No for real, don't laugh.

Shopping for a new religion? 15,070 people in the Czech Republic just identified themselves as Jedi Knights. 15,070. And those were just the ones who wrote it in. In the U.K. and New Zealand (where it started) it's a box you can check on the census and it's been around for awhile. They even have a website, and they don't let just anyone have one of those.

Don't laugh. If you now or have ever in your life believed in anything
outside the realm of hard, empirical science don't even laugh.

All aboard.

Crazy train, or sane train? Who's to say? Me, that's who. And I'm going with sane train. For real, check out their website. Other than some hokum (yeah, I dropped hokum) about the omnipresent mystical Force, they really don't say anything that out there. There's no god, but there isn't not a god, there's no afterlife, but there isn't not an afterlife and to date exactly 0 (non-fictional) people have been killed in the name of (or by) Yoda. 

And that hokum I mentioned? That might even be real. Higgs Boson particles might just be the universal elemental building block of matter. If real, they're everywhere, binding and penetrating us (eww), and CERN Scientists in Switzerland may have discovered them using the Large Hadron Collider and the tiny magnifying glasses on their army knives.

Large Hadron Colliders, chocolate, cheese with holes, the Swiss are an advanced people.

Fun fact: Jesus started out writing mystery
 novels under the name J.H. Christ.

Anyway, before you judge the real-life Jedi as a pack of obsessed fans, just remember that they may be on to something. Besides, it's not like they're not the first space religion. Check out these baby-cloning, free-love UFO devotees. Nothing crazy there. And if you have a problem with basing your life on the teachings of George Lucas, keep in mind that millions of people follow the path laid out by L. Ron Hubbard, and he somehow managed to be an even worse sci-fi writer than Lucas.

Is this really any weirder than burning bushes or walking on water?

You know who you are.

A note of caution though: Even the most well intentioned religions can go hell-fire looney given enough time. I don't want to name names, but a certain group of bible-thumping dinosaur-deniers seem to have gotten away from the 'do unto others' spirit they're supposed to be all about and replaced it with some seriously biblical douchbaggary (see left). Will the Jedi be any different? 2000 years from now, Comicons may well be marred by the continuing violence between the Orthodox Jedi of the Holy Trilogy and the Church of Latter Day Prequels.

It may just be better to subscribe to the notion that the true nature of the universe is unknowable and that we should just be not be dicks to each other out of basic human decency. On the other hand, there is an undeniable awesomeness to lightsabers.

"Fwoom! Fwoom! Midichlorians my ass!"
"Neeeeooom! Fwoom! You'll pay for your blasphemy Steve! Sssszzzzooom!"