No-MiddleMan Movement: Religion without middlemen

[safdar.dushantappeh]

I recently joined the NMMM (http://facebook.com/nmmm.org) which is a movement for uniting the religions by removing the middlemen (scholar, priest, church, guru, rabbi, ...) and emphasizing on the common core in all religions: good deeds. I wanted to encourage you all to contribute to this movement by sharing your views/observations/articles and help shaping the direction by discussing and challenging the presented thoughts (perhaps the fb page is more suitable place for discussions)

Here is the manifesto:

Earth is, as always, full of non-religions in which some middlemen claim to know what the Creator wants, and ask us to blindly follow them, and them exclusively, or otherwise we will be burnt in the hellfire. The fear of fire, the peer pressure, accompanied with the indoctrination from birth lead us to the convenient trap of following one of these middlemen instead of the more challenging lifestyle of responsibly and continuously searching for good deeds and doing them.
The middleman phenomenon takes different forms:

• Sometimes it is a "knowledgeable" Imam/Rabbi/Scholar who knows about religion some "complicated" things that we "ordinary people" do not know, and hence urge us to obey his Fatwa/Rule/Sharia.
• Sometimes it is a priest that provides a particular interpretation of the holy books and urge us to trust their view.
• Sometimes it is a church, mosque, or religious school that tells to take a text as sacred and assume that it is letter by letter a direct revelation from the creator.
• Sometimes it is a "spiritual" leader/Pope/Guru who is supposedly "closer" to the creator and thus can "see" what is right and what is wrong, and urge us to follow his vision.

The middlemen have pretty established positions in their societies and through the many years they have produced a bulk of literature to justify their existence and silence the curious minds. In fact many followers feel "educated" after reading such literature. They are so good at what they do, to the extent that many followers do not even realize that they are obeying a middleman. It is not thus uncommon to hear:

• a Christian saying that I am not following any religion; I am just following Jesus! And yet their very understanding of Jesus and Bible is pretty much shaped by a major church/religious organization.
• a Muslim saying that I am not blindly obeying Imams; I rather only consider their advice that is formed based on the book and the Hadith! And yet their interpretation of the book as well as which Hadith is authentic or relevant is pretty much shaped by a major doctrine (Madhab).

We believe that the world has an intelligent creator; one need not to abandon reason to live as a believer; life is a continuous, reasonable search for truth, which should lead to doing beautiful deeds; but no exclusive doctrine can claim the "right" path towards this. These are the middlemen who always come up with something very specific in their doctrine and introduce it as the "secret sauce" for salvation, to color their followers differently and to establish a "us vs. them" mindset. In whatever community that we are born in, and whatever our starting point is, we are more likely to end up with righteous deeds if we do not let our minds to be indoctrinated by middlemen.
The mission of No-MiddleMan Movement is to coordinate a community effort to identify the middlemen in each of our religions, trace their influence on the ideology, and help our fellow believers to purify their religious views and free themselves from the indoctrination that they are born into. We invite each of the readers to share with us and other readers the influence of middleman that they observe in their local community. All the contributed posts will be accessible to public. The editors further select some contributed articles and maintain organized a summary for impatient readers. Feel free to reach us if you want to also contribute as an editor.

 

[columbus]

I don't do Facebook. But this sounds like a very good idea.
It appears that you are encouraging people to stay with their community, while looking more critically and independently at the human authorities claiming to speak for God.
Kudos!
Tom

 

[David1967]

I agree with Tom. We should always question human authorities. To not do so often has disastrous results such as the murder of people who believe differently because some nutcase said God wants us too. God gave us all a brain. I have this feeling that He intends for us to use it.

 

[David1967]

On the surface it seems to have a resemblance to Baha'i without Baha Ullah.

 

[whirlingmerc]

I'm going to partly agree and partly dissagree

There is a notion of 'the priesthood of believers' in the Bible... so before God, men and women believers are in a sense 'priests' and even Jesus who is the greatest of interceders at the right hand of God said that we can ask God directly for things and 'I do not say I will ask for you for the Father Himself loves you'... so for a person genuinely redeemed I agree... although for a person not, they may just wander into never never land on their own...

Where I disagree is that community is important and there are people gifted as elders or teachers or pastors or other... who help 'the body' of believers and 'the body' helps 'the body' so I would not say 'a lone ranger Christian' is not the ideal or even a good thing. Jesus said the world will know you are mine by the love you have for one another... not a 'lone ranger' thing

 

[Blastcat]

We believe that the world has an intelligent creator; one need not to abandon reason to live as a believer

How is that belief arrived at by reason?

 

[David1967]

On the surface it seems to have a resemblance to Baha'i without Baha Ullah.

Thanks for the "funny" rating Kirsten, but I was actually being serious. I do see a resemblance at least in concept to Baha'i. Am I wrong? (Could be I know).

 

[David1967]

I am curious. Do you consider Mohammed a middleman?

 

[Thief]

I recently joined the NMMM (http://facebook.com/nmmm.org) which is a movement for uniting the religions by removing the middlemen (scholar, priest, church, guru, rabbi, ...) and emphasizing on the common core in all religions: good deeds. I wanted to encourage you all to contribute to this movement by sharing your views/observations/articles and help shaping the direction by discussing and challenging the presented thoughts (perhaps the fb page is more suitable place for discussions)

Here is the manifesto:

Earth is, as always, full of non-religions in which some middlemen claim to know what the Creator wants, and ask us to blindly follow them, and them exclusively, or otherwise we will be burnt in the hellfire. The fear of fire, the peer pressure, accompanied with the indoctrination from birth lead us to the convenient trap of following one of these middlemen instead of the more challenging lifestyle of responsibly and continuously searching for good deeds and doing them.
The middleman phenomenon takes different forms:

• Sometimes it is a "knowledgeable" Imam/Rabbi/Scholar who knows about religion some "complicated" things that we "ordinary people" do not know, and hence urge us to obey his Fatwa/Rule/Sharia.
• Sometimes it is a priest that provides a particular interpretation of the holy books and urge us to trust their view.
• Sometimes it is a church, mosque, or religious school that tells to take a text as sacred and assume that it is letter by letter a direct revelation from the creator.
• Sometimes it is a "spiritual" leader/Pope/Guru who is supposedly "closer" to the creator and thus can "see" what is right and what is wrong, and urge us to follow his vision.

The middlemen have pretty established positions in their societies and through the many years they have produced a bulk of literature to justify their existence and silence the curious minds. In fact many followers feel "educated" after reading such literature. They are so good at what they do, to the extent that many followers do not even realize that they are obeying a middleman. It is not thus uncommon to hear:

• a Christian saying that I am not following any religion; I am just following Jesus! And yet their very understanding of Jesus and Bible is pretty much shaped by a major church/religious organization.
• a Muslim saying that I am not blindly obeying Imams; I rather only consider their advice that is formed based on the book and the Hadith! And yet their interpretation of the book as well as which Hadith is authentic or relevant is pretty much shaped by a major doctrine (Madhab).

We believe that the world has an intelligent creator; one need not to abandon reason to live as a believer; life is a continuous, reasonable search for truth, which should lead to doing beautiful deeds; but no exclusive doctrine can claim the "right" path towards this. These are the middlemen who always come up with something very specific in their doctrine and introduce it as the "secret sauce" for salvation, to color their followers differently and to establish a "us vs. them" mindset. In whatever community that we are born in, and whatever our starting point is, we are more likely to end up with righteous deeds if we do not let our minds to be indoctrinated by middlemen.
The mission of No-MiddleMan Movement is to coordinate a community effort to identify the middlemen in each of our religions, trace their influence on the ideology, and help our fellow believers to purify their religious views and free themselves from the indoctrination that they are born into. We invite each of the readers to share with us and other readers the influence of middleman that they observe in their local community. All the contributed posts will be accessible to public. The editors further select some contributed articles and maintain organized a summary for impatient readers. Feel free to reach us if you want to also contribute as an editor.

ok....I have no religion
the Carpenter is my Inspiration
there is only one creed.....Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

i have heard the Carpenter did not author that line of doctrine
it was written a thousand years before Him.....in stone

we don't need anything else or anything more

including an organization such as you describe

 

[godnotgod]

I recently joined the NMMM (http://facebook.com/nmmm.org) which is a movement for uniting the religions by removing the middlemen (scholar, priest, church, guru, rabbi, ...) and emphasizing on the common core in all religions: good deeds. I wanted to encourage you all to contribute to this movement by sharing your views/observations/articles and help shaping the direction by discussing and challenging the presented thoughts (perhaps the fb page is more suitable place for discussions)

Here is the manifesto:

Earth is, as always, full of non-religions in which some middlemen claim to know what the Creator wants, and ask us to blindly follow them, and them exclusively, or otherwise we will be burnt in the hellfire. The fear of fire, the peer pressure, accompanied with the indoctrination from birth lead us to the convenient trap of following one of these middlemen instead of the more challenging lifestyle of responsibly and continuously searching for good deeds and doing them.
The middleman phenomenon takes different forms:

• Sometimes it is a "knowledgeable" Imam/Rabbi/Scholar who knows about religion some "complicated" things that we "ordinary people" do not know, and hence urge us to obey his Fatwa/Rule/Sharia.
• Sometimes it is a priest that provides a particular interpretation of the holy books and urge us to trust their view.
• Sometimes it is a church, mosque, or religious school that tells to take a text as sacred and assume that it is letter by letter a direct revelation from the creator.
• Sometimes it is a "spiritual" leader/Pope/Guru who is supposedly "closer" to the creator and thus can "see" what is right and what is wrong, and urge us to follow his vision.

The middlemen have pretty established positions in their societies and through the many years they have produced a bulk of literature to justify their existence and silence the curious minds. In fact many followers feel "educated" after reading such literature. They are so good at what they do, to the extent that many followers do not even realize that they are obeying a middleman. It is not thus uncommon to hear:

• a Christian saying that I am not following any religion; I am just following Jesus! And yet their very understanding of Jesus and Bible is pretty much shaped by a major church/religious organization.
• a Muslim saying that I am not blindly obeying Imams; I rather only consider their advice that is formed based on the book and the Hadith! And yet their interpretation of the book as well as which Hadith is authentic or relevant is pretty much shaped by a major doctrine (Madhab).

We believe that the world has an intelligent creator; one need not to abandon reason to live as a believer; life is a continuous, reasonable search for truth, which should lead to doing beautiful deeds; but no exclusive doctrine can claim the "right" path towards this. These are the middlemen who always come up with something very specific in their doctrine and introduce it as the "secret sauce" for salvation, to color their followers differently and to establish a "us vs. them" mindset. In whatever community that we are born in, and whatever our starting point is, we are more likely to end up with righteous deeds if we do not let our minds to be indoctrinated by middlemen.
The mission of No-MiddleMan Movement is to coordinate a community effort to identify the middlemen in each of our religions, trace their influence on the ideology, and help our fellow believers to purify their religious views and free themselves from the indoctrination that they are born into. We invite each of the readers to share with us and other readers the influence of middleman that they observe in their local community. All the contributed posts will be accessible to public. The editors further select some contributed articles and maintain organized a summary for impatient readers. Feel free to reach us if you want to also contribute as an editor.

If you really want to cut to the chase, go to Zen. Not even a doctrine. Just a finger pointing to the moon.

 

[LuisDantas]

Religion at its best involves a lot of learning from the wisdom of others and benefitting from the gifts from others.

I understand that it is often better to become a solitary practicioner when there is too much dogma, too much corruption or too much politics involved, but we should not deny ourselves those precious opportunities.

 

[Blastcat]

but we should not deny ourselves those precious opportunities.

I've learned way more about any religion from outsiders of the faith. All the insiders are way too biased.

 

[Aštra’el]

-I do not favor the idea of uniting all religions

-I do not feel that good deeds are the common core of all religions

-Most humans do not Will to act as their own "prophets", though such is possible with anyone.

-Religious teachers/ guides/ leaders offer an opportunity to experience and explore religion and spirituality to those with underdeveloped spiritual-religious attributes.

-Religious teachers/ guides/ leaders are a significant part of the spiritual-religious culture among various religions. Removing them would mean destroying culture, culture that is often of profound beauty and significance to the people and the community.

-Religious teachers/ guides/ leaders often arrive at their positions after displaying significant strength, power, and wisdom in the culture of a particular spiritual-religious system... often through years of experience and exceptional devotion. It would be foolish to underestimate what insights (often going back many, many generations) can be learned and absorbed from these people, and what one can potentially do with those teachings.

-The ability to exploit people as the resources they are by using religion to indoctrinate them and manipulate their thoughts and emotions, and actions and behavior, and directing subservient followers towards the attainment some goal or agenda that is not in their best interests.... is a practice that will exist as long as humans do. Human Nature is easily exploitable... there will always be those who opt to utilize this, often against people. This, however, should not prevent people from absorbing and experiencing the strength, power, wisdom, and beauty that can be found in various religious systems and various spiritual-religious teachers/ guides/ leaders.

 

[Blastcat]

Religious teachers/ guides/ leaders offer an opportunity to experience and explore religion and spirituality to those with underdeveloped spiritual-religious attributes.

Could you elaborate?

I'm an agnostic and a skeptic.
Do you consider me, for example, as having underdeveloped spiritual-religious attributes?

Why would I WANT to have more developed spiritual-religious attributes?

 

[Milton Platt]

I recently joined the NMMM (http://facebook.com/nmmm.org) which is a movement for uniting the religions by removing the middlemen (scholar, priest, church, guru, rabbi, ...) and emphasizing on the common core in all religions: good deeds. I wanted to encourage you all to contribute to this movement by sharing your views/observations/articles and help shaping the direction by discussing and challenging the presented thoughts (perhaps the fb page is more suitable place for discussions)

Here is the manifesto:

Earth is, as always, full of non-religions in which some middlemen claim to know what the Creator wants, and ask us to blindly follow them, and them exclusively, or otherwise we will be burnt in the hellfire. The fear of fire, the peer pressure, accompanied with the indoctrination from birth lead us to the convenient trap of following one of these middlemen instead of the more challenging lifestyle of responsibly and continuously searching for good deeds and doing them.
The middleman phenomenon takes different forms:

• Sometimes it is a "knowledgeable" Imam/Rabbi/Scholar who knows about religion some "complicated" things that we "ordinary people" do not know, and hence urge us to obey his Fatwa/Rule/Sharia.
• Sometimes it is a priest that provides a particular interpretation of the holy books and urge us to trust their view.
• Sometimes it is a church, mosque, or religious school that tells to take a text as sacred and assume that it is letter by letter a direct revelation from the creator.
• Sometimes it is a "spiritual" leader/Pope/Guru who is supposedly "closer" to the creator and thus can "see" what is right and what is wrong, and urge us to follow his vision.

The middlemen have pretty established positions in their societies and through the many years they have produced a bulk of literature to justify their existence and silence the curious minds. In fact many followers feel "educated" after reading such literature. They are so good at what they do, to the extent that many followers do not even realize that they are obeying a middleman. It is not thus uncommon to hear:

• a Christian saying that I am not following any religion; I am just following Jesus! And yet their very understanding of Jesus and Bible is pretty much shaped by a major church/religious organization.
• a Muslim saying that I am not blindly obeying Imams; I rather only consider their advice that is formed based on the book and the Hadith! And yet their interpretation of the book as well as which Hadith is authentic or relevant is pretty much shaped by a major doctrine (Madhab).

We believe that the world has an intelligent creator; one need not to abandon reason to live as a believer; life is a continuous, reasonable search for truth, which should lead to doing beautiful deeds; but no exclusive doctrine can claim the "right" path towards this. These are the middlemen who always come up with something very specific in their doctrine and introduce it as the "secret sauce" for salvation, to color their followers differently and to establish a "us vs. them" mindset. In whatever community that we are born in, and whatever our starting point is, we are more likely to end up with righteous deeds if we do not let our minds to be indoctrinated by middlemen.
The mission of No-MiddleMan Movement is to coordinate a community effort to identify the middlemen in each of our religions, trace their influence on the ideology, and help our fellow believers to purify their religious views and free themselves from the indoctrination that they are born into. We invite each of the readers to share with us and other readers the influence of middleman that they observe in their local community. All the contributed posts will be accessible to public. The editors further select some contributed articles and maintain organized a summary for impatient readers. Feel free to reach us if you want to also contribute as an editor.

Reason can lead different people to different supposed truths, so I do not see this as a viable solution to anything. Who gets to decide what is reasonable or not??

 

[loverofhumanity]

Reason can lead different people to different supposed truths, so I do not see this as a viable solution to anything. Who gets to decide what is reasonable or not??

That's why we have a Manifestation of God for each age. To define for us what is reasonable for our time and age.

For this age God has sent Baha'u'llah and if you investigate His Teachings you will see He redefines things like belief and freedom and the role of clergy and things like Holy War and many other things which we only dispute over.

Your question is very valid. Who decides? Only One Who is All Knowing can tell us exactly what is right for us not men because if you look at the world, it's a mess and we haven't been able to fix it up because everyone has a different opinion on how to fix it but God knows exactly what is the problem and how to fix it and He prescribes the medicine for each age.

 

[Milton Platt]

That's why we have a Manifestation of God for each age. To define for us what is reasonable for our time and age.

For this age God has sent Baha'u'llah and if you investigate His Teachings you will see He redefines things like belief and freedom and the role of clergy and things like Holy War and many other things which we only dispute over.

Your question is very valid. Who decides? Only One Who is All Knowing can tell us exactly what is right for us not men because if you look at the world, it's a mess and we haven't been able to fix it up because everyone has a different opinion on how to fix it but God knows exactly what is the problem and how to fix it and He prescribes the medicine for each age.

There again, you are delegating to a human authority to tell you which god to worship rather than demanding evidence such a god exists. Unless a given god reveals himself to every single human in such a way there can be no question as to his exidtence, his nature, his ultimate goals, speculation, and interpretation will always follow

 

[columbus]

There again, you are delegating to a human authority to tell you which god to worship rather than demanding evidence such a god exists. Unless a given god reveals himself to every single human in such a way there can be no question as to his exidtence, his nature, his ultimate goals, speculation, and interpretation will always follow

Therein lies the problem. Most religionists who believe in a human prophet speaking for God think that theirs is special.
T'was ever thus.
Tom

 

[chessplayer]

Some amazing being created all the natural world around us with all of it`s fine delicate balance , beauty and design. He also said that man will express his free will , often expressing it badly, causing much suffering to himself and others,

All this is based on the Bible written over 1500 years by 40 different authors , with a uniformity that surpasses reason and defies thousands of attempts over the ages by men intent in destroying it. quote by Voltaire ( 1778 ) " in 100 years the Bible will be a forgotten book !", however a quote by Jesus said " My word shall never pass away !" It has denied all attempts by kings and emperors to eradicate it , and still today it changes the hearts of men and women all over the world.

Bhudda is dead , Jesus is alive !
Mohammed is dead, Jesus is alive !
Confucious is dead , Jesus is alive !
How do we know Jesus is alive , because when you come humbly to Him , He will respond and dramatically change your life whether drugs is your problem or alcohol , or violence addiction or fear, or hopelessness , or just plain feel the need , then Jesus will fill the gap that your heart is searching for .

The Creator of the universe and of you and I, is obviously alive or we wouldn`t be here, and He said Jesus is alive , follow him .
However the rock on which the proud man founders is the encouragement to be humble before almighty God , asking His forgiveness for going our own way and instead following Him ,as we were created to do in the first place, only He knows the way in life , all He asks is that we follow Him !

 

[Milton Platt]

Therein lies the problem. Most religionists who believe in a human prophet speaking for God think that theirs is special.
T'was ever thus.
Tom

So given that humans are not trustworthy or dependable when it comes to communicating a god's will, and no god has ever chosen to uniformly make his will known to everyone everywhere in a completely detailed and unambiguous way, it would be reasonable to simply ignore the entire concept of there being any god until duch a time that happens.