Counterintuitive yet unsuccessful : the spreadability of Universe People's religious ideas

This paper examines religious concepts within the belief system of the Czech new religious movement, the Universe People. Using Minimal Counterintuitiveness (MCI) theory, in the following paper I analyze the first volume of their central text, Talks with Teachings from My Cosmic Friends (1998). Concepts identified within the text were coded using J. L. Barrett's method to calculate their counterintuitiveness scores. The Universe People's syncretic worldview, as presented in the text, draws from New Age and Christianity, and emphasizes an impending ecological threat, the fight against opposing forces, and individual and collective spiritual development. In this paper, I identify five main thematic areas and thirteen main concepts that, on average, scored as minimally counterintuitive. While MCI suggests these concepts should be memorable and successfully transmitted, the decline of the Universe People likely stems from other factors, such as their narrative framework and the broader societal context.