Designing a New Religion

TealLeaf said:
Considering that all major religions predict the end of an era and the coming of a new prophet and further considering that we are fast approaching the ultimate carrying capacity of the Earth it seems reasonable to me that a major new religion or philosophy could very well be on the horizon.
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The ultimate carrying capacity of the Earth can increase far beyond what it is now, and here is one way it might happen:

Imagine a world where there are fewer roads but they are double or triple in width, and nobody actually has to go anywhere on a daily basis. Everyone is on the internet. Every community contains a small automated manufacturing facility taking care of most needs (The tech for this exists btw.). Farming and other repetitive tasks are handled by artificial intelligence robots. Food and medicine become freely available, limited only by the incredible amounts of energy our sun pumps out every day.

What would be the earth's carrying capacity then?
 
Dream said:
Imagine a world where there are fewer roads but they are double or triple in width, and nobody actually has to go anywhere on a daily basis. Everyone is on the internet. Every community contains a small automated manufacturing facility taking care of most needs (The tech for this exists btw.). Farming and other repetitive tasks are handled by artificial intelligence robots. Food and medicine become freely available, limited only by the incredible amounts of energy our sun pumps out every day.
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That is an interesting scenario that you laid out.

Dream said:
What would be the earth's carrying capacity then?
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Please do tell.
 
The earth is about 200 Billion square miles and converting only 20% of the sun's light 24-7 from 1/4 of its surface is equivalent to the energy gotten from 10 Billion square miles constantly lighted and 100% converted -- not that much; but it represents enough calories of energy to feed six billion people (our current population) about seven million times every single day.

Seventy percent of earth's surface is ocean, however even some of the light striking the ocean can still be converted for our use. Overall, I'll guess that 20% of the sun's energy on average can be harvested from any given spot (only half the ratio we currently get with the latest electric solar panels). To make up for Earth's rotation of day & night, I only calculate using a fourth of the available light, assuming a mere 5% of all sunlight on Earth is converted for human food production. (At least 1/4 of the earth is getting some sunlight at all times. That is probably less than the true fraction, but I am limited to rough calculations.) Parts of the earth get less light and others more. The rest of the sunlight continues to warm, brighten the earth, invigorate the weather, and run machines.

The Wikipedia says "The Earth receives 174 petawatts (PW) of incoming solar radiation (insolation) at the upper atmosphere. Approximately 30% is reflected back to space while the rest is absorbed by clouds, oceans and land masses. The spectrum of solar light at the Earth's surface is mostly spread across the visible and near-infrared ranges with a small part in the near-ultraviolet." It also says about half of the total 174 Petawatts strikes the ground. (Solar energy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

For simplicity: I will take Wiki's number of 175 petawatts & half it to 87.5 Petawatts that it suggests can reach the ground, then take only 5% of that. I get 4.376 Petawatts. 4.376 Pettawatts all day every 24 hour day converted to Joules is (4.376 x 10^15 Joules/sec) x (86,400 sec/day) or 3.78 x 10^20 Joules of pure energy every day. A food Calorie = 4.1868 Joules, so we're talking about 9.03 x 10^19 Calories available per day to feed people. Going by the USDA food standard of 2,000 Calories per day per person, that is enough calories to feed 4.51 x 10^16 human adults.

I've heard Astronomers say the Sun has enough mass to continue shining like this for 5 billion more years.
 
Dream said:
4.51 x 10^16 human adults.
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So that's your honest answer? Wow.

I'm not going to get into all the outrageous assumptions that you made and the realities that you ignored in coming to that ridiculously inflated number but suffice to say that you are many orders of magnitude off base.

Organizations like the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Health Organization variably estimate the maximum sustainable population of the Earth to be between eight and twelve billion people with their more recent estimates being closer to lower figure.
 
Hi, I am new.:cool:
I have been reading this thread for the last consecutive 2 hours.
Good information demonstration though rarely in favor of the topic.
I am now choosing an avatar. later you will have the chance to absorb my comments.
 
romeo said:
Hi, I am new.:cool:
I have been reading this thread for the last consecutive 2 hours.
Good information demonstration though rarely in favor of the topic.
I am now choosing an avatar. later you will have the chance to absorb my comments.
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Hi Romeo
Welcome to the forum.
You'll have to get used to this happening, we do that a lot here.:D
 
TealLeaf said:
I'm not going to get into all the outrageous assumptions that you made and the realities that you ignored in coming to that ridiculously inflated number but suffice to say that you are many orders of magnitude off base.
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I'm honestly not trying to shoot you down, TealLeaf. Its just that we're no where near earth's population limits. The true limitations we have reached are in our governments and infrastructure. Every time those improve, the population limit goes up. Sometimes they have to go down in order to come up higher - like the stock market. This allows the infrastructure to improve, whereas a large population slows progress. Change has to come in spurts. I agree we are reaching a sort of limit with the infrastructure and govt. we now have but nowhere near the ultimate limit.
 
Thank you for your welcome messages.
I will join the discussion soon. I am too much busy now.
But for the start one of the cornerstones of My Way (it is not a religion) would be "Diversity" and the second one would be "Freedom of Choice" (two different categories).
 
TealLeaf said:
I have read that the Sikh religion's God is sufficiently fuzzy to be simultaneously a monotheistic creator God as well as something that is synonymous with the entirety of the Universe. Of course I have also read that the Sikhs are polytheists that while they believe in and worship one Supreme God also believe that other lesser Gods exist so I am not sure what to believe. I'd love to read their book "The Guru Granth Sahib" to see what they actually have to say and how they say it but it seems impossible to find a hard copy of the thing. (I hate reading things online.)
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Hello all, I just joined to clear things up regarding the Sikhi.

It is untrue that Sikhs believe in lesser gods. Sikhs believe that god is one, god is everything and god is endless. I think people confused the Guru's with gods but Guru means Teacher/Master and Sikh means Learner/Disciple.

To obtain a copy of the Silent Guru the "Guru Granth Sahib Ji." You can pick one up from your local Gurdwara for a small donation. There is an english version available but the one written in maharni is the real deal if you really want to learn about Sikhi without discrepancies. I would like to add that the poetry written in the Guru Granth Sahib requires one to think outside the box to understand the meaning.
 
Anoop said:
Hello all, I just joined to clear things up regarding the Sikhi.

It is untrue that Sikhs believe in lesser gods. Sikhs believe that god is one, god is everything and god is endless. I think people confused the Guru's with gods but Guru means Teacher/Master and Sikh means Learner/Disciple.

To obtain a copy of the Silent Guru the "Guru Granth Sahib Ji." You can pick one up from your local Gurdwara for a small donation. There is an english version available but the one written in maharni is the real deal if you really want to learn about Sikhi without discrepancies. I would like to add that the poetry written in the Guru Granth Sahib requires one to think outside the box to understand the meaning.
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Can you give me an example of what it means to think outside of the box when it comes to interpreting the Guru Granth Sahib?
 
Religion is old so I'm not sure about designing a new religion. A new religious group to suit my tastes
would continue the tradition of having a collection of texts that is considered sacred or very valuable. The publication would be changeable/updatable by owner/users. Personalizing of the texts would be encouraged. The texts that constitute a canon will be discussed and agreed upon by the members of each church canonization group. Churches will engage in public, text based, debates with religious opponents from other churches, and the conversations will be kept in a searchable text archive. Religious Ministers will be members of a church canonization group. Through their ministry they encourage the formation of religious groups willing to adopt the ministry group's most valued traditions.
 
We have so much conflict and confusion due to there being too many stories as to :
1) what we are;
and
2) why we are here/why we exist.

Every religion is differentiated by its own exclusive version or twist to those 2 questions.

Really, there is only one truth and our primary purpose should be to resolve this issue.
Otherwise we are no better than the fiddling caeser who played while his city burned.
Sure it is good to joke around about things....it is healthy.
But we also need to balance that with some seriousness....that is, if we want a brighter future.

Religions serve one of 2 purposes.....
they either liberate/enlighten, or enslave/control.
The choice as to what our future religion will be, ought to be quite simple then.
 
atypican said:
Religion is old so I'm not sure about designing a new religion. A new religious group to suit my tastes
would continue the tradition of having a collection of texts that is considered sacred or very valuable. The publication would be changeable/updatable by owner/users. Personalizing of the texts would be encouraged. The texts that constitute a canon will be discussed and agreed upon by the members of each church canonization group. Churches will engage in public, text based, debates with religious opponents from other churches, and the conversations will be kept in a searchable text archive. Religious Ministers will be members of a church canonization group. Through their ministry they encourage the formation of religious groups willing to adopt the ministry group's most valued traditions.
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Why? To what purpose? To who's benefit? Just more discussion and contemplation of the tenuous musings of those who who have egos so engorged in their own fatuousness they believe they know some higher truth? Fact is humanity has been debating gods and creation for many 1000s of years and all it has done is make institutions rich and provided rulers with a ready supply of pawns to the slaughter. I think its time we evolved beyond the meaningless questions that result from creating gods. All the truths of life and existence are plainly and clearly observable in nature. There are no deeper mysteries. We do not have every answer and we never will. But we should focus the human endeavour on those questions we stand some chance of answering, not the superstitious rot of our neolithic forebears who knew no better. Though perhaps that is the point for the religious, to debate something meaningless.... a kind of intellectual hiding ones head in the sand....or even cowardice.
 
"Why?"

In order to NOT throw the baby out with the bath water.

"To what purpose?"

To show how personally maintaining and overseeing the development of sacred texts is better than wholeheartedly accepting a ready made collection.

"To who's benefit?"

To the benefit of people involved.

"Just more discussion and contemplation of the tenuous musings of those who who have egos so engorged in their own fatuousness they believe they know some higher truth?"

I was thinking more about starting with agreed upon truths, and discussions between peers.

"Fact is humanity has been debating gods and creation for many 1000s of years" (Warring is what comes to MY mind)

"and all it has done is make institutions rich" (define rich)

"and provided rulers with a ready supply of pawns to the slaughter."

(the fruits of worship systems no?)

"I think its time we evolved beyond the meaningless questions that result from creating gods."

Then according to my vision you could articulate and develop a method for that and include it in your collection

"All the truths of life and existence are plainly and clearly observable in nature."

I WISH the obvious was as obvious as it's cracked up to be.

"There are no deeper mysteries."

So no need for deep examination of things? Right! I'll pass on that one

"We do not have every answer and we never will."

But as the saying goes: It's not what we don't know that causes us so much trouble, it's what we know that ain't so.

"But we should focus the human endeavour on those questions we stand some chance of answering, not the superstitious rot of our neolithic forebears who knew no better."

I can't say I disagree. But I must say not every teaching of old is superstitious rot.

"Though perhaps that is the point for the religious, to debate something meaningless.... a kind of intellectual hiding ones head in the sand....or even cowardice."

I am most irritated by those religious traditions that teach that matters involving an afterlife (that not everybody agrees exists) are more important than the life we are certain exists.
 
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