The Church of Virus

[nemorathwald]

The Church of Virus describes itself as an online "memetically-engineered nontheistic religion." Hence their logo is a biohazard symbol. Of course, how you define religion and how you define church would determine if you agree with this description. (They have an awesome lexicon of terminology definitions.) By telling you about it, I have acted as a Vector of the Church of Virus.

According to the website, "Virus is a collection of mutually-supporting ideas (a meme-complex) encompassing philosophy, science, technology, politics, and religion. The core ideas are based on evolution and memetics because one of the primary design goals was survivability through adaptation (religions die, not because they grow old, but because they become obsolete). If a new religion is designed around the premise of continuously integrating better (more accurate, more useful) concepts while ensuring the survival of its believers, it could conceivably achieve true immortality."

They're similar to the Church of the Subgenius in the sense that they named themselves in a way that would deliberately put people on warning, to think about them critically. But the Church of the Subgenius is strictly a joke, while Virus has gathered an exceptional philosophic base and organizational structure. Their discussions tend to be very high-quality. The messageboard has a ranking system that seems kind of similar to that of Slashdot. Here's the first issue of their e-zine, The Ideohazard.

Check out their website's pages on "Quick Answers to Big Questions," "The Three Senseless Sins" and "The Three Virian Virtues."

The Church of Virus has taken hold in the environment of my brain!

Comments

[reginator.livejournal.com]

I'll also have you know that the Church of the Subgenius is BY NO MEANS a joke, Sir Matt_Arnold. In Tacoland, "Bob" rules over all and those who do not submit to his pure love suffer the consequences...what those might be, is known only to "Bob".

my heresy

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

I SEE THE LIGHT. I renouce my blasphemy and henceforth and forthwith shall obey Bob's command to pull the wool over my own eyes. What must I do to atone for my grievous heresy?

Re: my heresy

[reginator.livejournal.com]

Queen Regina, being the fair ruler that She is, will not force Sir Matt_Arnold to atone for his blasphemous comments, since he obviously has embarrassed himself quite enough. Since Sir Matt_Arnold sees the true light of "Bob", then what good Subgenius would ever subject a fellow follower of His Light to anything worse than embarrassment?

If, however, Sir Matt_Arnold feels that he must prove, to himself and to the mighty "Bob" Himself, then he should ingest as many cans of Cheese Wiz is needed for him to truly see the Light of "Bob"...the last nut who did this ate 7 cans before he passed out...uh, I mean until he saw the Light.

Queen Regina VIIWTF
Ruler of Tacoland and all Her colonies

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

One of the things that intrigues me about the CoV is their system of community management. That's what a more traditional church would refer to as "church polity." The CoV messageboard has two different ranking systems.

One of them is the reputation rating. Each member has the ability in their software to rate the messageboard members on a scale of one to ten, and move that rating up or down over time. It represents how valuable of a contribution to the community they think that person is giving from time to time. Only those who are in the ratings system are members of the Virian Congregation. This rating determines how much pull they have in expressing their opinions through polls, or even rise to the rank of Adept or Archon on the Virian Council which makes the decisions.

The other rating system is karma. Rather than a blanket evaluation of a person, this is a judgement of an individual post. Each post to the messageboard has two buttons marked "applaud" and "smite." Most of them seem to have accumulated about ten or fifteen karma points. A person who tends to post ugly diatribes has accumulated karma of negative 62!