If you had to "create" a religion, what would that be and why?

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I think about this question from time to time. If you want to do this for real, and not just something you do for gags, then you need to actually improve on a religion’s ideas. It’s not too hard to do that, but it is hard to do in a way that will actually stick. In essence this is the same problem as trying to start a company, you have to convince people why they should follow your teachings or buy your product.

In the religious space, you can create a following, like Osho and Joel Osteen did, or you can create an actual religion, like Joseph Smith did with Mormonism and Mohammad did with Islam. In between would be something like Scientology, which I would class as an order rather than a religion, still very much controlled by one person, but the order of Scientology didn’t die when Hubbard died, and won’t when Miscavige does.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with focusing a religion on a person, Christianity is focused on Jesus after all, but I’m not entirely sure I’d enjoy being worshipped. I mean I guess it could be fun but really what I want is to pass my mystic knowledge onto others so that they can empower their own lives with it rather than focus their energies on me.

What society calls a cult and cult-like dynamics can happen no matter how the religion is organized and it’s invariably caused by insufficient leadership. You can’t just be a mystic, but you also have to be a statesman too, able to see the darkness in people and willing to take action to curb problems. Osho was incapable of removing Ma Anand Sheela from his inner circle and the chaos she brought resulted in the only bioterror attack to ever take place on American soil. Osho was a leader, a pretty good one, but his leadership was insufficient to handle Sheela.

I am not interested in remaking or even riffing off of Abrahamic scripture, so that all stays. What I am interested in is a “New New Testament.” Something that brings all of the lessons of the Old and New Testament together into a modern perspective. It would be written in the same style as the Old and New Testaments, of course in English. It would be a fascinating exercise to actually try to come up with something that can stand with those two books.

I wouldn’t want to try to write it all myself. Jesus didn’t write the New Testament after all, lots of people affiliated with him did. I’d write maybe a book or two, but leave most of it to my collaborators.

Abrahamic scripture revolves around the covenant man makes with God. We can see that covenant evolving slightly over the course of the Old Testament, with a somewhat sharper break happening in the New. But the two bodies of scripture are extremely cohesive, the excellent work of many many many skilled theologians.

My hope with my “New New Testament” is to make my new covenant so compelling that future theologians would find it worth doing that same work with my scripture so that my religion can evolve into a real alternative to Christianity, just like Christianity presented to Messianic Jews.

Thematically, I would love it if I could somehow make the last fifty or so years work as a setting for Biblical stories. High technology would be a fascinating thing to try to work with. I think I’d want to make the setting global, and start with the restoration of Israel at the end of World War 2.

I’m not sure yet whether I’d want to set myself out as a prophet like Jesus or Mohammad. I think I’d rather focus on characters whose inspiration is drawn from my personal life. But I’m not sure what the tradeoff is there yet, so I may yet task someone with writing my gospel.

One thing I find fascinating about Christianity is how the whole artistic culture sprung up around it, long after the apostles were all dead and gone, about relatively minor aspects of the faith, angels and demons. I would love to encourage a similar artistic flourishing.