in the various fields of science.
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this forum will eventually become to big for people who have never been here before to sort though and read it all. one day a summation of the teachings here will be required. first an HTML document and then eventually a book in printed form people could use to further the memes of virus.
Once again, we already have an extensive reading list and an excellent collection of FAQ documents and essays. Why waste time with a "bible" like book when we already have plenty of info available?
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most people don't even know what the scientific method implies or just what it means to doubt. even though these things are pivotal to understanding why the concept of god is flawed.
We're not going to convince too many theists that the concept of God is flawed. Our target audience should be people who are already atheists or agnostics.
Re:becoming a priest?
« Reply #4 on: 2003-07-16 17:00:49 »
yeah, maybe a official CoV book is a bad idea both now and in the near future. if this church needs a whole book devoted just to the teachings of the CoV, than it will be written by one of its own members and maybe placed with the rest of recommended books, not at the top. it won't be held as total truth. just a vector among many.
when i proposed the question of "becoming a priest" i was looking for a way too combat the constant rhetoric of these god fearing religions that keep floating around.
the GodFearingReligions (GFR)tm has people running around all day grabbing up new converts from the large majority of agnostics, not-sure believers, and people that are just lonely. not every one of them is suddenly going to go on the net and look up "atheist" at google.
oh well, i'll go read the new lecture form D. Lucifer himself and then see what i think about improving this church and its reach.
Well, I must say that, though your intentions are in my mind admirable, your efforts are doomed to failure. More than 90% of the world's population professes belief in God. Religion is an emotional thing, and using logic to combat it is a fruitless endeavor.
What we should be focusing on is creating a new religion, one that gives them the emotional satisfaction that people crave by immersing them into the world of science and technology, while providing them with what the founder of Virus calls "the best possible conceptual framework for living and thinking." The awe and wonder that I feel toward the world is what one should call my "religious" side. I think that, with enough effort, we can bring out that side of a lot more people than the handful we have discussing things on this board.
The religion (one that satisfies religious urges while encouraging it's adherents to embrace the scientific method) is, IMHO, Virus.
If you want to help theists, then reccommend that they read Darwins Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett or The Blind Watch Maker by Richard Dawkins. From what I've seen so far, these two books will give people the best idea of what the Virion way of looking at the world is. If it fails to satisfy, then Virus is not for them.
Of course this is all just my opinion, I'm relatively new here so I could be misinterpreting things a little, if not getting them downright wrong.
yeah, maybe a official CoV book is a bad idea both now and in the near future.
The official doctrine of the CoV (such as it is) is captured in the web site. Part of the doctrine is the recommended reading list (much easier to just point at what we think is right rather than rewriting it :-)).
The evolving doctrine is on the VirusWiki with related discussions on this BBS and the mailing list.
at one point earlier in this thought stream, someone said that there is no god in this church.
this is not true.
yes, there may be no localized "invisible man in the sky", but quite obviously there is something which holds the church together (other than the internet). perhaps not the standard concept of a god, a diety which exists in a time and place, but perhaps the notion that humanity's role is to evolve into god. or realize our full potential, at the stage we are at now in our evolution, as god.
atheists do not have churches. this is a church, hence, there is a god somewhere in it. one could even argue the god construct to be a fusion of the virtues: a vision executed with empathic reason. one of my favorite quotes is: "the universe is the inside without and outside, the sound of one eye opening".
thus, establishing that there IS a god construct of some kind (even though no general concept has been flushed out or agreed upon), all one would have to do to become a priest is to encourage others to live by the virtues and avoid the sins. upon being questioned about which deity is being worshipped, point out that there is no need to worship something which surrounds you at all times and that you are a part of: reality itself.
i think i have it. the virian God is a meme as difficult to completely grasp and understand as zen or tao.
anyone willing to encourage others on the virian path is a priest of the church of virus. if you are concerned about people spreading the wrong message, honestly there is nothing you can do. catholics have pedophiles preaching to groups about the sins of flesh, executing hypocrisy.
there will always be some people around to try and screw up a good thing, even if they don't know they're doing it. this is a statistical fact. the idea is to get enough people doing things right so that the few people blowing it aren't the ones who get attention.
what's coming through is alive, what's holding up is a mirror... totally void of hate, and killing me just the same... coming over like a storm again now considerately.
at one point earlier in this thought stream, someone said that there is no god in this church.
this is not true.
I concede that you can redefine the word "god" so that this church has one. But you would also have to agree that I can redefine "god" as a wiki and I guess that would make us all theists, right?
at one point earlier in this thought stream, someone said that there is no god in this church.
this is not true.
I concede that you can redefine the word "god" so that this church has one. But you would also have to agree that I can redefine "god" as a wiki and I guess that would make us all theists, right?
precisely. well, sort of. i'm not proposing that god really "is" any one thing, but that all thing have a facet of truth to them, and that somewhere within that facet of truth lies a connection to a higher truth, and that higher truth is... well, leads to a godhead.
yes, one could argue god is any one thing, but to define this as one thing is not doing it justice. i propose that the fabric of reality itself (and anything else that might exists as an antithesist to said fabric) is god and that we are all fractal shards of said diety, that by acknowledging that you exist you are a theist.
yes, a wiki is part of said entity, because it is. as everything is, so is everything a part of god. i'm not suggesting that we worship everything or even anything, just acknowledgement that this existance is holy in its own way.
and by the way, i did not consider it a redefinition of the word god. then again, having been raised by free thinkers, i never had a very rigid conception of anything my whole life, but a very mutable cognition of things. god to me when i was a kid was just the all singing all dancing crap of the world, nothing more or less. nowadays, i simply anthropomorphize said entity to be reality itself, and that it has given up being "GOD" in the traditional sense so that we as fractal shards may gain understanding and better enlighten it when this all comes together again at the end of time.
what's coming through is alive, what's holding up is a mirror... totally void of hate, and killing me just the same... coming over like a storm again now considerately.
precisely. well, sort of. i'm not proposing that god really "is" any one thing, but that all thing have a facet of truth to them, and that somewhere within that facet of truth lies a connection to a higher truth, and that higher truth is... well, leads to a godhead.
What is a facet of truth? Does the logical inverse of your assertion also contain a facet of truth? If so, does that lead to a facet of a contradiction?
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yes, one could argue god is any one thing, but to define this as one thing is not doing it justice. i propose that the fabric of reality itself (and anything else that might exists as an antithesist to said fabric) is god and that we are all fractal shards of said diety, that by acknowledging that you exist you are a theist.
Fractal shards? Do you mean everything is self-similar on every scale? If so, I don't think that is true. If not, what do you mean?
What is a facet of truth? Does the logical inverse of your assertion also contain a facet of truth? If so, does that lead to a facet of a contradiction?
YES! the logical inverse does, and it also leads toward a contradiction. a facet of truth (as i concieve of it) is a simple meme which can be proven true (there is gravity, we breathe air, all colors are only a tiny portion of the spectrum of light).
an example of a facet of contradiction would be the "nothing can not come from something" notion. if something can't come from nothing, then why does anything exist? how is it that dark matter has come to be? how could seinfeld run for years without a plot? etc.
likewise, logic contradicts itself with great ease. fire an arrow at a target. we all know it will hit its mark. but for it to travel the distance from A to B it must first go half the distance. then it must halve the distance again, and again, and again. eventually you'd be splitting atoms, but as long as there is distance for it to travel, it will never reach its target. using logic in this way, logic fails to account for inevitabilities... which is illogical. even though it is a logistics model.
there is an intrinsic truth in contradiction. that truths can oppose one another (as opposed to all truths moving in the same direction) is an example of WHY i think god exists.
are you familiar with the saying: "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist"?
i think it was god who pulled this one.
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...is god and that we are all fractal shards of said diety, that by acknowledging that you exist you are a theist.
Fractal shards? Do you mean everything is self-similar on every scale? If so, I don't think that is true. If not, what do you mean?
okay, you caught me. i was being poetic. old habits die hard ya know?, and it was a visualization better placed in the creative section. i apologize for that.
i did not intend to imply that everything is self similar, but i do think that everything has a degree of connectedness, be it an obvious one or a hidden one. catholics and satanists are intrinsically connected, even though they would both be upset to acknowledge this. likewise with oxygen breathers and plants, even though in most other ways we are dissimilar. atheists couldn't have existed without theists, as they wouldn't have had any godhead model to choose to NOT believe in. people theorize about the speed of light, but no one seems to discuss the speed of darkness....
not that things are self similar. but that without a context to be related to, simply wouldn't be as they are now.
i whole heartedly thank you for challenging me on this. i don't believe i'm right, but that i've got a pretty good idea. you're forcing me to clarify exactly what that is, and demanding a clarity previously uncalled for. i honestly don't really know how to communicate these ideas very well as my whole life hitherto they were just memes in my head, unchallenged and unnamed.
what's coming through is alive, what's holding up is a mirror... totally void of hate, and killing me just the same... coming over like a storm again now considerately.
Re:becoming a priest?
« Reply #14 on: 2003-11-08 00:58:51 »
A priesthood that is designed to spread the CoV meme would be effective. I mean the whole point of having a religion is that more than one person can share it. And what the church is best at is spreading memes.
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