plasmid

I had probably been the one most inclined to go ahead and include a God or at least the potential for there to be a God, mostly because I also thought that it was an important part of defining a religion and one of the biggest things that the faithful are looking for, and also because I didn't think it's really all that bad. But now I don't think that a God per se is really such an important factor in having someone adhere to a religion as I originally thought – I now suspect that culture & traditions, interacting with others in a community setting ("fitting into a group" sort of stuff), teaching basic morality, and to some degree spiritual ideas (with or without a God) are really the meat of it, and if it's not necessary to include a God then it's something we might as well avoid. We can go ahead and let people preserve the rest. I might be completely wrong in my assessment, though: I'm hardly qualified to give an expert opinion on motivations for belief. It might also vary quite a bit from place to place depending on the local culture. As far as winning over converts, yes it would definitely be easiest if we were to just be completely liberal about it and say that anyone in religion X could become a Phronist by adding the Phronist doctrine and some stuff about the Essence onto a base of religion X, basically creating a sub-denomination within each of the major religions: there'd be Phronist Christians, Phronist Jews, etc. who don't even have to forsake their ties to their old faith because they're still in it. But then being a Phronist wouldn't change the influence that these Gods have over their thoughts and perceptions about right and wrong; there would still be Phronist Christians who don't want to have evolution taught because it conflicts with their view of God's role in creation, and Phronist Jews and Phronist Muslims fighting over land that was granted to them by their respective Gods. Granted, allowing people to keep many of their customs and traditions would also delay progress on Middle East peace and acceptance of homosexuals, but at least with Gods out of the picture there would be a better chance of resolution. (Maybe the Middle East would go from what it is now to what America was after the end of slavery. Still not pretty, but better.) As for allowing members to join first and eventually wean themselves from their old God later: My suspicion is that if anyone would agree to go onto a path that they know is ultimately targeted at eliminating their God, they might as well just get rid of the God now. Yeah, that does sound way better. I say we go with that. You hit on the point I was dancing around when I wondered how the Essence could have made itself manifest to anyone in the first place. If we have an Essence that intervenes in our world to make itself evident, then how is that any different from having an interventionalist God? And if the Essence didn't reveal itself but was "discovered" somehow, then what's the evidence for it? Or do we just present the Essence like string theory: it's a hypothesis (using the term quite loosely because it's not provable or disprovable) that's possible and that you can choose to follow if you wish? Hardly seems like anyone would want to join if we took that last route. Would it be possible to make the religion by just saying that the Essence does exist, just kind of like a fact taken for granted without bothering to explain how we know that it does? But to get back to your point, I don't see too much problem with letting people explore those spiritual realms to the degree that they don't conflict with science or lead to dangerous prejudices or do any other foul things. In fact, I had thought that presenting the Essence so vaguely would actually reduce the potential for misuse. Denominations are free to propose belief systems for their members to follow, but everyone in Phronism knows that these aren't set in stone in sacred documents and should be questioned if they lead to conclusions that seem to defy science or common sense. I wouldn't mind spirituality as long as outsiders are able to keep an eye on it and blow a whistle if it steps out of bounds, but I'd like to see what everyone else thinks too. Seeksit makes a very good point. Until now, I've been saying that the followers need to respect the advice of non-believers, but beware of believers in other religions because they're subject to the whims of an imagined deity. That was actually a serious mistake which I could justifiably be called quite a bigot for making: just because someone believes in God doesn't mean they can't make a rational argument. It should be changed to say to ignore arguments that are guided by belief in deities that are figments of imagination. Do you have something in mind? Fire away! ARGH! Reminding me of the days of being a wee little Jehovah's Witness. Bleargh.

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Yeah, it better be pronounced "fr-aw-nism" instead of "fr-oh-nism". Otherwise anything associated with Phronism would be called "Phrony". Oh, the mockery that would ensue. Ok, as long as there's no central organization running the show then a Council of the denominations doesn't seem so bad. We might have to be careful about the rules, though, especially early on. Suppose the Catholics decide they don't like us (imagine that) and they decide to have enough groups of ten people each form a denomination so they can get a 90% vote in the council. They then change the core dogma to say that all denominations are to pay the Catholic church a tithe. To prevent this, I'll change my position on what it takes to start a new denomination. You have to be up and operational for say six months or so and have a bunch of members of other denominations visit to watch you in action and make sure you're legit. Then you get voted in by a majority. In principle it might still be possible for the Catholics to put on a good show and fool everyone for six months before disintegrating the faith, but if our followers are that easily duped then they deserve what's coming to them. I originally thought that making the core dogma mutable would seriously compromise the appeal to our target audience: the religious people who have so eagerly devoured the Truths preached to them simply because of the seeming unquestionability and cultural ingrainment of the institutions. If Phronism is ultimately presented as understanding bestowed by the Essence, then are we saying that the Essence might be wrong, or misunderstood, or maybe just didn't want to give us the whole truth right away? But the more I think about it, the more I'm reminded that somewhere in the Bible Jesus warned his followers that there might be people who falsely claim Christianity, yet rarely do Christians ever think that their own denomination might be false. Apparently, even if followers are warned up front not to trust people, they will anyway. But I'd still prefer to keep anything about changing core dogma buried deep in the "Robert's Rules of Order" book governing Councils instead of in the Phronetic Bible, leaving it to be pointed out only in an emergency. That's a tough question that I've been hesitant to answer. The very unique thing going for Phronism is that it would serve the interests of atheists and other rationalist-type folks. If non-believers were convinced that this actually could satisfy the OP, they might buy into helping it succeed. Of course, I don't think anyone would take it seriously if we said we were going to recruit Barack Obama as our messiah (sorry, Grayven) and Chuck Norris as a guest star, and the parables might need some cleaning up, but otherwise it seems plausible. We would just need a good story for how the Essence revealed itself to the world.

Apparently the major Hindu / Buddhist prophecy is about Kalki. Yeah, the "holy war" stuff has to go. I was personally inclined to avoid making any centralized leadership at all. Anything that's not part of a denomination would not be subjected to selective pressure and would be prone to corruption. The denominations would be pretty much self-running, and could get started by just hanging a shingle out front saying "new denomination of <name>" and inviting people in. That would mean that the denominations would have to be able to police themselves to keep each other from getting out of line, with the two particularly nasty things that I'm most concerned about being first not having their followers go visit other denominations from time to time (they really need to be under selective pressure), and second failing to follow the sincere guidance of non-believers. To prevent this, I would have each denomination keep a public list of all other denominations that they consider to be part of the true faith and worth letting their members visit, as well as a list of all that they deem blasphemous and the reason for their exclusion. Any denomination that gets excommunicated by virtually all others would (I hope) have a tough time surviving. But if two denominations get in a squabble and excommunicate each other, people will see that they're each accepted by most others and not worry about it too much. Doing stuff like saying there's an omniscient, omnipotent, interventionalist God would also be bad. But I'm not sure if we would want to completely rule out any existence of a God whatsoever. At least not yet. After all, we can't prove that there wasn't, say, a clockmaker God that set the universe into motion with the big bang and just stood back and watched since then. One might argue that it would be almost as bad to say that a God must not exist until proven otherwise as it would be to say that a God does exist until disproven (Occam's razor be damned!). I don't think it's at all likely, but I've gotta admit it can't be disproven. Edit: On second thought, the possibility that someone will ever prove the existence of a God and thus jeopardize the religion seems nil. For the sake of not dragging this thread into unnecessary territory, I'd be fine with having a God-free doctrine requirement and excommunicating violators. If there is no centralized government to run councils to make such changes, an option would be that each denomination can change the core doctrine that it follows, but they must publicly proclaim their core doctrine, and two denominations that hold different core doctrines are automatically excommunicated by each other. That way, if something catastrophic happens that requires the core doctrine to change, then all denominations could change it simultaneously and survive. But if one denomination were to try to change it unilaterally, it would be instantly excommunicated and die off. Then there might be problems if a major schism were to occur with two separate core doctrines. Not sure how that could be handled. But... we're designing a religion, right? Religions don't typically have governing documents covering how dissenters can change the core doctrine. No matter what approach we use, I'd like to frame it in such a way that it still seems like we're running a religion instead of parliamentary procedures for the United Nations. Granted it's already very unconventional to solicit non-believers for advice, but it still just doesn't seem right to say "we might have messed up when we designed the faith, so if it becomes painfully obvious then do this". How can we gracefully leave instructions on how to change the core doctrine? We might just have to be very very careful about designing the core doctrine and hope it doesn't ever need to be changed, although I would definitely feel more comfortable about it if it could be changed.

A pillow. Unfortunately that puts the cotton tail at the head of the bed. If only there were a species of rabbit with a big puffy afro...

Kool Kota got this one. As soon as I thought of that particular clue, I just knew I had to write a riddle using it.

I just have a habit of writing riddles that will lead you in one direction with a distracter while the true answer is something completely different. And then I title my riddles "I'm not (distracter)". The answer does not have big floppy ears and go around eating carrots.

Good question. Unfortunately it's one that I don't know the answer to, because it's not the answer to the riddle.

A beast four-legged, domesticated Remain with me and you'll be berated Forsake resistance of no avail Succumb, seduced by my cotton tail And I'm a multiplication table So take a shot at it if you're able Or maybe I am a monster's lair If so, I hope that you are a prayer If spring has sprung then my time has ended Unless I'm liquid (and that'd be splendid) Don't fear me bringing you down, I'm mellow For you're the one who'll bring me down, fellow

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One more important thing about <name> that's very different from other religions is its attitude toward non-believers. The others would more willingly lick the nearest electrical outlet than change their practices based on what an outsider has to say. That seems reasonable. Allowing even a watered down version of God to persist could be deleterious. Keeping their cheesy excuses for gift giving or dressing up seem mostly harmless. There could actually be a sizable market for a Denomination of The Arts, where the Essence is mentioned from time to time but most of each Sunday sermon is about the latest exhibits. Mingling with other aficionados might make it worth the extra effort of showing up to meet in a physical building instead of just reading about it in the news. Since we aren't using tithes to pay for education I presume we're not going to be financially supporting artists, so the rendezvous would be more of a meeting point for people to discuss while counting on the patrons to pay the artists through outside means. Suppose it works and the chance to be with others and participate in something that you're genuinely passionate about does make the social aspect provided by the old traditional religious experience seem less necessary and less enjoyable compared to the new alternative, and it starts winning converts. Could the traditional religions fight back by instituting their own competing arts & culture nights at the local places of worship to defuse the threat, and even outdo us by using tithe money to support their artists? If they find that they need to do so in order to survive, even if it means supporting art that's not self-glorifying, then I think they will quickly do it. And if someone forms a Denomination of Getting Totally Blitzed Every Night, would non-believers be able to put the brakes on it (so at least it wouldn't be recognized as a true denomination of <name> if they continued their ways) or is everyone in the country so far gone that it'd be a hopeless battle? As far as the name, I looked up "How to start a new religion" at eHow.com and their biggest piece of advice was to pick a short, simple, easy to spell name. They point out the awful mistake made by "The Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints" and how they had to go back and ignobly fix this blunder by changing their name to "Mormons". So right now the name with the fewest syllables and easiest spelling is still Uberfaith. We'll need to come up with something catchy using two or fewer syllables. By that logic, we can take over the world by calling it Mip.

Looking at other religions has made me realize that we might want to take a different approach to the initial establishment of Uberfaith. In the past, when religions have spread to new areas through means that do not involve sharp hardware, it seems like they generally did so not entirely by head-to-head competition but by creating hybrids with whatever practices were around at the time. Sometimes with things that seem relatively minor to us now like Christians incorporating pagan rituals in celebrations of Easter and Christmas and Halloween, other times more profound like Chan Buddhism merging with Taoist concepts, or of course Christianity sprouting from Judaism, and Islam deriving from both of the above. So, unless Uberfaith is imposed on the world in a similar fashion as (for example) Christianity was imposed on the American Indians, it might be worthwhile to make Uberfaith rendezvous points at least initially look very much like current churches and mosques and temples. Concepts of the Essence and rejoining it after you die and having your subsequent quasi-existence determined by the degree to which you achieved your Potential through Acts of Legacy are not so inconsistent with religions as they exist now; hybrids incorporating Uberfaith over a background of traditional faith don't seem too difficult to imagine. The main things that would differentiate the Uberfaith variety from the garden variety are (1) the Uberfaithers' commitment to listening to non-believers and (2) Uberfaith's encouragement for its members to try out different denominations every few years. One of the requirements for being an Uberfaith-approved denomination worth visiting is that you must actively encourage your members to go out and visit other denominations. The first point would have the effect of making the Uberfaithers more moderate compared to the traditional worshipers and would already have a positive impact on humanity by eliminating some of their most egregious practices (and hopefully make the Uberfaith versions more palatable to a wider audience and better able to compete). The second would make Uberfaith denominations evolve at a much faster rate by increasing the frequency of natural selection – from being practically nil currently if people generally stay in the faith they were born into, to having a half-life of a couple of years if an Uberfaith denomination is poorly adapted. It wouldn't be ideal for the Uberfaith denominations to carry vestigial superstition and dogma from their parent faiths (even if non-believers do eliminate practices that cause social problems) so we would want to get rid of them as fast as possible. We could start off with a variety of denominations ranging from those that are practically the old religions except with a commitment to listen to non-believers and have their members visit other denominations, to those that are practically all Uberfaith without any residual old religion, so combined they can both convert people who still need to cling to their old faiths and allow people to leave them completely for Uberfaith if they wish. We would want to see people gradually moving from the former to the latter. I'm not sure whether we need to try to engineer mechanisms to do so into Uberfaith, or if it would be safe to assume that the high rate of natural selection from periodic denomination changes would gradually push them that way regardless. Discuss! If this approach is adopted, it would make the name Ontaporism much more apropos.

I suspect that people who have seen this thread earlier on know that a game had begun a while ago, and probably haven't been following it to see that it's now over and we're waiting for sign-ups. A new thread may be in order. And while we're at it: If you want to try to take the game to an even more difficult level, how about making it 3-D so we're building cubes instead of squares? A sort of trivial example of a 4x4 x1 layer deep game board would be: Top lids Boxes Bottom lids + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Where the top and bottom lids show the layers where you would inset a plane to be the lid of the cube. After a few moves it might look like this Top lids Boxes Bottom lids + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +--+--+ + + + + + + XX | | | XX XX + + + + + + + +--+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + XX | + + + + + + + +--+ + + + + + + The box in the middle-upper-right that has all four sides in place hasn't been scored yet because it doesn't have a top lid. Eventually they could start scoring boxes like so Top lids Boxes Bottom lids + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +--+--+ + + + + + + XX XX |Me|Me| XX XX + + + + + + +--+--+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +--+ + + + + + + XX |Yu| XX + + + + + + + +--+ + + + + + + The only thing I don't like about this way of drawing the game board is that if we wanted to make a 4x4x3 game volume, we would have to make a mosterous Top lids Top boxes Top-Middle lids Middle boxes + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Mid-Bottom lids Bottom boxes Bottom lids + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + A more compact alternative would be to include the lids in the drawing of each layer of boxes. If there's a top lid in place draw a ^^, if there's a bottom lid in place draw a __, and if both the top and bottom lids are in place but the box hasn't been scored yet draw a ==. And of course if the box has been scored then draw initials, which would also mean that both lids are in place. The two potential problems with that approach are: you have to be very careful to keep the lids accounted for on both adjacent levels when you add them, and I'm not sure if the following would be too illegible Top layer Middle layer Bottom layer +--+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + |^^ __ == + + + + + + + + + + + +--+--+ + == __ ^^ == |__ ^^| +--+ + + + + + + + + + +--+ + + __ ^^ |^^| | + + + + + +--+--+ + + + +--+--+ + |__ ^^ + + + + + + + +--+--+ + + + + +

Re: new name. I thought Eucredism or "good belief" would be in keeping with the point of the thread. Unfortunately, it sounds a lot like Euclid. That would be a good thing in my book, but I've found that the masses (who we're trying to sell this to) generally view math less favorably than I do. *sigh* Keeping our audience in mind, if I had to decide between Aletheian and Ontaporism based solely on how pretty the word sounds, I think Aletheian has more of a ring to it. Unfortunately, Wikipedia says it's also the name of Christian progressive / melodic death metal band . Ontaporism's intended etymology is more consistent with what we're going for, but as seeksit noted it can be misinterpreted. Either way, we'll be able to tell Bran that we've done away with Uberfaith. Maybe he'd be willing to convert then. Re: Grayven's post. "Acts of Legacy", I like that a lot better than "karma". At least to my ears, "karma" has a bit of state-of-mind flavor to it. Calling it "Acts" makes the believers understand unambiguously that they have to actually do something useful with their lives. But "Truth" with a capital T, do you really want to put that in the hands of the religious masses? The idea of "Potential" I like. One of the problems with a strictly Acts of Legacy view is that if you're born in a slum, abandoned, and have to claw your way out of the gutter, then you're going to have a hard time advancing the state of humanity... and those are the people who most need to have a sympathetic religion. Saying that your goal is to make the most out of whatever Potential you're dealt would even the field. I realize that what I just said has little or nothing to do with what you originally intended, but that's the way it goes, especially when discussing nebulous topics. Re: neoplatonism. While neoplatonism is quite similar to what we're getting at with Uberfaith, there's still one big difference: neoplatonism (and for that matter Buddhism as well) inherently seem to promote asceticism as vital to achieving oneness with God, sort of "losing oneself" in the process. With Uberfaith, the followers can party down all they want as long as they still do useful stuff. Perhaps there's a way to use some of their ideas without also accepting the notion that indulgence in the material world is the source of all evil. I agree with octopuppy, the thing about the Essence being beyond existence is just golden. I've been considering how the religion formerly known as Uberfaith would spread initially. I think I'll recant my fable about Obama turning water into beer: it would unnecessarily cause problems with converting the Muslim world. So to replace it, As Obama attended the funeral of the Uberfaith ninja who was slain by Chuck Norris, the mother of the deceased approached him and inquired "For what has my son lived? Here he lies dead, and for what purpose?" Obama replied "Your son did good things for those around him. He was ever honest and reliable, and many of those he taught have ventured out and prospered. Few deeds are more highly esteemed than education; through his Acts of Legacy he has doubtless achieved harmony with the Essence." Unmoved by this, the woman retorted "Can you not see that the pursuit of the Essence has brought him only ruin? He now lies dead." As she began to weep, Obama comforted her by saying "We are all part of the Essence and our identity is a passing thing, imprinted on our loved ones and our actions. But when we die, we dissipate into a beautiful happy vague bliss where our identity disappears, but it doesn't matter because all our Essence carries on and retains all the beauty it attained when it was us." The woman held her tears for a moment to ask "Does that mean that he's still alive?" To this he answered "Although he is no longer the individual you knew, he does live on as part of the Essence, and his actions in this world are etched into eternity and his continued existence." With this the mother held back her tears. Although not fully understanding what awaited her son, she was confident that his actions were not in vain.

1. GMaster479 (Orange) 2. Andromeda (Blue) 3. plasmid (plaid, since there aren't any colors in code boxes anyway ) 4.

I wasn't very enthusiastic about Theosophy. Perhaps it's just because of the way it was presented on Wikipedia. But I would avoid using the logo that, to an audience today, would seem like a Jewish-Nazi-Islamic-Ancient Egyptian hybrid. More important, it had a lot of seemingly unnecessary theology about reincarnation as inanimate objects and various other species before reaching human, as well as development of humans through seven stages, including a sexless species on a lost continent . But you mean to say that they only ask you to accept whatever ideas seem valuable? I'd hesitate to go THAT far with Uberfaith. I'd still like the denominations to have some degree of power to keep the masses in line, and competition between denominations and oversight by nonbelievers will hopefully take care of weeding out deleterious practices. Neoplatonism, at least in its description of God (the Being) and the rest of the universe, seems a little more like what we're going for. It might be worth stealing adapting some of the Neoplatonistic ways of explaining the Being and human existence, simply because they seem sort of similar to (but are even more opaque than) what we had been coming up with. I'd have to read it a few more times before I get enough of a handle on that stuff to try to reproduce it though, and I'm not yet sure if adapting it would introduce more unsubstantiated stuff without necessarily gaining anything in return. I could live with octopuppy's approach of saying you just live one life and then go to some sort of nirvana-like experience with the Essence that depends on your actions during life. Most Holy Doctrine The Essence that permeates all things has subtle yet profound effects that shall not herein be fully explained. In order to help understand the Essence as it applies to human lives, though, it is useful to think of concepts such as karma and eternal life existence with the Essence. Karma may be earned with the following acts: Help others, be generous, be reliable. Do not harm others, steal, or lie. Do not place your faith in false gods. Find something that you're good at that will benefit society and do it. Learn throughout your childhood, and fulfill your potential as an adult. The nature of your eternal life existence with the Essence is determined by your karma. Believers in false gods suffer in hell. Those who believe but lack karma have modest contentment. Those whose karma is great enjoy utter bliss. It is fit that there be many denominations of Uberfaith, for not all people are alike, and diversity helps humanity flourish. The denominations shall each have their own customs and ways of harmonizing with the Essence. Sincere proponents of the Essence are welcome, but those that falsely claim Uberfaith shall be decried by the other denominations and spurned as heretics. As it is important for people to each find their unique role in the harmony of the Essence, it is fit for them to visit other denominations from time to time and experience their ways, and thus find their place in the world. As it is important to have many denominations, so it is important to have people outside Uberfaith who are most fit to view it objectively and dispassionately. These outsiders that understand the world through mankind's endeavors are not to be despised but welcomed, for they offer a unique perspective and often seek to advance humanity as the followers do. But beware those outsiders that cling to ideas of gods, for they worship illusions of their imaginations that may guide them to decay. Such people should be brought into the Uberfaith to understand how to harmonize with the Essence. If the Central Dogma of Uberfaith is pretty much finished, then we could start thinking about what some initial denominations might look like. For that, we could definitely use concepts from a lot of the current religious movements.

Does that mean we can't take part in today's festivities? For those of you living in the United States - the home of separation of church & state - I'd like to wish you all a happy "National Day of Prayer". CNN story.

Along those lines, if you ever get asked the question "Do these pants make me look fat?" and you know you're going to get in trouble no matter how you answer, you might as well do something to deserve the punishment you're about to get.

Actually, that's pretty close what I had in mind as being the "real" explanation. If that's allowable, then we might just be splitting hairs. How would you feel about having him say that, and then all of the followers sit around kind of perplexed trying to figure out what he just said. One of them asks "Uh, so that means we live forever as part of the Essence, and our actions here affect our existence in the Essence, right?" And he replies "No." Then after considering a moment, he adds "But such a crude approximation is not completely INcorrect either, and would guide you toward the correct course of action. If that is the only way for you to understand it, then it will do." If that seems like it'd be going too far, then I guess we can just stick with the vague description. According to WhiteHouse.gov, the administration seems to consist of president, vice president, cabinet, plus the first and second lady. That comes out to 25 if we count Obama!