The emergence of New religions based upon popular culture

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spuriousmonkey

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The popularity and attributed spiritual content of popular media franchises such as Lord of The Rings, The Matrix, and Star Wars sometimes make me feel like they could be the new religions of tomorrow.

How much would it really take for them to take off as a religion. For some people it is apparently already rathr difficult to distinguish between fiction and reality?

The force is strong in some people. The matrix is everywhere. Could it be possible that these popular cultures will turn into religions?

Has something similar happened in the past with for instance christianity?
 
You know, a few years ago people in Britain and/or Australia were asked what religion they follow and many said that they follow the religion "Jedi" and yes, I mean the Star Wars thing.
 
Jedi is an official religion, there are more jedi's than hindu's or buddists in the UK, that should say something about our mentality.
 
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So when we finally figure out which religion is the "right" one, we'll just have to make it look cool and badass.
 
That´s true.
CHAOS rules! Join Chaos! Chaos is your god!
BTW, interested to join my new religion? it is called chaos and it is really cool! :D
 
The Jedi stuff was just secondhand Zen and Taoism, dumbed down enough not to offend any Christians. It is an interesting point, that these stories are the mythology of the 20th century, but they don't seem to offer much in the way of philosophy that is new.
 
Duh, football as a religion? Well, it seems that today you can make naything a religion. It seems that Freud was not right. We still pray to idols.
 
But Christianity was derived from popular fiction 2000 years ago.

Remember that there was no form of electronic entertainment 2000 years ago, and that most people were illiterate. Their equivalent entertainment to ours was listening to storytellers who would readily embellish their stories to make them more exiting and believable. So stories about gods and kings and other super heroes were the same subjects then as they are today, but now we have Neo, Jedi, Spiderman, Gandalf and the return of the King, and the mutant powers from the X-men.

What has changed in 2000 years? Pretty much nothing except that we are far more literate and we can usually tell the difference between a Hollywood story and reality, although for some even that is blurred. But back then where the Earth was still flat and all illnesses were consider the result of evil spirits then the line between fiction and reality was a thick fog. So out of that came Christianity; just another super-hero fabrication of someone come to save the world – sounds awfully familiar to modern Hollywood.

Of course when Rome needed to discard its outdated gods whose stories had become worn out and boring then they looked around at other more popular stories and made the Christian myth an official religion. And so today we have many people, billions in fact, who still cannot tell the difference between the pure fiction of Christianity and reality.

But I don't believe modern fiction would ever become confused with a real religion again as it did with Christianity. There are just too many of us who can now tell the difference and that would prevent a critical mass forming; there was no such constraint 2000 years ago.

Kat
 
Katazia said:
But I don't believe modern fiction would ever become confused with a real religion again as it did with Christianity. There are just too many of us who can now tell the difference and that would prevent a critical mass forming; there was no such constraint 2000 years ago.

Kat
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Isn't the essence of the emergence of a new religion that not everybody needs to believe in it. It will start out with rather a small subgroup and will at that point probably be classified as a cult. We have seen the emergence of many cults in our modern society. Many people are in spiritual need and are easy prey. Only once a cult gets a rather large following will it be classified as religion. Or am I making the mistake here of seeing a difference between a cult and a religion?
 
No. A cult's an unpopular religion. When it gains power and followers, it becomes simply a religion. Basically, a cult's a fetus, and a religion's an adult.
 
Yeah, that´s an appropriate example. At least if someone had cared about a serious propagation of it´s existance. It would not have been that strange a cult compared to other things. (perhaps not as strange as the Jedi religion) :D
 
StarOfEight said:
No. A cult's an unpopular religion. When it gains power and followers, it becomes simply a religion. Basically, a cult's a fetus, and a religion's an adult.
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M*W: If a cult is "an unpopular religion," why are there so many of them around today? Why do they have so many believers who would die for their beliefs? You definition of a cult imples that a cult is undeveloped, and a religion is fully grown. I don't think this is a good analogy. They both try to sucker you in and take your money for the promise of salvation which might include your early death.
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I suppose a cult is smaller than the common religions. Or it is not accepted
by other religions or governments. Otherwise, there is no real difference
between them. There I agree with MedicineWoman.
 
M*W ... hundred fifty years ago, the Mormons were a cult. Some people still argue that, but now, they're a fairly respected religion. 1400 years ago, Islam consisted of the rantings of Mohammed to the uninterested Meccan town people. Now, it's a fairly respected religion. 2000 years ago, the Christians were considered hateful little cocksuckers for refusing to pay obesiance to Jupiter and the rest of the Pantheon. Now, it's a fairly respected religion. See my point? "Cult" is an essentially meaningless word ... it's a way for organized religions to denigrate their potential usurpers.

And yes, I would consider Catholicism more developed than say, Heaven's Gate, if only for their greater amount of influence and power it wields. To return to my analogy ... just because you're an adult doesn't make you less of a shithead. However, barring serious development disabilities, an adult is going to be more powerful and capable than a fetus.
 
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