Let me tell you a little story....

11/19/98
To start over from scratch....
I was raised Baptist. I'm not sure if I could tell you what sub-denomination; I've heard the term "Baptist General Conference," but I'm not entirely sure if that's our sub-denomination, or if it's like, some actual conferences somewhere. It hardly matters. I don't even really much care about denominations, let alone sub-denominations. I have my own ideas, anyway. Always have, always will. And so, once upon a time, I made up my own little denomination, called "D'Wardian Christianity." This would, I expect, have to have been sometime after I made up my own little nickname, D'Ward. (Originally the form of this word was meant to be quite strict: D'WARD. It was to be all captial letters, with a straight apostrophe, whenever possible. Since then- perhaps when I got on the Internet in 1995- I've quite mellowed about this, and now one can do whatever one wants with it. All caps, if you like. All lower-case. Any combination of caps and lower-case that strikes your fancy. These days I mostly, for "official" purposes, write it as D'Ward, and in common usage, often as d'ward. You may, of course, use whatever type of apostrophe you happen to have handy.) Which would be, I expect, sometime in my Freshman year of high school.

Not all of what I believe is yet entirely clear to me. Nor do I expect it ever to be, perhaps not even after I die. I tend to suspect that anyone who is entirely clear about everything they believe is probably a bit (or in some cases a lot) too closed-minded, and thinking far too small. (Just ask the Foundationists.) But I do have, I think, a firm enough grasp on the fundamentals, the truly important bits. Ah, gosh, I just know I'll never be able to say everything quite so well as I think I said it the first time. ...Though I probably said too much then, anyway, I was probably too redundant. And I may well be again, because that does seem to be my wont.... And I just can't think where to begin, or what order to say things in, and I fear I'll forget to say things... But I s'pose that's none of your concern, so I shouldn't be troubling you with it. Don't mind me, this is just how I write, even how I often write fiction... I talk to my readers overmuch, I'm afraid... I like that sort of thing....

Well, perhaps I should try to explain why I wanted my own denomination in the first place. Here is what I feel: religion is about the most important thing in Life, ultimately, particularly if you happen to believe in an afterlife, or in reincarnation. It is in fact just the sort of thing for which we were given Free Will. (Gosh, when you capitalize that, it sorta makes ya think of whale movies, don't it?) Now, deciding what you believe, or rather figuring it out, because I don't really feel there's much actual decision involved, at least there's not for me, is immensely important. It should also be fairly easy. There are some things it may be hard to figure out, but I should think the basics will just pretty much be there, undeniable, inescapable, unmistakable. (Of course, I also cannot conceive of anyone not knowing whether they're gay or not, and apparently some people do get confused about such things. To me it seems pretty straight(no pun intended)forward- I look at girls, I find them attractive. I look at guys, I... well it's conceivable I could find some vague aesthetic appreciation of them, but not to the point where I'd wanna.... Anyway, you get the idea. I know, I'm digressing on this whole subject. Well, I digress. It's another of my wonts, okay? Oh, by the way, about homosexuality, just let me say this: "...Not that there's anything wrong with that....") Where was I? Oh yes... what you must do is search your heart, mind, and soul to find the things you believe in most fundamentally. The things about which there can never be any doubt, about which you could not possibly ever change your mind. There will always be things you are sure of or unsure of to varying degrees, and some of these you may or may not waver on, throughout your life. But there should certainly also always be things upon which you are completely unwavery.

It is very likely that a great deal of what you believe will comply with the religion with which you have been raised. It's also possible you'll find a few things within that religion with which you disagree, or at least potentially disagree. Perhaps things which your religion would have you believe are definite, absolute, and you must believe; and yet... you kind of believe them... but you're not entirely convinced that there's no chance that they could be wrong. And at any rate, I believe that with thousands of years, or even hundreds or dozens of years of history, there are many chances for misinterpretations, misunderstandings. With the older religions, there have also been many chances for mistranslations in religious texts. In fact, there are known mistranslations in the Bible, which I don't believe anyone's ever bothered to correct... at least not on a universal level. Maybe there are some Bibles out there with corrections. I dunno. I also think some things described in the Bible sound entirely too like any number of stories from any number of ancient mythologies, as well as some perhaps living belief systems and oral traditions. Stories presented not as clearly fictitious parables, but as realistic representations of actual historical fact. And perhaps some of these things I don't necessarily mean to say couldn't have happened as described, but I also don't think definitely did. I think they could be metaphors, or perhaps just were made up to make things more understandable to people living a long time ago... just as with countless stories from mythology. They were written to appeal to the mindset of the day. Also, I shouldn't be surprised if at some point in history, at a time when few could read, and there were no printing presses, so books had to be copied by hand, and there weren't many copies in the world... perhaps it was possible for small alterations to have been made here and there, to suit the mores of the day.

There are, I suppose, plenty of examples I could give; more in fact than I could think of now, and more than I'd care to try to think of. And it's not important, really. I could give the example that many Christians, probably most, will believe that if you do not believe in and worship their God exclusively, you will go to Hell for eternity. Now, I don't know what Hell is like. But I have imagined some things far worse than I expect you to be able to imagine, and I would generally expect it to be far, far worse than even I can possibly imagine. If it's nearly as bad as all that, there are many people who do not come anywhere close to deserving to spend a second in Hell, let alone eternity. And any God who would send them there just for refusing to worship him, in my humble opinion, would be pure evil, and utterly undeserving of anything other than my fiercest contempt. Salvation, in that case, would be nothing other than a protection racket. Pay God what he wants, and he'll protect you... from his own wrath. Looking into my HMS (heart, mind, and soul), I can't bring myself to believe that he would be like that. God is not a racketeer.

In fact, God is a close personal friend of mine, I like to think. (I often call him by nicknames like "Chief" or "G.W."- short for "Great Writer." ...But then, there are any number of people I might call "chief"... I quite like the word.) He is very good, and loving, and generous, and kind. He is in fact the embodiment of such things, and more. If you can call him the embodiment of anything; I don't really think he has a body. I think of him as noncorporeal, a being of pure understanding and feeling. By this token, he does not have any gender; I use the masculine pronouns for eas of reference, as with Taelons (if you happen to be familiar with Earth: Final Conflict). Speaking of pronouns, I don't think for an instant that he minds in the slightest whether you capitalize his or not. I sometimes do; more often not. ...You may say, But aren't we supposed to be made in His image? Well, I think that's more of a metaphysical thing. We can think, we can reason, we can understand. We have highly developed intelligence and emotions. These, more than physical form, are godlike qualities. This also leaves open the possibility for intelligent life in countless forms, including noncorporeal. Yes, I see no reason why God should not have created sentience elsewhere in the Universe. I strongly believe in the Vulcan philosophy of IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations), and I can't help but feel God does, too... probably far moreso than any mortal could ever come close to fully comprehending.

So, as I say, you should figure out for yourself what it is you believe, and don't leave such an infinitely important matter up to others! Don't just blindly accept what others tell you to believe. Okay? Doesn't that seem wise? ...Anyway, do you see now why I had to create my own denomination? Good. It's very important that you understand this. Now we can move on to the Dominion.

I always wanted to get on the Internet, from the first time I ever heard of it, which I expect would have been in the early 1990's. I definitely think it must have been in high school, which I started in Fall of '89, and graduated in June of '93. In fact, I had always wanted my own computer, as far back as I can possibly remember. I didn't get one until August of this year (1998), but I used computers somewhat in grade school, and more in high school. I used perhaps a few friends' computers, and a relative's. And in college, which I started in 1995, I finally got to use the Internet. And soon, I was addicted. (Well, I want to know how one can avoid being addicted to the Internet? It's pretty much the same as saying you're addicted to life... of course you are!) In particular, I was addicted to the Dominion's B-board. I met lots of great friends there. I got to be myself more fully than I ever could in real life. People got to know me and like me... know me, I'd say, better than my family even does. And I got to set up plenty of my own topics on the Dom. At one point, I decided to set one up for D'Wardian Christianity.

At some point after this, I realized that this was too much about myself, and too much about Christianity. So I changed the name to Developing New Universal Religion. (And when I eventually got my own homepage at GeoCities, D'Ward's World, I subtitled it "Developing New Universal Homepage," though it had nothing to do with DNUR...) My topic on the Dom attracted a few people. I had some fun with it, and of course I was serious about it, but not too serious. I never take anything in Life too seriously. Well, it's gone now... but the idea isn't. I still need DNUR. Okay, I still consider myself a born-again Christian, and always will... but I guess I'm not exactly a straightforward Christian. I am also a follower of DNUR, which is at most, and by one of its chief intended aspects, a highly disorganized religion, and perhaps not even a religion at all. I do hope to get more people to join DNUR; currently I think there is one other person who would call herself a member, in some wise. Perhaps there will soon be more.

So, what is DNUR, exactly? To begin, I like to say its prime tenet is tolerance. No one really knows the truth about things, what religion is right; though of course, everyone will believe that they know, and that is how it should be. Just don't go overboard with it. Always, I think, one should allow for the possibility that there might be some part of what they believe about which they might conceivably be wrong, and that others might be right. Look at it this way: Take two people who believe diametrically opposed things. Say for the sake of argument that at least one of them has to be wrong, because their views are so completely different that it would be outside the bounds of logic for them both to be entirely right. Chances are they both believe whatever it is they believe equally as strongly as one another. Since we already know one of them is wrong, this means it is possible for a belief that feels like certain knowledge to be, mere belief. Once this has been established, it is plain that there is no real way of determining which one is right, as far as matters of faith go. And it hardly matters, I think. Personally, I believe there is some truth and some flaw in all belief systems, and that all faiths can have things in common, can work together to a degree.

This reminds me of Foundationism, the religion to which Dr. Stephen Franklin of Babylon 5 belongs. It is an idea conceived of in 2155, after humanity's first contact with aliens (the Centauri... lucky us...) which says that God is too big to be defined. Foundationism attempts to find the... well, the foundations... of all belief systems, find out what they all have in common. This is an idea I very much like, and I think it sounds a great deal to me like what I've long wanted DNUR to be. ...I've already said that I don't have a really clear idea of what God is, but that I don't believe he's what Christianity traditionally conceives him to be. Obviously, he is the God not only of Christianity, but of Judaism, Islam, and Mormonism, and probably a few others that presently elude me. I expect "he" is also the Goddess than some Christians perceive "her" to be. And if we are saying that God is too big to be defined, this leaves room for countless possibilities. He could be the Wiccan Goddess. He could be Nirvana. For all you Jedi out there, he could be the Force. He could be made up of all of us, or of all the Universe. When you start thinking along these lines, it becomes easier to see that there is no reason why all faiths, all religions might be to varying degrees the same, at their foundations. Even polytheistic religions... there is that we don't know what God is, and if he's noncorporeal, and he is everywhere (even Christians will tell you he is omnipresent) then we needn't consider him a single being. In fact, Christianity itself is in a sense tri-theistic, believing in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And even polytheisticker than that, he is living in the hearts of all born-again Christians... so he exists in millions of forms! Then too there is that (if you want to accept the basics of the Bible, such as the Ten Commandments) "thou shalt have no other gods before me." This hardly precludes having other gods after him....

By the way, originally J. Michael Straczynski had said that Foundationism was established in the late 20th Century, and only later decided it had been after our first contact with aliens. Which makes me wonder if he wasn't originally confusing Foundationism with DNUR. :^)

Now, what else was there? Well, I think you can begin to see how easy it should be, how very natural, for people of various beliefs to come together, to share their beliefs, to... not only tolerate one another, but in fact to rejoice in their differences, to celebrate them. And to understand that we're all the same, we're all human beings (or whatever alien race you might happen to be), we're all equals, we all came from the same place (whether it was through evolution, or through Creation by God, whatever you perceive him/her/it/us/everything to be, or through the Universe trying to understand itself, as the Minbari believe...). Hmmm? Don't you think the world will be a better place for it? I do.

So, there you have it. There were other things I wrote last night. There was stuff about the nature of organized religion, and some of the problems and benefits of it. There was that human beings tend to be both social and spiritual creatures, by design, and that we need to come together for various reasons, including to share our spiritual beliefs. And that DNUR provides a place for those of us who are disenfranchised or disenchanted of organized religion; who want, who need to come together to worship, to share their beliefs, but don't feel we need to convert anyone, or be converted, or be harrassed... We just want to be together, we just want fellowship with one another. We want open-mindedness and mutual respect and understanding. We don't need to have any common beliefs, necessarily, except that we all should believe we could all be a little bit wrong, and we could all be a little bit right, and we won't hold one another's beliefs against them. We won't have any preachers (though I sometimes call m'sef friar tek, just for the fun of it) or proselytizers (but I do like that word, proselytize. Don't you think it's a kool word?).

So, uh... I guess that about covers it. I may think of more to say sometime, but that's it for now, I think. Got any questions? Comments? I'll be happy to hear anything you have to say.

11/22/98
Addendum: It occurred to me today, because of something a friend said, though I don't know that this is what he meant, but things I hear always get me thinking of other things, so all that really matters is that I thought of this at all. It seems to me that perhaps I have not been clear enough on this matter: I have said that perhaps most people will feel a need to share their beliefs. But this does not mean to suggest that everyone will, or that everyone who has any interest in DNUR will. If you want to keep your beliefs more or less to yourself, you may feel perfectly free to do so, and still associate with DNURites... still consider yourself a DNURite to whatever degree you feel comfortable with... And you needn't even talk about what level that is or what specifically you agree or disagree with... religion is, as my friend said, a personal thing. That, as I said, is sort of the point. Please don't misunderstand what I mean about "sharing." It can mean talking with others about your beliefs and your feelings, yes. That can be an important part. But perhaps more important is a sense of fellowship with others, even if you have disparate beliefs, even if you don't necessarily know completely what one another believes... because you know it's not really all that important, as long as you agree with the fundamental of tolerance and unity. IDIC. E pluribus unum, and all that....

12/14/99
Update: I've been meaning for some time now, since seeing Dogma, to mention in passing that that li'l flick reminds me a heck of a lot of my own religious feelings...

Yesterday I worked for hours on writing up all I could possibly think to say about my own religious views, and the ideas behind DNUR. I started out writing in the page editor for my little site here, but then I decided it'd be safer and wiser to write in WordPad instead, save it, copy and paste it here later. So I moved to WordPad and continued writing. I hit save once or twice, maybe three times, I dunno... before I was finished. Never a bad idea, eh? Finally I finished. Oh, all the hours... and all the days of procrastinating before I finally got around to it. Well, it was done. I was quite pleased. I hit the little disk icon in the tool bar to save it. It's funny that a window popped up with a list of files already on my disk; that should only happen the first time I try to save a file. But, though I thought it strange, I hit the save button in that window. And apparently, the file was deleted when I did this.

This was, as you can imagine, rather nerve-wracking, which is the only explanation I can come up with for why I proceeded to hit the new page icon in the tool bar... Immediately after doing that, it occurred to me that I probably could have just tried to resave the file... I'm pretty sure it was still on my screen, just not on my disk anymore. I could be wrong about this, as we're talking about a few minutes when my brain was rather scrambled and my usual rutabega-memory was particularly mashed. Anyway, I think it might well have been best to have kept writing in the page editor, after all.

It reminded me of a time I wrote a story, a science fiction story, of course, that pretty well explained all religion in the history of the world.... And that story was lost too. Of course, that was on the word processor, and I've lost any number of files to that thing. Still, I wondered at the time if perhaps God wasn't trying to tell me something... but I doubted it. Last night I found myself wondering the same thing. Still, I doubt it. I have to do. If God's trying to tell me I'm wrong about everything I believe about religion, then I'm going to burn in hell for all eternity, because, as you will have seen, I am entirely incapable of believing differently than I do. That's sort of one of the main points, here. *Sigh* I s'pose it's just Coincidence. Coincidence, you know, is the most powerful force in the Universe... I'll have to explain in some detail my views on that subject one of these days....

Any rate, as upsetting as all this is, I managed to calm down rather more quickly than one might expect. Oh, I was still upset, but I accepted (after looking several times all over my computer for the file) that it was gone... and that it could be rewritten. Perhaps not quite the same way, but I don't think I'm going to forget the basic ideas. It's just my most fundamental beliefs about Life, the Universe, and Everything, after all. ...And besides, I had Q to talk with... or message with, to be precise... And she's both a calming and an exciting influence on me....

Too, I had a bottle of Sam Adams. Thank you, Boston! (he said in his best Boston Common theme guy voice).