Founded by Brother Mark

Our Creed:

We of the Rational Church are dedicated to maintaining fidelity to reason in all areas of our lives.  We do not rely upon prophets, fables, mythology, folklore, or superstitions; for those give us no knowledge, nor do we say “I don’t know,” for that gives us no insight.  We believe in what is real, and in the absence of empirical proof, we postulate and accept what is most likely to be true. 

The Doctrine of the Rational Church is as follows:

•	God head = Logic There are no deities.  Anything that occurs, occurs for logical reasons.  The concept of God was conceived as an explanation for what man had no explanation for.  As we learned more about nature we learned that there were in fact natural explanations for many things attributed to God or the gods people believed in.  Consequently, most “god” concepts have been dismissed. There however remains a need  to explain why anything exists at all.  In attempting to understand ultimate causes, we come to the conclusion that anything tangible must requires a cause of its own.  An ultimate cause must not only be intangible, but must exist outside of both space and time because no tangible entity can realize eternity.  It must also have in some sense properties of intellect.  Only logical causality meets these criteria.  The theistic idea that God is an immutable transcendent mind might be viewed as a metaphor for pure logic: God equals Logic. "In the beginning was Logic, and Logic was with God, and Logic was God.... In logic was life and the life was the light of men."
•	Origin of Universe = Is perpetually perennial, exists out of logical necessity, and evolves to be known to itself. Some say the universe has just always existed.  However, eternity going backwards in time is irrational because the time we call now would have had to traverse an eternity of time, which is not possible.  Eternity cannot be realized for it has no bounds.  We now know time is contingent upon other things.  Time can be slowed down and sped up, as proven by the theory of relativity.  Modern scientific theory provides evidence of a distinct beginning to time, in what is called the "Big Bang,” from which our universe emanated.  Thus, both our universe and even time itself had a definite beginning.  Since that beginning, some fourteen billion years ago, our universe has evolved into greater and greater complexity due to a combination of mechanisms such as: conservation of energy, the Law of Maximum Entropy Production, natural selection, and other factors that science may yet discover.  Since both the universe and time were contingent, we must ask contingent upon what?  The only rational thing that has the capacity to not be contingent upon something else is logic.  It is logic that is eternal.  Only immutable logic can be considered to be the mind of God.  The existence of the universe is because Logic demands that nothingness is impossible, so there must be somethingness.  However, what is somethingness without anything to know that somethingness is there?  Still just nothingness.  Thus, logic demands the necessity of intelligence - human or humanlike minds that give reality to existence.  The necessity of having cognitive minds, forced into being a pattern of evolution that would produce it.  Some say that our universe is finite, that it will someday come to an end, and it and we will be no more.  That would, however, just lead back to nothingness, and there cannot be nothingness.  The only way for something that had a beginning to not have an end, is for it to cycle.  Thus, the universe is perennially existent, whereby it emanates from a singularity, continues and evolves producing intelligence, eventually dies, but then revolves back to a new singularity, bursting forth anew.
•	Guiding Moral Principles Those things that that help preserve and improve upon all we have: our lives and our environment.  What is right is what benefits the human condition at the expense of no-one.  Behavior that improves health, personal and world wealth, peace and brotherhood are embraced as being axiomatically correct and needs no further justification.  Behavior which is contrary to the improvement of these must be rejected.  War and violence is always a manifestation of the failure of humans to deal with issues on an intellectual level having mutual respect.  Such acts can only be justified where there is no other alternative to avoid physical harm to oneself or others, despotism and other forms of suppressive rule.  The only justifiable civil government is democracy, since no person can be born with any intrinsic right to rule others.  Laws that are instituted by a democratic rule should be the most highly honored of civil rules, since the democratic process tends to validate them.  Naturally, anyone has the right to oppose laws in a responsible manner that he or she truly feels are not valid.  Ideally, people should be financially equal.  However, equality removes incentive or potential, and it would be impossible to share all resources equally even if people were financially equal.  Conversely, great disparity also removes incentive and potential.  Finding a means of approaching this ideal while still inspiring people to do their best, without having despotic rule, or infringing upon personal human rights to free choice and free association is a problem that we must strive to solve.  It may be that complete financial equality is impossible, but reasonable parity should be our goal.
•	Spirituality The Rational Trinity Logic – Universe – Self Prayer Encouraged.  Secular spiritualism ~ there is nothing to worship, but prayer as a personal act of hope, meditation, and  reflection is encouraged because such contemplations can give one the strength to endure and be self-edifying, even if the only one who hears the prayer is oneself.  It is also felt that any complex system can theoretically be interacted with and petitioned for intervention, thus prayer may help connect one in a pantheistic manner to the universe as a whole and interact with it.  Prayer should not be substituted for the seeking of pragmatic solutions, but used in conjunction with proactive approaches to life.     Brothers and Sisters of the Rational Church should reflect upon Nature, its workings and our place in it.
•	After Death Evolutionary Reincarnation.  No one has any direct evidence as to what happen after we die.  Most "rational" people would say we just die.  However, there are other rational things to consider.  No dead thing can be aware of anything, so being in a state of death is not rational -- no one can know he is dead.  We are here now, and what are the odds of that occurring if life were only a one-time experience?  Moreover, successive incarnations in some form is the most rational approach to the issue of death because inductive logic demands that what has happened in the past is what is most likely to happen in the future.  Furthermore, given that if life were simply completely random there would be little chance of being born anything other than a microbe, we might assume there to be an upward evolution toward greater and greater adaptation and perfection.  This “Evolutionary reincarnation” would most likely culminate to its logical conclusion wherein death itself is overcome and one exists in eternal perfection.   The above is not based on the following, but is coincidentally quite similar: Lection 37:2 "Blessed are they who suffer many experiences, for they shall be made perfect: They shall be as the angels in Heaven and shall die no more, and neither shall they be reborn, for death and birth will no longer have dominion over them." Jesus, Gospel of the Holy Twelve
•	Why Evil? There was no original sin, no Satan, and no evil spirits – such beliefs are based in mythology and are superstitious.  People make foolish decisions when they are ignorant of the power of their rational mind.  Heaven and Hell are states of consciousness and are only experienced during life.  There is nothing in death, but a stage for a new life and new evolutionary experiences.
•	Salvation Greater knowledge is our primary source for salvation, in that it will bring further cures for disease, end to poverty, end to crime and corruption, oneness of civilization, peace, and eventual complete harmony.   Salvation lies in the realization that we are part of nature and its natural processes of greater evolution towards perfection.  All will be saved, but will take somewhat different paths.
•	Undeserved Suffering Suffering is the natural results of an imperfect world fueled by greed, hatred, and lack of empathy, as well as an improving, but as of yet, imperfect medical science.  All living creatures are bound to suffer, but that suffering can be minimized in the future by scientific and moral advancements.
•	Contemporary Issues Abortion is an irresponsible act taken to deal with the unwanted product of another irresponsible act.  Never-the-less, it is the choice of the woman, for it is her body – It is utterly “irrational” to think that anyone can demand that someone else have a baby.  A baby’s full human rights begin only when independent from the body of the mother because only then is the mother’s body and her control over her physical being no longer an issue.  As long as they are “together” there must be a compromise.  Abortion is never fully right, but becomes more wrong the longer one waits, as the issue gradually changes from the mother’s body to that of the baby’s. Homosexuality should be tolerated for humanitarian reasons, but not affirmed.  Sex is most rationally about having children, and ideally should only take place within the bounds of marriage, so as to provide an institution to raise children in.  It is unrealistic to expect everyone to conform to this standard, but the further one gets away from this ideal, the more socially and morally wrong sex becomes.   Homosexual sex is far abreast of the ideal because it is logically senseless in regard to procreation -- it is biologically not sex at all -- thus it would be irrational to affirm it in society as being equal to, but just different from heterosexual sex.  Homosexual marriage would be a social affirmation of homosexually, thus it is cannot logically be supported.  The same reasoning would apply to any and all sexual practices -- the further the act is removed from in some way supporting the natural purpose of sex, the more wrong it is.