The Modulator informs me that there are 20 blogging commandments. Then I discover how to create your own religion in 10 easy steps. It figures that it’s twice as easy to create a religion as it is to create a successful blog.
So if I’d pursued that other avocation, I’d be pope by now? Or at least the leader of a globe-spanning cult? But I repeat myself.
Hmmm, not sure whether I prefer these or the Maxims of Blog.
When I was in high school, I had plans for a new religion. I had a mythos ready and holy sites mapped out. The only problem I had was no one was willing to be the messiah/martyr for the movement that would leave the head disciple, me, in charge.
Maybe you should have become the cephalopod-priest…
As a single male who was baptized Catholic, I’m eligible for the papacy (despite my recent laxity — 30 years’ worth). It’s disheartening to have been passed over three times now. (I’m not counting the 1958 election because church history shows you need to be at least a teenager to be elected pope.) Maybe starting one’s own religion is the best way to become the leader of a cult, but I’m beginning to doubt that math teaching is the path to spiritual enlightenment.
“leader of a globe-spanning cult?”
Give it time, give it time. If L. Ron Hubbard can do it…
Careful there, PZ. Once upon a time, Ron Hubbard sat in Fred Pohl’s living room drinking beer and talked about ideas about inventing a religion. Look what that led to.
Janine (#2), when I was in HS, I had a single diety, and a magical force which I had quanitized to potentially add to the SI scale of derived units. The base unit was the amount of magical energy required to teleport a 1 gram mass 1 meter. The name escapes me now.
Remember, you’re just an Acolyte. The Real Leader is the Great Kraken, deep beneath the Southern Ocean.
But what is Pharyngula if not spanning the globe, and what are Pharynguloids if not nascent cultists?
All hail PZ!
PZ asks (enbolding added):
Do you always repeat questions? Are questions always repeated by PZ? ;-)
But I repeat myself.
ZING!
Okay, let me give step #9 of the religion thing a try:
The loving creator YHWH has a son named Jesus, who is also Himself. In essence, the son is also the father, yet they are one and the same. Furthermore, the mother of Jesus is the son of YHWH. Therefore the creator is both the father and son of the mother of Him. In this way, YHWH/Jesus gets to be born by, impregnate, and conceive Mary.
What’s that you say? Someone already made that one up? Son of a BITCH!
I think you’d look darling in red Guccis….
Have you tried Discordianism? Or how I discovered the Goddess and what I did to her after I found her.
The strengths include the fact you’re automatically a pope, you can use anything you want as holy scripture, and you don’t have to believe in Eris to follow her laws (mostly because she aint got none). As a matter of fact, altering The Principia Discordia for your own benefit is much encouraged, you can find numerous editions on the Web.
Hope this helps.
Pope Alan of the Discordian Church of the Cognitive Dissonance and Pointing out the Obvious to People Who Won’t Think Through the Implications of Scientific Discoveries and Theories.