Since this is from The Onion, I guess it’s satire. It’s an unfortunately believable story about cults and postmodern ideas about making up the religion you want. It’s called “Scientology losing Ground to New Fictionology.”
For a laugh
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One response to “For a laugh”
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That was the fun of The Church of the SubGenius, make your own religion from the ground up. As the past Pope of Minneapolis, I certainly was involved in the creation of church doctrine. Our head launchings evolved into something truely beautiful and profane, world class, and everyone had a good time, and there was no devil worship – let me tell you. There was the sense of togetherness, until everyone went their seperate ways, as people are prone to do. That was part of the doctrine, short duration personal saviours, use ’em and move on, and they did. This is common in Japan I read a while ago, people switching religions as they age, or being involved with more than one religion at a time.
While I know we were only playing, there has to have been a time when people made up all the religions from scratch, and low and behold the process is the same. This was a long time ago and they have burned their way into the collective conscious and now are “real” or legitimate. As each religion grew organicly over time they had people, just like you and me, creating all the crap they carried into the future. Someone in the church organization got a new type of hat and you just know someone else got a new type of schmock, or some other type of religious claptrap. In many cases the original teachings of the great first one have been added to and changed over time by a procession of new and ever changing church handlers, many of whom are not so great and not so first in their thinking.
The people who first added to the creation of the Church of the Subgenius have mostly moved on, but there are still many new people who find out about it, the book still gets into print now and again. It’s been 20 years since they started, and now it’s mostly a little known artifact, but tens of thousands know about it, maybe hundreds of thousands, the germ is planted. How many people were knowledgable about Buddism, or Hindism or Christianity 20 years in. Did they have a books? How many printings? It’s an other time thing…we are now in the information age, fast moving, get your message out quickly. Somewhere way into the future, religions will change, as they all do, over a long period. I hopin’ we have space religions, if we ever get off this rock in one piece or at all, I’m looking forward to that. I have on occasion wondered what we as the collective human consciousness would think if aliens did show up for real. Hopefully they are not the Alien or Predator types, but the nicer aliens with better recording technology, and shiny no wear cloth.
I’m not interesed in joining a religion. I do have a tendency to lean to the eastern guys because they want you to look at your self and your actions, and I kind of like the Unitarians, since they have an open mind to the whole god thing, is he real or not, oooohhh. I still couldn’t bring myself to join some church, I could see no point in investing the time, to learn moral lessions I already know. I do see the group thing as a positive as long as the group thinks positive thoughts and deeds. No book burnings and no bombing for Jesus or Alla guys, they would not approve, and neither do I. I do approve of humour and I do like the Onion. If there is a god, I a betting he’d like the Onion too. After all, and god will agree with me on this, the more you know, the more jokes you get.
See ya in the funny papers.
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