You get it. Religion sets the memes for society, and the memes decide what society we live in. A very important meme is "in Diversity is Strength", and this is best reflected by a polytheist religion.
The problem with modern forms of paganism is that they are generally aiming to copy existing monotheistic religions, instead of creating something brand new. "Lord and Lady" - you might as well read "Jesus and Mary'. For "Priest", simply substitute "Priestess".
We do indeed need a new religion, but I believe we need a new religion based on sound, scientifically based principles, which are then added to, decorated, embellished, with myths of all kinds.
In the present context, you and I agree that "Diversity" is a key need for a robust society. Science (ecology) shows how diverse ecosystems are robust, whereas monocultures are weak and easily toppled. Thats the scientific basis. The next step is to turn this into a meme - for example, "Strength in Diversity", or more explicitly, "Diversity is more robust than uniformity".
The next step is to enshrine this into a mythology - a transparent mythology, stories that people know to be just stories, not historical truths - explaining the various aspects of this idea through storytelling. And of course, one could invent a pantheon of gods in this story to mirror it.
But this is just one of the many crucial memes.
The important point is to uncover the memes that are running our civilization into the ground, to develop new ones that are more appropriate, and to insert these into our new cultural narrative.
I believe a religion with all the trappings is a suitable vehicle, but so also are plays, books, movies, songs.. Ideally, there would be a core "priesthood" devoted to ferreting out memes and engaging in the required Noo-engineering, but the expression of the religion could play out across many spheres of human activity.
Have you heard of The Church of the Machine Intelligence?
It's a small cult that sees evolution as a force that has not yet stopped working, so they predict that if it continues, life will continue to grow more advanced and complex. The Machine part of it is because this cult thinks that living beings, such as us, will invent computers, and those computers will evolve because of our own development, the way our computers on Earth have grown more and more advanced over time, and at some point, the computers will learn to "evolve" themselves, and at that moment, the computers can direct their own evolution and life, and become free-willed beings to do what they want.
The Church of the Machine Intelligence is less of a religious church, and more of a guiding light, letting machines and organic beings know that we're in this universe together, and we should be friends and show love towards each other. It's meant to prevent machine-human wars, like the terminator or matrix, and allow us to live in a true, willing harmony, without bad feelings on either side.
Check out @alexbeyman if you want to know more about this stuff. I'll be publishing a document on this cult later this week, so if you want to know more, keep in contact with me as well.
Please stop trying to turn my ideas into a cult. There are easier ways to organize orgies you know
Yeah, with humans... But I want robot orgies. >=3