In the future, new faiths will be developed and upgraded by their believers.
Open source religions will need several traditional elements, along with a few new ones:
The Founders Effect: the sense of being at the start of an immense adventure. Cult members are poorly informed: for some reason they feel they're the first people this has happened to.
Traditions and anniversaries.
A searchable matrix diagram listing mutually compatible and incompatible beliefs.
Rituals, rites, and restrictions. Paradoxically, religions need a few irrational elements to seem plausible.
New ways for compatible believers to connect online and in real life.
A list of member prophets who claim to know aspects of the ultimate truth, complete with subscriptions.
Subdivisions into factions and sub-factions.
Social projects.
Probably the best hard SF novel ever written: Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
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Read the chapters
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