At a coffee shop called East of Java on Drew Street in Clearwater, Florida, a Cuban friend of mine discussed his new calling as an ordained minister. So I became an ordained minister as well. And so did a few others at the coffee shop.

Yes, I'm completely serious. In the State of Florida, I can actually perform marriages. Really. I even paid $10 more and got the title of Guru, though I never did get that paperwork. What am I talking about? The Universal Life Church.

The pretext of all of this revolved around discussion of philosophy, religion, people and religion all over extremely large doses of caffeine. And so we called East of Java our Church, and we had mock aspirations that seemed real enough at the time. We would start a Church to deal with the disillusioned that we encountered every day. It was an idea that just kept growing no matter what we did. We decided that we were Nowherians. After all, [w:Scientology] pretty much controlled Clearwater, Florida. In fact, it still does. But I digress.

We sat down the first night and hammered out our dogma. The poor barrista wasn't sure how serious we were - we were mocking the whole thing as we did it, but our intentions were very clearly sincere. Everything we said, we meant - but there was an odd humor about the whole thing.

There were no burning bushes. There were no floods. We did not fast in the desert. We did not have any of these momentous things - though we did have one 'sign'. Someone had broken into an apartment of one of our fold and... only stole the frozen pizzas, leaving all the electronics. Obviously, this was a sign that we should try to feed the hungry whenever we could if only so that we could keep our own frozen pizzas safe.

A lot of people might think that this was a mocking of religion. In a way, it was - but it wasn't an intentional mocking as much as, "We can do something, be legitimate, and we stand a chance of doing it better."

We decided that we would have no followers or disciples. Since everyone in the congregation could be a Minister of any title that they wished, they should. Everyone was equal. Any religious background was permitted. The only rule we really had was:

Be happy. But don't make others unhappy.

Right there, that encapsulates what we thought religion should be.

After a few weeks, we got bored with the whole thing and instead talked of other things. Every now and then we'd bring it up, but it was never the most pressing thing to talk about after those first few weeks. Slowly, we drifted apart because of circumstances in our lives. Somewhere out there, though, are fellow Nowherians. Probably sitting at coffee shops, perhaps with padlocks on their freezers.

The whole thing was a very interesting exercise, though, and one I would encourage anyone to attempt - even in the privacy of one's own home. You don't have to actually do it, but planning the whole thing out does make one look at religion very differently.

With a background as a software developer, I can discuss designing a religion in terms of architecture. Object oriented development is nothing new in religion; religions have been borrowing from each other from some time. Christianity is a brilliant example with the adaptation of pagan rituals into what is now known as Christmas Day. So 'borrowing' from other religions is not only allowable - it's expected. Tossing some science in makes it interesting.

Then there's the matter of scalability of the religion: it's a franchise. What will another Church of the same sort need to get started? How will the Church support itself? Tithing? Or will it be a percentage of what is spent on coffee? Or... will the Church support itself at all?

How will the Church interact with other faiths? Will you go door to door and tell people that their religion is all wrong, perhaps leave some literature for them? Or will you instead sing in a language that is only taught at the tertiary level of education in these modern times? Will you have a Holy Book? Who will write it?

Most importantly, you should do all of this with friends.

You'll come away knowing a lot more about religion as a man-made entity than you thought.