Thread: Are the Olympics essentially a New Religion? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


To visit this thread, use this URL:
http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=70;t=023313
Posted by no_prophet (# 15560) on :
 
I'm recalling the openning ceremonies of past Olympics, with the quasi-religious symbolism and 'people coming together in peace to compete' types of sentiments. Then the worship of hero athletes, and the scapegoating of the drug-doped cheaters. They are like Gods and Devils aren't they? We have a pantheon of countries all worshipping their national reps, and all trying to become immortal by winning.
 
Posted by Spiffy (# 5267) on :
 
In before everyone else points out the Olympics have always been religious.
 
Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :
 
The ancient Greeks had four games, the Olympics, the Nemean Games, the Delphic Games and the Isthmian Games.

The Delphic Games have been revived as an arts competition and festival, the ancient Delphic Games had a heavy arts tilt too, though they also included athletics; I have visited the stadium at Delphi.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
Finding it a bit of a stretch, frankly. There has always been plenty of scope for hero 'worship' that is not the same as religious worship.
 
Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :
 
Yes. The olympics exist for Mamon.
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
The thing they have in common with religion is that they are a Spectacle.

Obviously, since it cut back on the Gothic cathedral building, and the auto de fes, Christianity has rather lost ground in the crowd-pulling stakes.
 
Posted by Lord Jestocost (# 12909) on :
 
With entertainingly cultic overtones in the official merchandise.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
The London Olympics have much in common with religion - 90% of the population of the UK is totally apathetic about them.
 
Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :
 
I think the Eurovision Song Contest is more like religion - everyone supports their own faction and the most popular songs are the most tacky.
 
Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on :
 
When I was in Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics, the big anthem that blared constantly was appropriately named, "I Believe."

To this day, my only question was "Believe what?"

The fact that the chorus of this song was "I believe in You and I" which is grammatically incorrect, demonstrates the gap in funding between this sports celebration and the educational system. [Devil]

Clearly of course, a nation should be proud of winning gold medals at a 2 week competition rather than having a high quality education system or ending poverty...God have mercy on us all.
 
Posted by sebby (# 15147) on :
 
Probably not a new religion, but certainly more boring than most of the old ones.
 
Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
The thing they have in common with religion is that they are a Spectacle.

Obviously, since it cut back on the Gothic cathedral building, and the auto de fes, Christianity has rather lost ground in the crowd-pulling stakes.
Sagrada Familia in Barcelona is keeping the art of spectacular churches alive. It funds itself through being a tacky tourist attraction.
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
Sagrada Familia in Barcelona is keeping the art of spectacular churches alive. It funds itself through being a tacky tourist attraction.
How is it both spectacular and tacky at one and the same time? I don't remember the visitor infrastructure being any more tasteless than usual - in fact, there was something of a shortfall of tinsel-crowned Jesuses and glow-in-the- dark madonnas in the gift shop. Is it the popularity that is tacky? Is St Paul's or Notre Dame tacky as well?
 
Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Clearly of course, a nation should be proud of winning gold medals at a 2 week competition rather than having a high quality education system or ending poverty...God have mercy on us all.
Look, if you are still getting over some long-ago slight in gym class and personally don't enjoy watching sports, I get it. But equating celebrating athletic achievement with not caring about the poor? I think there are bigger problems in the world than sports fans, and you need to readjust your righteous indignation meter if you expect to be taken seriously.
 
Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
Sagrada Familia in Barcelona is keeping the art of spectacular churches alive. It funds itself through being a tacky tourist attraction.
How is it both spectacular and tacky at one and the same time? I don't remember the visitor infrastructure being any more tasteless than usual - in fact, there was something of a shortfall of tinsel-crowned Jesuses and glow-in-the- dark madonnas in the gift shop. Is it the popularity that is tacky? Is St Paul's or Notre Dame tacky as well?
The building looks like a fanciful goldfish castle rendered at full scale.

IMHO Sagrada Familia's design runs to the silly side of sublime. Pics from Wiki
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
The Olympics are only as religious as we wish to make them in our own perception.

I am reminded of something CS Lewis wrote concerning admiration of others:

quote:
To love and admire anything outside yourself is to take one step away from utter spiritual ruin
(Mere Christianity, from the chapter entitled The Great Sin)

I generally dislike celebrity culture, and especially those "celebrities" who are only famous for being famous. But I recognise the danger of the other extreme, in which the contempt for celebrity, especially when it is linked to some kind of hard earned achievement - as in the Olympics - is due to a deep-seated envy and well concealed self-love, that prevents the possibility of admiring the accomplishments of others.

So perhaps the contempt for the Olympics could be (for some people) a kind of "religion": the worship of oneself (that denigrates the achievements of others).
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
Yes, I know the building is daft as all get out - but you appear to say that it is a spectacular church, but a tacky tourist attraction, when what you mean is that it is a tacky church.

Which in turn suggests that you don't think religion can compete in the area of mass entertainment - which is where the Olympics are situate.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
The London Olympics have much in common with religion - 90% of the population of the UK is totally apathetic about them.
quote:
Originally posted by sebby:
Probably not a new religion, but certainly more boring than most of the old ones.
Speak for yourselves. Most, if not all, of the people I know are excited about the games, and they certainly don't find them less interesting than religion!
 
Posted by Mili (# 3254) on :
 
I don't care what anyone thinks, I love Sagrada Familia [Smile] However when I was in Barcelona in 2006 I also visited the former Olympic site. Very few tourists and starting to fall apart. The many stray cats wandering around just added to the sense of spookiness and decay.

The Olympics are always big in sports mad Australia. I've been teaching 6 and 7 year olds this week and they are really hyped up about them, despite probably being too young to remember the last Olympics. This particular school has a majority of families who are committed, church attending Christians too, and most of the rest of the kids practise another religion.

I did have a religion and Olympics collide moment today though. The school is having a mini-Olympics and I'm in charge of the 'Russian team'. We have to have a chant or song so I took the football song of the Greater Western Sydney Giants (as people joke it sounds Eastern European) and changed a few words. After we rehearsed one of the kids told me he's not allowed to sing national anthems, I assume for religious reasons. I explained it wasn't really a national anthem, while also giving him the option not to sing. Even after the explanation he chose not to sing it. (I'm not sure if he was a strict denomination of Christianity or Jehovah's Witness or something else).
 
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:


IMHO Sagrada Familia's design runs to the silly side of sublime. Pics from Wiki
I visited recently - it's magnificently crazy! Gaudí was on the whaccy baccy for sure!

I think that a permanent Olympic site is needed - somewhere out of the way in Greece with its own airport and athlete's village. That way the ones who love it get to do it, but don't get in everyone else's way.

I am buying some box set DVDs for evening entertainment, as sport makes me [Snore]

(And I'm very thankful I don't live in London)

A religion? Nope - you can't have faith in an event.

[ 20. July 2012, 10:14: Message edited by: Boogie ]
 
Posted by aumbry (# 436) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
The London Olympics have much in common with religion - 90% of the population of the UK is totally apathetic about them.
quote:
Originally posted by sebby:
Probably not a new religion, but certainly more boring than most of the old ones.
Speak for yourselves. Most, if not all, of the people I know are excited about the games, and they certainly don't find them less interesting than religion!
I think a pontifical high mass with a budget of £10 billion would be even more exciting and much less of a waste of money.

[ 20. July 2012, 11:20: Message edited by: aumbry ]
 
Posted by Matt Black (# 2210) on :
 
I think the Sagrada Familia is horrible; it reminds me of some of H R Giger's Alien sets. I kept expecting a Face Hugger to burst out of one of the walls and stick its ovipositor down my throat. [Eek!]
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
I think a pontifical high mass with a budget of £10 billion would be even more exciting and much less of a waste of money.
Really? You'd rather spend that kind of money on an hour or two of smells and bells ceremony that is only aimed at (and in fact explicitly excludes all but) a small percentage of the population than on a worldwide celebration of sporting excellence in a massive variety of events that is aimed at (and explicitly open to) everyone on the planet?

Really?
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
[QUOTE]The building looks like a fanciful goldfish castle rendered at full scale.

IMHO Sagrada Familia's design runs to the silly side of sublime. Pics from Wiki
You take that back or I shall call you to Heck. Well, if we had a Heck board, I would. And all the other Gaudi haters. Peasants.

To the OP. Yes, sport can be taken too seriously. The Olympics, especially. But they religion comparison is hyperbole more than reality. Government has more comparison to organized religion than the Olympics.
 
Posted by Unreformed (# 17203) on :
 
Sports in general, not just the Olympics, can become a kind of religion for some people if taken too seriously. I've noticed that the more secular the country the more this happens, too. Some NFL fans in the States can be pretty fanatical, but even the most ridiculous ones have nothing on European soccer hooligans, IMHO.
 
Posted by Unreformed (# 17203) on :
 
ISTM, actually, that the worst thing about the Olympics is how they can be manipulated and misused to fuel the most deadly of all religious substitutes--namely, nationalism.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Unreformed:
Sports in general, not just the Olympics, can become a kind of religion for some people if taken too seriously. I've noticed that the more secular the country the more this happens, too. Some NFL fans in the States can be pretty fanatical, but even the most ridiculous ones have nothing on European soccer hooligans, IMHO.
Some sociologists have described sport as a substitute for religion. Maybe the cultural acceptability of passion for sport has made it particularly appealing to men, whereas religious passion is frequently considered to be undesirable in men, particularly in Western cultures.
 
Posted by no_prophet (# 15560) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Some sociologists have described sport as a substitute for religion. Maybe the cultural acceptability of passion for sport has made it particularly appealing to men, whereas religious passion is frequently considered to be undesirable in men, particularly in Western cultures.
Sport and brand adherence. Particularly certain clothing brand names and beer brands. But I guess this might be the New Trinity: Sport, Brand and Beer.
 
Posted by the giant cheeseburger (# 10942) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
Yes. The olympics exist for Mamon.
Which makes the case for the Olympics sitting alongside most professing members of all old religions, let alone new ones.
 
Posted by aumbry (# 436) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
I think a pontifical high mass with a budget of £10 billion would be even more exciting and much less of a waste of money.
Really? You'd rather spend that kind of money on an hour or two of smells and bells ceremony that is only aimed at (and in fact explicitly excludes all but) a small percentage of the population than on a worldwide celebration of sporting excellence in a massive variety of events that is aimed at (and explicitly open to) everyone on the planet?

Really?
Well - yes - in fact the number of people who attend weekly athletics events is substantially smaller than attend bells and smells services.

When oh when will governments realise this?
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
IMHO Sagrada Familia's design runs to the silly side of sublime. Pics from Wiki
Well, the picture of the roof of the nave made my jaw drop. In a GOOD way. So well done on adding my name to the list of fans! [Razz]
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
Well - yes - in fact the number of people who attend weekly athletics events is substantially smaller than attend bells and smells services.
The second graph here would seem to indicate that in 2005 the total monthly attendance at all churches (never mind just the smells-and-bells ones) was in the region of 3,250,000. If you have access to more accurate or recent attendance figures please do let me know.

The figures for sport are harder to come by (there are a LOT more sports than denominations!), but this wikipedia page has average attendances per game for several worldwide sports leagues. To give a fair comparison, I've split out only the English leagues from the "Outdoor sports" section* and worked out what the average monthly attendance was by virtue of multiplying the average attendance per game by half the number of teams (as only half will be playing at home in any given week), and then multiplying by four** to give a monthly total.

That monthly total works out to be 3,958,838. And yes, I can show my working if you want to dispute that.

Which, you'll have noticed, is a higher figure than that for monthly church attendance. Your claim is false.

*= the list of English leagues that were in the "Outdoor sports" section of the Wikipedia page is as follows:


Note that this list is FAR from being an exhaustive list of all sporting events that happen during a normal English year - it is, in fact, made up of only four different sports! If all the other sports (and other leagues in the sports shown) that have fixtures each month were included that figure would doubtless be considerably higher.

**= multiplying by four actually gives a slightly-too-low figure for average monthly attendance, as most months are longer than four weeks.
 
Posted by aumbry (# 436) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
Well - yes - in fact the number of people who attend weekly athletics events is substantially smaller than attend bells and smells services.
The second graph here would seem to indicate that in 2005 the total monthly attendance at all churches (never mind just the smells-and-bells ones) was in the region of 3,250,000. If you have access to more accurate or recent attendance figures please do let me know.

The figures for sport are harder to come by (there are a LOT more sports than denominations!), but this wikipedia page has average attendances per game for several worldwide sports leagues. To give a fair comparison, I've split out only the English leagues from the "Outdoor sports" section* and worked out what the average monthly attendance was by virtue of multiplying the average attendance per game by half the number of teams (as only half will be playing at home in any given week), and then multiplying by four** to give a monthly total.

That monthly total works out to be 3,958,838. And yes, I can show my working if you want to dispute that.

Which, you'll have noticed, is a higher figure than that for monthly church attendance. Your claim is false.

*= the list of English leagues that were in the "Outdoor sports" section of the Wikipedia page is as follows:


Note that this list is FAR from being an exhaustive list of all sporting events that happen during a normal English year - it is, in fact, made up of only four different sports! If all the other sports (and other leagues in the sports shown) that have fixtures each month were included that figure would doubtless be considerably higher.

**= multiplying by four actually gives a slightly-too-low figure for average monthly attendance, as most months are longer than four weeks.
I said "Athletics events" not sports. The Olympic Stadium is an athletics stadium and unsuitable for football and rugby. The whole thing is a big white elephant.

The suggestion that £10 billion should be spent on a solemn pontifical eucharist was hyperbole not really to be subject to detailed analysis.

The Olympics is a minority interest big government vanity project with fascistical implications but Ho hum.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by aumbry:
I said "Athletics events" not sports. The Olympic Stadium is an athletics stadium and unsuitable for football and rugby. The whole thing is a big white elephant.
The Olympic Games encompass a wide variety of sports, not just athletics.

It is, in fact, "a worldwide celebration of sporting excellence in a massive variety of events", as I initially described it.

Arguing only about athletics in response would have been immensely ridiculous, and I was operating under the assumption that you weren't being immensely ridiculous.

quote:
The suggestion that £10 billion should be spent on a solemn pontifical eucharist was hyperbole not really to be subject to detailed analysis.
The analysis was aimed at your assertion that more people go to solemn high masses than to sporting events in any given week.

quote:
The Olympics is a minority interest big government vanity project with fascistical implications but Ho hum.
Minority interest? We'll let time tell on that one. I bet you that the games top every TV ratings chart and headline most newspapers for the duration of the time they're on. I bet more people will be talking about them at work or in the pub than anything else.

As for fascistical implications - eh? What, is it fascist to enjoy sports now?

[ 23. July 2012, 16:12: Message edited by: Marvin the Martian ]
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
I'm not sports fan, but I've got my tickets and I can't fucking wait.

This is the Olympic Games - the best athletes in the world competing in one place. And this year, it's happening in my home city. [Yipee] It will be worth seeing. Not a new religion, but definitely something to celebrate.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
The opening ceremony had 4 hymns. 5 if you count the national anthem.
 
Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :
 
There has always been a religious connection in the Olympics. They were banned in 393 ACE by the Christian Emperor Thadeous because of their pagan connections. Even today the modern games borrow a lot from the ancient past. They may not be dedicated to Zeus as in the past, but some of the symbols come from ancient Greek worship. Here is an interesting discussion on religion and the games.

[ 28. July 2012, 21:02: Message edited by: Gramps49 ]
 


© Ship of Fools 2016

Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM 6.5.0