Hyper-Real Religion: Pastafarianism and Beyond

When does a protest religion become an actual faith? What happens when purely fictional modes of belief leak off the page or screen? Join Robert and Joe as they discuss modern religious movements, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the rise of so-called hyper-real religions.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from house stop
ward dot com. Hey, you're welcome to stuff to blow
your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
and I want to share with you a modern legend.
Probably heard this one before it. It's one of the

(00:24):
most persistent rumors of the modern age, the L Ron
Hubbard Robert A. Heinland bar bet. You know this one, Robert, Yes, Now,
I looked into it, and I couldn't find any convincing
evidence that this bet ever actually took place, so it's
probably just more of a legend than than a real
historical account. But the legend I always heard goes something

(00:45):
like this, You've got L. Ron Hubbard and Robert A.
Heinland to science fiction authors of the twentieth century, and
they're sitting in a bar. They don't walk into a bar,
I guess. I suppose they have to walk into the
bar first, if they don't take hoverboards or maybe a
power armor stamp into the bar. But anyway, they're in
the bar. They're down in some bruskis and this is

(01:06):
probably some time I would guess in the late nineteen forties,
and they are discussing the best way to make a
ton of money, because let's face it, writing science fiction
doesn't always pay amazingly right, and at this point in
both of them in his career, they are sci fi writers. Yeah,
very much so. Uh so Hubbard has an opinion. L
Ron Hubbard says, you know, the best strategy is really

(01:26):
to take advantage of the common people's desire for transcendence
and salvation. So he says, quote religion, that's where the
real money is. And Hubbard boasts that he could invent
a religion and make millions. Of course, Hinland balks at this.
That sounds kind of extravagant. So they make a bet
can he do it? Can he not do it? And

(01:49):
by the end of the century there are at least
tens of thousands of Scientologists in the world. The Church
of Scientology claims millions of adherents those numbers. Who knows
what the real numbers are, but it seems like at
least tens of thousands. And Scientology is the sci fi
religion founded on the teachings of l. Ron Hubbard. Yeah,
and it has official religious status in numerous countries. So

(02:13):
even though this bat probably did not take place, like
it's one of those things where, yes, it could have
if you really crunch it, but there's an absolutely no documentation. Yeah,
there's no good evidence for it. And and in fact,
we we we probably really should emphasize that because apparently
in the past there have been some legal actions against
people who promulgate this as if it were true. So
probably not true. But why is the rumors so persistent?

(02:36):
Everybody's heard this, right, I bet you sitting at home,
or sitting standing running wherever you are listening, I bet
you've heard some version of this before, right, So you
could chalk it up to people's just general distaste for scientology.
There there's a lot of antipathy out there, right, there's
no sortage of scientology criticism, uh and and lampoon ing

(02:57):
on the internet these days. Right, But you could also
say that this kind of story sticks in the mind
and merits repeating simply because of the sheer audacity of it.
It offends our most basic sensibilities about what religion is
and is supposed to be creating a religion out of
thin air, just on a whim, coming up with a

(03:19):
new religion. Something about it seems fiercely wrong, just nakedly perverse. Well, yeah,
I think I think so. I think yeah. On one hand,
it does seem like sheer audacity that somebody would just
create it wholesale. Though, of course, as we'll discuss to
a large extent, nobody creates a religion wholesale. You're building

(03:40):
it out of existing parts. It's all kind of like
that first Iron Man suit that that that start builds
in the first Iron Man film. He just builds it
out of all the stuff that's laying around, and then
he uses that to his advantage. And that's I think
I would argue that that's what you see in most
of these cases, though the particular suit of religious armor
changes depending on the qual day of the ingredients. Yeah.

(04:01):
And I would say this relates back to something we
talked about in our Techno Religion for the Masses episodes,
which is that I personally think that a lot of
the power we attribute to religion lies in our chronological
alienation from its origins and from its contents. I mean,
it comes down to sort of like, what does someone
want from a religion? What does one want from a

(04:21):
a god? They want something greater than themselves, something that
stands outside of themselves. What better way than to have
something that stands outside of not only your lifespan, but
even your generation, outside of your your your era, even
you know it's calling to you from a distant place
slash time. Some of the power comes from the mystery

(04:42):
of its separation. That's sort of what holiness is. It's
way less impressive if it seems to spring from the
very ground we walk on from day to day. And
and yet all religions start somewhere. No religion can have
always been ancient, uh, because every religion that exists today,
even the one you believe in, you would you would

(05:05):
have to admit, has an origin. It started at some
point people started believing in this thing. Uh. Though most
are probably not the result of a single moment of creativity,
whether inspired by gambling in Bruskys and whatnot. I mean,
they're probably from gradual evolutions of beliefs, right, Yeah, new
ideas that suddenly get picked up by, in many cases

(05:25):
a charismatic individual who is bringing this to people or
you know it ties into uh two shifts and changes
in the structure of society and uh and then in
our sort of in and then when you layer over
the mythic uh materials as well. You're gonna throw in
some miracles. You're gonna throw in some some fantastic occurrences,

(05:45):
golden books falling out of the sky or emerging from
the ground. Right, Yeah, But this is what we want
to talk about today, right, So it's the beginnings of
religious movements, and especially on those that draw from sources
other than direct spirit whole revelation. So you might have
a movement that starts with somebody thinks they've received a
message from God or from other worldly powers, from a

(06:07):
supernatural agent, and then they deliver that message and found
a new religion. You've got those, But we want to
talk about what happens when something that everybody recognizes as
a fiction or an in joke or a prank or
a fan club takes on the mantle of religion and
genuine sanctity. Yeah, when does it become an actual religion?

(06:31):
And I know that some of you might be thinking, well,
what does any of this have to do with science
and the flag of science that is up there over
stuff to bow your mind? Well a lot actually, because
because most of what we're gonna talk about is occurring,
if not right now, than at least in the scientific age.
And I believe that that that the the age of science,

(06:52):
this age of a reason, has a lot to do
with the emergence of hyper real religions. Absolutely, and I
think we would be remiss if we did not begin
this discussion with one of the most popular jokes turned
religions of our modern age, and that is postafarianism. Yes,
and and I do want to just throw in real
quick this is, of course, the the word postafarianism is

(07:16):
is a play on Rastafarianism, and I do I do
want to just point out that we are aware that
adherents of the Rastafari faith uh often do not like
the term Rastafarianism. So it's kind of like there's a
little bit of an insult to Rastafari adherents built into postafarianism.

(07:39):
Well maybe maybe for that, for that reason, we could
avoid it and just say flying spaghetti monsterism. Well we
I think we can refer to either just what I
just thought it was important to acknowledge that, yes, uh uh,
there's I don't think it was intentional, but they're Postafarianism
could be deemed offensive by some out there, certainly, and
if you're already lost. We need to back up, because

(08:01):
in order for this to make sense, we've got to
start with a brief bit of historical context, especially for
those of you who live outside the United States and
aren't familiar with the school creationism controversy that's gone on
in the United States, I'd say mostly in the last
twenty years or so many twenty years. So in the
United States, we have a constitutional doctrine of separation of

(08:24):
church and State, and this is traditionally interpreted to say
that private citizens can believe whatever they want. You have,
whatever religious beliefs you want, an agents of the government
can't interfere with that, but also agents of the government
can't use their civil authority to punish or promote particular
religious ideas. Right. And for the most part, that works

(08:45):
pretty well, except where there's this crossover where on one
side the science book is saying, uh, there's this thing
called evolution. There were these things called dinosaurs. This is
the basic timeline as a science understands it versus more
fundamentalist and literal interpretations of biblical tradition. Right. And this
is the most common example in the United States of

(09:07):
a conflict between between separate between the sort of individual
beliefs of people who work for the government, and the
the idea that civil servants of the government shouldn't be
using their power to inflict their religious beliefs on other people.
Uh So, a large percent of Americans are what we
would call Young Earth creationists. And what does that mean. Well,

(09:29):
a Gallop poll released in June found that forty two
percent of Americans said they agreed with the following statement
quote God created human beings pretty much in their present
form at one time within the last ten thousand years
or so, which is of course complete nonsense, right, And

(09:50):
if you're listening to this podcast, I'm just gonna go
and assume you do not believe this. Yeah, as you
could guess, this entails a rejection of biological evolution and
common descent usually, uh, pretty much all of geology, radiometric dating,
all mainstream scientific thinking about fossils and paleontology, probably a
lot of astronomy and astrophysics too, for example, the creation

(10:11):
of the Solar System and the formation of galaxies, and
probably plenty of other things. You could just generally say
that Young Earth creationism is a belief that encounters generalized
difficulty when held alongside a scientific picture of our world. Yeah,
it's the the rejection of the best modern scientific understanding
of how the world works, and the acceptance of and

(10:32):
the reliance upon a sort of modern untangling of ancient
Babylonian right. So, but the problem is plenty of civil
servants in the United States, especially people who might be
teachers in public schools or approving curriculum or textbook selection
for public schools, hold these beliefs themselves, and they sometimes

(10:55):
try to promote these beliefs and their consequences in what
are supposed to be secular, religiously neutral classes for all students.
And this can take a lot of forms. At one extreme,
it might have biology classes teaching about the Garden of
Eden and Noah's Ark as an alternative evolutionary theory. At
the other end, it might be less overt than that,

(11:16):
and it might just insist on biology classes including materials
prepared by creationists that sort of cast vague, unfounded doubts
on modern biology, or that uh teach children scientifically false
arguments against evolution, like you know, things you've heard before,
like there are no transitional fossils and stuff like that.
And obviously this has led to lots of social conflict,

(11:38):
big public debates, and lots of court cases. One example
of such a court case occurs very close to home
for us here in Cobb County, Georgia, which is includes
northern suburbs of Atlanta. And on March twenty, two thousand two,
the public school officials in Cobb County approved a measure
requiring biology textbooks to wear a sticker on the inside
cover that has the following statement. It's says evolution is

(12:01):
a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living
living things. Uh. And in two thousand five, this was
ruled unconstitutional by US District Judge Clarence Cooper, who said,
of this ruling quote, by denigrating evolution, the school board
appears to be endorsing the well known prevailing alternative theory
creationism or variations thereof, even though the sticker does not

(12:24):
specifically reference the alternative theories. And this gets us back
to the monster in question, the spaghetti monster. Where where
did this come from? Well? This originates with a protest, Yeah,
a protest against the inclusion of statements like the stickers
like this in science textbooks. Like the basic idea here
is hey, if this nonsense is going to be presented

(12:47):
as an alternative to our science. How about this nonsense?
How about I just blatantly make something up, just completely
off the top of my head, just the craziest thing
you can imagine. Let's put that in there as well. Yeah,
and this of course takes this to Kansas. Yeah, to
two thousand five, when the Kansas State Board of Education
had decided to allow intelligent design the sort of a

(13:10):
moniker of creationism, you might call it, like a marketing
term to make it seem more scientific, like to add
a lexicon of scientific vocabulary to h to creationism. And
they said that they wanted to introduce this into the
curriculum as an as an alternative to evolution, you know,
teach both theories. So uh. Then twenty five year old

(13:33):
physics graduate Bobby Henderson wrote what is known as the
Open Letter to the Kansas School Board, published online in
two thousand five, to present his vision for religious inclusivity
in the science classroom. Robert, would you like to read
a select quote from the letter? I shall quote. I
am writing you with much concern, after having read of

(13:53):
your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of intelligent
design should be taught along with the theory of evolution.
Let us remember that there are multiple theories of intelligent design.
I and many others around the world are of the
strong belief that the universe was created by a flying
spaghetti monster. Right. So throughout this letter, Henderson goes on

(14:14):
to critique and satirize the intelligent design arguments by showing
how the claims of flying spaghetti monsterism, though they might
appear to conflict with scientists around the world, don't actually
because the flying spaghetti monster reaches out with his newly
appendages to tweak the results of experiments so that we
will be tricked into believing in an evolutionary model of

(14:35):
the old Earth. Uh. And he goes on also to
insist that when flying spaghetti monsterism is taught in science classrooms,
the teacher must wear full pirate regalia. Quote. The concise
explanation for this is that he becomes angry if we don't. Yeah. So,
and of course this leads to um wonderful depictions of

(14:56):
the flying spaghetti monster, yeah, which we've all seen before, right.
The meme very much. It started as a bit of satire,
a joke on this religious social movement that the author
of this letter opposed, but it really took on a
life of its own. It became a meme, it became
picked up on the internet. So there's artwork. Like you said,
there's uh, it's a whole living library of self referential

(15:20):
humor based around this original idea of a flying spaghetti monster,
including actually becoming some form of church. Yeah. I mean
it's interesting to look at the evolution of the joke.
I mean, I'm often just taken by the visual depiction
because I feel like those really pick up a lot
of steam. And the spaghetti monster itself is funny looking.

(15:43):
It kind of looks like testicles, so it's it's it's
inherently goofy. It has meatballs, by the way, it's a
it's a large pile of spaghetti flying through the sky
with eyes and meatballs generally too, and and and yeah,
to your point, like a lot of it's kind of
a community, a symbol, myth those as well, Like everyone,
all sorts of little bits and pieces are thrown in

(16:04):
kind of willy nilly to create this overall faith. And
it's one of those the theology is not all top down,
sort of bottom up theology. Yeah, and it's it's one
of those jokes that I think over the years, like
when I first heard it, I was kind of like,
didn't get the joke, and then I got the joke.
I'm like, Okay, I get it. But then the joke,
it's the joke just keeps going. People keep telling it

(16:25):
to the point where it's not really that funny anymore.
But you know, it's kind of like having that that
friend in high school who loves Monty Python so much
that they won't they just fit a reference or half
a skit into every conversation. Like that's kind of how
I feel about Pastafari. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know
exactly what you mean. And also I would say that

(16:47):
in some cases it evolved from a specific satire of
of teaching of Young Earth creationism in public schools to
become a more general critique of of religion across the board,
which I think is not necessarily what the author originally intended, right,
But yeah, that's definitely becomes kind of a you know,

(17:08):
an atheistic protest religion, um, and it serves a useful
purpose there, I think, you know it. It's it continually argues, hey, um,
why do we believe that in the things we believed in.
You know, why is this valuable? And this isn't um
and you know, as a joke goes it is it

(17:29):
has proven to be effective, you know, in the way
that jokes can often tear down the most formidable walls
in our society but also piss people off royally. Now,
I can take the other side for a second and
say that I can understand why some religious people would
be less than impressed with this joke as it exists today, because,

(17:49):
let's be fair, in a lot of cases, it does
seem to represent a just sort of generalized critique, and
critique might be a generous word of of religion without
much attempt to understand people's religions or doctrines and the
values they provide to the people that that hold them. Yeah,
it is you can just look at as a kind
of shallow, outsider mockery. Yeah, and I and I definitely,

(18:14):
you know, I can definitely relate to some of those
feelings about it, you know, over the years, because at
times I have felt like, not only is it a
joke that I maybe don't don't get or I don't
find as funny, but yeah, I could also see where
it's a little a little offensive, you know, because you're
it's kind of like you're taking just three minutes to
throw up a spaghetti monster image to rebuke a person's

(18:36):
lifetime of faith, you know, to to rebuke their their
their cultural heritage in many cases. But as we said,
this is becoming a new heritage of its own. And
I'm I'm curious to see what the Church of the
Flying Spaghetti Monster looks like in twenty years. Yeah. I
think for the most part, for most people, it's it's

(18:58):
remains at that bumper sticker level involvement, you know, it
is just something you throw up on social media or
stick on the back of your car. Other people have
taken it to two greater extremes, going in and trying
to get their official um, you know state I D
with a colander on their head, which is of course
one of the other articles of faith for the adherents,
and UH and other folks have pushed for official religious status,

(19:21):
which is is really taking it to the next level,
saying not only is our joke religion jokey, but it
is actually a religion, or it is as real religion
as your religion. And we want the government to recognize
that fact. And I think there are some governments that
have recognized it, right, Yeah, at least the Netherlands and
New Zealand to to some degree. That the Netherlands where

(19:45):
that was where we saw the most recent headlines about it,
and apparently they had to they had to prove that
it wasn't just a fad, that it was an actual
thing that people believed in and that they had like
a marriage ritual, uh, that sort of thing, so that
it was it's the kind of thing that people are
invested in enough that it is, you know, potentially a
part of your life. Yeah, and this leads us to

(20:05):
the realization that a religion need not be ancient in
order to be followed. So I I stand by what
I said earlier about a lot of the aesthetic power
of religion does seem to come from its antiquity and
its chronological alienation sort of alien holiness of the distant past.
But this doesn't mean you can't create religions in the

(20:27):
modern day that gain a following. Yeah. I mean we've
already mentioned Rastafari, which is an Abrahamic religion, uh, you know,
certainly with a lot of elements that are based in
deep history, but it also venerated uh then Emperor of
Ethiopia highly Stilassi, you know. And it's it's it's certainly
a religion I would love to look at in greater

(20:49):
depth at some point in the future. But yeah, you
have a situation where it's it's in the past, it's
it's taking place in the present. And I mean to
have your Messiah of and and die within the lifespan
of the faith, uh and to see that sort of
happen in in recent history, it's fascinating. Well, how about
how about Joseph Smith and the Latter day Saints. Oh yeah,

(21:11):
I mean there's another good one. Um, it's the origins
date back around eighteen thirty. This is a millennialist religion
that preach the impending second Coming, continuing revelations and uh
uh an identity and values that I guess you'd say
we're more grounded in the temporary setting. So you know,
it's America. It's there's a modern cosmology, very American religion. Yeah,

(21:34):
very much. So. If if you don't realize that this
is the name, the official name of the Mormons, the
Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter day Saints and it too,
of course, sprang up around a single charismatic individual, and uh,
it's it's it's actually a very interesting religion to look
at in terms of science as well, um, in the

(21:54):
in since it's since it is more of a more
closely tied to our scientific age, you do find elements
of it that are that that conflict less with modern
scientific cosmology, such as the the idea that there are
other planets and that there is a potential for life
on other worlds. Oh yeah, though even without the introduction

(22:14):
of new holy texts such as the Book of Mormon,
you could point out that lots of modern Christians have
adapted their beliefs to include modern science. Oh certainly. I mean,
when we look at the numbers from from that Gallup poll,
only forty two percent of Americans adhered to a literal
understanding of the Bible, and so that's obviously not even

(22:36):
maybe that's like half of Christians or something in America. Yeah, yeah,
I mean, you can certainly still be a Christian according
to me anyway. I mean, this is going to very
depending on who's who's serving you your Christianity, but um, yeah,
you can still be a Christian and not believe that
there was a literal garden of eaton. You can still
look at something like Noah's ark uh and and really

(22:56):
and and view it as mythology without and view it
as mythology, not in the as a dismissal, but understanding
the power of myth and the necessity of myth uh
in our culture right. Well, or you might not even
put it in those terms. You might just say like, well,
you know, it's a story that's part of our received tradition,
and I accept it as a story. But I but

(23:17):
also I wouldn't deny what the evidence in the lab says.
I mean, that would be foolish. So so one is
science and one is my religion, and you know you
don't have to smash them together in a particle collider
of my brain. Yeah, I mean you can. You can.
You can look at it as literature. You can look
at it his mythology if you want. You can look
at it as some sort of a literal historical document.

(23:39):
But to do so is to throw out our modern
understanding of the world. Yeah, so how about the other
uh recently created religion that we opened with talking about scientology,
Like we said, the bar Bet story probably isn't true,
but scientology certainly is a religion explicitly created in the
twentieth century. That's right. Nine Um contemporary individual focused movement

(24:03):
elements of science fiction, New age philosophy, and the psychoanalysis,
though it also has historically been anti psychiatry. Um. And
I think it's sort of almost uh positions itself as
an alternative to psychiatry. Yes, yeah, I think very much so,
um and one of them. We're not gonna go in
deep into all the mysteries of scientology here, but it

(24:26):
essentially says that we're all alien souls called Betan's that
bounce around from life to life. One attempts to free
oneself from this cycle and train their true self. So
it's kind of like space Buddhism, which you know, I
with without getting into the other details, I could get
behind the idea of some space Buddhism. I could see
the appeal in the abstract at least, though, as you note,
it is a pretty divisive religion. Everybody's got an opinion

(24:49):
on it. Yeah, it's hard to find and I'm I'm
one of those people that I would love to see
more just like objective down the middle coverage of scientology.
But for the most part it's either U. I mean, certainly,
just researching online you're gonna find one voice or the
other in very drastically different positions on the matter. Now,
any of the religions that we've mentioned so far, you

(25:10):
can definitely go at them and point out at least
little bits and pieces that don't match up with our
scientific understanding of reality. You can say, hey, bees didn't
have four legs, as we've mentioned in previous episodes. Sure
there were no New World horses prior to h to
the colonial presence UH in North America. You told how

(25:31):
is that relevant? Um? Some criticize, you know, the Book
of Mormon and point to UH passages about horses and
and use this as a, you know, a sort of
rallying point for Oh, you're totally full of it because
this thing doesn't match up with with real life. Likewise,
you can say, oh, there's no demonic space, aliens, there
no there was no z new etcetera. But as we're

(25:53):
about to discuss, there are religions or hyper religions as
they're they're sometimes called, in which there is definite fiction
going on, like the whole Bedrock for the faith is
fiction where not everybody agrees this fiction nobody and the
people on the inside. Yeah, So it's not a situation
where someone is having to say, well, you know, this
one little detail about horses or bees or what have you.

(26:16):
It doesn't match up because X Y and is either saying, oh, no,
I fully agree with you. This is all fiction. But
the thing that comes out of that fiction is real. Right,
we're talking about religions that draw inspiration from fictional narratives
that don't claim to adhere to reality at all. And
here we're going to get into a little bit of
the work of a sort of cultural critic and sociologist

(26:39):
named Adam Possum I And Possum's got a he's got
a book that came out in two thousand five called
Religion and Popular Culture a hyper Real Testament like that title, uh,
And in this book he builds on some postmodern social theory. Now,
don't worry, we're not going to get too into the

(26:59):
weeds of social theory and post modern criticism. But basically
here's how it goes. It says the twentieth century represents
a turn from traditional cultural structures to individualized consumer experiences
driven by capitalism. So just think about that for a second. Oh,
and he says, of course this extends to religion. And

(27:23):
so if you think about that, it's sort of saying
that instead of having a structure like a community accountable
to one another that gathers to pray and worship in
the received antique tradition, people consume their religion individually in
the same way they do their shopping and their media experiences.
Religion becomes a co modified, consume arized thing that you

(27:47):
you can pick off the shelf and take home with you.
And I'm not sure I totally agree, but I think
there is at least a grain of truth to this. Uh.
Simply by looking at the esthetics of religion in America today,
you could point to, for example, I think the rise
of televangelism, TV ministry networks. You can change the channel
at home religious participation on your own time with a

(28:10):
TV program. You could also look at mega churches, which
I think are a really interesting cultural phenomenon. I have
huge congregations, and what's the point of the huge congregation. Well,
if you wanted to look at it from this critical
point of view, you could say, really, a huge congregation
like that provides each individual church go or a kind
of Walmart level of anonymity. You don't have to have

(28:32):
a personal relationship. You just go and sort of consume
as another face in the crowd, as on your own time,
on your own terms. Now, of course that also can
be The very thing about a mega church that would
turn someone away is that they want to go into
a church. They want to be recognized, right, they want
to be an individual, they want a part of a
community exactly. But then also you could look at their

(28:54):
attention grabbing multimedia experiences like let's you know, let's watch
Pastor Trent rock out with the Rays Band on the JumboTron,
which there there's certainly plenty of that. And sometimes they've
even got truly built in shopping experiences. You've got coffee shops,
bookstores and the church and stuff like that. And so
this is the work that I think possum I is
building on. And so possum I, when he gets to

(29:15):
the concept of hyper real religion, he makes a comparison
between trends in fantasy literature and trends in religion. And
so he starts out by looking at fantasy fiction and
he says he says essentially that fantasy fiction has this
traditional library of tropes, styles, and contents from which it

(29:36):
usually draws like sword and sorcery fiction. He possum I
claims that this is based mostly on chivalric or medieval
romance like the R three and cycle, you know, King
Arthur and those kind of stories, that they form the
library of things which the modern fantasy author can now
reach in and grab and put together in his or
her own way. And so among the standard library of

(29:59):
tropes or things, magic, creatures, thieves, warriors, druids, wizards, orcs, elves,
what else, oh, gelatinous cubes. Yeah, all the standard dungeon
and dragons, characters, creatures and tropes for sure. But then
possum My points to an interesting development in the history
of fantasy, which he singles out as the two thousand

(30:21):
two video game Kingdom Hearts. Now, I've never played this
of you know, but I'm familiar with the with the series,
especially it's it's crossovers with like Disney material. Yeah, I
did not expect Kingdom Hearts to show up in the material,
but this is exactly what he points out. I think
it's a really interesting point. He says, so okay. Kingdom
Hearts is a video game following a very traditional fantasy plot.

(30:42):
In some ways, it has a traditional fantasy plot structure.
There's a quest, there's a main character who has a
sort of symbolic sword and uh, and the main character
is seeking reunification with friends who are lost. It all
sounds like this could be Tolkien or something. But instead
of having all of just the regular dungeons and dragons, chivalry,

(31:05):
you know, the knights and the elves and the orcs
and all that, it's got characters from Disney movies. Like
you say, so, it's got characters from Aladdin and Peter
Pan and hundred and one Dalmatians and Alice in Wonderland.
And so he's looking at this as saying, huh. So,
when you put yourself in the fantasy mindset, you kind
of have to uh accept as real all of the

(31:29):
tropes that are being pulled from the the antique library
of medieval and fantasy tropes like wizards and stuff like that.
That's the real material that you work with within the
fantasy realm. But this is bringing in all this stuff
where people are explicitly familiar with the origins Disney movies
Disney movies they saw when they were a kid, and

(31:49):
now they're part of the Fantasy library. Yeah. This is
I mean, this just makes me think about walking around
the office here, how stuff works. Uh, you go by
each desk and everyone as at least it seems like
one figuring, right, one action figure, some sort of pop
culture comic bookie character that is serving as kind of

(32:11):
uh kind of an avatar, kind of an icon, kind
of uh kind of a holy artifact, a little god,
a little shrine at your desk. Yeah, exactly. I mean,
like like I think about in my own situation, like
I carry a Ganesha in my pocket, Ganesha being of
course that the Hindu, a little elephant deity, the remover
of obstacles, um and and so you know, I carry

(32:34):
him around as a kind of a good good luck token.
But on my desk here at work, I also have
a Gammera and a tom Servo, which very fine idols. Yeah,
and they kind of what they kind of embody certain
you know, maybe not completely thought out ideas, but they
embody certain nostalgic powers and thematic powers that I kind

(32:55):
of draw in a draw on as I work. Gammera
has stuff we can all get behind he of all children.
It's right. He's a friend of children, and he breathes
fire and flies, so he's you know, he's he's a
he's a powerful force to to to to turn to.
So anytime there's a bat in your vicinity that begins
to emit rays you know that you have gammera on
your side. Exactly. Yeah, but you know to what extent

(33:18):
are all these little little creatures and little toy I mean,
they are all kind of religious icons. They're kind of
the gods of the New Age, right, Yeah, And so
we should note about possum I before we continue that.
In the academic community postmodern religious and cultural criticism, there's
been you know, a ton of ink spill debating the
merits of possum eze definitions and analysis. We're not going

(33:41):
to get into all that. We're we're not going to
get into these debates. We can just focus on that
the example itself, basically the all it is subjective analysis.
So if there's nothing definite about any of it, yeah,
but it's but it does it does make a lot
of sense in this one we're discussing it here. But
essentially the idea is creating religios inspired by source material

(34:02):
that the religion's own adherents except to be fiction. Well,
let's run through some examples of this, because I mean,
I know it's if you're not familiar with this, your
your brain is probably going in circles here, like how
do you base a religion? It's one thing to say, oh,
I get some inspiration from a gammera, but how would
you actually have a Gambra based faith? Well, do you
mind if I talk about the Jedi? First? Talk about
the Jedi? Okay, so how about Jedi is M. Have

(34:24):
you have you folks heard of this Jedi is M
Jeddism or Jeddi is M. Jedism always makes me think
of Jed from Beverly Hill, Billways. It's the religion of
Jed clamp At. Yes, because he came across the Black Gold,
so he must be inspired. Yes he would God let
him there. But anyway, that no, jedi Ism is a
Star Wars inspired religion that takes after the Jedi, the

(34:46):
Jedi knights of the Star Wars universe. Who are the heroes?
I mean, I probably don't need to explain the Star
Wars context. You I assume you've seen it, if not,
suffice to say, they're, you know, a quasimistical religious order
of good guy is facing off against an evil empire.
Well evil in quotation, I don't know how evil they
actually were. But but oh so you've got a bone

(35:08):
to pick there, Well, it's it's not really worth picking
at this point, never mind. Okay, So anyway, in my
best judgment, Jedi pretty clearly began as a joke. It
just explicitly a joke. Uh. First example the two thousand
one Senceus phenomenon. So around the time of the year
two thousand one, there was a widespread international email campaign

(35:30):
urging people to list Jedi as their religion on official
census forms. And it worked. It worked. According to the BBC,
In the two thousand one UK census, three hundred ninety thousand,
one d twenty seven people, which amounted to about zero
point seven percent of the population at the time, listed

(35:51):
their religion as some variation on Jedi on that census
Jedi or Jedi Night something like. That same year, according
to the Sydney Morning Herald, seventy thousand, five hundred and
nine Australians are about zero point three seven percent of
Australians registered as Jedi on on the two thousand one census.

(36:12):
So at the time, I think everybody assumed this was
sort of like flying spaghetti monsterism. It's a joke carried
out by atheists and secularists, maybe trying to point out
something about the arbitrary nous of people's religious beliefs. Maybe
they thought they were making a point. Maybe they didn't
even think they were making a point. Maybe they just
thought it was funny to say I'm a Jedi instead

(36:33):
of to say no religion or none or something. Yeah,
and it's probably the kind of thing where in many
of these cases, not a tremendous A tremendous now I thought,
is not going into this. It's it's just kind of
a gut reaction. But the roots may run a little
deeper than they're conscious off. Yeah. So that was two
thousand one. But if you look at the website now
of the Temple of the Jedi Order, and if you

(36:55):
listen to their spokespeople, it starts to seem less and
less like a joke, okay, or even a statement in
order to make a point. If you look at them now,
the Jedi have beliefs, they have doctrines. They have credle statements,
and it sounds to me perhaps unsettlingly sincere, I don't
mean unsettling as in I'm mocking them. I just mean

(37:18):
it's surprising. So I want to read a couple of
little things from the Temple of the Jedi Order. These
are These are statements they have. One is the Jedi Code,
and there are two versions of it. I want to
read the simplified version. The Jedi Code reads emotion yet peace,
Ignorance yet, knowledge, passion yet serenity, chaos yet, harmony, death

(37:45):
yet the force that sounds pleasingly my mystic and deep. Yeah. Okay,
there's also a Jedi creed, believe it or not, so
that this is their creed. I am a Jedi, an
instrument of peace. Where there is hatred, I shall bring
love where there is injury, pardon where there is doubt,

(38:06):
faith where there is despair, Hope where there is darkness, light,
and where there is sadness joy. I am a Jedi.
I shall never seek so much to be consoled as
to console, to be understood, as to understand, to be loved,
as to love, For it is in giving that we receive.

(38:27):
It is in pardoning that we're pardoned, and it is
in dying that we're born to eternal life. The forces
with me always for I am a Jedi. Okay, so
this makes me instantly wonder are we are we witnessing
here the evolution of a faith or the evolution of
the joke? Are we are we kind of in like
the Andy Kaufman uh period of the joke where we're

(38:50):
just forced to feel kind of confused and maybe a
little uncomfortable about where we stand, uh in bit versus reality?
I don't know, because I so first of all, that
creed I read there, they said they claimed that is
actually adapted from a traditional prayer of St. Francis of
assisi um. So that's sort of interesting that they're adapting

(39:11):
traditional religious materials. But I also listened to an interview
with the spokesperson from the organization, the Temple of the Jedi,
and you know what, he seemed to me like a
level headed guy who was not playing a prank. In fact,
he the weirdest thing was he didn't even seem like
all that obsessive of a Star Wars fan. Um. And

(39:31):
he so he explained that all the Jedi believe in
the Force, but the Jedi need not believe in like
a literal physical reality of the Force as an energy
field that surrounds us and binds us, though apparently you
can believe in that instead. He made it sound like
the Force can be defined however you like. He can
be a physical reality, it can be a metaphor for

(39:53):
the interconnectedness of the universe, or it can be something
else entirely pretty much whatever you want. He seemed very
earnest and serious about Jedism being taken seriously as a religion, or,
if not a religion, as a sort of philosophy, accorded
the same cultural respect as a religion. Well it's interesting,
right because you're, I mean, what is what is Star

(40:15):
Wars but sort of a rehashing and reassemblage of various
uh mythic tropes, right, yeah, And he pointed to exactly
this thing. He said, Star Wars doesn't exist in a vacuum.
You know, it draws on traditional philosophies and religions, and
so we're essentially using Star Wars as as a metaphorical
way to go back to these ancient traditions. So it's

(40:37):
kind of like, Hey, I really love Star Wars, Why
do I love Star Wars? And then if the answer
as well, some of these belief systems are kind of
appealing to me if you then explore the roots of
those things and began to find meaning in the roots
of those things without abandoning that initial science fiction lens
by continuing to have that be a part of your

(40:57):
your I'm hesitant to say world view, but let's see
your your spiritual construction. Then you you have yourself a
hyper real religion. Yeah, but the Star Wars universe is
not the only one that has created movements like this.
I think there are others that I would say chart
a similar path. It looks to me, and like I

(41:18):
have to admit, as with all these I'm an outsider,
so you know, I can't speak as a Jedi or something,
and I don't want to diminish people's experiences in that
faith or in any other faith. But what I'll say
is it looks to me like it definitely started as
a joke, and it it and it took on a seriousness.
And and there are others like that, like, well, that's

(41:39):
just like your opinion, man, right, how about the dude,
that's right? Dudaism is another big one. Um, I assume
we also have some Big Lebowski fans, I should hope.
So yeah, The Big Lebowski, The Cohen Brothers. Uh, just
wonderful film and it didn't really do well when it
came out, but it's one of those that has continued
to just gain a cult following conventions and even it's

(42:00):
own hyper real religion in the form of Dudaism. So
it's basically all boils down to the dude abides right. Um,
it's a dude centric philosophy and lifestyle, more or less
a modern pop culture take on Daoism dallasm. I've heard
it described also as having a lot of similarities to
Zen Buddhism. Yeah. Indeed, it's you know, it's a little

(42:22):
it's chill, it's uh, it's peaceful, it's uh, it's it's
it's all of the positive aspects of the dude, um,
without some of his more you know, reckless or laziness. Well,
you know, one of the funny things is that the
thing about the dude is that he's chill, but throughout
much of the movie, the dude is not chill. Yeah,
the the dude gets a little irritated and uh, and

(42:45):
and and is even criticized by the stranger for his
his vulgar language. So it's it's it's one of the
This is another great example though, where you when you
look at Dudaism, you see the people who follow it
or least like to talk about it. It all does
begin in that kind of bumper sticker area, like it's
fun to say, hey, what's your religion? Oh, it's Dudaism,

(43:07):
you know, because I really love this movie. But you
see the same thing, right, You see individuals who seem
to follow the roots of it or sort of ask
themself questions, Well, if Dudaism were a real faith, if
it were a real philosophy, what would what would his
tendants be? What would be what? What would I need
to understand? And then they sort of follow it backwards

(43:29):
into um, you know, more historical modes of belief. Yeah,
and I think this would encounter the same kind of
criticisms from outsiders that all these others would. People would
be like, wait a second, hold on, what do you
mean do you really believe in Dudaism? Is that really
your religion? Well, it's kind of It kind of makes
me think of you remember win App Yeah, and the

(43:51):
like MP three player that we all had our skins.
That's the thing. You had different skins, right, We all
had the same program, but we use different skins that
appeal of us personally. Since you have like a tool
skin on Winnamp, I think I had some sort of
like horrible blood splattery one or something like that. It was.
It was nice and dark and moody. But but I

(44:12):
can't help but feel like we encounter something something similar
with these hyper real religions that we're discussing, where the
actual mode of beliefs, the actual mechanics are either something
old or something cobbled together from other beliefs. But if
that skin that brings us in, that skin is unique
and appeals to us. I got another one. I was

(44:32):
trying to tell Rachel last night about Jeddism, my wife Rachel,
about Jedis to convert her or to Jedism. No, no, no,
just to explain it. And she was like, oh, I
bet there is this for Lord of the Rings and
and what do you know that there are there are
Tolkien inspired religious ideas, which is very interesting to me
because I would say that in some ways Tolkien is

(44:55):
sort of adapting Christianity to a fantasy setting. Yeah, or
at least some ideas of Christianity. It's not like an
explicit one to one metaphor, but a lot of his messages,
I think in Lord of the Rings are Christian ones. Yeah,
it's these sort of sort of vague tolken f neopagan religions.

(45:18):
They're they're interesting because you have the book itself. They're
they're often these arguments, you know, people saying, oh, this
is a pagan work and and it's they're the pagan
elements or what's important here? Others saying no, it's inherently
a Christian work. Other people saying it's it's a it's
a synthesis of the two um And maybe all of
these arguments there are ultimately kind of silly, but you

(45:38):
I mean, it's a very popular work, and especially out
of the you know, the nineteen seventies where you saw
people are really into Token. There's a lot of good.
There's still a lot of you know, culture cultural energy
going on. It's and led Zeppelin albums and all Zeppelin albums.
Then it it has a lot of power to it.
It has a lot of um, it has a lot
of depth to it. You can just go completely crazy, uh,

(46:01):
filling in all the details in your mind about the
world of Tolkien. We maybe don't advise that. No, well,
you go for it if you want. Um. I mean,
that's one thing I always enjoy about the various sci
fi and fantasy properties that that really engage me is
if there's a really rich mythos, they're either one that
is explicitly um laid out for you or one where

(46:22):
they are all these holes that you can't help but
fill in the details yourself. You know, we were talking
about this concept of hyper real religions and uh, and
Christian Seger our other host brought Satanism to mind, that's right. Um.
And if anyone remembers the Satanic Panic episode that Christian
and I did, I guess about a year ago. Now, Ums,

(46:43):
we discussed in that Satanism like never really existed, certainly
not in the way that that it was presented in
during the Satanic Panic, Right. I mean, I would say
that what you have as Satanism, people who would actually
claim this religion is almost explicitly an atheistic religion, right. Yeah,
And generally when we talk about Satanism, we're talking about

(47:03):
Lavay and Satanism, which was comes from the Church of Satan,
found in nineteen sixty six by Anton LaVey. Was you know,
ultimately it's an atheistic, individualist philosophy. It's UH with more
than a dash of of drama, symbolism, fun. It's about
messing with the squares and and putting on a you know,

(47:24):
a fun show. Well, in some ways I think it
has a lot in common with the Flying Spaghetti Monster
is um and that it's it's maybe more than this,
but in in some ways you can think of it
as a massive prank. Yes, very much so, UM And
And I think Leave, I think was was pretty straightforward
about that. I mean, this is a guy that came
from sort of Carney roots. It's a very Carney faith

(47:46):
and and I love it. You can't help it but
get involved with the trappings of it, especially as the
years rolled by and it becomes a part of uh,
you know, an entire segment of of music, right, and
you get into all this death metal that has very
degrees of satanic elements. All right, but I think it's
time to turn to psychology to try to see what
we can figure out about what people are actually trying

(48:08):
to get out of these religious beliefs. It seems fairly
clear what people get out of traditional religious beliefs where
there is at the core of them the assumption of
a real revelation about the metaphysical nature of reality. Um,
maybe not in all of them, but in lots of them.
But in these religious beliefs that are in some way

(48:28):
based on what everybody agrees is fiction, what what is
the goal of the seeker of the adherent? Well, one
take on this comes from Carol mq Sax Invented Religions, Imagination,
Fiction and Faith, and she posits that invented religions, such
as the ones we're discussing here, they demonstrate that what
meaning hungry humans really want is a powerful narrative, particularly

(48:52):
one in which unseen agents affect causality in our world
and in our lives. Okay, so maybe saying that even
if we don't agree that the narratives refer to a
thing that's literally true, just participation in the narrative is enough. Yeah,
I mean, like the fictional realm becomes the place where
it is okay to dream, whereas to to dream in

(49:15):
the more real world of of sort of, you know,
religious history that is Uh, that's that is sometimes seen
as a bit weird in some circles. Well, that relates
to something that we that I know, we read a
little bit about about why fantasy is popular these days.
It actually reminds me of of some thoughts, some observations
that are Scott Baker made our Scott Baker himself being

(49:37):
a successful and in my opinion, highly talented UM fantasy
writer himself background in philosophy, and also he works a
fair amount of neuroscience into his into his creations. But um.
In his paper that published on science fiction and Fantasy
World Whine Fantasy and Why now Um, he says that

(49:59):
fantasy is quote the primary literary response to what is
often called the contemporary crisis of meaning. So the idea
here is that we live in an age of reason
and science. We have all sorts of myth erasing answers
for how the world works, so so long as we
don't require teleological answers. So this get in other words,
this gets down to, you know, we have all these
answers about how, say, the solar system works, how life works,

(50:24):
but we don't have the wise, right, that's the stuff
that that is beyond science. Yeah, he almost says science
is essentially created too reliable of a tool for finding
correct answers about reality, and so reliable in fact, that
it has left us with nihilism. Uh. Now, we we
don't necessarily need to agree with that perspective to say that.

(50:44):
Certainly a lot of people probably feel this way that
if science is the only socially legitimate way of of
asserting that something is definitely true, where do you get
your meaning of life from? Yeah? If science is not
going to give that to you, and it can lead
to a sense of kind of despair, of hopelessness, of emptiness.

(51:05):
You know, what is life really all about? I mean,
who cares if I can finally understand the mysteries of
the quantum physics? If if what it reveals is that
there's no way to answer the question of the meaning
of life. Yeah, so you end up turning to fantasy. Um,
and to a certain a certain extent science fiction, but
largely we're talking about fantasy. You're trying to turn to
these fantastic stories, uh, in which you can find if

(51:29):
not find that meaning for yourself, then you at least
embody characters who find that meaning and world and live
in a world where life and in the individual has significance. Now,
I I personally probably wouldn't agree with Baker that this
is what this is what is entailed by the scientific
view of the world. But I can certainly see how
if you do go to that conclusion, fantasy could provide

(51:51):
a very powerful escape from it. Right. And you know,
I do have to say our Scott Baker's own work,
his UM Second Apocalypse series, he he crowns these case
it's definitely dark fantasy, but he grounds these many of
these characters, uh, in this this very believable philosophical place
that is at times like you, at times you're loot,

(52:13):
you lose yourself in the story, in the narrative, in
the world. But other times he forces the reader to
to really ask some troubling questions about about who we
are and how we work as individuals. Um. So, yeah,
I would say that his critique of fantasy genre UM
does not apply to everything within that realm, and it
certainly doesn't apply to all readers. It does comes back

(52:35):
comes back to the question, right, what do modern religious
individuals want? So he would say maybe meaning right, he
would say, meaning he would tie it into this idea.
He he coined the term the semantic apocalypse. Uh, this
idea that we are either at the point where we're
approaching this point where we just we're just completely stupefied
by the lack of meaning in our lives and in

(52:56):
the world. But then again, I mean, I'm sure there
have been some scientific study is that look into what
it is that people want out of religions in general? Uh?
There have, yeah, and one in particular. And again, this
is when we're talking about papers and studies about religion.
This is all ultimately, you know, subjective analysis. Uh, So

(53:16):
feel free to disagree and our igue with us and
uh but in this case, Uh. According to Ohio State
University professor Stephen rice Offer, author of the two thousand
sixteen book, uh, The Sixteen Strivings for God, he says
people have sixteen basic desires like these the interesting, Yeah, acceptance, curiosity, eating, family, honor, idealism, independence, order,

(53:41):
physical activity, power, romance, saving, social contact, status, tranquility, and
vengeance and any pretty good lists. I was trying to
think of things other than that. Yeah, though I think
he covered all the basics there, and you can't help
but look at that list and sort of check things
off in your head as you look at your own
either your own religious leaves, your spiritualism, or your the

(54:02):
fantasy that you're into. Um. But he developed this Rice
motivation profile that measures how much people value each of
these sixteen goals, and he administered it to a hundred
thousand plus people, and he found that the appeal of
any given religion relates to how it responds to one
or more of those desires. Uh, and it competes with

(54:23):
secular society to meet those desires. So, so think about it,
in what ways can both traditional religions and hyper real
religions meet in any of these desires such as uh, Well,
I mean stuff like curiosity. I can definitely see the
appeal of that, because one of the things that always
drew me into actual religions and continues to draw me
into actual religions is the mystery and the creativity, the

(54:46):
the interplay and narratives of these gods and heroes. Right,
It's what brings me into uh to you know, reading
a Hinduism, and brings me into reading a uh, you
know about ancient Egypt. It brings me into reading you know,
they his fantasy novels as well. Well, I mean in
some cases, I think this might grow out of a
slight disconnect between the things we need, you know, these

(55:09):
things we strive for and desire, versus what we really
know is appropriate in modern society, given that we've started
to think out ethical issues in a secular way. I
don't know if you can say that there's really a good,
widely agreed upon, secular justification for things like a desire
for honor. And yet the ancient structures of fantasy, or

(55:31):
of traditional religions or something like that might all include
concepts of honor that can sort of legitimate this desire
that we have biologically, even if we can't think of
a good reason to seek honor. Yeah, it makes more
something like honor often makes more sense in a simplified
and highly symbolic world than it does and you know
the minutia of real life. Yeah, um, you know. Likewise,

(55:54):
something like vengeance, which made the list, Like vengeance is
something that in your own life, like vengeance is kind
of ikey um, Well, yeah, it's the thing we all desire,
but most of us would probably agree we sort of
know better than to try to get it right. But
like a religious faith, you know, you have some sort
of hell doctrine. There an outsource of engeance. I'd say,

(56:16):
I don't have to get revenge something bad might happen
to you outside of my control. Yeah, and and and likewise,
we continually turn to fictional models of what vengeance might
consist of. I mean, revenge tails have always been popular
and will continue to be popular. And again, they often
fall back on a simplified and highly symbolic world. You know,

(56:40):
I wonder if studies on religious experience would indicate that
that hyper reality could become or is becoming, the new
norm for religious experiences. Yeah. It often reminds me of
the line in Big Trouble, Little China from the Sorcerer
egg Shin, who talks about Chinese UH modes of belief

(57:01):
in saying that it's like a salad bar that you choose, uh,
you take what you like and you leave the rest uh.
In this case, the character was referring to Confusism and
Daoism and and uh and and uh and and also
Buddhism as well. But the I find that increasingly in
my own life that I do that that I kind
of take what I want from these various models, including

(57:22):
some fictional models. And and incorporated into my sort of religious,
spiritual worldview. There's actually a two thousand fifteen study from
the University of Evansville published in American Sociological Review, and
it took a pretty thorough look at the way Americans
process religion and science. So the authors crunched data from

(57:45):
three waves of the General Social Survey and found that
US adults hold one of three perspectives based on their
knowledge and attitudes about science and religion. Now, the first
two are long established, but the third isn't. Is, according
to the author's entirely new. So there's modern perspective, a
worldview that favors science over religion, and that scot okay

(58:05):
science trump's religion. That's that's that version. Then there's a
traditional perspective, a worldview that favors religion over science, which
you know to interpret that that that score as you will.
But then the third one is the post secular perspective,
a worldview that values both science and religion, but quote
rejects science in favor of religion when it comes to

(58:28):
topics such as creation and evolution, and that scored. So
that is kind of the salad bar situation in action
there right where the individual is willing to favor science
and religion, in fact, favor science over religion, except for
those places where it becomes um teleologically difficult, where if

(58:53):
not overt issues of meaning come into play, then at
least implied um meaning, you know, implied issues of meaning.
So you know, it's like like, ultimately, I think there
can be a strong case to be made that what
does it matter if if life evolved or of the
hand of God shaped it. But if your interpretation sees

(59:16):
one vision version as problematic or threatening to the overall
religious structure in your head, then you then in this
case you're gonna favor that religious construct over the science.
And a separate question I think would be just what
are the triggers that cause people to view these things
as in conflict anyway? Like, some people obviously hold both

(59:38):
views in their heads without trouble, and some people perceive
a conflict. Um I'm not sure what makes the difference,
but it seems significant. Yeah, so yeah, So what we're
talking about here that the post secular perspective. It's not
a mere midpoint between the traditional and the modern, but
rather a unique way of looking at reality through the
combined lenses of science, and religion, So you can think

(59:59):
of it as a it's kind of a hybrid view.
And I think that the hyper real religions that we're
looking at our kind of represent a high red view
of a different, slightly different form where instead of rejecting
the science that that that threatens, meaning, we're going to
just we're going to outsource the religion into a sort

(01:00:20):
of a safe bucket, into the bucket of fiction, and
then build from there. I think that's an interesting way
of looking at it. Like we said, I mean a
lot of these people who have these beliefs, I get
the sense are basically uh non basically materialist humanists, Like
they typically have humanist values. They could just subscribe to

(01:00:42):
the humanist manifesto, and they typically don't believe in uh
spirits or something anything other than the natural world. That
certainly isn't the case for all of them, but that
seems to be a dominant way of thinking. But like,
like as we know from Buddhism and stuff like that,
you need not be a supernaturalist in order to be
a religious person, right, yeah, And there are ways of

(01:01:04):
engaging I mean, just for Buddhism on its on its own,
you can take a very sort of abstract philosophical approach
to Buddhism where you don't literally believe in life to
life reincarnation, or you can take what you can take
one that is very traditional and ultimately you know it's
it's all about being fearful and responding from a place

(01:01:26):
of fear in terms of what your your next incarnation
will consist of. I had another idea based in psychology,
about what might explain some of this. I mean, I
certainly wouldn't want to say that all of it could
is explained by this, but it could explain some of
the transition from joke religions into real religions. And it
would be based in the idea of sunk costs, choice

(01:01:46):
supportive bias, and post purchase rationalization. So let's say you
spend a lot of money on a new lawnmower. Okay,
I can't imagine it happening in my case, but yeah,
you've mowed the lawn a few times, and you start
to worry that maybe you didn't spend your money all
that well, So you start to engage in an internal conversation,

(01:02:07):
which is a form of choice supportive bias, a bias
towards validating the choice you already made. That's called post
purchase rationalization. You start coming up with the reasons why
you know this really was a good way to spend
my money. I think I did the right thing by
spending the money on this lawnmower, because it could sort
of lead to some unpleasant cognitive dissonance. If you don't

(01:02:30):
come to that conclusion, you can think, man, I really
screwed up. I shouldn't have gone down this road. So
it's kind of kind of gets into the area if
I read Done three times or more times than that,
even maybe it wasn't just a good book. Maybe it
wasn't just a great book, but maybe it was a
book that was so meaningful that it is that it
achieves kind of a spiritual level exactly, or in another way,

(01:02:52):
it could be true that Let's say if you spent
a lot of time and effort just carrying out a joke,
just on a prank religion. Let's say you start spending
time on Judaism because you love the Big Lebowski and
because it's funny. It's funny to pretend that there's a
dude religion. But after realizing how much sunk costs you've
incurred in your own time and energy over a long

(01:03:13):
period of time. You start seeking ways to rationalize the
purchase of of these beliefs by saying, huh, you know,
maybe if I've spent three hundred hours on Dudaism, was
it really just a joke. Maybe it wasn't just a
Maybe there's really some meaning in this. And and that's
not even to say that the meaning you find is

(01:03:35):
invalid if that's your method of coming to that meaning,
I would say that that conclusions reached through choice supportive
bias aren't necessarily untrue conclusions. I think in many cases,
the time and financial investment involved here, it just forces
you to double down on something that you were already
inclined to support or inclined to buy into. You know,

(01:03:57):
It's it's like I already thought this was a great idea,
but now that I've I've potentially wasted this much time
on it, it's definitely a great idea. One other thing
I wanted to note, I was interested to see what
you thought of this is that these religions, the hyper
real religions, especially like Jedi is Um and Judaism, seem
to be very much creatures of the Internet. In fact,

(01:04:23):
even I mentioned that I listened to an interview with
the spokesperson of the Jedi Temple. The guy who I
listened to explicitly pointed to the introduction of Internet fan
communities and forums in the nineteen nineties as the thing
that made the Jedi religion possible. And so that makes
me wonder how the Internet has changed what's possible in
terms of social movements and the birth of religions. Well, yeah,

(01:04:46):
I mean, the Internet has made it possible to to
find those communities of people that share your belief. You
might be the only person in your small town that
loves Star Wars as much as you do, but the
Internet allows you to find all those other individuals who
are as invested, and you find the community in your
fandom that that one could you know, that would pre

(01:05:07):
one could previously find, perhaps only in something like a religion.
You're finding that religious community in your fandom. But then again,
I come back to the question. I mean, I have
to wonder what the evolution of this looks like over
a long time. Could you ever reach the point where
there are jedi Ists who believe in the truth of
Jedi is m so firmly that they would actually come

(01:05:30):
to the position of the creationists we talked about at
the beginning, where they would want their views taught as
an alternative to modern science in schools, where they would say,
you know, I I don't just say that this is
a useful framework for my life. That kind of makes
sense to me. I say this is how reality is,
and I've got the exclusive truth. I mean, I it's

(01:05:52):
hard to imagine with the jedi Ists of today, who,
like we said, seemed to be just sort of like
a taking from the salad bar of interesting ideas. But
who knows what would be possible in the future. Yeah, well,
it seems to me it would be less of a
conflict between between science and this kind of story telling mythology,
but it wouldld be more of a conflict between mythology,

(01:06:13):
So would be more in line with the Jedi is saying, Hey,
if you're going to teach the children about Greek mythology, uh,
then and if you're going to teach them about you know,
about Hinduism or some of these other um, you know,
modes of sort of mythological belief, and you have to
teach them about our mode as well. Because yeah, because
our mode has all of those old ideas, but it's

(01:06:34):
been kind of purified through the lens of modern culture. Well,
I will say I do believe Obi wan Kenobi is
much wiser than most of the Greek gods. He's he's
a very wise individual. It's hard not to I don't
know if some of his choices in the prequels may
have been I'm not even talking about that. That's heretical. Yes, blasphemy. Robert,

(01:06:57):
what's your own personal choice for hyper real religion? Well,
you know, um, like if if you had to go
with one, I could see myself as a follower of
Anambor Kellis the aspect emperor of the three season our
Scott Baker's Second Apocalypse saga. Um, okay, I don't know
anything about that. It's pretty it's pretty rich and deep
and uh, that is one where there are segments in

(01:07:20):
those books where I've I can't they come back to me.
I think about little motifs that he rolls out, and
like some of it is as meaningful as any you know,
actual religion, actual mythology in my life. Likewise the done universe. Hey,
I am right with you there. In fact, I think
some of the some of the liturgical formulas of the

(01:07:41):
Done universe are absolutely useful in the real world, and
you don't have to buy into the reality of Done
at all. I'd say try the Litany against Fear sometime. Yeah,
if you are feeling fear, say these words, I must
not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the
little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear.

(01:08:01):
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the
inner eye to see the path. And where the fear
has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain. Yeah,
I mean I have. I have seriously taken some some
strength and comfort from from from those words and in
the past. Yeah, I mean, they sort of take on
the nature of a proverb where it's not necessarily it's

(01:08:24):
not the authority of the text that gives it its power.
It's self evidently powerful. It's a it's a piece of
literature that you you don't even need to know where
it came from in order for it to be effective. Yeah, exactly.
So how about you, what what hyper real religion would
you turn to jail? Well, besides that, you know, I
do love the Litany against Fear, but my own personal

(01:08:46):
choice for years was, you know, Facebook used to ask
you what your religion is, and I was like, well,
that's none of your business, Facebook. So I'm gonna say
Falsa Doom, right, the Temple of Set from the James
from James Earl Jones and the Schwartz and I er
Cone in the Barbarian movie. I'm to understand Fulsa Doom
is kind of different in other media, right, Yeah, but

(01:09:06):
my opinion is that he gained perfection in that film. Yeah,
I James Earl Jones, He's the perfect Fulsa Doom. He's
a great villain, but he's a very profound and literary
villain and very charismatic. What is steel compared to the
hand that wields it? He has the whole message that
flesh is stronger than steel because steel is just a tool.

(01:09:26):
The flesh is the will. And I can get behind that.
I see what he's getting at. Yeah. And plus the
parties looked pretty cool. Yeah yeah, cannibal stew, giant snakes
and uh, lots of lounging around. Yeah. Well, one more thing,
I mean, I have to admit that there's there's ever
so slight a temptation to some jedi is m. I'm
not saying I would ever be a jedi Ist, but

(01:09:49):
I can get a little misty when I think about
the fact that luminous beings are we not this crude matter?
All right? Well, there you have it, hyper real religions
kind of a you know, an exa emanation of of
where we are in terms of modern religious faith and
and fandom, where we've come from, and perhaps a new
way to sort of look at these these old religions

(01:10:10):
as well. Of course, we want to hear from everyone
else out there. Do any of you guys and gals
follow a hyper real religion? Do we have any uh
Unutologists in the audience that want to speak up about
about Altman, about Church of the SubGenius. Yeah, Church of
the SubGenius. They're a number of big ones that we
didn't We didn't even have time to get to in
this podcast. So we would love to hear from any

(01:10:32):
and all of you about that, And sincerely, if you
want to let us know what you truly love about
this religion and why you consider it a real faith,
please share? Yeah, yeah, do so, we will. We will
keep an open mind and encourage everyone else keep an
open mind about it as well. Um In the meantime,
check us out of Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That's where you will find all the podcasts, the videos,

(01:10:53):
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if you want to get in touch with us with
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you can email us it blow the Mind at how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands

(01:11:18):
of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com