In a hitherto clean games, officials have announced this morning that many of the athletes including medal winners have tested positive for divine intervention.
Mick Jenson of the Olympic SportFair Association expressed his concern that things have taken a turn for the worse, ‘Athletes are supposed to be competing on a level playing field and we all trust that they compete without outside help. When athletes seek this kind of unfair advantage we need to act swiftly.
These thoughts were echoed by the Testing Committee, ‘Some of the athletes looking for their gods to help them are easy to spot, for example, crossing themselves or looking to the sky in thanks but some of the more insidious stuff is harder for us to pin down. For instance, we are using specialist lip-readers and video technology to differentiate between muttered prayers and harmless self-motivation. ‘
There is also concern over the growth in the use of so-called ‘hard religions’ such as Catholisicm and Islam. These work on the fear and guilt centres of the nervous system and can do lasting harm to the athlete and indeed to their communities at large. Some athletes taking soft gods such as Buddhism sometimes known as ‘Sids’, use it as a muscle relaxant and can reach mental states which may give serious advantage in the synchronised swimming events where a fixed smile is obligatory. Others inject Hinduism which is a cocktail of gods which are difficult to detect in isolation but work in synergy to boost hockey skills in particular. Some of the more reckless are using a new age of synthetic multi-doping where crystals, feng shui, and aura enhancement are mixed without any real thought.
David Price of the National Secular Society thinks we are all getting this out of hand, ‘Look, god doesn’t exist. That’s why he hasn’t even got a capital letter in my previous sentence. I suppose if there’s any advantage then it’s through the placebo effect and in that case we simply need a control group Olympic finals to work out the difference.’
Mick Jensen dismisses this, ‘These faith junkies go to crack dens to pilgrim. When they pilgrim their bodies can undergo massive change, cancer can be cured and paraplegics can walk again. Others reach these very calm and serene states. I can’t believe it’s not Buddha.’
