A Pratchett definition of Time

So I know we have passed our discussion of time, but I have been doing some personal reading (which normally doesn't result in good outcomes), and one book I read was Terry Pratchett's book Thief of Time. This fantasy book takes place on the Discworld, which is a world that floats on the back of 4 elephants which rest on the back of a giant turtle. The plot revolves around a few monks and the granddaughter of the anthropomorphic personification of death who try and stop these beings who are trying to stop time in order to make the universe more orderly. The plot was delightfully comic and absurd, and laced with philosophical points, such as the idea that wisdom can be found in any situation, and one should never challenge an seemingly innocent old man to a fight unless you want to risk your life.

However, when they discussed the nature of time, Pratchett created a whole philosophical theory of how time works. Pratchett argues that time the force that makes the smallest of particles move from one position, to the next position. In order to do this, the novel claims that the world is destroyed every exact moment, and then recreated in order to create the next. To try to make this more comprehensible, in order to progress from one instant to the next, the world must be destroyed then recreated with the particles in a different position which reflects the movement. Pratchett displays this idea in a humorous and engaging manner, which makes me want to share this fictional construction of time.

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.