{"id":352,"date":"2007-02-15T07:09:14","date_gmt":"2007-02-15T06:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=352"},"modified":"2007-02-15T07:09:14","modified_gmt":"2007-02-15T06:09:14","slug":"its-john-frum-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=352","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s John Frum Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just how easy is it for a new religion to emerge? In his controversial work &#8220;The God Delusion&#8221; [my review <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/science.html#TGD\">here<\/a>], Richard Dawkins shows how easy it is by refering to so-called &#8220;cargo cults&#8221;.<br \/>\nAccording to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cargo_cults\">the Wikipedia explanation<\/a>: &#8220;A cargo cult is any of a group of unorthodox religious movements appearing in tribal societies in the wake of Western impact, especially in New Guinea and Melanesia. Cargo cults essentially maintain that manufactured western goods (&#8220;cargo&#8221;) have been created by divine spirits and are intended for the local indigenous people, but that white people have unfairly gained control of these objects.&#8221;<br \/>\nOver the last 75 years most cargo cults have petered out. Yet, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Frum\">John Frum cult<\/a> is still active on the island of Tanna, Vanuatu. The name &#8220;John Frum&#8221; is possibly derived from World War II GIs introducing themselves to the locals as &#8220;John from America&#8221;.<br \/>\nThe followers believe that John Frum will come back on a 15th February (the year of his return is not known), a date which is observed as &#8220;John Frum Day&#8221; in Vanuatu. If this seems odd, remember that Christians have been waiting 2,000 years for their Second Coming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just how easy is it for a new religion to emerge? In his controversial work &#8220;The God Delusion&#8221; [my review here], Richard Dawkins shows how easy it is by refering to so-called &#8220;cargo cults&#8221;. According to the Wikipedia explanation: &#8220;A cargo cult is any of a group of unorthodox religious movements appearing in tribal societies [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}