bible – Earthly Religion

Words and The Word

March 16, 2025
Byron Carrier

“I know words,” claimed Donald Trump. “I have the best words.” Does he? His words aren’t fair or intelligent, but they are effective. He does “The Weave,” mixing exaggerated boasts and insults into a random collage of repeated words. “His speeches are pitched as if to nine-year-olds at a fourth-grade level,” wrote the UK's Guardian. “You come away from a Trump speech with a feeling, not an argument." “I love the poorly educated,” he shrewdly boasted. His lies can work better than truths. “A lie…

March 29, 2024
Byron Carrier

Time to Resurrect from Our Cave

January 24, 2012
Byron Carrier

Have you noticed that the three great monotheistic religions of the world are also the three great problem makers in the world? Is God the problem? Does God want these vast forces to wage war with the others? We’re told lately that society has gotten too secular, too wayward, and that we should return to our religions and have more faith. But should we? Haven’t religions often been the source of problems – from stifling knowledge to torturing non-believers? Haven’t religions insisted on preposterous claims…

January 24, 2012
Byron Carrier

It ain’t necessarily so, no it ain’t necessarily so. The things that you’re liable to read in the Bible It ain’t necessarily so. Mathusala lived nine hundred years, yea, Mathusala lived nine hundred years. But who calls that livin’ when no gal will give in to No man what’s nine hundred years. I’m glad to be in a religious tradition where both aspects of this naughty song can be sung in church: the Bible might not be true, and a sex joke. Both…

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The dream of an Earthly Religion…

Earthly: our precious natural earth which allows us our bodies, lives, cultures and future.

Religion: from the old root words religare and religio, meaning “to bind back to the root and be whole again.” This does not assume we need to believe in God or the Bible. Rather, we should be well-related with our own bodies, each other, natural life, and natural existence as it actually is. If there is connection with divinity or God, it is in and through our bodies and beings that we relate primarily, not via scriptures, traditions, rituals, or supposed religious authorities. In short, by religion we mean “relating well with reality.”

The emphasis here is on the earthly. It is not an afterlife or an instead-of-life that interests us. Living well here on earth together does.

While we take our religious perspective and work seriously, we don’t want it to be stuffy. Too often, religions can be alien to the human condition rather than affirming of it. They can be demeaning and demoralizing, dull and bossy, ponderously pretentious. We lean more towards the fun and sexy, natural and lively, human and humane, thoughtful and pertinent.

Reality: the obvious and inescapable stuff of physical existence. We intend to enjoy and tend our lives in these bodies, for our time, in our cultures, for our singular and interrelated ecosystem. There may be more, but there is AT LEAST THIS of which we are born, in which we live, and into which we will die.

God or no-God is not the point; Earth is. Both believers and non-believers are welcome here, for we all share a common source, opportunity, and responsibility: life as it is and could be. This ranges from simply improving one’s own life to your helping save and restore Eden’s, not just to “sustain” it, but veering it to thrive as never before. If you value your life, each other’s, and Earth’s – welcome!

Learn more…

Words and The Word

Easter Earnestness

The Problem of Religion and the Promise of Creation

From Dysfunctional to Funfunctional