Coincidance - Principia Discordia

COINCIDANCE 203
The New Religion As Complicated Joke
As an investigative journalist in the US, I met many members of all these
cults or sects. I have found them to be above-average in intelligence and
education, mostly young (average age is under 30, although some over-40s
do crop up) and very erudite in anthropology, history of religion and,
especially, science-fiction. Typically, they attend science-fiction conventions
even more devoutly than the services or celebrations of their churches. Many
of them are in the computer industry, and others in entertainment, the arts,
the Academia. They frequently belong to two or more of these sects
simultaneously and may also be involved in some Oriental mystical system
on the side. An overwhelming majority of them also belong to the Society
for Creative Anachronism, which holds "fairs" in many parts of the US at
which members dress and act like persons from past centuries or from the
future and everybody creates his or her own separate reality-tunnel. They
are usually in favour of both ecology and technology—"appropriate technology"
is one of their buzz-words, followed by "synergy" and "holism."
When asked how serious they are, they usually say something to the effect
that humans need some religion and they are trying to create a relativistic
religion for a scientific age.
Malaclypse the Younger states it this way, "We are not engaged in a
complicated joke disguised as a new religion. We are engaged in a new
religion disguised as a complicated joke."
When will aD this impact on Ireland? Well, we already have the Krishna
cult here, and the Rajneesh people, and Jehovah's Witnesses, and est, and
even some local witches. However much it may distress the Rev. Dr.
McNamara, I cannot believe that the Discordians, the Sub-Geniuses and
even the Reformed Druids can be far behind. Novelist Robert Heinlein, who
helped start all this with the Martian religion in Stranger In A Strange Land, has
even provided a rationale to show that all of these metatheologies can be
equally true, in a more recent novel, The Number of The Beast. In this
mathematical fantasy, Heinlein posits a 6-dimensional space-time continuum
in which 6 to the power of 6 to the power of 6 parallel universes co-exist.
That is a mightily large number (try calculating it) and Heinlein therefore
posits that most universes are empty to start with and have become full only
as humans imagined things that previously did not exist. Thus, every idea,
however absurd, is true in some universe, somewhere in space-time, and
"reality" can only be described as Multi-Ego Pantheistic Solipsism; or in
other words, every mind creates its own universe.
Refuting that will keep the Jesuits busy for a few years.