The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #111592   Message #2353029
Posted By: Little Hawk
30-May-08 - 11:40 AM
Thread Name: BS: Starting a new religion
Subject: RE: BS: Starting a new religion
"a man in the sky who made everything
knows everything
can intervene in everything
especially if people 'Pray'"

That's a very primitive anthropomorphic concept found in some religions (specially the Big 3 from the Middle East) and a good many religious people, Les. But it's not the only known religious concept out there. There are many other ways of being religious.

Don Firth - Going by what you said about scientology, it doesn't sound like a God-centered religion at all to me. It sounds more like a human-centered creed or philosophy built around venerating a specific prophet (or idealogue) and his works and ideas, the prophet being L. Ron Hubbard. I guess you could call it a religion of a sort...but not one that is about "God", rather one that is about L. Ron Hubbard and his particular method of controlling one's actions and consciousness according to a certain discipline and dogma that he came up with.

There have been many such movements. They are veneration not of some transcendent truth itself, but rather of a specific human being who thinks he HAS that transcendent truth.