Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from house stop
Speaker 1: ward dot com. Hey, you're welcome to stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and I want to share with you a modern legend.
Speaker 1: Probably heard this one before it. It's one of the
Speaker 1: most persistent rumors of the modern age, the L Ron
Speaker 1: Hubbard Robert A. Heinland bar bet. You know this one, Robert, Yes, Now,
Speaker 1: I looked into it, and I couldn't find any convincing
Speaker 1: evidence that this bet ever actually took place, so it's
Speaker 1: probably just more of a legend than than a real
Speaker 1: historical account. But the legend I always heard goes something
Speaker 1: like this, You've got L. Ron Hubbard and Robert A.
Speaker 1: Heinland to science fiction authors of the twentieth century, and
Speaker 1: they're sitting in a bar. They don't walk into a bar,
Speaker 1: I guess. I suppose they have to walk into the
Speaker 1: bar first, if they don't take hoverboards or maybe a
Speaker 1: power armor stamp into the bar. But anyway, they're in
Speaker 1: the bar. They're down in some bruskis and this is
Speaker 1: probably some time I would guess in the late nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: and they are discussing the best way to make a
Speaker 1: ton of money, because let's face it, writing science fiction
Speaker 1: doesn't always pay amazingly right, and at this point in
Speaker 1: both of them in his career, they are sci fi writers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very much so. Uh so Hubbard has an opinion. L
Speaker 1: Ron Hubbard says, you know, the best strategy is really
Speaker 1: to take advantage of the common people's desire for transcendence
Speaker 1: and salvation. So he says, quote religion, that's where the
Speaker 1: real money is. And Hubbard boasts that he could invent
Speaker 1: a religion and make millions. Of course, Hinland balks at this.
Speaker 1: That sounds kind of extravagant. So they make a bet
Speaker 1: can he do it? Can he not do it? And
Speaker 1: by the end of the century there are at least
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of Scientologists in the world. The Church
Speaker 1: of Scientology claims millions of adherents those numbers. Who knows
Speaker 1: what the real numbers are, but it seems like at
Speaker 1: least tens of thousands. And Scientology is the sci fi
Speaker 1: religion founded on the teachings of l. Ron Hubbard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it has official religious status in numerous countries. So
Speaker 1: even though this bat probably did not take place, like
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where, yes, it could have
Speaker 1: if you really crunch it, but there's an absolutely no documentation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no good evidence for it. And and in fact,
Speaker 1: we we we probably really should emphasize that because apparently
Speaker 1: in the past there have been some legal actions against
Speaker 1: people who promulgate this as if it were true. So
Speaker 1: probably not true. But why is the rumors so persistent?
Speaker 1: Everybody's heard this, right, I bet you sitting at home,
Speaker 1: or sitting standing running wherever you are listening, I bet
Speaker 1: you've heard some version of this before, right, So you
Speaker 1: could chalk it up to people's just general distaste for scientology.
Speaker 1: There there's a lot of antipathy out there, right, there's
Speaker 1: no sortage of scientology criticism, uh and and lampoon ing
Speaker 1: on the internet these days. Right, But you could also
Speaker 1: say that this kind of story sticks in the mind
Speaker 1: and merits repeating simply because of the sheer audacity of it.
Speaker 1: It offends our most basic sensibilities about what religion is
Speaker 1: and is supposed to be creating a religion out of
Speaker 1: thin air, just on a whim, coming up with a
Speaker 1: new religion. Something about it seems fiercely wrong, just nakedly perverse. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think so. I think yeah. On one hand,
Speaker 1: it does seem like sheer audacity that somebody would just
Speaker 1: create it wholesale. Though, of course, as we'll discuss to
Speaker 1: a large extent, nobody creates a religion wholesale. You're building
Speaker 1: it out of existing parts. It's all kind of like
Speaker 1: that first Iron Man suit that that that start builds
Speaker 1: in the first Iron Man film. He just builds it
Speaker 1: out of all the stuff that's laying around, and then
Speaker 1: he uses that to his advantage. And that's I think
Speaker 1: I would argue that that's what you see in most
Speaker 1: of these cases, though the particular suit of religious armor
Speaker 1: changes depending on the qual day of the ingredients. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I would say this relates back to something we
Speaker 1: talked about in our Techno Religion for the Masses episodes,
Speaker 1: which is that I personally think that a lot of
Speaker 1: the power we attribute to religion lies in our chronological
Speaker 1: alienation from its origins and from its contents. I mean,
Speaker 1: it comes down to sort of like, what does someone
Speaker 1: want from a religion? What does one want from a
Speaker 1: a god? They want something greater than themselves, something that
Speaker 1: stands outside of themselves. What better way than to have
Speaker 1: something that stands outside of not only your lifespan, but
Speaker 1: even your generation, outside of your your your era, even
Speaker 1: you know it's calling to you from a distant place
Speaker 1: slash time. Some of the power comes from the mystery
Speaker 1: of its separation. That's sort of what holiness is. It's
Speaker 1: way less impressive if it seems to spring from the
Speaker 1: very ground we walk on from day to day. And
Speaker 1: and yet all religions start somewhere. No religion can have
Speaker 1: always been ancient, uh, because every religion that exists today,
Speaker 1: even the one you believe in, you would you would
Speaker 1: have to admit, has an origin. It started at some
Speaker 1: point people started believing in this thing. Uh. Though most
Speaker 1: are probably not the result of a single moment of creativity,
Speaker 1: whether inspired by gambling in Bruskys and whatnot. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're probably from gradual evolutions of beliefs, right, Yeah, new
Speaker 1: ideas that suddenly get picked up by, in many cases
Speaker 1: a charismatic individual who is bringing this to people or
Speaker 1: you know it ties into uh two shifts and changes
Speaker 1: in the structure of society and uh and then in
Speaker 1: our sort of in and then when you layer over
Speaker 1: the mythic uh materials as well. You're gonna throw in
Speaker 1: some miracles. You're gonna throw in some some fantastic occurrences,
Speaker 1: golden books falling out of the sky or emerging from
Speaker 1: the ground. Right, Yeah, But this is what we want
Speaker 1: to talk about today, right, So it's the beginnings of
Speaker 1: religious movements, and especially on those that draw from sources
Speaker 1: other than direct spirit whole revelation. So you might have
Speaker 1: a movement that starts with somebody thinks they've received a
Speaker 1: message from God or from other worldly powers, from a
Speaker 1: supernatural agent, and then they deliver that message and found
Speaker 1: a new religion. You've got those, But we want to
Speaker 1: talk about what happens when something that everybody recognizes as
Speaker 1: a fiction or an in joke or a prank or
Speaker 1: a fan club takes on the mantle of religion and
Speaker 1: genuine sanctity. Yeah, when does it become an actual religion?
Speaker 1: And I know that some of you might be thinking, well,
Speaker 1: what does any of this have to do with science
Speaker 1: and the flag of science that is up there over
Speaker 1: stuff to bow your mind? Well a lot actually, because
Speaker 1: because most of what we're gonna talk about is occurring,
Speaker 1: if not right now, than at least in the scientific age.
Speaker 1: And I believe that that that the the age of science,
Speaker 1: this age of a reason, has a lot to do
Speaker 1: with the emergence of hyper real religions. Absolutely, and I
Speaker 1: think we would be remiss if we did not begin
Speaker 1: this discussion with one of the most popular jokes turned
Speaker 1: religions of our modern age, and that is postafarianism. Yes,
Speaker 1: and and I do want to just throw in real
Speaker 1: quick this is, of course, the the word postafarianism is
Speaker 1: is a play on Rastafarianism, and I do I do
Speaker 1: want to just point out that we are aware that
Speaker 1: adherents of the Rastafari faith uh often do not like
Speaker 1: the term Rastafarianism. So it's kind of like there's a
Speaker 1: little bit of an insult to Rastafari adherents built into postafarianism.
Speaker 1: Well maybe maybe for that, for that reason, we could
Speaker 1: avoid it and just say flying spaghetti monsterism. Well we
Speaker 1: I think we can refer to either just what I
Speaker 1: just thought it was important to acknowledge that, yes, uh uh,
Speaker 1: there's I don't think it was intentional, but they're Postafarianism
Speaker 1: could be deemed offensive by some out there, certainly, and
Speaker 1: if you're already lost. We need to back up, because
Speaker 1: in order for this to make sense, we've got to
Speaker 1: start with a brief bit of historical context, especially for
Speaker 1: those of you who live outside the United States and
Speaker 1: aren't familiar with the school creationism controversy that's gone on
Speaker 1: in the United States, I'd say mostly in the last
Speaker 1: twenty years or so many twenty years. So in the
Speaker 1: United States, we have a constitutional doctrine of separation of
Speaker 1: church and State, and this is traditionally interpreted to say
Speaker 1: that private citizens can believe whatever they want. You have,
Speaker 1: whatever religious beliefs you want, an agents of the government
Speaker 1: can't interfere with that, but also agents of the government
Speaker 1: can't use their civil authority to punish or promote particular
Speaker 1: religious ideas. Right. And for the most part, that works
Speaker 1: pretty well, except where there's this crossover where on one
Speaker 1: side the science book is saying, uh, there's this thing
Speaker 1: called evolution. There were these things called dinosaurs. This is
Speaker 1: the basic timeline as a science understands it versus more
Speaker 1: fundamentalist and literal interpretations of biblical tradition. Right. And this
Speaker 1: is the most common example in the United States of
Speaker 1: a conflict between between separate between the sort of individual
Speaker 1: beliefs of people who work for the government, and the
Speaker 1: the idea that civil servants of the government shouldn't be
Speaker 1: using their power to inflict their religious beliefs on other people.
Speaker 1: Uh So, a large percent of Americans are what we
Speaker 1: would call Young Earth creationists. And what does that mean. Well,
Speaker 1: a Gallop poll released in June found that forty two
Speaker 1: percent of Americans said they agreed with the following statement
Speaker 1: quote God created human beings pretty much in their present
Speaker 1: form at one time within the last ten thousand years
Speaker 1: or so, which is of course complete nonsense, right, And
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this podcast, I'm just gonna go
Speaker 1: and assume you do not believe this. Yeah, as you
Speaker 1: could guess, this entails a rejection of biological evolution and
Speaker 1: common descent usually, uh, pretty much all of geology, radiometric dating,
Speaker 1: all mainstream scientific thinking about fossils and paleontology, probably a
Speaker 1: lot of astronomy and astrophysics too, for example, the creation
Speaker 1: of the Solar System and the formation of galaxies, and
Speaker 1: probably plenty of other things. You could just generally say
Speaker 1: that Young Earth creationism is a belief that encounters generalized
Speaker 1: difficulty when held alongside a scientific picture of our world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the the rejection of the best modern scientific understanding
Speaker 1: of how the world works, and the acceptance of and
Speaker 1: the reliance upon a sort of modern untangling of ancient
Speaker 1: Babylonian right. So, but the problem is plenty of civil
Speaker 1: servants in the United States, especially people who might be
Speaker 1: teachers in public schools or approving curriculum or textbook selection
Speaker 1: for public schools, hold these beliefs themselves, and they sometimes
Speaker 1: try to promote these beliefs and their consequences in what
Speaker 1: are supposed to be secular, religiously neutral classes for all students.
Speaker 1: And this can take a lot of forms. At one extreme,
Speaker 1: it might have biology classes teaching about the Garden of
Speaker 1: Eden and Noah's Ark as an alternative evolutionary theory. At
Speaker 1: the other end, it might be less overt than that,
Speaker 1: and it might just insist on biology classes including materials
Speaker 1: prepared by creationists that sort of cast vague, unfounded doubts
Speaker 1: on modern biology, or that uh teach children scientifically false
Speaker 1: arguments against evolution, like you know, things you've heard before,
Speaker 1: like there are no transitional fossils and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And obviously this has led to lots of social conflict,
Speaker 1: big public debates, and lots of court cases. One example
Speaker 1: of such a court case occurs very close to home
Speaker 1: for us here in Cobb County, Georgia, which is includes
Speaker 1: northern suburbs of Atlanta. And on March twenty, two thousand two,
Speaker 1: the public school officials in Cobb County approved a measure
Speaker 1: requiring biology textbooks to wear a sticker on the inside
Speaker 1: cover that has the following statement. It's says evolution is
Speaker 1: a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living
Speaker 1: living things. Uh. And in two thousand five, this was
Speaker 1: ruled unconstitutional by US District Judge Clarence Cooper, who said,
Speaker 1: of this ruling quote, by denigrating evolution, the school board
Speaker 1: appears to be endorsing the well known prevailing alternative theory
Speaker 1: creationism or variations thereof, even though the sticker does not
Speaker 1: specifically reference the alternative theories. And this gets us back
Speaker 1: to the monster in question, the spaghetti monster. Where where
Speaker 1: did this come from? Well? This originates with a protest, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a protest against the inclusion of statements like the stickers
Speaker 1: like this in science textbooks. Like the basic idea here
Speaker 1: is hey, if this nonsense is going to be presented
Speaker 1: as an alternative to our science. How about this nonsense?
Speaker 1: How about I just blatantly make something up, just completely
Speaker 1: off the top of my head, just the craziest thing
Speaker 1: you can imagine. Let's put that in there as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this of course takes this to Kansas. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: two thousand five, when the Kansas State Board of Education
Speaker 1: had decided to allow intelligent design the sort of a
Speaker 1: moniker of creationism, you might call it, like a marketing
Speaker 1: term to make it seem more scientific, like to add
Speaker 1: a lexicon of scientific vocabulary to h to creationism. And
Speaker 1: they said that they wanted to introduce this into the
Speaker 1: curriculum as an as an alternative to evolution, you know,
Speaker 1: teach both theories. So uh. Then twenty five year old
Speaker 1: physics graduate Bobby Henderson wrote what is known as the
Speaker 1: Open Letter to the Kansas School Board, published online in
Speaker 1: two thousand five, to present his vision for religious inclusivity
Speaker 1: in the science classroom. Robert, would you like to read
Speaker 1: a select quote from the letter? I shall quote. I
Speaker 1: am writing you with much concern, after having read of
Speaker 1: your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of intelligent
Speaker 1: design should be taught along with the theory of evolution.
Speaker 1: Let us remember that there are multiple theories of intelligent design.
Speaker 1: I and many others around the world are of the
Speaker 1: strong belief that the universe was created by a flying
Speaker 1: spaghetti monster. Right. So throughout this letter, Henderson goes on
Speaker 1: to critique and satirize the intelligent design arguments by showing
Speaker 1: how the claims of flying spaghetti monsterism, though they might
Speaker 1: appear to conflict with scientists around the world, don't actually
Speaker 1: because the flying spaghetti monster reaches out with his newly
Speaker 1: appendages to tweak the results of experiments so that we
Speaker 1: will be tricked into believing in an evolutionary model of
Speaker 1: the old Earth. Uh. And he goes on also to
Speaker 1: insist that when flying spaghetti monsterism is taught in science classrooms,
Speaker 1: the teacher must wear full pirate regalia. Quote. The concise
Speaker 1: explanation for this is that he becomes angry if we don't. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: and of course this leads to um wonderful depictions of
Speaker 1: the flying spaghetti monster, yeah, which we've all seen before, right.
Speaker 1: The meme very much. It started as a bit of satire,
Speaker 1: a joke on this religious social movement that the author
Speaker 1: of this letter opposed, but it really took on a
Speaker 1: life of its own. It became a meme, it became
Speaker 1: picked up on the internet. So there's artwork. Like you said,
Speaker 1: there's uh, it's a whole living library of self referential
Speaker 1: humor based around this original idea of a flying spaghetti monster,
Speaker 1: including actually becoming some form of church. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: it's interesting to look at the evolution of the joke.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm often just taken by the visual depiction
Speaker 1: because I feel like those really pick up a lot
Speaker 1: of steam. And the spaghetti monster itself is funny looking.
Speaker 1: It kind of looks like testicles, so it's it's it's
Speaker 1: inherently goofy. It has meatballs, by the way, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a large pile of spaghetti flying through the sky
Speaker 1: with eyes and meatballs generally too, and and and yeah,
Speaker 1: to your point, like a lot of it's kind of
Speaker 1: a community, a symbol, myth those as well, Like everyone,
Speaker 1: all sorts of little bits and pieces are thrown in
Speaker 1: kind of willy nilly to create this overall faith. And
Speaker 1: it's one of those the theology is not all top down,
Speaker 1: sort of bottom up theology. Yeah, and it's it's one
Speaker 1: of those jokes that I think over the years, like
Speaker 1: when I first heard it, I was kind of like,
Speaker 1: didn't get the joke, and then I got the joke.
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, I get it. But then the joke,
Speaker 1: it's the joke just keeps going. People keep telling it
Speaker 1: to the point where it's not really that funny anymore.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's kind of like having that that
Speaker 1: friend in high school who loves Monty Python so much
Speaker 1: that they won't they just fit a reference or half
Speaker 1: a skit into every conversation. Like that's kind of how
Speaker 1: I feel about Pastafari. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know
Speaker 1: exactly what you mean. And also I would say that
Speaker 1: in some cases it evolved from a specific satire of
Speaker 1: of teaching of Young Earth creationism in public schools to
Speaker 1: become a more general critique of of religion across the board,
Speaker 1: which I think is not necessarily what the author originally intended, right,
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's definitely becomes kind of a you know,
Speaker 1: an atheistic protest religion, um, and it serves a useful
Speaker 1: purpose there, I think, you know it. It's it continually argues, hey, um,
Speaker 1: why do we believe that in the things we believed in.
Speaker 1: You know, why is this valuable? And this isn't um
Speaker 1: and you know, as a joke goes it is it
Speaker 1: has proven to be effective, you know, in the way
Speaker 1: that jokes can often tear down the most formidable walls
Speaker 1: in our society but also piss people off royally. Now,
Speaker 1: I can take the other side for a second and
Speaker 1: say that I can understand why some religious people would
Speaker 1: be less than impressed with this joke as it exists today, because,
Speaker 1: let's be fair, in a lot of cases, it does
Speaker 1: seem to represent a just sort of generalized critique, and
Speaker 1: critique might be a generous word of of religion without
Speaker 1: much attempt to understand people's religions or doctrines and the
Speaker 1: values they provide to the people that that hold them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is you can just look at as a kind
Speaker 1: of shallow, outsider mockery. Yeah, and I and I definitely,
Speaker 1: you know, I can definitely relate to some of those
Speaker 1: feelings about it, you know, over the years, because at
Speaker 1: times I have felt like, not only is it a
Speaker 1: joke that I maybe don't don't get or I don't
Speaker 1: find as funny, but yeah, I could also see where
Speaker 1: it's a little a little offensive, you know, because you're
Speaker 1: it's kind of like you're taking just three minutes to
Speaker 1: throw up a spaghetti monster image to rebuke a person's
Speaker 1: lifetime of faith, you know, to to rebuke their their
Speaker 1: their cultural heritage in many cases. But as we said,
Speaker 1: this is becoming a new heritage of its own. And
Speaker 1: I'm I'm curious to see what the Church of the
Speaker 1: Flying Spaghetti Monster looks like in twenty years. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think for the most part, for most people, it's it's
Speaker 1: remains at that bumper sticker level involvement, you know, it
Speaker 1: is just something you throw up on social media or
Speaker 1: stick on the back of your car. Other people have
Speaker 1: taken it to two greater extremes, going in and trying
Speaker 1: to get their official um, you know state I D
Speaker 1: with a colander on their head, which is of course
Speaker 1: one of the other articles of faith for the adherents,
Speaker 1: and UH and other folks have pushed for official religious status,
Speaker 1: which is is really taking it to the next level,
Speaker 1: saying not only is our joke religion jokey, but it
Speaker 1: is actually a religion, or it is as real religion
Speaker 1: as your religion. And we want the government to recognize
Speaker 1: that fact. And I think there are some governments that
Speaker 1: have recognized it, right, Yeah, at least the Netherlands and
Speaker 1: New Zealand to to some degree. That the Netherlands where
Speaker 1: that was where we saw the most recent headlines about it,
Speaker 1: and apparently they had to they had to prove that
Speaker 1: it wasn't just a fad, that it was an actual
Speaker 1: thing that people believed in and that they had like
Speaker 1: a marriage ritual, uh, that sort of thing, so that
Speaker 1: it was it's the kind of thing that people are
Speaker 1: invested in enough that it is, you know, potentially a
Speaker 1: part of your life. Yeah, and this leads us to
Speaker 1: the realization that a religion need not be ancient in
Speaker 1: order to be followed. So I I stand by what
Speaker 1: I said earlier about a lot of the aesthetic power
Speaker 1: of religion does seem to come from its antiquity and
Speaker 1: its chronological alienation sort of alien holiness of the distant past.
Speaker 1: But this doesn't mean you can't create religions in the
Speaker 1: modern day that gain a following. Yeah. I mean we've
Speaker 1: already mentioned Rastafari, which is an Abrahamic religion, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: certainly with a lot of elements that are based in
Speaker 1: deep history, but it also venerated uh then Emperor of
Speaker 1: Ethiopia highly Stilassi, you know. And it's it's it's certainly
Speaker 1: a religion I would love to look at in greater
Speaker 1: depth at some point in the future. But yeah, you
Speaker 1: have a situation where it's it's in the past, it's
Speaker 1: it's taking place in the present. And I mean to
Speaker 1: have your Messiah of and and die within the lifespan
Speaker 1: of the faith, uh and to see that sort of
Speaker 1: happen in in recent history, it's fascinating. Well, how about
Speaker 1: how about Joseph Smith and the Latter day Saints. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's another good one. Um, it's the origins
Speaker 1: date back around eighteen thirty. This is a millennialist religion
Speaker 1: that preach the impending second Coming, continuing revelations and uh
Speaker 1: uh an identity and values that I guess you'd say
Speaker 1: we're more grounded in the temporary setting. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's America. It's there's a modern cosmology, very American religion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very much. So. If if you don't realize that this
Speaker 1: is the name, the official name of the Mormons, the
Speaker 1: Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter day Saints and it too,
Speaker 1: of course, sprang up around a single charismatic individual, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's actually a very interesting religion to look
Speaker 1: at in terms of science as well, um, in the
Speaker 1: in since it's since it is more of a more
Speaker 1: closely tied to our scientific age, you do find elements
Speaker 1: of it that are that that conflict less with modern
Speaker 1: scientific cosmology, such as the the idea that there are
Speaker 1: other planets and that there is a potential for life
Speaker 1: on other worlds. Oh yeah, though even without the introduction
Speaker 1: of new holy texts such as the Book of Mormon,
Speaker 1: you could point out that lots of modern Christians have
Speaker 1: adapted their beliefs to include modern science. Oh certainly. I mean,
Speaker 1: when we look at the numbers from from that Gallup poll,
Speaker 1: only forty two percent of Americans adhered to a literal
Speaker 1: understanding of the Bible, and so that's obviously not even
Speaker 1: maybe that's like half of Christians or something in America. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can certainly still be a Christian according
Speaker 1: to me anyway. I mean, this is going to very
Speaker 1: depending on who's who's serving you your Christianity, but um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can still be a Christian and not believe that
Speaker 1: there was a literal garden of eaton. You can still
Speaker 1: look at something like Noah's ark uh and and really
Speaker 1: and and view it as mythology without and view it
Speaker 1: as mythology, not in the as a dismissal, but understanding
Speaker 1: the power of myth and the necessity of myth uh
Speaker 1: in our culture right. Well, or you might not even
Speaker 1: put it in those terms. You might just say like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a story that's part of our received tradition,
Speaker 1: and I accept it as a story. But I but
Speaker 1: also I wouldn't deny what the evidence in the lab says.
Speaker 1: I mean, that would be foolish. So so one is
Speaker 1: science and one is my religion, and you know you
Speaker 1: don't have to smash them together in a particle collider
Speaker 1: of my brain. Yeah, I mean you can. You can.
Speaker 1: You can look at it as literature. You can look
Speaker 1: at it his mythology if you want. You can look
Speaker 1: at it as some sort of a literal historical document.
Speaker 1: But to do so is to throw out our modern
Speaker 1: understanding of the world. Yeah, so how about the other
Speaker 1: uh recently created religion that we opened with talking about scientology,
Speaker 1: Like we said, the bar Bet story probably isn't true,
Speaker 1: but scientology certainly is a religion explicitly created in the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. That's right. Nine Um contemporary individual focused movement
Speaker 1: elements of science fiction, New age philosophy, and the psychoanalysis,
Speaker 1: though it also has historically been anti psychiatry. Um. And
Speaker 1: I think it's sort of almost uh positions itself as
Speaker 1: an alternative to psychiatry. Yes, yeah, I think very much so,
Speaker 1: um and one of them. We're not gonna go in
Speaker 1: deep into all the mysteries of scientology here, but it
Speaker 1: essentially says that we're all alien souls called Betan's that
Speaker 1: bounce around from life to life. One attempts to free
Speaker 1: oneself from this cycle and train their true self. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of like space Buddhism, which you know, I
Speaker 1: with without getting into the other details, I could get
Speaker 1: behind the idea of some space Buddhism. I could see
Speaker 1: the appeal in the abstract at least, though, as you note,
Speaker 1: it is a pretty divisive religion. Everybody's got an opinion
Speaker 1: on it. Yeah, it's hard to find and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: one of those people that I would love to see
Speaker 1: more just like objective down the middle coverage of scientology.
Speaker 1: But for the most part it's either U. I mean, certainly,
Speaker 1: just researching online you're gonna find one voice or the
Speaker 1: other in very drastically different positions on the matter. Now,
Speaker 1: any of the religions that we've mentioned so far, you
Speaker 1: can definitely go at them and point out at least
Speaker 1: little bits and pieces that don't match up with our
Speaker 1: scientific understanding of reality. You can say, hey, bees didn't
Speaker 1: have four legs, as we've mentioned in previous episodes. Sure
Speaker 1: there were no New World horses prior to h to
Speaker 1: the colonial presence UH in North America. You told how
Speaker 1: is that relevant? Um? Some criticize, you know, the Book
Speaker 1: of Mormon and point to UH passages about horses and
Speaker 1: and use this as a, you know, a sort of
Speaker 1: rallying point for Oh, you're totally full of it because
Speaker 1: this thing doesn't match up with with real life. Likewise,
Speaker 1: you can say, oh, there's no demonic space, aliens, there
Speaker 1: no there was no z new etcetera. But as we're
Speaker 1: about to discuss, there are religions or hyper religions as
Speaker 1: they're they're sometimes called, in which there is definite fiction
Speaker 1: going on, like the whole Bedrock for the faith is
Speaker 1: fiction where not everybody agrees this fiction nobody and the
Speaker 1: people on the inside. Yeah, So it's not a situation
Speaker 1: where someone is having to say, well, you know, this
Speaker 1: one little detail about horses or bees or what have you.
Speaker 1: It doesn't match up because X Y and is either saying, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I fully agree with you. This is all fiction. But
Speaker 1: the thing that comes out of that fiction is real. Right,
Speaker 1: we're talking about religions that draw inspiration from fictional narratives
Speaker 1: that don't claim to adhere to reality at all. And
Speaker 1: here we're going to get into a little bit of
Speaker 1: the work of a sort of cultural critic and sociologist
Speaker 1: named Adam Possum I And Possum's got a he's got
Speaker 1: a book that came out in two thousand five called
Speaker 1: Religion and Popular Culture a hyper Real Testament like that title, uh,
Speaker 1: And in this book he builds on some postmodern social theory. Now,
Speaker 1: don't worry, we're not going to get too into the
Speaker 1: weeds of social theory and post modern criticism. But basically
Speaker 1: here's how it goes. It says the twentieth century represents
Speaker 1: a turn from traditional cultural structures to individualized consumer experiences
Speaker 1: driven by capitalism. So just think about that for a second. Oh,
Speaker 1: and he says, of course this extends to religion. And
Speaker 1: so if you think about that, it's sort of saying
Speaker 1: that instead of having a structure like a community accountable
Speaker 1: to one another that gathers to pray and worship in
Speaker 1: the received antique tradition, people consume their religion individually in
Speaker 1: the same way they do their shopping and their media experiences.
Speaker 1: Religion becomes a co modified, consume arized thing that you
Speaker 1: you can pick off the shelf and take home with you.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure I totally agree, but I think
Speaker 1: there is at least a grain of truth to this. Uh.
Speaker 1: Simply by looking at the esthetics of religion in America today,
Speaker 1: you could point to, for example, I think the rise
Speaker 1: of televangelism, TV ministry networks. You can change the channel
Speaker 1: at home religious participation on your own time with a
Speaker 1: TV program. You could also look at mega churches, which
Speaker 1: I think are a really interesting cultural phenomenon. I have
Speaker 1: huge congregations, and what's the point of the huge congregation. Well,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to look at it from this critical
Speaker 1: point of view, you could say, really, a huge congregation
Speaker 1: like that provides each individual church go or a kind
Speaker 1: of Walmart level of anonymity. You don't have to have
Speaker 1: a personal relationship. You just go and sort of consume
Speaker 1: as another face in the crowd, as on your own time,
Speaker 1: on your own terms. Now, of course that also can
Speaker 1: be The very thing about a mega church that would
Speaker 1: turn someone away is that they want to go into
Speaker 1: a church. They want to be recognized, right, they want
Speaker 1: to be an individual, they want a part of a
Speaker 1: community exactly. But then also you could look at their
Speaker 1: attention grabbing multimedia experiences like let's you know, let's watch
Speaker 1: Pastor Trent rock out with the Rays Band on the JumboTron,
Speaker 1: which there there's certainly plenty of that. And sometimes they've
Speaker 1: even got truly built in shopping experiences. You've got coffee shops,
Speaker 1: bookstores and the church and stuff like that. And so
Speaker 1: this is the work that I think possum I is
Speaker 1: building on. And so possum I, when he gets to
Speaker 1: the concept of hyper real religion, he makes a comparison
Speaker 1: between trends in fantasy literature and trends in religion. And
Speaker 1: so he starts out by looking at fantasy fiction and
Speaker 1: he says he says essentially that fantasy fiction has this
Speaker 1: traditional library of tropes, styles, and contents from which it
Speaker 1: usually draws like sword and sorcery fiction. He possum I
Speaker 1: claims that this is based mostly on chivalric or medieval
Speaker 1: romance like the R three and cycle, you know, King
Speaker 1: Arthur and those kind of stories, that they form the
Speaker 1: library of things which the modern fantasy author can now
Speaker 1: reach in and grab and put together in his or
Speaker 1: her own way. And so among the standard library of
Speaker 1: tropes or things, magic, creatures, thieves, warriors, druids, wizards, orcs, elves,
Speaker 1: what else, oh, gelatinous cubes. Yeah, all the standard dungeon
Speaker 1: and dragons, characters, creatures and tropes for sure. But then
Speaker 1: possum My points to an interesting development in the history
Speaker 1: of fantasy, which he singles out as the two thousand
Speaker 1: two video game Kingdom Hearts. Now, I've never played this
Speaker 1: of you know, but I'm familiar with the with the series,
Speaker 1: especially it's it's crossovers with like Disney material. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: did not expect Kingdom Hearts to show up in the material,
Speaker 1: but this is exactly what he points out. I think
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting point. He says, so okay. Kingdom
Speaker 1: Hearts is a video game following a very traditional fantasy plot.
Speaker 1: In some ways, it has a traditional fantasy plot structure.
Speaker 1: There's a quest, there's a main character who has a
Speaker 1: sort of symbolic sword and uh, and the main character
Speaker 1: is seeking reunification with friends who are lost. It all
Speaker 1: sounds like this could be Tolkien or something. But instead
Speaker 1: of having all of just the regular dungeons and dragons, chivalry,
Speaker 1: you know, the knights and the elves and the orcs
Speaker 1: and all that, it's got characters from Disney movies. Like
Speaker 1: you say, so, it's got characters from Aladdin and Peter
Speaker 1: Pan and hundred and one Dalmatians and Alice in Wonderland.
Speaker 1: And so he's looking at this as saying, huh. So,
Speaker 1: when you put yourself in the fantasy mindset, you kind
Speaker 1: of have to uh accept as real all of the
Speaker 1: tropes that are being pulled from the the antique library
Speaker 1: of medieval and fantasy tropes like wizards and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: That's the real material that you work with within the
Speaker 1: fantasy realm. But this is bringing in all this stuff
Speaker 1: where people are explicitly familiar with the origins Disney movies
Speaker 1: Disney movies they saw when they were a kid, and
Speaker 1: now they're part of the Fantasy library. Yeah. This is
Speaker 1: I mean, this just makes me think about walking around
Speaker 1: the office here, how stuff works. Uh, you go by
Speaker 1: each desk and everyone as at least it seems like
Speaker 1: one figuring, right, one action figure, some sort of pop
Speaker 1: culture comic bookie character that is serving as kind of
Speaker 1: uh kind of an avatar, kind of an icon, kind
Speaker 1: of uh kind of a holy artifact, a little god,
Speaker 1: a little shrine at your desk. Yeah, exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: like like I think about in my own situation, like
Speaker 1: I carry a Ganesha in my pocket, Ganesha being of
Speaker 1: course that the Hindu, a little elephant deity, the remover
Speaker 1: of obstacles, um and and so you know, I carry
Speaker 1: him around as a kind of a good good luck token.
Speaker 1: But on my desk here at work, I also have
Speaker 1: a Gammera and a tom Servo, which very fine idols. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they kind of what they kind of embody certain
Speaker 1: you know, maybe not completely thought out ideas, but they
Speaker 1: embody certain nostalgic powers and thematic powers that I kind
Speaker 1: of draw in a draw on as I work. Gammera
Speaker 1: has stuff we can all get behind he of all children.
Speaker 1: It's right. He's a friend of children, and he breathes
Speaker 1: fire and flies, so he's you know, he's he's a
Speaker 1: he's a powerful force to to to to turn to.
Speaker 1: So anytime there's a bat in your vicinity that begins
Speaker 1: to emit rays you know that you have gammera on
Speaker 1: your side. Exactly. Yeah, but you know to what extent
Speaker 1: are all these little little creatures and little toy I mean,
Speaker 1: they are all kind of religious icons. They're kind of
Speaker 1: the gods of the New Age, right, Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: we should note about possum I before we continue that.
Speaker 1: In the academic community postmodern religious and cultural criticism, there's
Speaker 1: been you know, a ton of ink spill debating the
Speaker 1: merits of possum eze definitions and analysis. We're not going
Speaker 1: to get into all that. We're we're not going to
Speaker 1: get into these debates. We can just focus on that
Speaker 1: the example itself, basically the all it is subjective analysis.
Speaker 1: So if there's nothing definite about any of it, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's but it does it does make a lot
Speaker 1: of sense in this one we're discussing it here. But
Speaker 1: essentially the idea is creating religios inspired by source material
Speaker 1: that the religion's own adherents except to be fiction. Well,
Speaker 1: let's run through some examples of this, because I mean,
Speaker 1: I know it's if you're not familiar with this, your
Speaker 1: your brain is probably going in circles here, like how
Speaker 1: do you base a religion? It's one thing to say, oh,
Speaker 1: I get some inspiration from a gammera, but how would
Speaker 1: you actually have a Gambra based faith? Well, do you
Speaker 1: mind if I talk about the Jedi? First? Talk about
Speaker 1: the Jedi? Okay, so how about Jedi is M. Have
Speaker 1: you have you folks heard of this Jedi is M
Speaker 1: Jeddism or Jeddi is M. Jedism always makes me think
Speaker 1: of Jed from Beverly Hill, Billways. It's the religion of
Speaker 1: Jed clamp At. Yes, because he came across the Black Gold,
Speaker 1: so he must be inspired. Yes he would God let
Speaker 1: him there. But anyway, that no, jedi Ism is a
Speaker 1: Star Wars inspired religion that takes after the Jedi, the
Speaker 1: Jedi knights of the Star Wars universe. Who are the heroes?
Speaker 1: I mean, I probably don't need to explain the Star
Speaker 1: Wars context. You I assume you've seen it, if not,
Speaker 1: suffice to say, they're, you know, a quasimistical religious order
Speaker 1: of good guy is facing off against an evil empire.
Speaker 1: Well evil in quotation, I don't know how evil they
Speaker 1: actually were. But but oh so you've got a bone
Speaker 1: to pick there, Well, it's it's not really worth picking
Speaker 1: at this point, never mind. Okay, So anyway, in my
Speaker 1: best judgment, Jedi pretty clearly began as a joke. It
Speaker 1: just explicitly a joke. Uh. First example the two thousand
Speaker 1: one Senceus phenomenon. So around the time of the year
Speaker 1: two thousand one, there was a widespread international email campaign
Speaker 1: urging people to list Jedi as their religion on official
Speaker 1: census forms. And it worked. It worked. According to the BBC,
Speaker 1: In the two thousand one UK census, three hundred ninety thousand,
Speaker 1: one d twenty seven people, which amounted to about zero
Speaker 1: point seven percent of the population at the time, listed
Speaker 1: their religion as some variation on Jedi on that census
Speaker 1: Jedi or Jedi Night something like. That same year, according
Speaker 1: to the Sydney Morning Herald, seventy thousand, five hundred and
Speaker 1: nine Australians are about zero point three seven percent of
Speaker 1: Australians registered as Jedi on on the two thousand one census.
Speaker 1: So at the time, I think everybody assumed this was
Speaker 1: sort of like flying spaghetti monsterism. It's a joke carried
Speaker 1: out by atheists and secularists, maybe trying to point out
Speaker 1: something about the arbitrary nous of people's religious beliefs. Maybe
Speaker 1: they thought they were making a point. Maybe they didn't
Speaker 1: even think they were making a point. Maybe they just
Speaker 1: thought it was funny to say I'm a Jedi instead
Speaker 1: of to say no religion or none or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's probably the kind of thing where in many
Speaker 1: of these cases, not a tremendous A tremendous now I thought,
Speaker 1: is not going into this. It's it's just kind of
Speaker 1: a gut reaction. But the roots may run a little
Speaker 1: deeper than they're conscious off. Yeah. So that was two
Speaker 1: thousand one. But if you look at the website now
Speaker 1: of the Temple of the Jedi Order, and if you
Speaker 1: listen to their spokespeople, it starts to seem less and
Speaker 1: less like a joke, okay, or even a statement in
Speaker 1: order to make a point. If you look at them now,
Speaker 1: the Jedi have beliefs, they have doctrines. They have credle statements,
Speaker 1: and it sounds to me perhaps unsettlingly sincere, I don't
Speaker 1: mean unsettling as in I'm mocking them. I just mean
Speaker 1: it's surprising. So I want to read a couple of
Speaker 1: little things from the Temple of the Jedi Order. These
Speaker 1: are These are statements they have. One is the Jedi Code,
Speaker 1: and there are two versions of it. I want to
Speaker 1: read the simplified version. The Jedi Code reads emotion yet peace,
Speaker 1: Ignorance yet, knowledge, passion yet serenity, chaos yet, harmony, death
Speaker 1: yet the force that sounds pleasingly my mystic and deep. Yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's also a Jedi creed, believe it or not, so
Speaker 1: that this is their creed. I am a Jedi, an
Speaker 1: instrument of peace. Where there is hatred, I shall bring
Speaker 1: love where there is injury, pardon where there is doubt,
Speaker 1: faith where there is despair, Hope where there is darkness, light,
Speaker 1: and where there is sadness joy. I am a Jedi.
Speaker 1: I shall never seek so much to be consoled as
Speaker 1: to console, to be understood, as to understand, to be loved,
Speaker 1: as to love, For it is in giving that we receive.
Speaker 1: It is in pardoning that we're pardoned, and it is
Speaker 1: in dying that we're born to eternal life. The forces
Speaker 1: with me always for I am a Jedi. Okay, so
Speaker 1: this makes me instantly wonder are we are we witnessing
Speaker 1: here the evolution of a faith or the evolution of
Speaker 1: the joke? Are we are we kind of in like
Speaker 1: the Andy Kaufman uh period of the joke where we're
Speaker 1: just forced to feel kind of confused and maybe a
Speaker 1: little uncomfortable about where we stand, uh in bit versus reality?
Speaker 1: I don't know, because I so first of all, that
Speaker 1: creed I read there, they said they claimed that is
Speaker 1: actually adapted from a traditional prayer of St. Francis of
Speaker 1: assisi um. So that's sort of interesting that they're adapting
Speaker 1: traditional religious materials. But I also listened to an interview
Speaker 1: with the spokesperson from the organization, the Temple of the Jedi,
Speaker 1: and you know what, he seemed to me like a
Speaker 1: level headed guy who was not playing a prank. In fact,
Speaker 1: he the weirdest thing was he didn't even seem like
Speaker 1: all that obsessive of a Star Wars fan. Um. And
Speaker 1: he so he explained that all the Jedi believe in
Speaker 1: the Force, but the Jedi need not believe in like
Speaker 1: a literal physical reality of the Force as an energy
Speaker 1: field that surrounds us and binds us, though apparently you
Speaker 1: can believe in that instead. He made it sound like
Speaker 1: the Force can be defined however you like. He can
Speaker 1: be a physical reality, it can be a metaphor for
Speaker 1: the interconnectedness of the universe, or it can be something
Speaker 1: else entirely pretty much whatever you want. He seemed very
Speaker 1: earnest and serious about Jedism being taken seriously as a religion, or,
Speaker 1: if not a religion, as a sort of philosophy, accorded
Speaker 1: the same cultural respect as a religion. Well it's interesting,
Speaker 1: right because you're, I mean, what is what is Star
Speaker 1: Wars but sort of a rehashing and reassemblage of various
Speaker 1: uh mythic tropes, right, yeah, And he pointed to exactly
Speaker 1: this thing. He said, Star Wars doesn't exist in a vacuum.
Speaker 1: You know, it draws on traditional philosophies and religions, and
Speaker 1: so we're essentially using Star Wars as as a metaphorical
Speaker 1: way to go back to these ancient traditions. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of like, Hey, I really love Star Wars, Why
Speaker 1: do I love Star Wars? And then if the answer
Speaker 1: as well, some of these belief systems are kind of
Speaker 1: appealing to me if you then explore the roots of
Speaker 1: those things and began to find meaning in the roots
Speaker 1: of those things without abandoning that initial science fiction lens
Speaker 1: by continuing to have that be a part of your
Speaker 1: your I'm hesitant to say world view, but let's see
Speaker 1: your your spiritual construction. Then you you have yourself a
Speaker 1: hyper real religion. Yeah, but the Star Wars universe is
Speaker 1: not the only one that has created movements like this.
Speaker 1: I think there are others that I would say chart
Speaker 1: a similar path. It looks to me, and like I
Speaker 1: have to admit, as with all these I'm an outsider,
Speaker 1: so you know, I can't speak as a Jedi or something,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to diminish people's experiences in that
Speaker 1: faith or in any other faith. But what I'll say
Speaker 1: is it looks to me like it definitely started as
Speaker 1: a joke, and it it and it took on a seriousness.
Speaker 1: And and there are others like that, like, well, that's
Speaker 1: just like your opinion, man, right, how about the dude,
Speaker 1: that's right? Dudaism is another big one. Um, I assume
Speaker 1: we also have some Big Lebowski fans, I should hope.
Speaker 1: So yeah, The Big Lebowski, The Cohen Brothers. Uh, just
Speaker 1: wonderful film and it didn't really do well when it
Speaker 1: came out, but it's one of those that has continued
Speaker 1: to just gain a cult following conventions and even it's
Speaker 1: own hyper real religion in the form of Dudaism. So
Speaker 1: it's basically all boils down to the dude abides right. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a dude centric philosophy and lifestyle, more or less
Speaker 1: a modern pop culture take on Daoism dallasm. I've heard
Speaker 1: it described also as having a lot of similarities to
Speaker 1: Zen Buddhism. Yeah. Indeed, it's you know, it's a little
Speaker 1: it's chill, it's uh, it's peaceful, it's uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's all of the positive aspects of the dude, um,
Speaker 1: without some of his more you know, reckless or laziness. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the funny things is that the
Speaker 1: thing about the dude is that he's chill, but throughout
Speaker 1: much of the movie, the dude is not chill. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the dude gets a little irritated and uh, and
Speaker 1: and and is even criticized by the stranger for his
Speaker 1: his vulgar language. So it's it's it's one of the
Speaker 1: This is another great example though, where you when you
Speaker 1: look at Dudaism, you see the people who follow it
Speaker 1: or least like to talk about it. It all does
Speaker 1: begin in that kind of bumper sticker area, like it's
Speaker 1: fun to say, hey, what's your religion? Oh, it's Dudaism,
Speaker 1: you know, because I really love this movie. But you
Speaker 1: see the same thing, right, You see individuals who seem
Speaker 1: to follow the roots of it or sort of ask
Speaker 1: themself questions, Well, if Dudaism were a real faith, if
Speaker 1: it were a real philosophy, what would what would his
Speaker 1: tendants be? What would be what? What would I need
Speaker 1: to understand? And then they sort of follow it backwards
Speaker 1: into um, you know, more historical modes of belief. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think this would encounter the same kind of
Speaker 1: criticisms from outsiders that all these others would. People would
Speaker 1: be like, wait a second, hold on, what do you
Speaker 1: mean do you really believe in Dudaism? Is that really
Speaker 1: your religion? Well, it's kind of It kind of makes
Speaker 1: me think of you remember win App Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: like MP three player that we all had our skins.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. You had different skins, right, We all
Speaker 1: had the same program, but we use different skins that
Speaker 1: appeal of us personally. Since you have like a tool
Speaker 1: skin on Winnamp, I think I had some sort of
Speaker 1: like horrible blood splattery one or something like that. It was.
Speaker 1: It was nice and dark and moody. But but I
Speaker 1: can't help but feel like we encounter something something similar
Speaker 1: with these hyper real religions that we're discussing, where the
Speaker 1: actual mode of beliefs, the actual mechanics are either something
Speaker 1: old or something cobbled together from other beliefs. But if
Speaker 1: that skin that brings us in, that skin is unique
Speaker 1: and appeals to us. I got another one. I was
Speaker 1: trying to tell Rachel last night about Jeddism, my wife Rachel,
Speaker 1: about Jedis to convert her or to Jedism. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: just to explain it. And she was like, oh, I
Speaker 1: bet there is this for Lord of the Rings and
Speaker 1: and what do you know that there are there are
Speaker 1: Tolkien inspired religious ideas, which is very interesting to me
Speaker 1: because I would say that in some ways Tolkien is
Speaker 1: sort of adapting Christianity to a fantasy setting. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: at least some ideas of Christianity. It's not like an
Speaker 1: explicit one to one metaphor, but a lot of his messages,
Speaker 1: I think in Lord of the Rings are Christian ones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's these sort of sort of vague tolken f neopagan religions.
Speaker 1: They're they're interesting because you have the book itself. They're
Speaker 1: they're often these arguments, you know, people saying, oh, this
Speaker 1: is a pagan work and and it's they're the pagan
Speaker 1: elements or what's important here? Others saying no, it's inherently
Speaker 1: a Christian work. Other people saying it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: a synthesis of the two um And maybe all of
Speaker 1: these arguments there are ultimately kind of silly, but you
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a very popular work, and especially out
Speaker 1: of the you know, the nineteen seventies where you saw
Speaker 1: people are really into Token. There's a lot of good.
Speaker 1: There's still a lot of you know, culture cultural energy
Speaker 1: going on. It's and led Zeppelin albums and all Zeppelin albums.
Speaker 1: Then it it has a lot of power to it.
Speaker 1: It has a lot of um, it has a lot
Speaker 1: of depth to it. You can just go completely crazy, uh,
Speaker 1: filling in all the details in your mind about the
Speaker 1: world of Tolkien. We maybe don't advise that. No, well,
Speaker 1: you go for it if you want. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's one thing I always enjoy about the various sci
Speaker 1: fi and fantasy properties that that really engage me is
Speaker 1: if there's a really rich mythos, they're either one that
Speaker 1: is explicitly um laid out for you or one where
Speaker 1: they are all these holes that you can't help but
Speaker 1: fill in the details yourself. You know, we were talking
Speaker 1: about this concept of hyper real religions and uh, and
Speaker 1: Christian Seger our other host brought Satanism to mind, that's right. Um.
Speaker 1: And if anyone remembers the Satanic Panic episode that Christian
Speaker 1: and I did, I guess about a year ago. Now, Ums,
Speaker 1: we discussed in that Satanism like never really existed, certainly
Speaker 1: not in the way that that it was presented in
Speaker 1: during the Satanic Panic, Right. I mean, I would say
Speaker 1: that what you have as Satanism, people who would actually
Speaker 1: claim this religion is almost explicitly an atheistic religion, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And generally when we talk about Satanism, we're talking about
Speaker 1: Lavay and Satanism, which was comes from the Church of Satan,
Speaker 1: found in nineteen sixty six by Anton LaVey. Was you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately it's an atheistic, individualist philosophy. It's UH with more
Speaker 1: than a dash of of drama, symbolism, fun. It's about
Speaker 1: messing with the squares and and putting on a you know,
Speaker 1: a fun show. Well, in some ways I think it
Speaker 1: has a lot in common with the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Speaker 1: is um and that it's it's maybe more than this,
Speaker 1: but in in some ways you can think of it
Speaker 1: as a massive prank. Yes, very much so, UM And
Speaker 1: And I think Leave, I think was was pretty straightforward
Speaker 1: about that. I mean, this is a guy that came
Speaker 1: from sort of Carney roots. It's a very Carney faith
Speaker 1: and and I love it. You can't help it but
Speaker 1: get involved with the trappings of it, especially as the
Speaker 1: years rolled by and it becomes a part of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, an entire segment of of music, right, and
Speaker 1: you get into all this death metal that has very
Speaker 1: degrees of satanic elements. All right, but I think it's
Speaker 1: time to turn to psychology to try to see what
Speaker 1: we can figure out about what people are actually trying
Speaker 1: to get out of these religious beliefs. It seems fairly
Speaker 1: clear what people get out of traditional religious beliefs where
Speaker 1: there is at the core of them the assumption of
Speaker 1: a real revelation about the metaphysical nature of reality. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe not in all of them, but in lots of them.
Speaker 1: But in these religious beliefs that are in some way
Speaker 1: based on what everybody agrees is fiction, what what is
Speaker 1: the goal of the seeker of the adherent? Well, one
Speaker 1: take on this comes from Carol mq Sax Invented Religions, Imagination,
Speaker 1: Fiction and Faith, and she posits that invented religions, such
Speaker 1: as the ones we're discussing here, they demonstrate that what
Speaker 1: meaning hungry humans really want is a powerful narrative, particularly
Speaker 1: one in which unseen agents affect causality in our world
Speaker 1: and in our lives. Okay, so maybe saying that even
Speaker 1: if we don't agree that the narratives refer to a
Speaker 1: thing that's literally true, just participation in the narrative is enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like the fictional realm becomes the place where
Speaker 1: it is okay to dream, whereas to to dream in
Speaker 1: the more real world of of sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: religious history that is Uh, that's that is sometimes seen
Speaker 1: as a bit weird in some circles. Well, that relates
Speaker 1: to something that we that I know, we read a
Speaker 1: little bit about about why fantasy is popular these days.
Speaker 1: It actually reminds me of of some thoughts, some observations
Speaker 1: that are Scott Baker made our Scott Baker himself being
Speaker 1: a successful and in my opinion, highly talented UM fantasy
Speaker 1: writer himself background in philosophy, and also he works a
Speaker 1: fair amount of neuroscience into his into his creations. But um.
Speaker 1: In his paper that published on science fiction and Fantasy
Speaker 1: World Whine Fantasy and Why now Um, he says that
Speaker 1: fantasy is quote the primary literary response to what is
Speaker 1: often called the contemporary crisis of meaning. So the idea
Speaker 1: here is that we live in an age of reason
Speaker 1: and science. We have all sorts of myth erasing answers
Speaker 1: for how the world works, so so long as we
Speaker 1: don't require teleological answers. So this get in other words,
Speaker 1: this gets down to, you know, we have all these
Speaker 1: answers about how, say, the solar system works, how life works,
Speaker 1: but we don't have the wise, right, that's the stuff
Speaker 1: that that is beyond science. Yeah, he almost says science
Speaker 1: is essentially created too reliable of a tool for finding
Speaker 1: correct answers about reality, and so reliable in fact, that
Speaker 1: it has left us with nihilism. Uh. Now, we we
Speaker 1: don't necessarily need to agree with that perspective to say that.
Speaker 1: Certainly a lot of people probably feel this way that
Speaker 1: if science is the only socially legitimate way of of
Speaker 1: asserting that something is definitely true, where do you get
Speaker 1: your meaning of life from? Yeah? If science is not
Speaker 1: going to give that to you, and it can lead
Speaker 1: to a sense of kind of despair, of hopelessness, of emptiness.
Speaker 1: You know, what is life really all about? I mean,
Speaker 1: who cares if I can finally understand the mysteries of
Speaker 1: the quantum physics? If if what it reveals is that
Speaker 1: there's no way to answer the question of the meaning
Speaker 1: of life. Yeah, so you end up turning to fantasy. Um,
Speaker 1: and to a certain a certain extent science fiction, but
Speaker 1: largely we're talking about fantasy. You're trying to turn to
Speaker 1: these fantastic stories, uh, in which you can find if
Speaker 1: not find that meaning for yourself, then you at least
Speaker 1: embody characters who find that meaning and world and live
Speaker 1: in a world where life and in the individual has significance. Now,
Speaker 1: I I personally probably wouldn't agree with Baker that this
Speaker 1: is what this is what is entailed by the scientific
Speaker 1: view of the world. But I can certainly see how
Speaker 1: if you do go to that conclusion, fantasy could provide
Speaker 1: a very powerful escape from it. Right. And you know,
Speaker 1: I do have to say our Scott Baker's own work,
Speaker 1: his UM Second Apocalypse series, he he crowns these case
Speaker 1: it's definitely dark fantasy, but he grounds these many of
Speaker 1: these characters, uh, in this this very believable philosophical place
Speaker 1: that is at times like you, at times you're loot,
Speaker 1: you lose yourself in the story, in the narrative, in
Speaker 1: the world. But other times he forces the reader to
Speaker 1: to really ask some troubling questions about about who we
Speaker 1: are and how we work as individuals. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say that his critique of fantasy genre UM
Speaker 1: does not apply to everything within that realm, and it
Speaker 1: certainly doesn't apply to all readers. It does comes back
Speaker 1: comes back to the question, right, what do modern religious
Speaker 1: individuals want? So he would say maybe meaning right, he
Speaker 1: would say, meaning he would tie it into this idea.
Speaker 1: He he coined the term the semantic apocalypse. Uh, this
Speaker 1: idea that we are either at the point where we're
Speaker 1: approaching this point where we just we're just completely stupefied
Speaker 1: by the lack of meaning in our lives and in
Speaker 1: the world. But then again, I mean, I'm sure there
Speaker 1: have been some scientific study is that look into what
Speaker 1: it is that people want out of religions in general? Uh?
Speaker 1: There have, yeah, and one in particular. And again, this
Speaker 1: is when we're talking about papers and studies about religion.
Speaker 1: This is all ultimately, you know, subjective analysis. Uh, So
Speaker 1: feel free to disagree and our igue with us and
Speaker 1: uh but in this case, Uh. According to Ohio State
Speaker 1: University professor Stephen rice Offer, author of the two thousand
Speaker 1: sixteen book, uh, The Sixteen Strivings for God, he says
Speaker 1: people have sixteen basic desires like these the interesting, Yeah, acceptance, curiosity, eating, family, honor, idealism, independence, order,
Speaker 1: physical activity, power, romance, saving, social contact, status, tranquility, and
Speaker 1: vengeance and any pretty good lists. I was trying to
Speaker 1: think of things other than that. Yeah, though I think
Speaker 1: he covered all the basics there, and you can't help
Speaker 1: but look at that list and sort of check things
Speaker 1: off in your head as you look at your own
Speaker 1: either your own religious leaves, your spiritualism, or your the
Speaker 1: fantasy that you're into. Um. But he developed this Rice
Speaker 1: motivation profile that measures how much people value each of
Speaker 1: these sixteen goals, and he administered it to a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand plus people, and he found that the appeal of
Speaker 1: any given religion relates to how it responds to one
Speaker 1: or more of those desires. Uh, and it competes with
Speaker 1: secular society to meet those desires. So, so think about it,
Speaker 1: in what ways can both traditional religions and hyper real
Speaker 1: religions meet in any of these desires such as uh, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean stuff like curiosity. I can definitely see the
Speaker 1: appeal of that, because one of the things that always
Speaker 1: drew me into actual religions and continues to draw me
Speaker 1: into actual religions is the mystery and the creativity, the
Speaker 1: the interplay and narratives of these gods and heroes. Right,
Speaker 1: It's what brings me into uh to you know, reading
Speaker 1: a Hinduism, and brings me into reading a uh, you
Speaker 1: know about ancient Egypt. It brings me into reading you know,
Speaker 1: they his fantasy novels as well. Well, I mean in
Speaker 1: some cases, I think this might grow out of a
Speaker 1: slight disconnect between the things we need, you know, these
Speaker 1: things we strive for and desire, versus what we really
Speaker 1: know is appropriate in modern society, given that we've started
Speaker 1: to think out ethical issues in a secular way. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you can say that there's really a good,
Speaker 1: widely agreed upon, secular justification for things like a desire
Speaker 1: for honor. And yet the ancient structures of fantasy, or
Speaker 1: of traditional religions or something like that might all include
Speaker 1: concepts of honor that can sort of legitimate this desire
Speaker 1: that we have biologically, even if we can't think of
Speaker 1: a good reason to seek honor. Yeah, it makes more
Speaker 1: something like honor often makes more sense in a simplified
Speaker 1: and highly symbolic world than it does and you know
Speaker 1: the minutia of real life. Yeah, um, you know. Likewise,
Speaker 1: something like vengeance, which made the list, Like vengeance is
Speaker 1: something that in your own life, like vengeance is kind
Speaker 1: of ikey um, Well, yeah, it's the thing we all desire,
Speaker 1: but most of us would probably agree we sort of
Speaker 1: know better than to try to get it right. But
Speaker 1: like a religious faith, you know, you have some sort
Speaker 1: of hell doctrine. There an outsource of engeance. I'd say,
Speaker 1: I don't have to get revenge something bad might happen
Speaker 1: to you outside of my control. Yeah, and and and likewise,
Speaker 1: we continually turn to fictional models of what vengeance might
Speaker 1: consist of. I mean, revenge tails have always been popular
Speaker 1: and will continue to be popular. And again, they often
Speaker 1: fall back on a simplified and highly symbolic world. You know,
Speaker 1: I wonder if studies on religious experience would indicate that
Speaker 1: that hyper reality could become or is becoming, the new
Speaker 1: norm for religious experiences. Yeah. It often reminds me of
Speaker 1: the line in Big Trouble, Little China from the Sorcerer
Speaker 1: egg Shin, who talks about Chinese UH modes of belief
Speaker 1: in saying that it's like a salad bar that you choose, uh,
Speaker 1: you take what you like and you leave the rest uh.
Speaker 1: In this case, the character was referring to Confusism and
Speaker 1: Daoism and and uh and and uh and and also
Speaker 1: Buddhism as well. But the I find that increasingly in
Speaker 1: my own life that I do that that I kind
Speaker 1: of take what I want from these various models, including
Speaker 1: some fictional models. And and incorporated into my sort of religious,
Speaker 1: spiritual worldview. There's actually a two thousand fifteen study from
Speaker 1: the University of Evansville published in American Sociological Review, and
Speaker 1: it took a pretty thorough look at the way Americans
Speaker 1: process religion and science. So the authors crunched data from
Speaker 1: three waves of the General Social Survey and found that
Speaker 1: US adults hold one of three perspectives based on their
Speaker 1: knowledge and attitudes about science and religion. Now, the first
Speaker 1: two are long established, but the third isn't. Is, according
Speaker 1: to the author's entirely new. So there's modern perspective, a
Speaker 1: worldview that favors science over religion, and that scot okay
Speaker 1: science trump's religion. That's that's that version. Then there's a
Speaker 1: traditional perspective, a worldview that favors religion over science, which
Speaker 1: you know to interpret that that that score as you will.
Speaker 1: But then the third one is the post secular perspective,
Speaker 1: a worldview that values both science and religion, but quote
Speaker 1: rejects science in favor of religion when it comes to
Speaker 1: topics such as creation and evolution, and that scored. So
Speaker 1: that is kind of the salad bar situation in action
Speaker 1: there right where the individual is willing to favor science
Speaker 1: and religion, in fact, favor science over religion, except for
Speaker 1: those places where it becomes um teleologically difficult, where if
Speaker 1: not overt issues of meaning come into play, then at
Speaker 1: least implied um meaning, you know, implied issues of meaning.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's like like, ultimately, I think there
Speaker 1: can be a strong case to be made that what
Speaker 1: does it matter if if life evolved or of the
Speaker 1: hand of God shaped it. But if your interpretation sees
Speaker 1: one vision version as problematic or threatening to the overall
Speaker 1: religious structure in your head, then you then in this
Speaker 1: case you're gonna favor that religious construct over the science.
Speaker 1: And a separate question I think would be just what
Speaker 1: are the triggers that cause people to view these things
Speaker 1: as in conflict anyway? Like, some people obviously hold both
Speaker 1: views in their heads without trouble, and some people perceive
Speaker 1: a conflict. Um I'm not sure what makes the difference,
Speaker 1: but it seems significant. Yeah, so yeah, So what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here that the post secular perspective. It's not
Speaker 1: a mere midpoint between the traditional and the modern, but
Speaker 1: rather a unique way of looking at reality through the
Speaker 1: combined lenses of science, and religion, So you can think
Speaker 1: of it as a it's kind of a hybrid view.
Speaker 1: And I think that the hyper real religions that we're
Speaker 1: looking at our kind of represent a high red view
Speaker 1: of a different, slightly different form where instead of rejecting
Speaker 1: the science that that that threatens, meaning, we're going to
Speaker 1: just we're going to outsource the religion into a sort
Speaker 1: of a safe bucket, into the bucket of fiction, and
Speaker 1: then build from there. I think that's an interesting way
Speaker 1: of looking at it. Like we said, I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of these people who have these beliefs, I get
Speaker 1: the sense are basically uh non basically materialist humanists, Like
Speaker 1: they typically have humanist values. They could just subscribe to
Speaker 1: the humanist manifesto, and they typically don't believe in uh
Speaker 1: spirits or something anything other than the natural world. That
Speaker 1: certainly isn't the case for all of them, but that
Speaker 1: seems to be a dominant way of thinking. But like,
Speaker 1: like as we know from Buddhism and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: you need not be a supernaturalist in order to be
Speaker 1: a religious person, right, yeah, And there are ways of
Speaker 1: engaging I mean, just for Buddhism on its on its own,
Speaker 1: you can take a very sort of abstract philosophical approach
Speaker 1: to Buddhism where you don't literally believe in life to
Speaker 1: life reincarnation, or you can take what you can take
Speaker 1: one that is very traditional and ultimately you know it's
Speaker 1: it's all about being fearful and responding from a place
Speaker 1: of fear in terms of what your your next incarnation
Speaker 1: will consist of. I had another idea based in psychology,
Speaker 1: about what might explain some of this. I mean, I
Speaker 1: certainly wouldn't want to say that all of it could
Speaker 1: is explained by this, but it could explain some of
Speaker 1: the transition from joke religions into real religions. And it
Speaker 1: would be based in the idea of sunk costs, choice
Speaker 1: supportive bias, and post purchase rationalization. So let's say you
Speaker 1: spend a lot of money on a new lawnmower. Okay,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine it happening in my case, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you've mowed the lawn a few times, and you start
Speaker 1: to worry that maybe you didn't spend your money all
Speaker 1: that well, So you start to engage in an internal conversation,
Speaker 1: which is a form of choice supportive bias, a bias
Speaker 1: towards validating the choice you already made. That's called post
Speaker 1: purchase rationalization. You start coming up with the reasons why
Speaker 1: you know this really was a good way to spend
Speaker 1: my money. I think I did the right thing by
Speaker 1: spending the money on this lawnmower, because it could sort
Speaker 1: of lead to some unpleasant cognitive dissonance. If you don't
Speaker 1: come to that conclusion, you can think, man, I really
Speaker 1: screwed up. I shouldn't have gone down this road. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of kind of gets into the area if
Speaker 1: I read Done three times or more times than that,
Speaker 1: even maybe it wasn't just a good book. Maybe it
Speaker 1: wasn't just a great book, but maybe it was a
Speaker 1: book that was so meaningful that it is that it
Speaker 1: achieves kind of a spiritual level exactly, or in another way,
Speaker 1: it could be true that Let's say if you spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time and effort just carrying out a joke,
Speaker 1: just on a prank religion. Let's say you start spending
Speaker 1: time on Judaism because you love the Big Lebowski and
Speaker 1: because it's funny. It's funny to pretend that there's a
Speaker 1: dude religion. But after realizing how much sunk costs you've
Speaker 1: incurred in your own time and energy over a long
Speaker 1: period of time. You start seeking ways to rationalize the
Speaker 1: purchase of of these beliefs by saying, huh, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe if I've spent three hundred hours on Dudaism, was
Speaker 1: it really just a joke. Maybe it wasn't just a
Speaker 1: Maybe there's really some meaning in this. And and that's
Speaker 1: not even to say that the meaning you find is
Speaker 1: invalid if that's your method of coming to that meaning,
Speaker 1: I would say that that conclusions reached through choice supportive
Speaker 1: bias aren't necessarily untrue conclusions. I think in many cases,
Speaker 1: the time and financial investment involved here, it just forces
Speaker 1: you to double down on something that you were already
Speaker 1: inclined to support or inclined to buy into. You know,
Speaker 1: It's it's like I already thought this was a great idea,
Speaker 1: but now that I've I've potentially wasted this much time
Speaker 1: on it, it's definitely a great idea. One other thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to note, I was interested to see what
Speaker 1: you thought of this is that these religions, the hyper
Speaker 1: real religions, especially like Jedi is Um and Judaism, seem
Speaker 1: to be very much creatures of the Internet. In fact,
Speaker 1: even I mentioned that I listened to an interview with
Speaker 1: the spokesperson of the Jedi Temple. The guy who I
Speaker 1: listened to explicitly pointed to the introduction of Internet fan
Speaker 1: communities and forums in the nineteen nineties as the thing
Speaker 1: that made the Jedi religion possible. And so that makes
Speaker 1: me wonder how the Internet has changed what's possible in
Speaker 1: terms of social movements and the birth of religions. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the Internet has made it possible to to
Speaker 1: find those communities of people that share your belief. You
Speaker 1: might be the only person in your small town that
Speaker 1: loves Star Wars as much as you do, but the
Speaker 1: Internet allows you to find all those other individuals who
Speaker 1: are as invested, and you find the community in your
Speaker 1: fandom that that one could you know, that would pre
Speaker 1: one could previously find, perhaps only in something like a religion.
Speaker 1: You're finding that religious community in your fandom. But then again,
Speaker 1: I come back to the question. I mean, I have
Speaker 1: to wonder what the evolution of this looks like over
Speaker 1: a long time. Could you ever reach the point where
Speaker 1: there are jedi Ists who believe in the truth of
Speaker 1: Jedi is m so firmly that they would actually come
Speaker 1: to the position of the creationists we talked about at
Speaker 1: the beginning, where they would want their views taught as
Speaker 1: an alternative to modern science in schools, where they would say,
Speaker 1: you know, I I don't just say that this is
Speaker 1: a useful framework for my life. That kind of makes
Speaker 1: sense to me. I say this is how reality is,
Speaker 1: and I've got the exclusive truth. I mean, I it's
Speaker 1: hard to imagine with the jedi Ists of today, who,
Speaker 1: like we said, seemed to be just sort of like
Speaker 1: a taking from the salad bar of interesting ideas. But
Speaker 1: who knows what would be possible in the future. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it seems to me it would be less of a
Speaker 1: conflict between between science and this kind of story telling mythology,
Speaker 1: but it wouldld be more of a conflict between mythology,
Speaker 1: So would be more in line with the Jedi is saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: if you're going to teach the children about Greek mythology, uh,
Speaker 1: then and if you're going to teach them about you know,
Speaker 1: about Hinduism or some of these other um, you know,
Speaker 1: modes of sort of mythological belief, and you have to
Speaker 1: teach them about our mode as well. Because yeah, because
Speaker 1: our mode has all of those old ideas, but it's
Speaker 1: been kind of purified through the lens of modern culture. Well,
Speaker 1: I will say I do believe Obi wan Kenobi is
Speaker 1: much wiser than most of the Greek gods. He's he's
Speaker 1: a very wise individual. It's hard not to I don't
Speaker 1: know if some of his choices in the prequels may
Speaker 1: have been I'm not even talking about that. That's heretical. Yes, blasphemy. Robert,
Speaker 1: what's your own personal choice for hyper real religion? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, um, like if if you had to go
Speaker 1: with one, I could see myself as a follower of
Speaker 1: Anambor Kellis the aspect emperor of the three season our
Speaker 1: Scott Baker's Second Apocalypse saga. Um, okay, I don't know
Speaker 1: anything about that. It's pretty it's pretty rich and deep
Speaker 1: and uh, that is one where there are segments in
Speaker 1: those books where I've I can't they come back to me.
Speaker 1: I think about little motifs that he rolls out, and
Speaker 1: like some of it is as meaningful as any you know,
Speaker 1: actual religion, actual mythology in my life. Likewise the done universe. Hey,
Speaker 1: I am right with you there. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: some of the some of the liturgical formulas of the
Speaker 1: Done universe are absolutely useful in the real world, and
Speaker 1: you don't have to buy into the reality of Done
Speaker 1: at all. I'd say try the Litany against Fear sometime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you are feeling fear, say these words, I must
Speaker 1: not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the
Speaker 1: little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear.
Speaker 1: I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
Speaker 1: And when it has gone past, I will turn the
Speaker 1: inner eye to see the path. And where the fear
Speaker 1: has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I have. I have seriously taken some some
Speaker 1: strength and comfort from from from those words and in
Speaker 1: the past. Yeah, I mean, they sort of take on
Speaker 1: the nature of a proverb where it's not necessarily it's
Speaker 1: not the authority of the text that gives it its power.
Speaker 1: It's self evidently powerful. It's a it's a piece of
Speaker 1: literature that you you don't even need to know where
Speaker 1: it came from in order for it to be effective. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So how about you, what what hyper real religion would
Speaker 1: you turn to jail? Well, besides that, you know, I
Speaker 1: do love the Litany against Fear, but my own personal
Speaker 1: choice for years was, you know, Facebook used to ask
Speaker 1: you what your religion is, and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: that's none of your business, Facebook. So I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: Falsa Doom, right, the Temple of Set from the James
Speaker 1: from James Earl Jones and the Schwartz and I er
Speaker 1: Cone in the Barbarian movie. I'm to understand Fulsa Doom
Speaker 1: is kind of different in other media, right, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: my opinion is that he gained perfection in that film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I James Earl Jones, He's the perfect Fulsa Doom. He's
Speaker 1: a great villain, but he's a very profound and literary
Speaker 1: villain and very charismatic. What is steel compared to the
Speaker 1: hand that wields it? He has the whole message that
Speaker 1: flesh is stronger than steel because steel is just a tool.
Speaker 1: The flesh is the will. And I can get behind that.
Speaker 1: I see what he's getting at. Yeah. And plus the
Speaker 1: parties looked pretty cool. Yeah yeah, cannibal stew, giant snakes
Speaker 1: and uh, lots of lounging around. Yeah. Well, one more thing,
Speaker 1: I mean, I have to admit that there's there's ever
Speaker 1: so slight a temptation to some jedi is m. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying I would ever be a jedi Ist, but
Speaker 1: I can get a little misty when I think about
Speaker 1: the fact that luminous beings are we not this crude matter?
Speaker 1: All right? Well, there you have it, hyper real religions
Speaker 1: kind of a you know, an exa emanation of of
Speaker 1: where we are in terms of modern religious faith and
Speaker 1: and fandom, where we've come from, and perhaps a new
Speaker 1: way to sort of look at these these old religions
Speaker 1: as well. Of course, we want to hear from everyone
Speaker 1: else out there. Do any of you guys and gals
Speaker 1: follow a hyper real religion? Do we have any uh
Speaker 1: Unutologists in the audience that want to speak up about
Speaker 1: about Altman, about Church of the SubGenius. Yeah, Church of
Speaker 1: the SubGenius. They're a number of big ones that we
Speaker 1: didn't We didn't even have time to get to in
Speaker 1: this podcast. So we would love to hear from any
Speaker 1: and all of you about that, And sincerely, if you
Speaker 1: want to let us know what you truly love about
Speaker 1: this religion and why you consider it a real faith,
Speaker 1: please share? Yeah, yeah, do so, we will. We will
Speaker 1: keep an open mind and encourage everyone else keep an
Speaker 1: open mind about it as well. Um In the meantime,
Speaker 1: check us out of Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's where you will find all the podcasts, the videos,
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