Yahgahn reveres science as its highest spiritual duty.
The following is cut and pasted from my response to this poll.
My religion/spirituality is one I came up with for a series of novels and stories of mine, with a few Earth deities thrown into the mix on the side. I don't know whether it counts as a religion or not, even though it's a religion for the aliens who practice it in the stories (a religion that not only doesn't have a problem with science, but actually holds science in high regard; they even change their theology if something science finds contradicts something they believed. They also literally worship knowledge, wisdom, and ideas. They require all their believers to learn how to read. And the greatest blasphemy in their religion is destroying libraries, books, or art).
The deities in it... I don't know if they count as higher powers or not. Certainly some of the deities created the universes, but others just represent things and don't really have any power. And part of the theology is that all people and things are part of Kohraindehr (their highest Deity), and as such are gods in their own right, gods experiencing life as mortals.
As to an afterlife, people who die go to whatever afterlife they think they should go to, for as long as they think they should be there, and then possibly reincarnate if they so desire. There are other options as well.
As to growing up... Mom is a new-ager (and has been, as long as I've known her) and Dad is some kind of spiritual agnostic, last I knew. He believes *something* exists beyond this life, but doesn't have any beliefs about its nature.
For the last question, I didn't answer because I didn't know what to put. I don't reject religion, I just wish people would actually believe what their holy book actually says. It's amazing to me how many people don't realize Jesus was a hippy and a liberal who hated rich people and gave away free health care. It's also amazing that people who call themselves Christians believe in the Ten Commandments, when Jesus replaced ALL the old rules with the One Commandment: Love thy neighbor as thyself.
This was cross-posted from http://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1059268.html
You can comment either here or there.
My religion/spirituality is one I came up with for a series of novels and stories of mine, with a few Earth deities thrown into the mix on the side. I don't know whether it counts as a religion or not, even though it's a religion for the aliens who practice it in the stories (a religion that not only doesn't have a problem with science, but actually holds science in high regard; they even change their theology if something science finds contradicts something they believed. They also literally worship knowledge, wisdom, and ideas. They require all their believers to learn how to read. And the greatest blasphemy in their religion is destroying libraries, books, or art).
The deities in it... I don't know if they count as higher powers or not. Certainly some of the deities created the universes, but others just represent things and don't really have any power. And part of the theology is that all people and things are part of Kohraindehr (their highest Deity), and as such are gods in their own right, gods experiencing life as mortals.
As to an afterlife, people who die go to whatever afterlife they think they should go to, for as long as they think they should be there, and then possibly reincarnate if they so desire. There are other options as well.
As to growing up... Mom is a new-ager (and has been, as long as I've known her) and Dad is some kind of spiritual agnostic, last I knew. He believes *something* exists beyond this life, but doesn't have any beliefs about its nature.
For the last question, I didn't answer because I didn't know what to put. I don't reject religion, I just wish people would actually believe what their holy book actually says. It's amazing to me how many people don't realize Jesus was a hippy and a liberal who hated rich people and gave away free health care. It's also amazing that people who call themselves Christians believe in the Ten Commandments, when Jesus replaced ALL the old rules with the One Commandment: Love thy neighbor as thyself.
This was cross-posted from http://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1059268.html
You can comment either here or there.