Yes indeed.
Posted on 08/27/2002 9:11:12 AM PDT by marshmallow
More than 70,000 people in Australia have declared that they are followers of the Jedi faith, the religion created by the Star Wars films.
A recent census found that one in 270 respondents - or 0.37% of the population - say they believe in "the force", an energy field that gives Jedi Knights like Luke Skywalker their power in the films.
Most of the 70,509 people who wrote Jedi on their census forms were suspected to have done so in response to an e-mail encouraging all Star Wars fans to get it recognised as an official religion.
But the majority do not seriously tell each other: "May the force be with you", according to Australian Star Wars Appreciation Society president Chris Brennan.
"When you look at it you probably have got about 5,000 people in that 70,000 that were true hard-core people that would believe the Jedi religion carte blanche," he told ABC Radio.
"Then you would have 50,000 fans that said 'oh yeah we'll just put down Jedi for fun, we don't actually have a religion of our own'.
"Then you probably have 15,000 people who did it just to give the government a bit of curry," he said.
'Not defined'
An e-mail was sent around the world in 2001 saying that if 10,000 people declared they were Jedi, it would be recognised as an official religion.
But the Australian Bureau of Statistics said it would be categorised as "not defined".
Thousands of people in New Zealand and the UK also followed the advice of the e-mail - with Jedi Knight even being included on the list of religions by UK census authorities.
You missed the point entirely.
Subjecting yourself to death for what you BELIEVE to be true, is a common virtue.
Subjecting yourself to death for what you KNOW to be untrue, is extremely rare.
No, you missed his point. Dieing for something "proves" nothing, except the strength of the belief of the person willing to die. Since uncounted numbers of people have been willing to die for many, many mutually incompatible religious (and other) beliefs, their deaths "prove" nothing, either, except the strength of their convictions. No one claimed that non-believers died for something they pretended to believe in; that's a straw man argument. The argument is that dieing for what you believe in doesn't prove anything, anymore than the ability of a spoilt child to hold his breath, in a fit of tantrum, "proves" that he should get a cookie.
But such rank emotivism as you postulate has nothing to do with my Faith. I have no idea what you are talking about.
I just acknowledge a well-attested Historical Fact for which the evidentiary support is vastly greater than many other Historical Facts which I take as givens (the Gallic Wars, the Annals of Tacitus, etc etc). It's a simple matter of behaving rationally, that's all.
Why should I blather about something "not making sense" when it makes perfectly rational sense, and is well-attested by facts in evidence?? Egads.
Yes indeed.
How come when I say, it's a BOOK, B-O-O-K, I don't get the same reaction?? :-)
Good point: no one has ever been burnt to death for disbelieving in the Jedi religion. Not yet anyway! :-)
When George Lucas gets nailed to a board, gets a stake shoved through his heart, and then walks out of his own grave, he gets to start his own religion, too.
It's a fair test...
You mean, when he gets enough people to believe that he came back from the dead. It's the belief that makes the religion, not the facts.
OOPS! I mean "George Lucas isn't THREATENING anyone with eternal damnation."
Well, when we have actual proof that God is threatening us with eternal damnation, we might be able to make a comparison. I'm having a little trouble believing his third- and fourth- hand intermediaries.
Possibly because most people prefer Christianity over Atheism....
"Most" people?
More specifically, he has to get at least 500 eyewitnesses who are willing to die rather than disavow the truth of their claims.
Which is not the kind of sacrifice which a man will typically make for something which he knows to be false... but which sacrifice he will make, for something he knows to be true.
Since a lot of people have died for what they "knew" was true, but which we now, in fact, know to be false, what does that say about the "logic" of your argument? I'd say that Logic 101 is probably not taught in seminary; in certainly wasn't taught in Sunday school.
Just as many (probably more, in fact) people died for the "truths" of heretical Christian sects as have died for Orthodox Christianity; let's not forget the Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, and others - they all have their martyrs, too. And the secular movements - communism, fascism, nazism, all of the nationalisms - lots of people willing to die for the truths they believe in. They can't all be right, if the orthodox Christian belief is right.
Is it just me or are people just basically nuts?
No; you are right. People are basically nuts.
A live man becoming dead after being repeatedly stabbed is a perfectly ordinary occurence. A dead man becoming alive again is not, to put it mildly. Thus, the standard of evidence required for a claim of the latter is correspondingly more stringent.
As I've already explained, the application of a higher standard to the claim of Resurrection is perfectly rational, given the extraordinary nature of that particular claim. The account of (for example) the Gallic Wars is credible despite the greater gap between event and earliest available mansucript because its claims (that Caesar engaged in a certain set of military campaigns with a certain set of results) are not particularly difficult to believe, and are consistent with the other known facts of Roman history.
Or just get some people to claim there were 500 witnesses that died rather than disavow the truth of their claims. It doesn't take much to start a religion.
Especially when you control the world government of the day (the Roman Empire) and have the power to kill anyone who disagrees with your point of view, and the power to burn all of the books which contradict your interpretation of events. Not to mention the power to write or rewrite your own books and get them accepted as gospel, literally. Given that kind of power, "finding" 500 witnesses is a piece of cake.
This whole "argument" that people don't martyr themselves for something they don't believe in is a huge, ridiculous "straw man" argument, since no one has ever alleged that anyone did this. The "true believer" has never been in short supply; no one needs to rely on phony believers when the real thing is plentiful, eager, and willing to sacrifice life, money, and everything, for the belief. Any belief.
Why does the Australian government need to know the religion of Australians?
Why does the Australian government need to make it illegal not to vote? Make it illegal to own firearms? Make it illegal to publish certain things on the internet?
The Australian government is run by socialist control freaks.
Yes indeed.
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