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Even More on God
2007-09-20 19:14:00
In our previous posts Does God Exist? and More on God we discussed how believing in God can help some people and how the Church of Integrity embraces both those that believe in him and those that don't. This post will clarify that statement.When children get scared then it comforts them to have a teddy bear or something of that sort. Adults can also get scared because life is not easy. Adults don't have teddy bears though so instead they seek comfort in an imaginary friend called God. It is indeed a personal god that is generally supposed to be the image of all which is good in this world. We at the Church of Integrity believe that this is something natural and all attempts to somehow outlaw God will be bound to fail.Instead of viewing this believe in God as being a bad thing then we cant to emphasize the good that comes out of believing in God, given certain conditions. The most important condition is that people must understand that they alone are responsible for their actions. ...

Atheism
2007-05-11 00:24:00
In a previous post we talked about on what religion the Church of Integrity is based. The church is not only inspired by the religions mentioned in that post but also on Atheism . We gave a short hint about this relation whe we added the Atheist Blogroll. In this post we'll go more in depth into how atheism influenced us.The atheist movement is on a rise. We believe there are many different reasons why people become atheists. Many are frustrated with how religion seems to bash and pervert science as some religious groups have done with the theory of evolution. In the Church of Integrity we of course base our world view on science so you shouldn't end up with any frustrations like that here. Others are frustrated with fundamentalism which we want to avoid at all costs. Yet others have fundamental issues with many religions because they require unconditional belief. We don't require unconditional belief, in fact we encourage people to question the world around them. Yet others are t...
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Diversity
2007-05-08 20:43:00
We believe that all humans were created equal. Thus you should treat people with due respect no matter their gender, race, appearance etc. This does not mean that we want a uniform population. People are different and in some sense not created equal. Some people are better at sports than others etc. People also look differently, for example have different skin colour. We should celebrate those differences. We should not be scared when we see someone different, on the contrary, we should be excited because we might learn something new about the world from the person. Discrimination is not the right thing to do.It is healthy to travel and get to know people from other countries or a different background than yourself. It helps expand your horizon and helps you do the right thing. In the future we hope to set up a forum in connection with the blog. The forum would be a good place for you to chat with people from other countries in a cheap way (much cheaper than actually having to trave...
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More on God
2007-05-07 22:53:00
In our post Does God Exist we emphasized on the good aspects of believing in God. We don't even mention a strict God like the one shown in the Old Testament of the Bible. The reason is that we believe that positive thinking can help people. Thus we focus on the good, cheerful aspects of the God notion rather than trying to scare people. Of course there will come a time in every persons life where he or she can't help it but be pessimistic but that's where the community comes in. We want to try help people to be optimistic about life and think positive.It is amazing how this notion of God or supreme beings comes up in most religions. Maybe science will one day be able to shed light on that. Perhaps our universal truths take that form, that is, maybe it stems from our notion of right and wrong and God can be viewed as some personification of that. An alternative is to interpret the randomness that created Big Bang as God. There are so many possibilities. We find this fascinating.En...
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Does God exist?
2007-05-06 22:29:00
It is very understandable that people needed the notion of God in ancient times. They were not as safe as we are now since there was no police and their whole existence depended on getting enough food from the crops. Today we can get food whenever we want and the government can tap your phone, look at you through countless security cameras so the only real threat you might feel comes from your own government! Thus it's understandable if people do not feel they need a God.Some quote Pascal as proof that we should believe in God for if God doesn't exist then it doesn't matter what we do but if he exists then depending on whether we are "good" or "bad" then we go to Heaven or Hell. This argument is fundamentally flawed. How do you know what "good" behavior is? This God, is he the God of Christians or someone elses God? Even if God existed then you do not know what he expects from you so in case he exists then you are in a similar situation as if he didn't exist. Why should we focus...
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The Purpose of Life
2007-05-05 19:36:00
Questions like, "What is the purpose of life?", "Why are we here" etc are classical. Some claim that man invented religion to try to answer those questions so we feel it is appropriate here at the Church of Integrity that we at least attempt to address them.Why are we here? We claim it's a result of Big Bang and evolution. That answer is perhaps oversimplified but you can learn more about the development of the Universe from Big Bang by looking up those terms on the internet. Still that answer doesn't fulfill our need for knowledge because it begs the question, "Why did Big Bang happen". To that we have no answer. We hope that science will lead us to an answer. Is it possible that God or some supreme being caused Big Bang. Totally, but for many scientific reasons then it does not seem plausible so we will not be endorsing that view.What is the purpose of life? To help mankind survive. This statement seems rather dull compared to other religions where the goal is to lead a good lif...
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Compassion and Charity
2007-05-04 19:28:00
It's easy to twist words and ideas. Evolution and natural selection are fundamental theories in science and since we use science to explain the world around us then they are fundamental to us too. One could try twisting our religion by saying that natural selection should lead to the conclusion that we should not help those that are less fortunate, no matter whether it's health wise or money wise. That is not the case. In fact this is a fundamental thing and we'll never associate ourselves with anyone that holds those views.In all communities of men then it seems a virtue to help others, it seems to be one of those universal truths. When you weigh that against some deduction from scientific principles then we think it is clear that helping others is the way to go, not some natural selection. Note we are not saying that natural selection is wrong as a scientific theory, we are just saying that we humans should not use it as a guiding light for our lives. Hence we highly recommend ...
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Respect and Tolerance
2007-05-03 07:21:00
The Church of Integrity encourages people to ask questions and think. Thus more than likely we'll have a very diverse group of followers. How is it possible for a diverse group to get along? The only proven way we know of is that people show each other due respect. When you meet someone that is different than you or has different ideas then you should become curious about the persons background, culture and views. We learn by interacting with each other. Refusing to learn or hating on those that are different is not in the spirit of our teachings.One important form of respect that we want to teach is respect for followers of other religions. Learn about their religion for they are part of our cultural heritage as citizens of planet Earth. Even if it is possible to dig out something bad in the teachings of their religion then remember that people are not inherently evil and that in the end, all that matters is how you interpret your religion and what parts of it you emphasize on.Wha...
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Gratitude
2007-05-02 09:44:00
First I want to thank Famous Blogs for giving this blog the Blog of the Day Award.We also want to thank all our readers and visitors for the support. Last but not least we want to thank all those that have commented for their input. We are really happy with the great discussions we've had, not only in the comments on this blog but also on other blogs and forums.To have something good in this post for our readers and to give a bit back to the community then I wanted to point out three blogs.The Astonishing Adventures of Lord Likely is great entertainment, it's one of the gems out there.Marilyn's Non-violent Planet sends a great message around the world.Journey Before Death is the blog of Ernest who has commented quite a few times and been a great supporter of this blog. Thanks Ernest.Tomorrow we'll continue with thought provoking posts on tolerance.
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Atheist Blogroll Added
2007-05-01 09:26:00
Just wanted to let you know that we added the atheist blogroll to the site. That might seem strange to say the least when the site is obviously about our new religion. However if you read the fine print with the atheist blogroll then it's not only for atheists but also for skeptics and freethinkers. To some extent we share the common trait with many atheists that we don't claim to know whether God exists. God or some other supreme being is not central to our religion.Another reason we joined the list is that we believe many people jumped on the atheist bandwagon because they were frustrated with religious groups attacking science and trying to squeeze themselves into politics. The Church of Integrity might appeal to many of those people since we have in some sense outsourced our world view to science and we as a religion want to stay as much out of politics as possible (though we encourage our members to be active on their own terms).In other news then there have been posts floati...
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One Day Blog Silence
2007-04-30 04:23:00
The blogosphere is uniting in remembering the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings and in general all the victims of our worlds. The Church of Integrity will be participating so our silence starts now. This is a good time to reflect on all the evilness in the world and how we can help get rid of it. Violence is not an answer. Tuesday, May 1st, we'll resume back to normal schedule. Read more about this event at OneDayBlog Silence .com.

Fundamentalism
2007-04-29 09:08:00
When other religions were established then I'm not sure they anticipated the movement we call fundamentalists today. No matter how big the Church of Integrity becomes then we hope that our followers will not become fundamentalists. Never ever shall you read through our teachings and try to twist them and turn into something bad and then point to our teachings as some sort of proof. Everything we teach requires you to use your best judgment and it requires you to think. Never ever follow someone blindly. Our fundamental teaching, "Do what is right", forces you to think independently and that is what we want to teach you, think for yourself and question the world around you. Never think that the religion is merely based on what we write here on the blog, different interpretations are good for discussion but should never divide our followers. Those that interpret our statements differently than you are not bad and should not be persecuted for thinking on their own. We hope that the co...
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Culture: Book of the Week
2007-04-28 22:37:00
As we have stated before then the cultural heritage of humankind is very important to us here at the Church of Integrity. Culture makes you think. It raises important moral questions and contains lessons about ethics. Culture is something we want to cherish and educate people about. Thus we've decided to start a Book of the Week section on the blog. We'll point your attention to some books that we enjoyed. By no means does this imply that you must read them to be a follower, absolutely not. We just want to share those books with you and hopefully you'll not be disappointed if you read them. Culture is much more than books though. We plan on making posts about other aspects of culture but there is limited space on the blog and we simply want to start of with the books because they are a rather inexpensive and universal way of enjoying culture (as opposed to art galleries that are rather local for example). This first column and suggestion might be up for a bit more than a week, si...
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So what is the right thing to do?
2007-04-28 06:13:00
"Do what is right" begs the above question. Here at the Church of Integrity we really appreciate this aspect of our basic statement. It forces you to think. Already we've been asked quite a few times how people are supposed to decide what the right thing to do is. The answer to those questions were perhaps a bit hidden in the original foundational post so in this post we'll focus exclusively on the answer to those questions.First of all then the world is not simple and a simple answer like "Do what is right" obviously can not answer all your questions. One of the reasons we use it is that it forces the question in the title of this post. It makes you think and immediately engages you. We feel religion should reach out to the people and this is our way to reach out to the people and engage them in important ethical questions.As we use it then the phrase "Do what is right" refers first of all to ethical rules that we consider universal in some sense. For example most people agree th...
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On what religion is the Church of Integrity based?
2007-04-27 06:46:00
No, the Church of Integrity is not based on Christianity. However we are proud to say that many of our teachings come from Christianity and other religions. In this post we'll look into what religions influence the Church of Integrity.First we want to make it absolutely clear that the Church of Integrity is a new religion. The founders however were raised up as Christians and thus the Church of Integrity contains a lot of teachings from Christianity, simply because Christianity contains ethical teachings that are considered universal truth. Examples are that you should not kill a man and you should treat others like you want them to treat you. The ethical teachings from the church are still being announced on this blog and in fact then they are always being revised and new teachings being added because a church needs to stay up to date and specifically talk about what concerns people at that time. Thus we'll start with many good examples from Christianity and we hope to expand ou...
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Is religion a good idea?
2007-04-26 06:14:00
No, this is not a post on whether religion is good or not. I had something entirely different in mind. The movie Dogma said that religion was just a good idea. We agree with that philosophy here at the Church of Integrity.Religion is just a good idea in the sense that religion is an idea that guides you in life but it's only a good idea in the sense that it's eventually you that make the decisions and it's eventually you that is responsible for your life, not some dogma.Furthermore then religion is just a good idea in the sense that we all take religion a bit differently. Just look at all the forks in Christianity. Thus we think that religion is a very personal thing. Thus in the Church of Integrity we don't want to force people too much to do certain things. For example we won't tell you that you'll go to Hell if you don't pray. If you don't feel like praying then don't pray. Same goes with going to church, thinking about the religion etc. We all approach these things in d...
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Why does this blog have advertisements?
2007-04-25 19:30:00
The story of when Jesus cleared out the merchants is one that we agree with here at the Church of Integrity. We just don't feel it works out that we try to get our message out there and then have someone else try to steal your attention (the advertiser). So in general then you should not view the fact that we have an advertisement as some indication that the religion will be littered with advertisements.The reason we have the advertisement here is that we want to make money to be able to spread the religion even further. So we have these conflicting opinions, on the one hand we need the money but on the other hand we prefer not to mix up the religion with advertisements. We hope the solution we chose is the right thing to do. The advertisement is safely kept to the side and clearly labeled as an advertisement. I hope it wont distract you dear readers from the points we try to make.So what do we want to do with the money? First we'd like to buy a domain, both to secure it and it wi...
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Does Hell exist?
2007-04-22 19:08:00
It is a natural question to ask what happens if you do not do the right thing. Why shouldn't you just go out there and kill someone? Our answer is that because of evolution we have these basic notions of what is right and what is wrong. If you go against them then you and those who follow you will probably end up extinct. We say probably because it is impossible to tell how evolution will happen but the fact that humans have had wars, killed and done many wrong things and yet we still cherish these fundamental values shows that going against them is heading for a slippery slope.Hence the Church of Integrity cherishes universal values like repenting and asking for forgiveness. Additionally then some of us claim that you feel better when you do the right thing, but that is not substantiated with any scientific experiments.Believing in God can be a good thing, it can help people that feel bad. Hence we suggest that as an alternative. Hell on the other hand is something we don't care ...
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Why follow your teachings?
2007-04-21 08:15:00
Other religions base their commandments or teachings on the word of God. We in the Church of Integrity say that the reason we should do the right thing is because that will help us survive. It is somehow wired into us that we should try survive. The survival instincts in humans just as animals are quite amazing. So why should we do the right thing, treat others like we want to be treated ourselves etc? It is because during all these years of evolution then it has emerged as common wisdom to do those things. They can help you survive and can help the human race in general. When we help each other and work together then we can accomplish amazing feats like the open source movement has shown. You can go to very primitive examples of what happens if you start killing others or if you treat others badly but in general then you'll get punished for it or feel bad about it. Of course there will exist examples that might in some way disprove this general rule but they are few and far betwee...
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Virginia Tech
2007-04-20 20:53:00
We at the Church of Integrity send our condolences to the victims and their families. The families probably don't know what to do now, let alone knowing what the right thing to do is! They need our help. No matter which religion you come from then I hope you pray for or send good thoughts to the survivors and the families. Better yet, if you know someone connected to the tragedy then talk to them. They need the support of those that can think somewhat clearly at the moment.
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Is the church a house?
2007-04-20 07:43:00
No, like in Christianity then the Church of Integrity views the church as being the people. We put a big emphasis on the community. Let's look at two examples that highlight how important the community is.Most of the time then luckily things go well. Many people tend to forget their faith during that time. In the Church of Integrity we emphasize that people help others when they are themselves doing good. There are many ways to help. You can donate money to charity, you can help your neighbors and many other things. One thing we specifically point out is that we all have to deal with problems or we don't know what the right thing to do is. When we feel that way then it's great to be able to talk to someone. Offer to help by listening and talking about such things. It is love thy neighbor in pratice. Thus the community is here to help and that is very important.During services then preaching is a good way to get a message across. We firmly believe though that the church should off...
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Politics and Religion
2007-04-18 04:07:00
Just like with education then we believe that the church and politics should be seperated. The church will strive to stay away from political discussion but we recommend that our people take part in the discussion and help shape the society they live in.So far we've established that the Church of Integrity wants to keep some distance between the religion on the one hand and education and politics on the other hand. Of course life isn't that simple. We preach for a certain way of living. One of the foundations of our world view is science. Of course if let's say other religions would attack science in our public schools then the Church of Integrity might be forced to either create our own schools and/or fight for science in the public schools. Similarly if other religions try to take over in politics and lets say ban our religion then we might have to get involved in politics.The idea is though that the church as an institution distances itself from those matters. Whatever happens...
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Ancient Myths?
2007-04-16 09:10:00
Most religions have ancient myths or stories that relate to their prophets, creation of the universe etc. In the Church of Integrity we claim we got one of the best stories in some sense. Since following the scientific method is central to our world view then our ancient story is that of the universe, from Big Bang until today. We are constantly adding to the story and finding out more about our past. There study of the universe is very important because it answers questions that we all want answers to like how was the world created and studying history, for example mistakes like wars, helps us stay away from those mistakes in the future and do the right thing.As seen above then science and history are very important to us but does this mean that we ignore the ancient myths of the other religions? Not at all. Cultural in general, whether it is recent novels or sagas of old can tell us a lot about people. Culture can challenge us. Always challenging your view of the universe is impor...
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Frequently Asked Questions
2007-04-15 09:57:00
This post will attempt to summarize the various questions you might have about the religion. The post will be updated as more information is posted on the blog.Q: What is the foundation of the religion?A: The foundation of the religion has been posted and is in a simplified version that you should always do what is right. See more details in the the foundation post that we link to in this answer.Q: What is you stance on praying?A: Praying is good.Q: How should we educate our children?A: There should be some distance between education and religion.Q: Is the Church of Integrity a political power?A: No, we claim that the church as an institution should distance it from politics.
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Prayer
2007-04-15 09:19:00
Do you need to pray in the Church of Integrity? No you do not.Is it ok to pray? Yes it is.Just as believing in the existence of God is not central in our teachings then we claim that praying to God has not harmed anyone and as long as you are aware of the fact that there is no tangible evidence for the existence of God then praying should not harm you. In fact we claim that praying can do you good. It can help you focus on what you want to achieve and help you focus on what is important to you in life. For example who hasn't heard stories about people about to die that have prayed and felt better. We can not explain this phenomenon but as long it doesn't harm anyone then we do not want to claim it is bad.Tolerance is a very important point in the religion. You can view it as being part of treating others as you want them to treat you. Perhaps you do not believe in God and perhaps you think that prayer is not useful. That does not mean that you should belittle those that seek comfo...
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Church of Integrity
2007-04-14 07:18:00
The Church of Integrity is founded on the following statement:Do what is right.Of course it is impossible to capture the whole message of the church in one sentence but the above goes pretty far in doing so. Religion involves among other things a code of ethics, a philosophy of life and a worldview. The above statement captures the essence of that. We lead our lives by making decisions that confirm to what we feel is ethically right.So what is the right thing to do? Couldn't you justify murder and other evil deeds then by simply saying that you felt it was right?In the Church of Integrity we believe that ethics are deeply connected with biology in the sense that we, humans, are preprogrammed with certain ethics that have helped the species to advance and survive for a long time. For example then most people agree on that murder is bad. We are not so naive though to think that the world is black and white. We teach ethics that we believe almost everyone can agree on. Examples are th...