Creating Your Own Religion

Good idea if it works for you, I'm confused on the 6 men/women thing though.

I wouldn't say I created my own religion but I don't believe in any of the established religions. I usually call myself athiest, but I'm not so sure. I believe in energy. I know it exists, and I know it controls everything. It seems reasonable to me that it was energy that created everything. Probably not consciously, but it did.

Yeah, I don't really know how to explain it...

I am the proud founder of Beatlemania. It is, as the name suggests, worship of The Beatles. It is reminiscent of that one episode in Family Guy when Peter started that church worshipping Fonzie, you may think, but in actuality The Beatles have much more value to their worship than the Fonz could ever wish for. On the high holy days, the birth and death days of the Holy John Lennon and George Harrison, we Beatlemaniacs wear black pants and the traditional black Beatles logo tee. We also refuse to eat meat on these days. If any Beatlemaniacs have the pleasure of sharing a birthday with some significant event in Beatles history (for example, my birthday is on the exact release date of the single "Hello Goodbye"), we must celebrate with a Beatles cake, Beatles decorations, and Beatles attire, and in addition we must sing the Beatles song "Birthday" over the traditional "Happy Birthday" song. Any birthday parties held must be Beatles themed.

Sorry. I just had to. xD

In all honesty, if I had to pick one religion, I'd be a Buddhist. But truth be told, I believe in some of the values and practices of many religions, not just one, and in a way I kind of just mix them all into one religion that is specific to my wants and needs.

I have my own religeon. I belive in a mixed beleif of Paganism and Christianity. I do beleive in an upper force with lower forces (spirits) looking after us. My religeon branches off from there.

Beatlemaniac:

I am the proud founder of Beatlemania. It is, as the name suggests, worship of The Beatles. It is reminiscent of that one episode in Family Guy when Peter started that church worshipping Fonzie, you may think, but in actuality The Beatles have much more value to their worship than the Fonz could ever wish for. On the high holy days, the birth and death days of the Holy John Lennon and George Harrison, we Beatlemaniacs wear black pants and the traditional black Beatles logo tee. We also refuse to eat meat on these days. If any Beatlemaniacs have the pleasure of sharing a birthday with some significant event in Beatles history (for example, my birthday is on the exact release date of the single "Hello Goodbye"), we must celebrate with a Beatles cake, Beatles decorations, and Beatles attire, and in addition we must sing the Beatles song "Birthday" over the traditional "Happy Birthday" song. Any birthday parties held must be Beatles themed.

Sorry. I just had to. xD

In all honesty, if I had to pick one religion, I'd be a Buddhist. But truth be told, I believe in some of the values and practices of many religions, not just one, and in a way I kind of just mix them all into one religion that is specific to my wants and needs.

I too am somewhat of a Beatlemaniac. A Hard Day's Night topped the charts on my birthday.

Does this mean we have to own Gideon's bible, though?

I like this idea, actually.

If I had my own religion, it would be all mystical and philosophical and cool and no one would be able to comprehend it.

Just kidding. On a more serious note, though, I don't know. I think religion is a very confining idea. I also have a hard time feeling committed to a higher being. So. I don't know. I'm in a kind of religious limbo right now.

I personally don't understand how people create their own religions and feel comfortable with it. I understand if they take things from different religions and instill those beliefs in themselves, but with me personally, if I don't have some sort of basis behind it, then it doesn't make sense. I know people that created a religion in which they worship Oprah, which lacks any sort of realism to me. I prefer picking a religion that's already out there rather than creating my own - just because you create it, doesn't mean it's real. I could create a country, but that doesn't mean it's real or will be acknowledged by anyone else as something that truly exists.

cinderella.:

Just because you create it, doesn't mean it's real.

The same could be said of pre-existing religions, too. :)

Alex; oxytocin.:

The same could be said of pre-existing religions, too. :)

I completely understand that. I don't know about every single religion, but what I do know is that the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) is that they have a basis in which their religion is based off of (the Torah, Bible, and Quran) that simply makes more sense than saying 'Oprah Winfrey is God, anything she says is true because I love her and she's the wisest that the world has ever seen' sort of ideology.

cinderella.:

I completely understand that. I don't know about every single religion, but what I do know is that the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) is that they have a basis in which their religion is based off of (the Torah, Bible, and Quran) that simply makes more sense than saying 'Oprah Winfrey is God, anything she says is true because I love her and she's the wisest that the world has ever seen' sort of ideology.

It may make more sense,however, could possibly not be real.

Jewel Nicole:

It may make more sense,however, could possibly not be real.

What is reality to one person, may not be reality to another. There are people who believe that 'truth is only in the eye of the beholder'. Everybody's reality differs slightly. Who knows, everything we see may be a figment of our imaginations and might not really exist at all.

Creating your own religion doesn't seem that far-fetched to me, when you look at the origins of many of today's modern religion. For instance, Christians think Christianity is original, but many of its holidays and themes were borrowed from other religions, such as the date of Christmas and Easter, as well as the concept of a self-sacraficing God. And when you look at it, doesn't it seem just as likely that the world was on the back of a turtle (a Native American belief) as it would that hundreds of years ago, people built a tower to Heaven, and God got pissed and scattered them everywhere?

I, myself, am a kind of pantheist. The world exists due to no greater power, but it all works as one. Nature and humans shouldn't be classified so; humans are a part of nature, and should act like so. We weren't created to be superior; we came into being the same way everything else did.

Sorry. I kinda started rambling...

I can understand that people can have different takes on a certain religion, but it seems to pointless me to make your own. What are you basing these beliefs on? Your own opinions? I dunno, I know some people who make up their own beliefs just because they don't like what certain belief systems have to say. Just because you want something to be true doesn't mean that's the way things are.

Alex; periphery.:

I don't have my own religion per se, but I have my own set of beliefs. I just call that... my beliefs.

Ditto (:

* *

I don't think it'd be necessary to try and create your own religion (if that were at all possible). A lot of people's beliefs don't align perfectly with the religion they identify with. It's the reason why, when people ask what my religion is, I tell them that I'm "just spiritual" or "I believe a combination of things, some from different religions and some I've found on my own."

I think, at some point, all intelligent people do this. You stop believing without questioning what people tell you about god(s)/goddess(es)/faith/religion and just start figuring out what all those things actually mean (or don't mean) to you.

kafka.:

With religion, it's like determinism. We believe in causality, but is there a cause to this causality? Everything in our universe has a cause and an effect (or so we believe), but we don't have an actual explanation for this phenomenon. It just happens, it's just what we like to believe in. Likewise, gravity, for example, is almost undoubtedly not caused by humans, however the laws that explain and dictate the way gravity works have obviously been written by humans. God is gravity and Holy Scriptures are the laws, they're not always accurate, but we don't doubt the existence of gravity because Newton's laws were inaccurate or simply because they were written by human beings not gravity itself.

I think this explanation is pretty darn perfect.

There's evidence to every religion out there, otherwise, why would anyone believe it? There are always things that people see as proof of something, while other people will still question it. I think dru is right here; it's smart to, in a way, 'create your own religion.' I mean, I would word it much differently if I wanted to explain it to people, because by definition, religion is "details of belief as taught or discussed," and in all honesty, I don't think it's really anyone's business what my personal beliefs are, and I'm sure not about to try to get other people to believe what I do, especially if they're already secure with their own faiths. That's just me personally, though, so other people can think/do whatever they wish, I suppose.

Point is, I think it's admirable for people to believe so thoroughly in something as trivial as a religion, but I don't know how anyone can go through their lives with blind faith, doing whatever their higher ranking people of worship tell them to, without any personal feelings/proof in the matter. Thing is, reality is different from person to person. Maybe what they think is true for them, but not for you, and maybe what's true for you isn't true for them, and that's okay. If someone believes in things that have already been touched on by preexisting religions, then good for them.

But sometimes, that just doesn't happen. Sometimes someone goes through life believing in things that haven't yet had names put to them. It can be really stressful, having beliefs that don't have anything to do with any religion you've grown up around; and it can get even more stressful when you have people all over the place telling you that "you can't just make up your own religion, you have to pick one," when as far as you're concerned, none of them are true. In my experience, that's when it all comes into play. You know your own reality. You make your own reality.

And I don't think anyone should be shamed for it.

Especially considering all the things that people relied on in the beginning of all these 'old age religions' would be considered certifiably crazy if people started talking about them now. I think that's unfair. For example: people say the bible came from God's word, spoken directly from the all powerful, and man just wrote it down. They say old prophets and people, regular people, had visions of God. Now, if those same people that believe all this saw someone in the streets saying they saw their own version of an almighty being, that they spoke to them, they would probably think that person was crazy, or on drugs, or both. But who's to say they are? If it could be true all those hundreds of years ago, who's to say it can't happen now? What makes it okay and perfectly believable for people to have visions back then, but not now?

I think it's a bit disrespectful to say otherwise, really...

to die.:

There's evidence to every religion out there, otherwise, why would anyone believe it?

I wouldn't say that's true; I challenge anyone to come up with serviceable evidence in favour of Scientology, and yet that's a pretty fast-growing religion.

@ Alex; periphery.
Or the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

^ That too.

for dru's sins.:

@ Alex; periphery.
Or the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Do people really believe that? I thought it was created to mock religion. Not bashing, I'm just curious.