Parody Religions

So, this whole year we’ve been talking about the major religions like Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Native American beliefs, Buddhism, Hinduism, and a bunch of other ones. But what about Googlism? The Invisible Pink Unicorn? And Pastafarianism? Some of you may be aware of these unheard “parody” religions, but I wanted to look into them a little closer. Most of the religions poke fun at the established religions today like Christianity, but surprisingly they have pretty good points and theories that are just as “correct/ridiculous” as the religions of today.

Googlism is one of my favorites because it outs a few things into perspective This is on the main web page of The Church of Google (which is not affiliated with the actual Google Company of course).

“We at the Church of Google believe the search engine Google is the closest humankind has ever come to directly experiencing an actual God (as typically defined). We believe there is much more evidence in favour of Google's divinity than there is for the divinity of other more traditional gods.”

I took a moment and thought about that quote. To me, that statement seems pretty accurate, especially in these modern times.I look more to google than to God to figure out my problems. I looked further into the website and found they created the “9 Proofs” that show how close Google is to a modern god. A few examples of them are “Google is all knowing, Google is everywhere, and Google answers prayers.” Sound familiar? This is just like the Christian's (or any other major religion's) God, just Google can’t smite you if you do something it doesn’t like. This actually sounds like a pretty good religion to me now that I think of it.
Another one I found pretty intriguing was the Invisible Pink unicorn. According to the belief as explained by Steve Eley:

"The Invisible Pink Unicorns is a being of great spiritual power. We know this because she is capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that she is pink; we logically know that she is invisible because we can't see her."

It looks silly what the above statement says, but that statement is pretty much based off of any religion out there today. You can’t see a god because he/she/it is invisible, but you can’t prove it doesn’t exist because it isn't visible. Of course these religions aren’t practiced as vigorously as modern religions (at least I don’t think) but they are there just to show that there are some foolish and silly ideas and beliefs of those religions.

Here are a few Parody religions/beliefs if you’re interested:
The Church of Google
The Invisible Pink Unicorn
Pastafarianism (Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster)
Last Thursdayism
Russels Teapot

Scientific look at Religion

I should first say that if someone already talked about this, I sincerely apologize. My brain doesn’t have the capacity to remember all the blog posts that have already been posted, and I don't have the time to go back and look.

After thinking all day about what I should write about, I decided to crack open Linden’s The Accidental Mind and see what he had to say about religion. I thought it might be interesting to get some scientific thoughts into the class. I opened to the chapter titled “religious impulse” and began to read. I found that he noticed that all cultures in the world have different religions, but are all similar in the fact that they practice a religion. He then poses the question “Why does every human culture have religion?”

Somehow, he is able to explain this in a way that I understand (I'm pretty sure), and hopefully I can relay this to you in a way you can understand. He first discusses how your brain can make things appear to be “gap-free.” His first example is about saccades. Saccades are the jumps and jerks of your eyes as you scan a visual scene. You don’t actually see those jerks, but everything blends very smoothly because you brain is basically making up the visual feedback between each jerk. Hopefully you’re still with me. This shows that your brain can make things up for you, in order for things to make sense.

He then goes on to say the same concept happens with split-brain patients. He gives an example of a patient who is set up in front of a device where they can see two images next to each other, a chicken claw and snow. The subject is asked to select two cards out of several different ones that would best match the individual pictures on the devise. The subject decides to pick a shovel and chicken. As you can see, the subject chose to match the shovel with the snow, and the chicken claw with the chicken. However, when the subject is asked about why they decided on those, the subject states “The chicken claw goes with the chicken and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.” Because there is no clear link between the two hemispheres in a split brain patient, a side of the brain that can clearly see the snow was able to tell the body to pick the shovel card, but was not able to relay this to the other side of the brain, which is supposed to allow the subject to explain themselves in the decision (but it couldn’t). The brain is able to re-organize what happened, and create something that made sense.

(You might be starting to recall all this from last year.)

If you can see where I’m getting at, or actually what he’s getting at, you’ll notice that the brain likes to try and make things make sense. He states “The binding together of disparate percepts and ideas to create coherent narrative that violates our everyday waking experience and cognitive categories is a left cortical function that underlies both dreaming and the creation and social propagation of religious thought.” I’m pretty sure that the statement means that for something that can’t be explained in a way for someone to understand, the brain will make something up, to allow for the person to understand that explanation. This results in unnatural answers to these questions, with “unnatural” referring to something that is “God-like”, which would explain why so many cultures will have some sort of religion.

So, what do you think? Could this be the reason why cultures have religion? Is this the reason behind any religious thoughts? And don’t think of this concept as a scientific fact, he states in the beginning of the chapter that it is all speculation. But who knows? This is probably the reason why I keep on thinking that God had a part in creating life, because scientifically the creation of life it is too difficult to wrap my head around.

Works Cited:

Linden, David J. The Accidental Mind. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2007.

Course texts

Mythology and Modern Religion

I never really thought about mythology until it was brought to my attention in my Scientific Revolutions class last Semester with Professor Bashaw. I can’t quite remember how the topic was brought up, but it was basically about how myths of certain ancient cultures shouldn’t be called myths at all. Our teacher explained how he didn’t like this because it’s not fair for the religious practices and beliefs of ancient cultures to be considered just “fictional stories” compared to the religious practices of today which are considered more “true.” I thought the statement was very interesting and I completely agreed with it. In a way, the stories of the past could be just as false as the religious stories of today. I also thought about how it would feel if someone of the past found out that what they were praying for would be considered a fictional story by someone of today. It was funny because I actually did have that experience when the topic was being discussed. I was trying to write something down and couldn’t pay attention to what the teacher was saying, until I heard the words “Christian Mythology.” I have no idea why (I’m not as religious as I used to be) but a voice in my head shouted “What the hell did he just say!?!” The comment caught me by surprise; it seemed very offensive that the religion I am associated with was being called “Fake.” Then again, I haven’t been to church in a while, don’t pray anymore, and my belief in religion in general is fading, so I probably shouldn’t take offense to that.

It would be impossible for me to tell you why religions of the past are now considered myths since this would take years of research. It could be because of a culture that fell long ago, such as the Greek, Egyptian, or Roman empires would also cause the religion it was mostly associated with to fall with it. Michael Brooks states in an article:

“It turns out that human beings have a natural inclination for religious belief, especially during hard times. Our brains effortlessly conjure up an imaginary world of spirits, gods and monsters, and the more insecure we feel, the harder it is to resist the pull of this supernatural world. It seems that our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods.”

It could be that after a civilization falls, and if it’s religion falls with it, people will go on and pray to new gods. The old gods, religious practices, and prayers must have been forgotten about, probably explain why they could be considered “myths”. Like what Michael Brooks just stated above, Humans need to believe in something. I guess if they can't believe in one god they must go to another, and the old gods are forgotten for what the stood for originally. Of course these are only theories of my own, there is most likely a better reason behind this.

Who knows, in the distant future some high school student is going to be writing a paper titled “Christian Mythology.”

While I couldn’t find a video relating directly to what I just said, but I have found a funny video by Seth McFarline. The religion the family in the video discusses is just as absurd as the religions of today (In my opinion of course.)




Credit:

Brooks, Michael. "Born believers: How Your Brain creates God." New Scientist. February 4, 2009.

Course Readings

Informal Post - Evan Burrill

Hey guys, this is Evan Burrill,
I'm pretty interested in where this course is going to go. I was raised Catholic which meant going to church and CCD every Sunday as a kid. Even though I'm not that religious anymore, i still have a little knowledge about the Christian religion that i could apply to course work or discussions. But hopefully we'll be learning about different religions , I was never really educated about any of the other ones and want to know more about them.