Parody Religion

A parody religion or mock religion is an imitation belief system that challenges spiritual convictions of others, often through humor, satire, and/or burlesque. Often created to achieve a specific purpose related to another belief system, a parody religion can be a parody of several religions, sects, gurus, cults, and or new religious movements at the same time or a parody of no particular religion, instead parodying the concept of religious belief. In some parody religions, emphasis is on making fun and being a convenient excuse for pleasant social interaction among like-minded, e.g. the Church of the SubGenius. Other parody religions target a specific religion, sect, cult, or new religious movement.

One approach to parody religion aims to highlight deficiencies in particular pro-religious arguments — the thinking being that if a given argument can also be used to support a clear parody, then the original argument is clearly flawed. An example of this is the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which parodies the equal time argument employed by intelligent design Creationism.

Several religions that are classified as parody religions have a number of relatively serious followers who embrace the perceived absurdity of these religions as spiritually significant, a decidedly post-modern approach to religion. For instance, in Discordianism, it may be hard to tell if even these "serious" followers are not just taking part in an even bigger joke. This joke, in turn, may be part of a greater path to enlightenment, and so on ad infinitum.