A new religious movement has been formally recognized by the government of Sweden. It's just a bit different than most religions you've run into. For example, one of their central tenets is that all information sharing is “holy”. Their sacred symbols include things like ^C (the keyboard shortcut for copying to the clipboard).
On one level, this is just an amusing story. On another level, though, it's a great example of something that free societies embracing religious freedom find quite challenging: exactly what constitutes a “religion” (thereby becoming worthy of protection by the state)? That turns out to be an astonishingly difficult – perhaps even impossible – question to answer objectively.
Thanks to Simon M. for passing this along...
If Scientology gets to be a protected religion, pretty much anything can.
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