Star Wars and the 'Jedi' faith

[arthra]

Well I think Scifi writers use models of religions they know about..for material in their books.

Take Frank Herbert's Dune which if you read it has what I would call themes that are similar to Islamic history.

And check out the Muslims in the "Chronicles of Riddick"!

Matrix has elements of martial arts and maybe Zen... The Jedi may be something like the Boshido.

Jason Scott Card a Mormon has themes that are similar to his religion and if you watched Battle Star Gallactica, the original series there was the planet Kobal which sounds to me a lot like the planet Kolab in Mormon scripture and recall the "twelve tribes"...

Recall that CS Lewis used Christian themes in his writings and he wrote some science fiction called the Space Trilogy as well so really this stuff is not new.

- Art

[flowperson]

Art:

Being a SoCal guy, I thought fer sure that you'd mention L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, and the writer/creator of that smash hit, Battlefield Earth, starring John Travolta.

flow....

[arthra]

Originally Posted by flowperson

Art:

Being a SoCal guy, I thought fer sure that you'd mention L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, and the writer/creator of that smash hit, Battlefield Earth, starring John Travolta.

flow....

Well OK.. I used to drive by one of their headquarters on my way to work and they had this ship deck with masts on their property and a lot of people dressed in navy costumes. But you're right ...L Ron Hubbard was a Scifi writer and they made that film Battlefield Earth!

- Art

[jiii]

originally posted by flowperson

When a few people, and then many, saw a strange man do wonderful and magical things in Palestine 2,000 years ago, something "clicked" and Christianity came into being. Belief is a strange phenomenon. Very small things may start it, and sometimes huge things cannot stop it. That's what we're really talking about here.

flow....

Indeed. I mean, I knew while I was writing that post that the irony was that most all religions have pretty modest origins which, objectively speaking, appear absurd and would've been considered weird by the ordinary person of the day. A new religion, I think, always gets that kind of sneer in the beginning. Though, I wonder if that isn't just an important part of the process...you know, so that people don't run off making a religion around "X-men", get bored the next year, and make a new religion that follows the way of the "Peter Pan", then get bored again and follow the way of "He-Man", and so on, and so on. Like people in America tend to be with diet plans, really. Many more than 10,000 people switch diets every year, but it's funny how fast a trend can be gobbled up and disappear.

Maybe "The Force" persists and somehow has staying power... If so: then, cool, I was here for the beginning of a new religion . If not: well...let's just say, I wouldn't be surprised.

-jiii

[flowperson]

Hi jiii:

I think you're right in much of what you say. But in the past the "weirdness" that set the "initial conditions" of religious movements centered around the direct activities of a real person or a group of them. In the cases we're seeing today, as you and Art have pointed out, we seem to have the same phenomena occuring; but, the "initial conditions" of the new religious movements are based upon passive observance and belief in "artificial" presentations of alternative realities that are pretty far divorced from the real world that humans experience every day. I'd sure like to have a Psychiatrist or Psychologist comment upon this difference, and inquire whether we might be seeing a new form of "escapism" being created by those who find the real world to be not acceptable in some ways in explaining their real day-to-day experiences in it ? I would probably also include obsessive video game playing in the same category of questioning.

Any thoughts guys ?

flow....