Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

You could say the Jedi don't count as a religious order because the Force is demonstrably real.

Nobody, with the exception of Alan Moore, calls themselves part of a religion they don't believe is real. It's not a very helpful definition. Every religion would argue that theirs is demonstrably real. Even the Force had its doubters by A New Hope.

edited 24th Apr '15 12:40:06 AM by Tuckerscreator

But even if you're not a Jedi, you can't reasonably doubt that the Force is actually a thing when someone shows it to you. It's just a fact of life.

edited 24th Apr '15 12:42:07 AM by DrDougsh

That's true with the exception of the stubborn who might dismiss it as "magnets" or "trickery", but it doesn't make it not a religion. A religion is defined by its beliefs, practices, and devotion to a greater power, not by an outside observer's perspective. By that definition the Jedi are a religion, as they attribute all things to the actions of a spiritual power and have rules in place for how to interact with that power. And the Sith, Nightsisters, etc, have different ideas about how to commune with the Force. If religion were as simple as "believing in fictional thing", then one could say believing in Santa Claus is a religion.

edited 24th Apr '15 12:51:51 AM by Tuckerscreator

Arguably, Santa Claus is a deity-like figure to his followers. I mean, he has his own tenets of being naughty or nice, and in exchange for following his commands you are rewarded with presents, much like how you are rewarded with eternal bliss in Heaven for following your God's tenets. And many people leave cookies and sweets for him, similarly to how you might make offerings or sacrifices to an icon of worship. You could say he's essentially a religious icon for children who earnestly believe in him.

I never said religion is just believing in something that's fictional, though. But, I think every or near-every religion in real-life has some objective cosmological component that can't be proven or disproven. That's not the case with the Force, which is proven real.

But one doesn't have to be a Jedi to be a believer in the Force, or even a user of it. There are Force-sensitives out there who are not Jedi, are not Sith, may not even know exactly what the Force is other than that it lets them do supernatural things. The Jedi would take them in and educate them in their ideas on how to use the Force, teaching that one should avoid emotion, trust instincts, and seek the will of the Force. The Sith have their own teachings and ideas about using the Force, controlling it, etc. It's their system that is the religion, not the mere knowledge that the Force exists.

It's kinda like the difference between someone who believes God exists, and Christians and Jews who have different ideas and systems about how to worship the same God. The latter two would be religions.

This. It's not the belief in the force that makes Jedi a religion but their interpretation of it and the rules they have governing their lives. The Sith have a different interpretation and different rules and the countless other groups in the old EU had their own distinct interpretations of it. You can also have completely secular religions with no supernatural stuff. And a lot of fantasy religions (like in Dungeons and Dragons) have existing and meddling deities. If the Force/God/Santa Claus demonstrably exists or not is thus not relevant in the decision to call something a religion.

And while the Force is shown to be real, there is nothing to show that the Jedi have a full, objective grasp of it. They even have been shown to be wrong sometimes like with the prophecy. The Bible demonstrably exists too, that still doesn't stop different people from coming away with totally different interpretations.

Ascribing to a system of ethics or moral guidelines isn't necessarily the same thing as following a religion. There's the gulf between a religion and a philosophy. A religion generally has some cosmological or metaphysical component to it, and Jedi doctrine technically doesn't — all those parts of their worldview are based in known, objective concepts that continue to evolve and be explored, arguably making it more akin to a science. The Jedi are willing to explore and revise their stance on the Force — we see it in "The Clone Wars", where Yoda and Qui-Gon realise, by actual exploration, that the Jedi have a completely wrong idea about death and the afterlife, and adjust their own views accordingly.

I think it's questionable if an "existing and meddling deity" could even be considered the subject of a religion, and not just a set of followers. If a God appears right in front of me doing God stuff, I don't need faith or religious sentiment as motivation to follow him — I just need the basic self-preserving mindset of "Holy shit, that guy's awesome! Maybe I should do as he says so I'm not damned for eternity!"

I always thought of Jedi as a philosophical movement.

(V)(;,,;)(V)

Maybe we should move this discussion to the General Star Wars thread?

We're looking at this through a modernist lens, though. Jedi and Sith alike are purely religious in an older sense. Do the Taoists think (or especially in ancient times, did they think) that their various techniques were not empirically provable? Acupuncture is fact, and yet came from the same belief system that will tell you certain days of the year are more "auspicious" for doing things than other days of the year.

No major religion is based on something that was not, at some point, believed to be stone-cold fact. The ancient Jews didn't just think they had a special covenant with God, they *knew* it.

So it's really a sci-fi representation of religion as viewed in olden-times. Advanced technology with which they can quantify the supernatural effects, but that doesn't stop the supernatural effects from being supernatural (beyond a few hard-and-fast points like midichlorians)

Agreed. I think the current discussion is far wider than the scope of this thread.

You think that's bad? in Argentina we have to wait until 7th January. That's 3 weeks after it's released in most of the world.

1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV

We'll enforce the spoiler policy here and then you just have to stay off the rest of the internet until you get to see it.

Oh, I can wait. My comment was more intended as a "hey, calm down, it's just a week, others have to wait even more."

1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV

So I've just been informed that Hamill re-recorded the Return of the Jedi "force runs strong in my family" speech for the Force Awakens trailer...but just the reverb.

Freakish.

Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.

Yep!

I remember Dave Filoni saying that when he came in to do Darth Bane's voice, he actually did it with two different distinct voices and the final product is both of them mixed together. Guess it gives it the whole eerie eternal vibe.

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Did he record it for the audiobooks or something? My brother's listened to pretty much all three of those.

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

No, for the trailer.

Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.

That thing about Hamill as Bane is pretty cool, you can definitely hear a mixture of the smoother tones of Ozai and the more beastial Joker.

edited 26th Apr '15 3:08:56 PM by KJMackley

I meant Dave Filoni and Darth Bane's voice.

edited 26th Apr '15 5:39:54 PM by theLibrarian

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

nah, Hamill didn't do any of the Darth Bane audiobooks, as far as I know. :/

Wait, never mind, I messed up.

edited 27th Apr '15 6:11:44 AM by theLibrarian

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

But he did do Bane in Clone Wars:

(As a sidenote both Bane and Revan were supposed to show up earlier in the show when the Son was introduced)

edited 27th Apr '15 6:18:44 AM by LordofLore