A word on what the hell I'm doing here
When I was 16, my goal in life was to start my own religion. Well, cult. Cults were in the news a lot at the time, partly because of the mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate cult. I drew my inspiration from Principia Discordia, and a parody cult based on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy–specifically, the character of Marvin the android.
Both were hilarious, but in the case of Discordianism, it also had an interesting interpretation of zen going on. Some called it a joke disguised as a religion disguised as a joke. Some called it a joke disguised as a religion disguised as a joke. My take away was that the joke and the religion were the same thing. This became a kind of worship of humor and absurdity.
I continued to study religious texts of every kind. No particular religion ever really hooked me, but usually they at least had some interesting ideas. I was raised Christian, and even if I did not think of myself that way anymore, I felt like the Bible had some good lessons about morality here and there.
I was really hoping that I would find a religion I could really get into, though. Something that made me think, "This is where I belong. They will understand me and my ideas." The closest I got was paganism. In many ways I felt like a pagan, but the pagans I met didn't exactly feel like they were my pagans.
Things started to really come together for me when I was about 32. My efforts to connect everything with everything else were starting to pay off. If I could point to just a few things that made the difference, it would be "Cosmos," Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, and Mircea Eliade's Yoga: Immortality and Freedom.
What you are witnessing here is the process of giving birth to my religion, moving it from inside my head and out into the world.* It will take many forms, and a lot of the time, it might not even look like a religion. Much of it will be discussions of philosophy, ethics, and morality. There will also be some science, and I'm sure you can guess that there will be some jokes.
I see the religious element as coming from where we go from "is" to "ought," which is this: we ought to be excellent to each other. We ought to treat the people in our lives with unconditional kindness. The world we live in today is a result of 200,000 years of humans working together with each other, and we know more than we ever did before about how to be excellent to each other.
My hope is that this process will create a corresponding religious community. After all, I'm 33 now, and I've heard people call it your "Jesus year." That's also the age he died, and I'm hoping that doesn't happen–but if it does, I at least know that my ideas will be out there in the world for someone else to pick up. I'm not the first person here, and I won't be the last.
* - When Athena came fully formed out of Zeus's head, was it a metaphor for the way that wisdom comes into the world? Sure, why not. The author is dead, and the meaning of 'meaning' is a graduate level seminar in the philosophy department.