THE CHURCH

“For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.”

—Luke 17:21

“Sanctuary at Futura Farms” is the name we gave to our church. Our church is organized under “The Church of the Latter Day Dude”. The religion itself is called Dudeism. It’s a lighthearted approach to spirituality and philosophy that runs parallel with Taoism but is accepting of anyone’s other religious affiliations. We feel that it’s an umbrella that can bring us all in where we can get something done. We can assemble the best aspects of all great religions into one unifying spiritual theory. And then grow as we see fit. Nothing in nature is fixed.

“When I see on the one side the inert bank — for the sun acts on one side first — and on the other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and me — had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about.”

–Henry D. Thoreau

Religion is like the old parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant. We all know something is there. We feel it. We sense it. But we rarely agree on what we believe it is. It is our suggestion that on our road to discovering truth, we work together, respecting that everyone comes from a different viewpoint, and to use that to our advantage in order to come to truth more quickly rather than defending one’s personal perception or belief as the only correct one.

Click here to read the parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant.

“These things I do, you shall do also, and greater.”

—John 14:12

The main difference between our religion and most others, is that ours is participatory and expected to evolve when new things “have come to light, man.” Like science was supposed to do* (more on this subject in footnote below). Instead of a priest standing before the congregation professing to others what they feel is truth, our priests are only conversation facilitators. Our congregation is as empowered as our priests. No one is lesser or greater here.

We all agree on the basics, the golden rule, thou shalt not be a dick, etc. But there are a great many things going on in the world that need discussion, not dogma. So ours is a faith of the people, not a top-down enterprise. God’s already done his part, he gave us life and all we need to live it in grace and beauty. The rest is up to us. Personally, we don’t think God is a male or female; those are mammalian sexual reproduction traits. But humans have personified God for a long time and it’s sometimes easier to say “God” and “He” than “The creative force of the universe” or whatever makes us feel a little less antediluvian or more scientific… “In the parlance of our times.”

We encourage our members to come to Sunday Services, which are held on Sundays from 11 AM to noon. Our Dudeist priest(s) will provide some brief words to remind and reconnect us to source (God), and then open the floor for discussion. Perhaps we discuss topics of the day, address any concerns, plan activities, etc.

Services will be held in the studio. Yoga mats and meditation cushions provided. We will end the service with a brief sound bowl alignment, and then, for those members who have registered for our Jazz Brunch, we will head off upstairs to the dining room for good food and live music. Members who are not attending Sunday Brunch are still encouraged to join us for service.

All proceeds from church activities and events go to the operating costs of the events, the building, and its expenses. If we ever reach the point that we have proceeds above and beyond operating costs, we will invest that back into the church, its members, and its mission; primarily investing in systems to keep us all safe, self-sufficient, and off-grid. The church should be a meeting place and support system in times of crisis.

Our priests all have day jobs and pay taxes for their personal lives beyond the sphere of the church. The church exists for the good of the members, which are our community. When the community is strong and safe and happy, life is good for all. That is our goal.

-Your resident Dudeist Priests, Steve & Elena

-Footnote:

* To explain what we mean by this (“…like science was supposed to”), here is an excerpt from Jed McKenna’s book, Jed McKenna’s Theory of Everything: The Enlightened Perspective.

Science: Our Blind Torchbearers

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about science as a field of exploration is that it is rigidly paradigm-locked and effectively self-exiled from truth…because the infinite cannot be represented in a finite system. Science is a structure and requires the support that only a false paradigm can provide.

There is no physical universe—period, full stop. A ridiculous statement, perhaps, so it should be easy to disprove, but it can’t be disproven. Objective knowledge itself is impossible, meaning that science can never rise above non-probable conjecture. Hence, all science is obviously and inescapably pseudo-science.

We could stop right there, but let’s not.

I would have thought that the modern-day torchbearers in man’s quest for knowledge were graphic novelists and video game designers, but in their book The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow state:

“Philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.”

I suppose Hawking and Mlodinow would rather say that religion is dead, killed by science, but they know that religion is not only not dead, but can still bite, whereas philosophy is effectively toothless. Dumping on philosophy might get you some sour looks at the faculty cocktail party, but dumping on religion could get you set on fire—torchlike, ironically.

Has philosophy ever borne any torch? Centuries ago perhaps, during the, uh, enlightenment maybe, and back in ancient days and in the thoughtful East, but if you walk up to anyone nowadays and ask them to which branch or school of philosophy they subscribe, they probably couldn’t even make up an answer.

Religion, on the other hand, is a defining aspect of life in any society. Even self-possessed atheists reside within a religious ethos from which their rational minds cannot free them, which may be why so many feel the need to self-profess instead of self-shut up.

… Science and religion are the two main denominations of wrong-knowing; peacefully opposed, sometimes engaging in petty Skeptic vs Believer skirmishes, both sects representing a pole while the agnostic majority languishes in equatorial indifference, and a wobbly sort of balance is maintained.

Philosophy should reign over both science and religion, but clocks in as an also-ran because it shies away from extreme skepticism. No amount of skepticism could ever be too extreme. The only way to see what doesn’t burn is to set everything on fire. … everything… burns—everything except the truth of you.

Let’s spare another moment for Stephen Hawking while we’re here. There are valuable insights to be gleaned from just the first sentence of The Grand Design:

“We each exist for but a short time, and in that time explore but a small part of the whole universe.”

That might look like a reasonable statement to most people, but anyone conducting a serious search would view it as an unpardonable offense against honest inquiry. If I had been reading this book back when I was trying to get things figured out for myself, I would have thrown it in the reject pile by the first comma, and the authors with it.

Hawking is our most respected scientific guy, and he claims in this same book that philosophy is dead and that science is running point in mankind’s quest for knowledge. If it wasn’t true that science is bearing the torch for humanity, it would hardly matter, but it is true in the sense that a lot of people believe it. Now here’s Hawking himself, and the very first sentence of his book is poxy with baseless belief presented as unequivocal fact. Our most respected scientific guy is so infected by his own beliefs that he doesn’t know that’s all they are. Half a sentence, that’s all it takes to unmask the blind torch-bearer. And in case you’re keeping score, not-so-dead philosophy just walked haughty science out to the woods and came back alone. Consensus-based pop philosophy may roll over and play dead on command, but extreme skepticism—aka, honest inquiry—gives no quarter and takes no prisoners.