Los Angeles, USA - Behold, brethren. The "open source" movement, long championed by computer whizzes as a way to solve problems using the input of all, is increasingly being applied to other disciplines including literature, scientific research and religion.
Yes, religion. Yoism — a faith invented by a Massachusetts psychologist — shuns godly wisdom passed down by high priests. Instead, its holy text evolves online, written by the multitude of followers — much the same way volunteer programmers create open-source computer software by each contributing lines of code.
Adherents of Yoism — who count Bob Dylan, Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud among their saints — occupy the radical fringe of the open-source movement, which is quickly establishing itself as a new organizing principle for the 21st century.
Although an extreme example, Yoism shows how far beyond computer programming the open-source method has progressed. At its core, the process presumes the intelligence of crowds, and Yoans build their faith around the notion that, together, they take the place of divine inspiration.
The open-source frontier is religion. That's where Yoism comes in.
But is it really a religion? Chester L. Gillis, chairman of Georgetown University's theology department, is skeptical. Yoism, he says, embraces a transitory view of reality that contradicts traditional concepts of religion based on belief in fundamental truths.
"There's an authoritative source in religion that [Yoism] lacks. It doesn't talk about revelation from the divine," he said. "Any religion that hopes to survive is essentially conservative — it conserves elements of the faith. This one lacks that."
But Yoans have an answer for Gillis. As it is written in the Book of Yo, "There always exists the possibility of one day discovering that all our current truths are indeed wrong."