The other day a Jehovah's witness stopped by my house and offered me a tract - I said, "No thanks, I'm in the Jehovahs Witness Protection Program", and politely shut the door.

I wonder how long she stood there trying to figure out what I meant.

I'm not sure what I'd do should a Jehovah's Witness show up on my doorstep. It's been so long, I think they have our house blacklisted. (Could it be the year-round Halloween decorations? The only evidence that they have been nearby was a little book about god or creation or something, left in our mailbox a few months ago. We threw it in the recycling.) If they showed up this weekend, I'm thinking that I might have one of the following reactions, depending on my state of mind:

• If I know ahead of time that there are Witni-like entities approaching the porch, I could let them knock and wait about .2 seconds for my doggie Booda to start barking. Then I'd start barking too. They'd probably see us through the curtains. This might be a good reception for *any* door-to-door salespersons.
• I might try (hopelessly) to convert them to a very different religion, such as Old Norse Paganism, new Discordianism, or Apatheism. That might be fun. But then they might come back the next weekend. Ick.
• I could yell, very loudly, "Everybody hide! It's the Jehovah's Witnesses!" and then run around the house frantically "looking" for a hiding place.
• Here's one I read on a joke board :"Answer every one of their questions with 'What do you mean by that?' This might take a while, but you and your loved ones can have fun placing bets on how long it takes for them to leave."
• I might indulge myself in a little game of CheezWiz.

I used the Religion Selector in two ways. First I took the quiz paying close attention to my current personal dis-beliefs. Then I took it again, this time plugging beliefs from my fantasy religion (what I want the universe to be like) into my answers. Here is a graph of the combined results (I did the graph myself; Speakout.com lists the religions and your compatability scores).

I think Unitarian can be ignored; I feel it's a sort of catch-all salad bar religion. It's going to be at the top of a lot of people's lists.

Last month I was explaining to My friend toK the general ideas of apatheism. She grabbed the bait and took it much farther than it should probably go. "We should start a Church of Apatheism!" she said. Immediately the ideas started flooding in, mostly due to a silliness brought unto us by a profound lack of sleep. It's probably one of those concept cults that I wouldn't mind turning into a reality (that is, actually trying to make converts), partly because the age old question asked by many religious leaders immediately came to mind: "I wonder if we could make any money off this religion?"

My other thoughts lately have been about various ramblings by Kory, usually while we're walking through the woods. Kory has a mechanistic approach to, well, practically everything, but also in his ideas of personal identity. I hope he writes an article about his thinkings, because nothing I write will do them justice. Suffice it to say that he makes very logical philosophical arguments that lead up to this: If there are an infinite number of universes, all slightly different from each other, then there are an infinite number of people who have your exact memories and experiences. This means that when you die in one universe, in another an exact copy of you, with all memories intact, continues to live. So in a very real sense, you would never die. This is not a nice thought, because it means that in such a paradigm all of us will go through hell and back, suffering and reveling for eternities. Eek. Maybe more on that later.

On the contrary, I think it has everything to do with religion. The key is to realize that religion has (at least) two major components.

One the intellectual confrontation of the great unanswerable questions, like "are we alone?" and "what comes after life?" and "who's in charge? and "is she watching right now?"

The second is a spiritual or emotional sensation. For example, a feeling of being a part of the world,  or of being guided by an external force...or simply the emotional shock of understanding how deep those intellectual questions really are, and how far you are from answering them.

For example, I was recently flipping through a biology textbook, looking for interesting microphotographs. Reading a few sections, I was struck again by the incredible machine-like efficiency of living things. Consider the
ribosome, which reads DNA sequences and builds corresponding protein molecules, which then carry out various tasks in the cell. Well, ribosomes in some life forms are as small as 55 proteins plus three molecules of ribosomal RNA (which are big--they account for more than half its weight). It marches along a piece of DNA like a zipper pull, building up a chain of proteins by grabbing the ones with the right labels stuck to them, cutting the finished product loose at the end-of-file mark. I don't know what that says about the existence of God (though if she does exist, it says she's quite a hacker), but...well, it's staggering. It provokes awe (an overwhelming feeling of reverence, fear, etc., according to my dictionary).

So to me, the Fuller quote is speaking about the relationship between these two components of religion.

Footnote: The other things that may be critical elements of religion include: a moral code; rituals; community; guilt....

But what sort is this God? First he maliciously refused Adam from eating of the tree of knowledge, and, secondly, he said "Adam, where are you?" God does not have foreknowledge? Would he not know from the beginning? And afterwards, he said, "Let us cast him out of this place, lest he eat of the tree of life and live forever." Surely, he has shown himself to be a malicious grudger! And what kind of God is this? For great is the blindness of those who read, and they did not know him. And he said, "I am the jealous God; I will bring the sins of the fathers upon the children until three (and) four generations." And he said, "I will make their heart thick, and I will cause their mind to become blind, that they might not know nor comprehend the things that are said." But these things he has said to those who believe in him and serve him!

(from the Nag Hammadi texts, Testimony of Truth)

"Hey, I went to church every week in high school. I sang in the choir."

"I know. That's exactly the problem. Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds."

In case you need a religio-census (or as close as you can get to one these days) www.adherents.com has some estimates for all of the major religions. The site also has an incredible amount of the world's religions indexed and briefly described. You know it's an incredible amount when they include Discordianism.

I can't say this with absolute certainty, but you seem to be describing something that is eerily similar to what I've started to experience lately whilst walking amongst the oaks.  I don't feel that I could pass on such experiences to others either (I'm not sure I want to--it would feel like religious advertisement).  My reasons for saying this are a little different from yours though.  It seems to me that words serve as a poor medium to express concepts and experiences that lie fully in the emotional-intuitive realm.  Words are fine for expressing "concrete" events that register as sensory experience or for expressing ideas that deal with logic and "linear" thought.  But emotion, passion, and "gut feeling" frequently are too slippery and varied to nail down with the stroke of a pen (or keyboard).  There are things I feel which words haven't yet been invented for.  To say that, "it seems as though the forest speaks to me" is to loose the heart of the experience.

"Some mon just deal wit' information. An' some mon, him deal wit' the concept of truth. An' den some deal wit' magic. Information flow aroun' ya, an truth flow right at ya. But magic, it flow t'rough ya"

-Nernelly, Jamaican Bush Doctor

On a somewhat tongue in cheek related vein, Fade to Black put up a funny parody: the most popular religions rated by Consumer Reports. Since they wanted to use impartial judges, they picked "South American Aborigines."

A man was killed in a car crash. Upon waking, he found his grandfather standing over him offering to take his hand. His grandfather looked just like he had remembered him from his youngest days. 

"Where are we Grandfather?"

"This is heaven."

As the man looked around he saw all manner of people, they walked past a smiling Buddhist monk, he saw a Shi-ite holy man laughing and talking with a Hassidic Rabbi. Over in the trees he saw a Wiccan and a Navajo Medicine man. But something inescapable seemed odd.

Finally, they came to a high wall; he could hear singing from the other side. "Grandfather," he asked, "what is this?"

"Shhh not so loud, it's the Christians... they think they are the only ones here."

How many new (to the US) religions should we accomodate if each one brings along public demonstrations like these?  I don't like the idea of infringing on anyones rights and I certainly would never want to force only 4 religions on people, but where can we draw a line so religious organizations aren't just wacko cults taking advantage of 'religious' status to have big bonfires or smoke dope or walk naked in the street...?

OK, first of all, Christianity *is* a wacko cult. Secondly, *all* religions, regardless of wackiness, are to be treated equally. If we were conservative enough to follow some of our founding fathers' ideas, no religion would have precedence over the others. Thirdly, the Wiccan religion is gaining enough popularity that there is a significant population, significant enough to demand recognition and significant enough to scare the Bejeezus out of people like Sen. whatsisname who are superstitious and afraid of "witches". Fourthly, when people are finally allowed to walk naked on the street and smoke dope, life will be incredibly more fantastic than it is at the present left-over puritan level that it is stinking of. End of rant.

The military should either accept that there are other religions and allow their mumbo jumbo, or deny the right of "acceptable" (tr. tolerated by the christian monopoly) religions and stop allowing *all* practices (including the christian mumbo jumbo) on military bases.

"The ultimate end of any ideology is totalitarianism. Today, the religious right and the academic left seem to be in some kind of competition to brutalize the gene pool. As agents of homogenization, both sides are committed to institutionalized mediocrity. They want to re-create the world in their image, and re-create society to fit the contours of their fears."

-- Tom Robbins

"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering."

-- Buckminster Fuller

The main problem I have with funerals is the advertisements. Some minister, often one who barely knew the deceased, will stand up and practically ignore whoever the funeral is for in the first place. Instead he'll talk about heaven, Jesus, faith, God, blah blah. I want to hear people's memories of our Dear Departed, not advertisements.

Whenever I hear someone say "Life's not fair" I am forced to comment, "compared to what?" Life is a system with so many variables and so much form; it is impossible to cheat Life or be cheated by Life. To say that "Life is not fair" implies that we are competing in some way against Life. I don't think that is possible, when we are so much a part of the game. It's like saying, "Chess isn't fair to the pawn."  Likewise, I find it difficult to listen to people blaming their fortune or fallout on God. If God is so incomprehensibly part and parcel of even more than space-time, how can we do anything but trust It to be the way It is? I doubt very much that God punishes (or rewards). It is too primitive a concept, punishment. Perhaps it is better to say that "the Almighty Something delivers."