Some Rules

Rules from The Sacred Order of Lavatorium

Here at the Church of No Preference we both abhor rules and beg for them. I suppose any organization of people whether a country or a club or a country club must feel the same way. Religions and churches are no different. No matter how much people scream uncontrollably "CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?" people just have ways to not get along. So, groups of people make up rules and laws to force other people to get along and then when those rules and laws are broken more rules and laws are made to make people follow the original rules and laws so as to get people to just get along. Whew! Do you follow me?

The Church of No Preference does have some rules, you know, in order to just get along. Any church to survive has to follow the laws where they reside, for instance most places on Earth have laws against murder, so naturally rule number one at the Church of No Preference is...

Rule Number One; "Hey, Don't Murder." It kind of helps that most other religions also have that rule, it's not like we're the only one. For instance Christianity has that rule as a commandment, although to that religion it is only the sixth rule. So, No Preferentists have elevated that no murder rule to number one, we just have a good feeling about that, in fact such a good feeling about that rule that we repeat it.

Rule Number Seven; "Hey, Don't Murder!" and...
Rule Number Fourteen; "Hey, Didn't We Tell You Twice Already? Don't Murder!"

But now it gets confusing. What constitutes murder? Well, it seems logical to not murder a fellow human. And murdering animals sure seems kind of sick. And how sad to murder little innocent insects. And murdering fish and reptiles seems logical as much as it seems logical not to murder humans, animals and insects. And then murdering birds seems so cruel. And what of fungus and bacteria, seems logical to not murder them. Oh, and plants, we don't want to murder them either. HELP! We are in a logic trap, we can't murder ANYTHING!

So as you can see The Church of No Preference considers rules one, seven and fourteen as very important to follow but we are not sure how to follow them. From what I hear other religions have this problem as well. At least we have no preference to having the debate about murder, here at the church we like debate. Which brings us to rule number two...

Rule Number Two; "Welcome discussion, debate, deliberation, consideration, dialogue, exchange, and the Thesaurus these words come from."

Yes, rule number two is a long rule and tends to be difficult to repeat as a mantra, but our members like the rule, unless a member is the loser in a discussion, debate, deliberation, consideration, dialogue, or exchange. We don't like to inflame a loser during a rule number two event because we don't want to upset that member so much as to make them privately consider breaking rules number one, seven or fourteen. So we have a rule for that.

Rule Number Three; "Be nice, and maybe we can all just get along."

The Church of No Preference truly believes in being polite, respectful, courteous, kind, nice, and the Thesaurus those words come from. We can't fully explain why, but it just seems to work out for the best most times. We think this comes from simple probability, the odds seem to favor being nice. Go with the odds, we like to say. "Gamble on nice and nice will pay off," one member likes to explain rule number three. It sort of sounds like Karma to me, but it does have a good advertising feel to it.

Well, that's three rules, oops, I mean five rules that have been revealed in our convoluted ways. In the vague future more of The Church of No Preference rules will be leaked, I mean exposed, um, unveiled.