My favorite new religion is The Great Magnet (jump on that page and contribute, it’s my first Wikipedia article ever!). I’m a HUGE fan of the Adam Carolla Podcast and I heard him talking about this the other day. I won’t go so far as to call it a religion (as an atheist, he doesn’t believe it’s a religion either, but he positions that it’s as close as you can get to him believing in religion).
The Great Magnet (n): The theory that as you become aware or start thinking about certain things, you are more likely to encounter similar things. Example, I have a bowl of Mac and Cheese for dinner and think it’s great. The next morning, The Today Show is talking about making killer Mac and Cheese, and then in the afternoon I read an article about how bad carbs are for your heart.
Anyhow, whether or not there’s some degree of correlation involved, or if it truly is causality, I’ve definitely experienced this many times. Like over the past few days, I’ve had non-stop exposure to the concept that the vast majority of your senses are actually filled in by memories in your brain, rather than actually detecting new inputs from the outside world (blog post coming very shortly on this). Everywhere I turn, it seems I run into the same concept, though the majority of these pieces seem to be totally unconnected. I think it’s just a sense of awareness you get when something is on your mind – but it’s nice to have a name for it. And remember:
"Nine out of ten religions fail in their first year" – God, The Simspons [9F01]
