Actually, after reading this catchism on Comedism, posted on Daily Kos, I realized that my family has been pretty evangelical Comedists my entire life:
The basic beliefs of Comedism are not that different from other religions. Life is fleeting and a test for the hereafter. Like the Buddhists, we believe that on Earth you strive for a state of bodilessness. You can foresee this nirvana in the sort of full out belly laugh that you get from a really good joke. When you laugh so hard that your spirit is ultimately joyful, but your sides ache, you can't breathe, you roll around on the floor unable to stand, you realize that it is the humorous soul and not the things of the body that are important.
We believe that the key to acting well is understanding the nature of the joke. Jokes have two parts, a set up in which a normal situation you think you understand is sketched...and then the punchline that forces you radically rethink how you understood the world of the set up...The humor exists in that moment when your brain is split, trying unsuccessfully to resolve the tension between the two incompatible interpretations. The very possibility of a joke presupposes that reality may always be looked at in more than one way. We must see life as a great joke -- there are always perspectives other than our own and we must strive to get the joke by adopting other people's perspectives.
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