I can amswer questions about Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius BTW
I'm actually curious... There's not really any polite way to put it, but is Discordianism a serious thing, or is it a parody? Everything I've read seems to be deliberately ambiguous on the matter.
It's more of a philosophy than a religion. The mythological aspect isn't meant to be taken literally; its more like Heracles and Venus turning up as characters in Aesop's fables.
It does have a religious aspect, but it relates to normal religion in the same manner in which
an upside-down toilet relates to Michelangelo's statue of King David.
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The Church of the SubGenius offers some statements on the matter of the parodic mythology/theology of these faiths
"This is a joke, but it's a very serious joke. It's A joke you can believe in"
NOW -- go for a walk and keep walking until you stub your toe, get mugged, or until your feet really hurt. This will remind you that what you have been reading is valid ONLY IN YOUR HEAD and just a bunch of philosophical crap to begin with. There's no sense in getting permanently cosmic-headed, even if you could (and most yogis are only faking it to themselves). You still have to eat, and your shit still stinks. There IS such a thing as getting TOO HIGH, and death is a waste (though that is the ONLY reason you should be afraid of it). Religious yay-hoos can keep blabbering glib crap forever, us included, and it's a good flushing-out of the brainpan, but THAT'S ALL IT IS. The rest is between you and "Bob." Good luck, SUCKERS!!
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SubGenius also describes itself as "
inherently bogus".
But bogusness
and hypocrisy and corruption are cynically/sarcastically seen as the unifying element of all religion (with western religion also generally possessing elements of hypocrisy and corruption and eastern religions posessing the additional unifying quality of all being unnecessarily inscrutable and delphian; SubGenius mimics the former and Discordian mimics the latter. But I digress...). And also, by being openly bogus, a form of the
Liar's Paradox is invoked, whereby at least they're right about not being right, ostensibly putting them ahead or religions that aren't straight about anything.
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There's also the implication that all religion is bogus and therefore all religious experiences are caused by human psychology and therefore you theoretically could just as easily get the same benefits from a fun religion without all of the inconvenient guilt and obedience and self-denial that might seem necessary if you believed the experience to derive from an external divine power. (With the exception of those extreme self-denial and/or penitence related "religious experiences" which could be more properly classified as the direct effect on starvation or blood loss on the human brain. But even those are theoretically made more convenient by the knowledge that you don't have to be thinking some particular pious thing while fasting or whatever).
Personally I've occasionally experienced the kind of thing that some people describe feeling during prayer while contemplating entities that I know to be fictitious.
"Pull the wool over your own eyes and relax in the safety of your own delusions" -Ivan Stang
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Also. It must be mentioned that I could be reading way too much into a lot of this stuff. And it may contradict other followers' interpretations.
Luckily this is also explicitly permitted:
From Dobbs came the prophetic utterances which are now severe and compulsory Tenets of the Church. He popularized the concept of Critical-Paranoiac Follies Evaluation by which we know that "...any inanity spouted by a SubGenius at any given time automatically becomes part of orthodox SubGenius Liturgy." It is one of the single greatest Tenets, for by its own very token one can also deny it later. It is erasable. For instance, a guilty SubGenius speaks an Inanity which later proves anti-nonprofit. He can then insist, "No, I didn't say that. It was merely my 'image'...my 'id' took over temporarily." Logically, then, nothing that a SubGenius says is any more or less true and consecrable than any other thing he just happens to utter - even (and especially) if they are contradictory.