According to this article on Sci Fi Wire, some 404,000 people in England, Scotland, and Wales listed their religion as "Jedi" on the 2001 British census (HT: Instapundit). The BBC reported on the growth of the Jedi movement in Britain back in 2003. The Jedi claim that they are Britain's fourth largest religion.
The Sci Fi Wire article also states that the British Office of National Statistics doesn't recognize the Jedi as an official religion and has lumped them in with the atheists. Counting the Jedi as atheists may be technically correct. Throughout the six Star Wars movies, there is no indication that the Jedi worship a God or gods of any kind. They do revere the Force. But the Force seems to be an impersonal power similar to gravity, rather than a conscious deity. Indeed, the ability to use the Force seems to be triggered by genetic anomalies rather than by any spiritual connection to supernatural entities. Jedi mysticism appears to be a secular moral philosophy like utilitarianism or Kantianism, not a religion.
As an atheist myself, perhaps I should welcome the rise of the Jedi in Britain. However, as sci fi writer David Brin documents here, here, and here, Jedi morality has many flaws. Even worse, the growth of the Jedi movement may cause the rise of the Sith, which Tyler Cowen claims is an inevitable consequence of the Jedis' authoritarian tendencies. Tyler is not as forgiving of the Jedis' flaws as I am. On the other hand, Bryan Caplan effectively uses public choice theory to defend the Jedi. Bryan makes some good points; but I find his lack of faith in the Galactic Republic disturbing. We'll just have to see if the Force is with Britain's new Jedi or not.
Although this also suggests a way for a clever entrepreneur to make a buck or three from the silliness: sell midichlorian test kits to the faithful!
It's also really, really, really sad.
Hah! Allusion caught, sir.
Interesting, btw, following from Brin's thread (NPI), that both George Lucas and Stephen King...
(a) are liberal Democrats in real life, working thinly-disguised digs at Republican Presidents into their oeuvres ("If you're not with me, you're against me!", and Gary Hart as President)
but
(b) create fictional universes in which happy, well-governed kingdoms are undermined by unscrupulous traitors ("Democracy, not the rule of the gun!" "I promise, if elected, to put an end to corruption") and must be defended, or restored, by a hereditary elite of aristocratic super-warriors, determined by bloodline.
At least JRR Tolkien actually believed in absolute monarchy, and Ursula le Guin actually believed in Kropotkinesque anarchism, for real life as well as for fiction.
PS: Is it true the US census form doesn't ask your religion?
... created famous 1978 movie characters named "Carrie".
Correct. I would venture to say that it strikes many Americans as strange that so many other countries do collect this information about their citizens.
Then a Republic is clearly not the optimal choice for governance.
This is true by definition. The only requirement for atheism is lack of a belief in gods. You could believe in crystal power and still be an atheist if you lack belief in gods. That's the weakness of negative labels; they don't tell much about the group they cover.
It would seem a bit of a stretch for someone to say "I'm an atheist but I believe in astrology and karma", for example.
Actually, Tolkien believed in a monarchy with strictly limited powers. He was very skeptical of government.
His statement may be just a reflection of his own ignorance of the Jedi beliefs. After all, the whole scene demonstrates that the imperial generals don't really understand the Force and thereby underestimate Vader.
it's kind of like that old saw about any technology that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magick.
tarkin's like was using religion in a deprecating way, like saying it was just a blind faith in a non-existent thing. and then vader shows him JUST HOW POWERFUL THE FORCE'S THROAT SQUEEZING POWER IS!
personally i'd subscribe to any religion that lets me squeeze people's throats from a distance by merely pointing at them menacingly.
I would suggest this line is more likely similar to the misuse of parsec; something that simply wasn't thought through enough at the time. I'd suspect the choice of the word religion here doesn't reflect a deeper plot trend, merely an incomplete and non-coherent universe created by the writers that gets explained retroactively.
Whit: There is nothing in that scene which suggests deprecation. He says it quite matter-of-factly, and the two of them are the only ones in the room. In the earlier scene, the guy who gets force-choked, _he_ was being derogatory, but he referred to it as "sorcery." Tarkin seems positively respectful by comparison.
http://darthside.blogspot.com/
And yes, from the Roman standpoint it made sense to charge Christians with atheism. To a polytheist there was an infinite number of deities (they found more whenever they invaded another country), all of them powerful. The Romans had no trouble with the Christians worshipping another 1-3, BUT they also refused to worship the official minimum number, or to offer sacrifice to the emperor's genius (not exactly a god, but some cross between destiny and guardian angel).
Josephus' account of the siege of Jerusalem shows their attitude. Romans get word that the defenders have stopped sacrifices in the Temple (reason not given, but apparently it was defiled by human blood being shed during fighting). Roman commander flips. Yahweh might blame him and the Romans for this, with dire consequences. His own gods will take Yahweh's side -- gods vs. mortals and all that, you did it to him and you might do it to us, you impious scum.
He gives a speech explaining that the Romans are pious men, had offered to make the the Temple a demilitarized zone for that reason, it was the defenders' fault, Romans are not to blame, and in case Yahweh remains in the area (as he might not, considering how terribly he was treated by his worshippers) sacrifices will be made to him in the Roman camp.
If one considers the mass hysterical insanity after Diana's death, the only conclusion can be that the ~400,000 are serious.
Would "rationalist" fit better? Thus, eg, someone who believes in ghosts or devils but not in God(s) (the default theology of most Hollywood horror films) would be "atheist" but not "rationalist".
"Actually, Tolkien believed in a monarchy with strictly limited powers"
He believed the king's powers should be limited materially but not formally. IOW, he believed a king should take an oath to govern justly and to respect all ancient laws, rights and customs... but he did not think there should be a Parliament or a Supreme Court with power to overrule, let alone depose, a monarch who turned tyrant. The king would be held accountable not by any power on earth, but in the afterlife.
My wife is one of the very odd Therevada Chinese Buddhists. Godless Buddhism+pagan ancestor worship to improve the lots of dead people whose fates were sealed before you were born... it's weird.
Darth Vader:
Someone sitting behind me just said, "Do you realize how many politicians would be dead if any of us had that power? But at least a lot more people would be watching C-Span."
Except, that karma is not supernatural: karma is the natural functioning of the web of causal relations that constitutes each "thing". See, Pratityasamutpada (dependent origination).
Bob
On the other hand, if it were a genuine conviction, how is it that no "believer" has yet been individually identified. Somebody must have one of them in his family or acquaintances.
Season 2 started a couple months ago!
I could say that gods aren't supernatural using the same reasoning. Gods are a part of the natural order of things and the fact that gods throw lightning at people is no more supernatural than the fact that the sun throws out rays of light.
Gods and karma may be part of some "natural" functioning, but this natural functioning is completely disconnected from any other sort of natural functioning and cannot be measured or affected using normal methods. That's supernatural in everything but name.
We did it again last year when there was a campaign to make Jeremy Clarkson ( The TV presenter of Top Gear)Prime Minister it got millions of votes, again it didn't work though.
A Brit
Always two there are, a master and an apprentice.
But the fundamental principle of karma is simply that actions have consequences. One would expect the most hard-nosed rationalist would agree with that.
The fact that one's actions can have consequences that one has not even considered seems to drive those misconceptions. Perhaps it is simply easier and more comforting to believe that one's present state is consequence of stepping on a bug in some mysterious past life, than it is to believe that one's actions in this present life cause one's present state.
But actions have consequences regardless of whether this present life is the only one that ever was or will be, or this present life is one of countless past and future lives. Questions of one's past lives, future lives, and immortal soul transcending time are simply irrelevant.
Tolkien I believe wavered between monarchism (absolute, but with "good" rulers) and some form of anarchism. It was all the isms in between he didn't like.
Consider possible representation of Plan of Salvation in 1976 Star Wars: mentor (obi-wan)=prophet, shadow (darth vader,emperor)=Satan, quest (rescue princess, defeat vader)=journey to promised land/heaven, herald (R2D2)=angel/missionaries, magical object (light saber)= Spirit, prayer, hero (Luke)=Christ, and by extension those that follow him. Hero's allies (Han Solo, etc..)=church members.
Of course all screen writer's are using archetypes these days but I've never heard a convincing biological explanation for them.
In the U.S. Census 2000 there were no questions about religion. Most the of questions are about income, housing, education, occupation, disabilities, and transportation. All legitimate information that the government would use to allocate resources. Also in the U.S. Census 2000 there are questions about race, which does not seem necessary.
Interestingly, race questions disappeared from U.S. census from 1840 – 1930. As one would imagine there in the early census questions there were a number of questions about the number of free white males in the household.
Don't force-choke me, bro!
Of course there are many situations in human affairs where we don't really know what's going to work, and in these cases the distinction may not be a very helpful one.
I wonder if people are reporting it as some sort of joke or slap at authority.
Just like with spoken grammar, there is sort of a moral grammar that we're born with. Which system get's laid on top is cultural, but the underlying structures (action, object, effect) are biological. So, given the universality of where we come from in moral abilities, it seems natural to have commonalities in the way they're expressed (myths about heroes and villains) in the same way we have common features across languages (verbs and nouns, etc..). Or at least, that's how one could explain it in a naturalistic way.
As an aside, this is somewhat wrong, or at least incomplete. Plenty of science (a colleague of mine estimated once in a dark humor 90% roughly) doesn't work. Sometimes magic "works," in the sense that you rub the crystal -- and the cancer goes away!
The more relevant practical distinction between science and magic is that science possesses the axiom that the intentions, thoughts, feelings, et cetera of the practitioner do not matter. Things happen, or don't, entirely independent of human wishes and will. F = ma for Newton and Hitler, for the person who wants it to be true and for the person deeply skeptical.
Magic is exactly the opposite. Your intentions and beliefs matter profoundly. Indeed, they're often central. Harry Potter can't cast the Expelliarmus spell unless he's in the right frame of mind, is sufficiently distraught, et cetera.
The difficulty with magic is that this dependence on state of mind makes it almost impossible to sort out what works in the empirical sense above from what does not. Motivation and state of mind are the ultimate uncontrolled and uncontrollable variable. If your mixture didn't turn lead into gold, or your love philter didn't work, or your centrally-planned economy tanked, it's never possible to conclude that your understanding of reality is flawed, because it's always possible that your state of mind wasn't quite right -- you didn't try hard enough, or in the "right way."
This is both the power and the folly of magical thinking. It gives humans hope even when cold logic suggests hopelessness, but, on the other hand, it allows a degree of self-deception that can profoundly retard real advances in understanding. From an evolutionary biology point of view, it's quite interesting that we should have such a strong partiality to magical thinking. You'd think coldly logical empirical thinking would have higher survival value. But apparently it doesn't. We will not understand our own evolution until we understand why that is.
The Jedi are a "religion" only in the sense that they believe the Force should be used in certain ways and not others, for the greater good. But since the Force, even according to Yoda, isn't really supernatural -- it exists in reality, as an "energy field created by all living things", not in some other realm -- they really aren't a "religion." Note that only non-Force users who have no first-hand knowledge of the Jedi think that they were part of a "religion."
(And note that Darth Vader's line "I find your lack of faith disturbing" is almost certainly meant sarcastically or ironically, since he is demonstrating at that very moment in no uncertain terms that whether you have "faith" in the Force or not he can still crush your windpipe with it.)
Also, in regards to my first point, in the novelization of Revenge of the Sith, which was written before Lucas edited the film version and cut a bunch of material, it is explained that the "new powers" being granted to the Chancellor are powers that give the Chancellor direct control over the Jedi, who previously had reported to the Senate. (How exactly that happened and who or what Committee in the Senate actually directed them is not made clear). That is the source of much of the worry the Jedi have in the film about the Chancellor and his power grabs... that he is trying to fundamentally change their position in government and who they report to. But what they don't do is challenge that they report to the government and its elected leaders, who are democratically elected.
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