Sunday, November 11, 2012

The Re-construction of Religion

So, I have stumbled upon a website titled Open Source Religion. This is a social media website subscribing to the belief that religions are no longer viewed as strict belief systems, where one draws their beliefs solely from that source. Instead, people can take their beliefs from multiple sources and different religions. 

According to the statement of a founder of the site,  Sidian Jones:
"in this day and age there is a massive movement of people who are “modularizing” beliefs. What this means is that religions no longer have a strict homogeneity of beliefs, but rather are being treated as sources from which to draw ones beliefs, even across multiple religions.
Imagine 100 years ago someone saying that they are “Christian with Buddhist leanings.”; practically unheard of. There was strict boxing of what beliefs belong with what group. These days you are only a stones throw from anyone mixing beliefs like “Salvation Through Jesus” and “Karma”.
Having established this philosophy, I wanted to provide a platform for the Open Source Religion community to digitally interact with, and document all these beliefs and their relationships." (Quote found from this source)
I am sympathetic to this belief, for in an era of post-modernism, and relativity, viewing any one religion as completely objective and whole could be considered an outdated concept. However, at the same time, I am unsure of how much I like the idea rifling through various religions and picking and choosing what they want to believe. It seems to go against the very idea of a religion, in the sense that you need to either completely accept it as truth, or not at all. It seems to me to be a kind of religious relativism. I wonder what this will imply for how religion will be treated in the future.

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