From the Vault: Hyper-Real Religion

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 Lamb and Joe McCormick as they discuss modern religious movements, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the rise of so-called hyper-real religions like Jediism and Dudeism (Originally published March 29, 2016)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, Welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Time for a Vault episode. Going into the Vault, this
time to explore the world of religion. This episode originally
aired March twenty nine, and it is about the concept
of hyper real religion. Yeah, this is a This is
a fascinating topic. It gets into areas such as the

(00:27):
flying spaghetti monster, the Jedi religion, Jedi religion or sad
devotion to that ancient religion is no match for the
power of this space station. Is that body says? It
sounds right? Yeah. Basically, the idea of modern humans picking
and choosing their religions, not only from the religions of
the ancient world or or even new religions that have

(00:49):
popped up in recent decades, but just going straight to
the fictional world, going to fictional religions that that that
they know are fictional, and finding some sort of inspiration
or worldview in them, something they can latch onto. Yeah,
this is one of my favorites we've done. So we
hope you out there enjoyed this episode on hyper real religion.

(01:14):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works 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.
You've probably heard this one before. It it's one of

(01:36):
the 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

(01:57):
like this, You've got l Ron Hubbard and Robert A.
Island 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 coverboards, or maybe they
power arm or stamp into the bar. But anyway, they're
in the bar. They're down in some Bruskis and this

(02:17):
is 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. Uh So Hubbard has
an opinion. L Ron Hubbard says, you know, the best
strategy is really to take advantage of the common people's

(02:40):
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 box at this, that sounds kind of extravagant. So
they make a bet can he do it? Can he
not do it? And by the end of the century

(03:01):
there are at least tens of thousands of Scientologists in
the world. The Church of Scientology claims millions of 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 even though this bat probably

(03:27):
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 there 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? Everybody's heard this, right,

(03:49):
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 gen real distaste for scientology. There there's
a lot of antipathy out there, right, there's no sortage
of scientology criticism, uh and and lampooning on the internet
these days. Right. But you could also say that this

(04:12):
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 new religion.
Something about it seems fiercely wrong, just nakedly perverse. Well, yeah,

(04:38):
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
it out of existing parts. It's all kind of like
that first Iron Man suit that that that Stark builds
in the first Iron Man filming, just builds out of

(05:00):
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 quality of the ingredients. Yeah. 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

(05:22):
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 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

(05:45):
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 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.

(06:08):
No religion can have always been ancient, because every religion
that exists today, even the one you believe in, you
would you would 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 and Brusque's and whatnot.

(06:29):
I mean, they're probably from gradual evolutions of beliefs, right, Yeah,
new ideas that suddenly get picked up by, in many
cases 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 and then when you layer over

(06:50):
the mythic UH materials as well you're gonna throw in
some miracles. You're gonna throw in some some fantastic occurrences,
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 spiritual revelation. So you might have a

(07:12):
movement that starts with somebody thinks they've received a message
from God or from other worldly powers, from a 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

(07:35):
takes on the mantle of religion and genuine sanctity. Yeah,
when does it become an actual religion? 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
buy your mind? Well a lot, actually, because because most
of what we're gonna talk about is occurring, if not

(07:56):
right now, then at least in the scientific age. And
I believe that that that the the age of science,
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

(08:17):
religions of our modern age, and that is postafarianism. Yes,
and and I do want to just throw in real
quick this. Of course, the the word postafarianism is is
a play on Rastafarianism, and I do I do want
to just point out that we are aware that adherents

(08:37):
of the Rastafari faith uh often do not like the
term Rastafarianism. So it's kind of like there's a little
bit of of insult to Rastafari adherents built into postafarianism.
Well 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

(08:58):
thought it was important to it ignore knowlledge that yes,
uh uh, there's I don't think it was intentional, but
they're the postaparianism could be deemed offensive by some out there, certainly,
And if you're already lost, we need to back up
because 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

(09:20):
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 church and State, and this is traditionally interpreted to
say that private citizens can believe whatever they want. You have,

(09:42):
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
pretty well, except where there's this crossover where on one
side the science book is saying, uh, there's this thing

(10:02):
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
a conflict between between separate between the sort of individual

(10:24):
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,
a gallop pole released in June found that forty two

(10:45):
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
if you're listening to this podcast, I'm just gonna go
and assume you do not believe this. Yeah, as you

(11:06):
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
of the Solar System and the formation of galaxies, and
probably plenty of other things. You could just generally say

(11:28):
that Young Earth creationism is a belief that encounters generalized
to 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
the reliance upon a sort of modern untangling of ancient

(11:50):
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 a proving curricular or textbook
selection for public schools, hold these beliefs themselves, and they
sometimes try to promote these beliefs and their consequences in
what are supposed to be secular, religiously neutral classes for

(12:14):
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, and it might just insist on biology
classes including materials prepared by creationists that sort of cast vague,

(12:34):
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, big public debates and lots of court cases.
One example of such a court case occurs very close

(12:55):
to home for us here in Cobb County, Georgia, which
is includes northern suburbs of Atlanta. And on March twenty,
two thousand to 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 says,
evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin

(13:16):
of living living things. Uh And in two thousand five,
this was ruled unconstitutional by U. S 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 specifically reference the alternative theories. Uh and this

(13:39):
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 as an alter native to our science.

(14:02):
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 moniker of creationism, you might

(14:24):
call it, like a marketing term to make it seem
more scientific, like to add a lexicon of scientific vocabulary
to uh, 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 physics graduate Bobby Henderson wrote

(14:47):
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
le I shall quote. I am writing you with much concern,
after having read of your hearing, to decide whether the
alternative theory of intelligent design should be taught along with

(15:10):
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 to critique and satirize the
intelligent design arguments by showing how the claims of flying

(15:32):
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 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

(15:55):
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 the
flying spaghetti monster, yeah, of which you'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

(16:19):
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
humor based around this original idea of a flying spaghetti monster,
including actually becoming some form of church. Yeah. I mean

(16:42):
it's interesting to look at the evolution of the joke.
I mean I'm often just taken by the visual depictions
because I feel like those really pick up a lot
of steam. And the spaghetti monster itself is funny looking.
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

(17:03):
with eyes and meatballs generally too, and and and yeah,
to your point, like a lot of it's kind of
a community assembled mythos as well, like everyone, all sorts
of little bits and pieces are thrown in 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

(17:26):
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, and
I'm like, Okay, I get it. But then the joke,
it's the joke just keeps going. People keep telling it
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

(17:46):
that they won't Yeah, they're 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 in some cases it evolved from a specific satire
of of teaching of Young Earth creationism in public schools

(18:08):
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, an atheistic protest religion, um, and
it serves a useful purpose there, I think, you know it.
It's it. It continually argues, hey, um, why do we

(18:32):
believe that in the things we believe in. You know,
why is this valuable? And this isn't um and you know,
as a joke goes it is it 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

(18:53):
can understand why some religious people would be less than
impressed with this joke as it exists today, because, 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

(19:15):
they provide to the people that hold them. Yeah, it
is you can just look at as a kind of shallow,
outsider mockery. Yeah, and I and I definitely, 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 its funny,

(19:36):
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 lifetime of faith,
you know, to to rebuke their their their cultural heritage
in many cases. But as we said, this is becoming

(19:57):
a new heritage of its own. And I'm I'm curious
us 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 remains that
bumper sticker level of 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

(20:19):
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, which
is is really taking it to the next level, saying
not only is our joke religion jokey, but it is

(20:40):
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 that was where we saw the
most recent headlines about it, and apparently they had to

(21:00):
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 the realization that a religion need
not be ancient in order to be followed. So I

(21:24):
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, the sort of alien
holiness of the distant past. But this doesn't mean you
can't create religions in the modern day that gain a following. Yeah.
I mean we've already mentioned Rastafari, which is an abrahammock religion, uh,

(21:45):
you know, certainly with a lot of elements that are
based in deep history. But it also venerated uh then
Emperor of Ethiopia highly Selassi, you know. And it's it's
it's certainly a religion I would love to to look
at in greater 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

(22:08):
I mean, to have your Messiah live 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, 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

(22:33):
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, very much. So. If if you don't
realize that this is the name, the official name of
the Mormons, it's the Church of Jesus Christ of the
Latter day Saints, and it too, of course, sprang up

(22:54):
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 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

(23:18):
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 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

(23:41):
forty two percent of Americans adhered to a literal understanding
of the Bible, and so that's obviously not even 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 in your Christianity, but um, yeah,
you can still be a Christian and not believe that

(24:02):
there was a literal garden of eaton. You can still
look at something like Noah's ark uh and and really
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,

(24:23):
you know, it's a story that's part of our received
tradition and I accepted as a story. But I but
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 that
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

(24:44):
at it as mythology if you want. You can look
at it as some sort of a literal historical document.
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 open 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

(25:08):
twentieth century. That's right, nineteen four UM contemporary individual focused
movement elements of science fiction, New age philosophy, and the
psycho analysis, though it also has historically been anti psychiatry.
UM and Uh. I think it's sort of almost uh
positions itself as an alternative to psychiatry. Yes, yeah, I

(25:30):
think very much so, um and one of them. We're
not going to go in deep into all the mysteries
of scientology here, but it essentially says that we're all
alien souls called Theton'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,

(25:52):
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 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
I mean, certainly, just researching online you're gonna find one

(26:14):
voice or the other in very drastically different positions on
the matter. Now, any of the religions that we've mentioned
so far, you 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,

(26:34):
there were no New World horses prior to UH, to
the colonial presence UH in North America. You hold on,
how 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,

(26:56):
because this thing doesn't match up with with real life. Likewise,
you can say, oh, there're no demonic space aliens, there
no there was no Zen, New etcetera. But as we're
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 that fiction nobody and the

(27:19):
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,
it doesn't match up, because X, Y and Z they're saying, oh, no,
I fully agree with you. This is all fiction. But
the thing that comes out of that fiction is real.

(27:43):
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
named Adam Possum I and possum Eze got a it's
got a book that came out in two thousand five

(28:04):
called Religion and Popular Culture a hyper real Testament like
that title, uh. And in this book he he builds
on some postmodern social theory. Now, don't worry, we're not
going to get too into the 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

(28:27):
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 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,

(28:52):
people consume their religion individually in the same way they
do their shopping and their media perience is religion becomes
a co modified, consume arized thing that you 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.

(29:14):
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 the
TV program. You could also look at megachurches, which I
think are a really interesting cultural phenomenon. I have huge congregations,

(29:36):
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 a
personal relationship. You just go and sort of consume as
another face in the crowd as on your own time,

(29:58):
on your own terms. Now off or is 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, they want
to be an individual, the want of a community exactly.
But then also you could look at their attention grabbing
multimedia experiences like let's, you know, let's watch Pastor Trent
rock out with the praise band on the JumboTron, which

(30:20):
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
the concept of hyper real religion, he makes a comparison
between trends in fantasy literature and trends in religion. And

(30:43):
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
usually draws, like sword and sorcery fiction. He possum I
claims that this is based mostly on chival ric or
medieval romance like the R three and cycle, you know,

(31:04):
King Arthur in 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 tropes or things like magic, creatures, thieves, warriors, druids, wizards, orcs, elves,

(31:24):
what else, oh, gelatinous cubes. Yeah, all the standard dunez
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
two video game Kingdom Hearts. Now, I've never played this of,
you know, but I'm familiar with the with the series,

(31:46):
especially it's it's crossovers with like Disney material. But 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 put in some ways, it has a traditional fantasy
plot structure. There's a quest, there's a main character who

(32:06):
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, you know, the nights and the elves
and the orcs and all that, it's got characters from

(32:28):
Disney movies. Like you say, so, it's got characters from
Aladdin and Peter Pan and a 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 tropes that are being pulled from

(32:48):
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
binging in all this stuff where people are explicitly familiar
with the origins Disney movies. Disney movies they saw when
they were a kid, and now they're part of the

(33:09):
fantasy library. Huh. Yeah, this is I mean, this just
makes me think about walking around the office here and
how stuff works. Uh. You go by each desk and
everyone has at least it seems like one figurine, right,
one action figure, some sort of pop culture comic bookie
character that is serving as kind of uh, kind of

(33:30):
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

(33:50):
and so you know, I carry 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 of draw

(34:14):
in a draw on as I work. Gammera has stuff
we can all get behind. He loves 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.

(34:35):
But you know, to what extent are all these little
little creatures and a 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,

(34:57):
definitions and analysis. We're not going 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
subjective analysis. So if there's nothing definite about any of it, yeah,
but but it does it does make a lot of
sense in this one. We're discussing it here, But essentially,
the idea is creating religions inspired by source material that

(35:20):
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 gammera 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 you?

(35:42):
Have you folks heard of this jedi Ism, Jeddism or
jeddi is M. Jedism always makes me think of Jed
from Beverly Hillbillies. 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, jed Edi is Um is a Star Wars
inspired religion that takes after the Jedi, the Jedi knights

(36:05):
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 quasi mystical religious order of good guys
facing off against an evil empire. Well evil in quotation,
I don't know how evil they actually were. But but oh,

(36:25):
so you've got a bone 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 since this phenomenon, so around the
time of the year two thousand one, there was a
widespread international email campaign urging people to list Jedi as

(36:51):
their religion on official census forms. And it worked. It worked,
according to the BBC. In the two thousand one UK
since US three hundred ninety thousand, one hundred and twenty
seven people, which amounted to about zero point seven percent
of the population at the time, listed their religion as
some variation on Jedi on that census Jedi or Jedi

(37:14):
Knight something like. That same year, according to the Sydney
Morning Herald, seventy thousand, five hundred and nine Australians, or
about zero point three seven percent of Australians registered as
Jedi on on the two thousand one census. So at
the time, I think everybody assumed this was sort of
like flying spaghetti monsterism. It's a joke carried out by

(37:36):
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 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 amount thought is not going

(37:58):
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 listen to their spokespeople,
it starts to seem less and less like a joke

(38:19):
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 it's surprising. So
I want to read a couple of little things from

(38:40):
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 us yet, harmony, death yet the Force. Okay,

(39:05):
that sounds pleasingly mystic and 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, faith
where there is despair, hope where there is darkness, light,

(39:29):
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, it is in pardoning that we're pardoned, and
it is in dying that we're born to eternal life.

(39:50):
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 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
just forced to feel kind of confused and maybe a

(40:11):
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 traditional
religious materials. But I also listened to an interview with

(40:33):
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. Umh. And
he so he explained that all the Jedi believe in
the Force, but the Jedi need not believe in like

(40:55):
a literal physical reality of the Force as an energy
field that's around 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. It can
be a physical reality, it can be a metaphor for
the interconnectedness of the universe, or it can be something
else entirely pretty much whatever you want. He seemed very

(41:17):
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 what is that what is Star Wars
but sort of a rehashing and reassemblage of various uh

(41:38):
mythic tropes, right, yeah, And he pointed to exactly this thing.
He said, Star Wars doesn't exist in a vacuum, you know,
yet 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 kind
of like, hey, I really love Star Wars. Why do
I love Star Wars? And then if the answer is, well,

(42:00):
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 your I'm hesitant
to say worldview, but let's say your your spiritual construction.

(42:22):
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 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

(42:42):
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. Well,
and it it and it took on a seriousness and
and there are others like that, like, well, that's just
like your opinion. Man, right, how about the Dude. That's right.
Dudaism is another big one. Um, I assume we also

(43:04):
have some Big Lebowski fans, I should hope. So yeah,
The Big Lebowski, the Coen 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
gaining a cult following conventions and even its own hyper
real religion in the form of Dudaism. So it's basically
all boils down to the dude abides right. Um, it's

(43:26):
a dude centric philosophy and lifestyle, more or less a
modern pop culture take on on Dalloism 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
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,

(43:50):
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
and and is even criticized by the stranger for his
his vulgar language. So it's it's it's one of the

(44:11):
This is another great example, though, where you when you
look at Dudaism and you see the the people who
follow it or at 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, 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

(44:34):
of ask themself questions, well, if Dudaism were a real faith,
if it were a real philosophy, what would what would
his tenants be? What would be what? What would I
need to understand? And then they sort of follow it
backwards into um, you know, more historical modes of belief. Yeah,
and I think this would encounter the same kind of

(44:55):
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 Judaism? Is that really
your religion. Well, it's kind of it kind of makes
me think of you remember win App. Oh yeah, the
old like MP three player that we all had. That's
the thing. You had different skins, right, we all have
the same program, but we use different skins that appeal

(45:17):
to us personally. Since you have like a tool skin
on win App, 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
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

(45:41):
old or something cobbled together from other beliefs, But it's
that skin that brings us in. That skin is unique
and appeals to us. I got another one. I was
trying to tell Rachel last night about Jeddism, my wife Rachel,
about Jedis to convert her or 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

(46:03):
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
sort of adapting Christianity to a fantasy setting, or at
least some ideas of Christianity. It's not like an explicit
one to one metaphor, but a lot of his messages

(46:26):
I think in Lord of the Rings are Christian ones. Yeah,
it's these sort of sort of vague Tolkien asked neopagan religions.
They're they're interesting because you had 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 are what's important here. Other saying no, it's inherently

(46:47):
a Christian work. Other people saying it's a it's a
synthesis of the two um. And maybe all these arguments
there are ultimately kind of silly, but you, I mean,
it's a very popular work, and especially out of the
the nineteen seventies where you saw people are really into Tolkien.
There's a lot of good there's still a lot of
you know, Coulter cultural energy going on. It's in Led

(47:08):
Zeppelin albums, all Zeppelin albums, and 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, 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

(47:29):
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 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 Sega, our other host, brought Satanism

(47:52):
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. Know, um, as 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,

(48:13):
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 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

(48:35):
of of drama, symbolism, fun. It's about messing with the
squares and and putting on a you know, 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 could think of it as a massive prank. Yes,
very much so um And And I think lave I

(48:58):
think was was pretty straightforward about I mean, this is
a guy that came from sort of Carney roots at
the very Carney faith, and and I love it. You
can't help it but get involved with the trappings of it,
especially as the years roll by and it becomes a
part of uh, you know, an entire segment of of music. Right,
you get into all this death metal that has varying
degrees of satanic elements. All right, but I think it's

(49:20):
time to turn to psychology to try to see what
we can figure out about what people are actually trying
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,

(49:41):
maybe not in all of them, but in lots of them.
But in these religious beliefs that are in some way
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

(50:02):
as the ones we're discussing here, they demonstrate that what
meaning hungry humans really want is a powerful narrative, particularly
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,

(50:25):
I mean, like the fictional realm becomes the place where
it is okay to dream, whereas to to dream in
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.

(50:49):
It actually reminds me of of some thoughts, some observations
that are Scott Baker made our Scott Baker himself being
a uh 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

(51:13):
and Fantasy, World, Wine, Fantasy and Whine now Um, he
says that 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

(51:34):
other words, this gets down to, you know, we have
all these answers about how, say, the solar system works,
how life works, 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

(51:54):
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. 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?

(52:17):
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. You know, what is life really
all about? I mean, who cares if I can finally
understand the mysteries of the of 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

(52:39):
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 not find that meaning for yourself,
then you at least embodied 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 big or that this is what this

(53:02):
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 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 cads. It's definitely dark fantasy, but
he grounds these many of these characters, uh, in this

(53:25):
this very believable philosophical place that is at times like you,
at times you're loot, 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

(53:47):
does not apply to everything within that realm, and it
certainly doesn't apply to all readers. Come back to the question, right,
what 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,

(54:09):
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 the world. But then again, I mean, I'm sure
there have been some scientific studies 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

(54:32):
is when we're talking about papers and studies about religion.
This is all ultimately, you know, subjective analysis. Uh, So
feel free to disagree and our idea with us and uh,
but in this case, uh. According to Ohio State University
professor Stephen rice Offer, an author of the two thousand
sixteen book, uh, The Sixteen Strivings for God, he says

(54:52):
people have sixteen basic desires. I liked these interesting. Yeah, Acceptance, curiosity, eating, family, honor, idealism, independence, order,
physical activity, power, romance, saving, social contact, status, tranquility, and vengeance.
And then a pretty good list. I was trying to
think of things other than that. Yeah, though, I think

(55:15):
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 beliefs, your spiritualism, or your the
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

(55:35):
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
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,

(55:57):
I mean stuff like curiosity. I can doubt only 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 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

(56:18):
know about ancient Egypt. It brings me into reading you know,
various 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 things we
strive for and desire, versus what we really know is
appropriate in modern society, given that we've started to think

(56:40):
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 of traditional
religions or something like that might all include concepts of
honor that can sort of legitimate this desire that we

(57:01):
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, something like vengeance,
which made the list, Like vengeance is something that in

(57:22):
your own life, like vengeance is kind of ikey um,
well yeah, and 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 in there, an outsource vengeance, I'd say, I
don't have to get revenge something bad might happen to

(57:42):
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,
will continue to be popular, and again they often fall
back on a simplified and highly symbolic world. You know,

(58:03):
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 modes of belief in

(58:24):
saying that it's like a salad bar that you choose,
you take what you like, and you leave the rest. Uh.
In this case, the character was referring to Confusism and
Taoism and and uh and and uh and and also
Buddhism as well. But but yeah, I I find that
increasingly in my own life that I do that that
I kind of take what I want from these various models,

(58:45):
including 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 View,
and it took a pretty thorough look at the way
Americans process religion and science. So the author's crunch data

(59:07):
from 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 a modern perspective,
a worldview that favors science over religion, and that scored Okay,

(59:28):
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

(59:51):
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

(01:00:16):
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

(01:00:39):
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 are obviously hold both

(01:01:01):
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

(01:01:22):
of it as a as kind of a hybrid view.
And I think that the hyper real religions that we're
looking at are kind 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

(01:01:43):
sort 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 material list humanists,
Like they typically have humanist values, they could subscribe to

(01:02:05):
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 engaging.

(01:02:27):
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 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 of

(01:02:49):
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, supportive bias,

(01:03:11):
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, which
is a form of choice supportive bias, a bias towards

(01:03:34):
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 come to
that conclusion, you can think, man, I really screwed up.

(01:03:55):
I shouldn't have gone down this road. So it's kind
of kind of gets into the area if I read
Dune 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, it
could be true that Let's say if you spent a

(01:04:18):
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
period of time, you start seeking ways to rationalize the

(01:04:40):
purchase of these beliefs by saying, huh uh, you know,
maybe if if I've spent three hundred hours on Dudaism,
was it really just a joke? Maybe it wasn't just
a joke. Maybe there's really some meaning in this. And
and that's not even to say that the meaning you
find is invalid if that's your method that of coming
to that meaning. I would say that that conclusions reached

(01:05:05):
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, It's it's like I already thought this was
a great idea, but now that I've I've potentially wasted

(01:05:26):
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 m
and Judaism, seemed to be very much creatures of the Internet.
In fact, even I mentioned that I listened to an

(01:05:48):
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,

(01:06:09):
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

(01:06:30):
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 jeddi Ists who believe in the truth of
jedi Is m so firmly that they would actually come

(01:06:53):
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 ends 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. Uh, I

(01:07:14):
mean I it's 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 storytelling mythology, but would be more a conflict

(01:07:35):
between mythology. So would be more in line with a
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

(01:07:55):
of those old ideas, but it's been kind of purified
through the lens of 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. Oh, I don't know.
Some of his choices in the prequels may have been
I'm not even talking about that. That's heretical. Heretic, Yes, blasphemy. Robert,

(01:08:20):
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
annasurmbor 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

(01:08:43):
those books where I've keep 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 doom universe. Hey,
I am right with you there. In fact, I think
some of the some of the liturgical formulas of the

(01:09:04):
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.

(01:09:24):
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

(01:09:47):
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 exactly.
So how about you, what what hyper real religion would
you turn to cha? Well, besides that, you know, I
do love the Litany against Fear, but my own personal

(01:10:09):
choice for years was you know, Facebook. He 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
Fulsa Doom. Right, the Temple of Set from the from
James Earl Jones and the Schwarzenegger Conan the Barbarian movie.
I'm to understand Thulsa Doom is kind of different in
other media, right, Yeah, but my opinion is that he

(01:10:31):
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, 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. The flesh is the will.

(01:10:51):
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 Ism. I'm not saying I would
ever be a jedi Ist, but I can get a

(01:11:12):
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 examination 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 as well. Of course,

(01:11:34):
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 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

(01:11:55):
from any 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, I 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,

(01:12:15):
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(01:12:41):
of other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com.
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