I don’t have to tell anyone that religion has been around for a long time. Artifacts and red dust found at Neanderthal archaeological sites have been interpreted by Scientists as having a religious purpose. Every human society known to science has had some form of religion, so for whatever reason it has been with us. In recent years religion has been taking a beating from what has been dubbed by the media and others as “the new atheists”, fellows like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett who have recently released a number of books that attack religion, faith, and spirituality itself as evils that have outlived their usefulness to Mankind. Their books and rhetoric have drawn the ire of Religious leaders and believers, creating a whole new genre of youtube video.
While traditional religions have been losing their faithful and clout for the last 50 years (though this is a very relative term, as fundamentalism and religious activism have increased in proportion) interest in “new age” faiths, pagan beliefs, eastern religion, and other esoteric sects and belief systems. Most of these “new age” religions at least purport to be the distillation of age old secrets and beliefs, or at least a new revelation from a traditional deity. There are of course totally new home grown religions appearing, the Church of the Sub Genius, Pastafarians, innumerable others as well (think the hale-bop cult, heaven’s gate, etc., etc.). At the bottom of this sad scale of religious belief is believers in faiths that were created whole-cloth from the minds of people who pretend for a living and here we find such sad people like Jedis and Scientologists (who, I am only half joking, will send me some sort of nasty email form their lawyers). These are people so desperate for a belief system that they actualize the fictional religions of others, this is only half true with Scientology it was fiction but Hubbard was cashing in. Wired Magazine has a small article in their October issue about this group here, I couldn’t bring myself to read all of it. Of course what Jedis stood for in the Star Wars movie was mostly a good thing, but you can do what they do without investing it with anything supernatural.
The world is fascinating enough without creating magic, and omnipotent bearded men in the sky, or alien invaders from the deep past who destroyed prisoners in volcanoes on earth with nuclear devices… Take a break, step outside and enjoy the beauty of existence for what it is, not what you wish it was.
