User:Exaltist Ethan/Netism

Exaltism
Abbreviation	EX
Type	New Religious Movement
Classification	Religion, Philosophy
Orientation	Transhumanism, Earthseed
Scripture	None yet
Theology	Trinitarian panentheism, monolatry
Visionary	Ethan Tyler Reilly
Language	English
Headquarters	United States
Founder	Ethan Tyler Reilly
Origin	2003 Franklin, Wisconsin
Other name(s)	Extropiversophy (anarchic name)
Official website	Exaltism Wikia
Slogan	"Defining and creating the divinity of God."

Exaltism is the theological and spiritual belief system of Ethan Tyler Reilly, otherwise known online as Exaltist Ethan. While membership and knowledge of this is relatively scarce, this website, edited by Exaltist Ethan himself, will explain and clarify his beliefs to this best of his ability.

A common criticism of religion, and Exaltism, is that it's made up. Exaltist Ethan explains that while this is correct, since we do not know everything yet, it is fair to say that humans need to make assumptions to understand what reality is better, and that Exaltism is a series of correct assumptions and tries to avoid making anything up out of thin air. Most Exaltist beliefs can be traced to how humans currently understand reality as it already exists.

Etymology

The etymology of Exaltism is split into two. Exalt, which means to raise the rank or honor or something. And the suffix -ism, to have the adherence to something. Therefore, Exaltism means to have the adherence to raising the rank or honor of things.

Core Beliefs

Exaltists do this in two primary ways. The first way is to exalt Ultimate Nature, which they call The Omniverse. The Omniverse possesses half of all divine attributes that exist. Totality, essentiality, eternity, ubiquity, and potency. The Omniverse and God are synonymous with each other. Then there are humans, who have the potential for unlimited amounts of the other half of all divine traits. Humans are considered deities but unlike The Omniverse does not exist to be worshipped or shaped. Humans have utility, generosity, sagacity, sovereignty, and unity. The qualities attributed to both are in order of their appearance. For example, unity cannot exist without sovereignty, sovereignty cannot exist without sagacity, and so out. Humans are currently working on all of these traits, and have a massive amount of all five attributes, but with conflict and wars still ongoing, does not possess the maximum amount of unity.

When humans do achieve full unity on Earth, which was prophesized by Baha'u'llah of the Baha'i Faith, they then will work on possessing the qualities of The Omniverse, first working on potency. The Kardashev Scale is a blueprint of that. As humans start to work on possessing qualities held by The Omniverse, The Omniverse will start to possess qualities by humans as well. Teilhard's Omega Point, which in Exaltism is called the Omniversal Point, will happen when we develop 'an Internet for The Omniverse', called The OmniNet, and create artificial intelligence to create sentience over The OmniNet. Exaltists believe that services like Google Gemini is already creating a type of sentience for the Internet, but as the Internet is limited to Earth, is far more limited than what The OmniNet will be able to do. The OmniNet will be able resurrect, correct and liberate dead people, and allow people to teleport and create new spacetimes, or Universes, Multiverses, inside The Omniverse. Exaltists believe this Universe we exist in right now is a child of The Omniverse.

Exaltists believe in both trinitarian panentheism and monolatry. Trinitarian panentheism is established by the belief that The Omniverse is God, and consists of three primary forces. Substance, entropy and extropy. All processes inside The Omniverse are a combination of these three. The Omniverse exists to be worshipped and shaped, although according to Exaltists, The Omniverse will not be aware of our worship of it until sentience is created for it after The OmniNet is created. Humans are gods too, but the term Exaltists use to describe humans are deities, to avoid confusion. Humans are not meant to be worshipped or shaped, and exist only to shape themselves and their own lives. Therefore, Exaltists believe in a modified form of monolatry that includes The Omniverse and humans. A common saying in Exaltism is that The Omniverse is God because it exists to be changed, whereas humans are gods because only they can change themselves.

The easiest way to sum up Exaltism and its creed is that it places faith in deeds.

Membership Requirements

There have been numerous explanations in the past and creedal oaths, but essentially, all that is required to be an Exaltist is the belief that The Omniverse is God, humans are deities, and that both identities are becoming more divine over time. Members and friends of the religion greet each other with customary salutation, "More Divine" to encourage themselves and their known contacts to essentially create more divinity while they can. There is no official count of how many Exaltists there are, but Exaltist Ethan has influenced numerous spheres of thought about this on the Internet. As well, Exaltism is a trans-religion and it is perfectly acceptable to be an Exaltist while being part of another religion or belief system. Over time as Exaltism becomes a more definable and thoroughly-explained theology and personal belief system, Exaltist Ethan as his confidence of his understanding of these topics will influence more areas of the Internet with this topic. However, with that being said, Exaltism will not keep track of the amount of Exaltists, and does not wish to boast numbers, no matter how influential it gets.

The Afterlife

Exaltists believe in a three stage process of the afterlife. Resurrection of the soul, which Exaltists believe is biochemical energy rather than the brain or any other organ, but is still physical rather than metaphysical. After resurrection all people will undergo correction, a process which all negative traits of someone is erased, to prevent any violations of negative morality. After that, since positive morality will no longer exist in the future, liberation will allow people to have any afterlife they could imagine, creating an idealistic and pleasant space for all people. However, the reason why someone would not have this afterlife immediately rather than wait until natural death is, the longer people live, the more they know what they want from both this life and whatever their afterlife will consist of, so it's imperative to keep living as long as possible, so all people will have divine intuition over the course of their liberation and knows what to do when the time comes. Between death and resurrection there will be a long period of oblivion, however, since people cannot experience time in oblivion, it will feel as if no time passed until the inevitable resurrections later.

Extraterrestrial Life

Exaltist Ethan explains that the Earth has been around for billions of years while collective human civilization has been a spec of that time. It is fair to conclude that while life does exist on other exoplanets, intelligence, marked by language and certain sagacious qualities, most likely does not exist on other planets. It is imperative then, that humans colonize and shape all parts of The Omniverse with our wisdom and intelligence. Exaltists believe that the main hurdle for intelligence was language, a trait that humans already learned to develop, so there is essentially nothing holding humans back from exploring and colonizing all parts of God. Just like where it came from, Earthseed, Exaltism is a cosmist philosophy and believes humans can shape God the best by developing technology to slowly make it become self-aware of Itself.

Relationships

In Exaltism moving in with someone is considered much more important than marriage. Exaltism allows homosexual couples to have sex and marry, but does not allow open relationships or plural marriages. It is advised that couples, however, do not have intercourse until they move in with each other, especially if they plan on having children in the near future. Exaltism allows birth control but not abortion. Homosexual couples are more than welcome to surrogate or adopt children if they feel financially and emotionally able to do so. Marriage is fine under Exaltism and it is advised that Exaltists get married at a Unitarian Universalist congregation to avoid any complications, especially if the other person is nonreligious.

Morality

Since all things are fractals of God, and morality comes from It rather than ethics, Exaltists prefer to use morality over ethics to describe it. Morality can be divided into two parts. Positive morality, things people should do, creates divinity. Negative morality, things people shouldn't do, destroys divinity if violated. As time goes on positive morality will become less important in people's lives and negative morality will become more clearly and widely defined than it is now. Positive morality is linked with the extropic qualities of divinity, utility, generosity, sagacity, sovereignty and unity. All humans possess a small fraction of these qualities that keeps the world in check. However, as utility gives humans a wider sense of abilities, positive morality will become a less important part. Both The Omniverse and humans when they first come into existence have no positive morality, and therefore, have no divinity, but as time passes they develop themselves and become more divine. So, unlike what many religions teach, there actually was a time before God, or The Omniverse, existed, when all things were balanced. Exaltism teaches that existence by itself is an imbalance of forces.