On a more functional level, you have to respect the blend of Sufism, Hinduism, mysticism and lower calorie dining. Talk about dinner and a show. What more could you possibly want? Oh, what’s that you say? The chandelier is swaying? Don’t pay it any attention; this joint is EARTHQUAKE PROOF. Can I get you some more tropical tea?
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I don’t know if you were alluding to Orwell, but here’s what I thought of:
A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labour that would build several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is built… In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them.
(Emphasis mine)
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And they all claim to make life better, but just leave you cursing yourself, and fighting with adherents of others
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I vaguely remember seeing this story mentioned in the paper when they were first trying to get approval to build it N years ago, unless that was some similar non-traditional religious congregation out in the sticks.
I’ve seen a wide variety of opposition to church building, especially for minority religions, so I’m glad the law tries to protect it. The zendo down the street from me had to wait N years for city approval; apparently some of the neighbors thought that the sound of one hand clapping would be too noisy. (My street’s mostly apartment buildings and condos.) Back when I lived in New Jersey, there was a synagogue that got similar harassment.
The so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” got horrible abuse for being Evil Terrorist Islamic Sharia Promoters - they were Sufis, so about as terrorist as Quakers.
The Baptist church I attended had more New Jersey flavored kinds of approval problems when we built a building to replace our 1904 one that was falling apart; apparently the building inspectors were disappointed that they hadn’t been offered money under the table before they started work, so somehow our sewer connection got paved over, can’t touch it without an “approved” contractor who charges $10K more than the bids we had, and even after we suggested we might complain to the town council, we still ended up having to put in the best fire detection system anybody had ever seen.
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Fattening.
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On a related note, I really enjoyed I, Wabenzi, part of which describes the author’s sojourn at Swyre Farm. There’s a passage in there where he notices some soap, and wonders what those at the other Sufi center would think of it, as the soap (IIRC) was rendered from pork fat.
I’ve seen a wide variety of opposition to church building, especially for minority religions, so I’m glad the law tries to protect it.
Yeah, I keep hearing about the troubles this place is having:
This sort of thing started before the place was constructed. (FYI I’ve never heard the town’s name pronounced any other way besides “MUR-fiss-burra”)
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No, those are natural gas tanks next to the Jersey turnpike.
Oh, also, for scale, 60,000 feet is a pretty typical 1990s-construction grocery store size, except for being round, of course.
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the input of @JeremiahC and @Erik_Denning is appreciated; however, nobody has yet mentioned that probably all of you have already been exposed to the philosophy of this organization. The core philosophy of Meher Baba was expressed in a pop song that anyone over 30 can sing the hook to:
As a cradle atheist, I’m not advocating, but just pointing out that McFerrin was spreading the gospel without explicitly proselytizing, here. Back in the 60s, Mr. Baba printed up postcards with this slogan and spammed as many mailboxes as he could pay postage for in CA.
It’s a toehold of sufi-ism in the West enabled by baby-boom contrarian spirituality. But it hardly seems like anything that ought to be derided (beyond what I just said, anyhow) or viewed with any suspicion or contempt. A large corporation is headed by a Baba adherent and he is funding a temple? I find this less troubling than the sprawl and parking lot of another megachurch. They explicitly frown upon proselytizing. Christians take note.
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In Lafayette you can also find the pretty awesome “My Way” which is where Brent Midland was living when he died.
I suppose that it would depend on the cardinality of the set of commandments and whether a religion is entirely determined (up to isomorphism?) by its commandments. If so, the cardinality of religions would be the cardinality of the set of functions from commandments to the set {True,False}. i.e. 2^|commandments|. (Greater if religions have other properties.)
I’d guess that we could probably come up with some families of commandments indexed by the natural numbers, so we should have at least \mathbb{R}'s worth of religions.
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you just nearly described Burning Man
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Welcome to BOingBoing
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Blaming Meher Baba for Bobby McFerrin is a pretty low blow. I’d rather you mentioned Pete Townshend’s devotion to Meher Baba and the Baba O’Riley what followed.
The Babaites are well-intentioned, not trying to convert or rip off people, and they aren’t a cult. There are many worse things to be a part of.
I’m contrarian about a lot of things (too cool for myself, secretly insecure, etc.) but, sadly, I like spirituality. I’ve never been able to feel it. I honestly envy people with spirtiuality or religious faith. It must feel nice sometimes and looks to be very comforting.
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Sometimes its not about comfort at all but you do it anyway.
Please feel free to split to a new topic if interested, don’t wanna go too far off topic and invoke the wrath of the moderators.
Yes… I feel like I missed something.
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This is clearly a fake news item perpetrated by one of Cheesecake Factory’s bitter restaurant rivals. You’ll know which one when you spell the name of the town backwards…
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well, they all say that the other ones are wrong. so yep at least one underlying universal truth checks out. 
The Cheese-us Crust is good, just don’t fill up on bread.
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You can count to infinity…but it takes forever. 
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