Toddo said:Most chapters have a cosmology in my experience. No gods, but plenty of extraplanar beings who fill similar roles.
I agree that religion is something that should be kept out of game as much as possible, knowing that total exclusion is impossible. A group of humans following the orders of a powerful extraplanar being and perhaps gaining powers by doing so? Seen it a hundred times and it's hard for me to argue against someone calling that "a cult or religion by another name." Should such plot cinstructs be banned? I say no.
aara said:Most chapters have their own cosmology and their own pseudo-religions, as Toddo mentioned, so I don't know how much it would change if we started calling it differently other than to heat up arguments that don't necessarily need to be put on the boiler.
ASFDan said:Generally speaking, Alliance already has the framework of religion in place. We just can't call it that, and the lengths we go to in order to avoid doing so end up being unsubtle, clunky, and awkward.
Generally speaking I agree with the notion of the gods themselves being abstract in nature, if only because things tend to get overly heavy-handed when you involve them directly. On the other hand cults, churches, worship, faith and personal belief, sacred artifacts and places are just some of the things we have to talk around even though most of them exist in the world already by some other name.
In other words, why not just call a spade a spade and dispatch with all of the complicated rhetoric that's been put in place to convince ourselves that it's really just a shovel?
OrcFighterFTW said:I know the anthropologist who plays in SoMN would be better able to state this, but we've talked about it before together. Essentially, religion as a study of human behavior is academically described as a series of predetermined actions that are ritually repeated for an intended outcome based on spiritual or faith-based (non-science or evidence-based) philosophy of the world/universe and what impact those actions will have to change the world/universe/outcome in one's favor.
meirya said:ASFDan said:Generally speaking, Alliance already has the framework of religion in place. We just can't call it that, and the lengths we go to in order to avoid doing so end up being unsubtle, clunky, and awkward.
Generally speaking I agree with the notion of the gods themselves being abstract in nature, if only because things tend to get overly heavy-handed when you involve them directly. On the other hand cults, churches, worship, faith and personal belief, sacred artifacts and places are just some of the things we have to talk around even though most of them exist in the world already by some other name.
In other words, why not just call a spade a spade and dispatch with all of the complicated rhetoric that's been put in place to convince ourselves that it's really just a shovel?
Yes, yes, and yes.
Look. Barbarian superstition? Religion. Reverence for the earth and aversion to chaos? Religion. I'm new to Alliance so it's gonna be a bit before I can speak to any other elements, but if my NERO experience applies to Alliance at all then I'd say that yes, there is already religion in game, it's just not called that and the word "god(s)" is avoided.
I actually find it more problematic that there's this view of "religion = worship of gods". That completely discounts animistic faiths as being "real" religions. It looks less to me like a case of "let's be religion-neutral" and more like a case of "let's avoid alienating the Christians", because the earth-reverent attitudes and practices and philosophies in-world are similar enough to earth-based religions in the real world that saying these practices "don't count" as religion is demeaning and dismissive of animistic, panentheist, pantheistic, and nature-centric religions.
Mind you. I'm not actually advocating that we change anything or not. I don't take any actual offense at the above as an animist, I just find it kind of annoying and, if I think about it for long, kind of problematic.
My real issue is that religion/faith/myth/belief/spirituality - these are parts of human existence. These are intrinsic parts of any culture. Ritual, tradition, superstition, faith... These are all parts of religion, too. You can't really have a rich culture without some form of that, and I think people realize that on some level because there is a lot of religion in game, just with lots of verbal contortions to avoid the terms "religion", "gods", or such.
I'm all for a continued ban on deities or the mention/belief thereof. However, I do think the rigid ban on "religion" is... Ineffective at best, and problematic based on what counts as "not religion" at worst. I don't think religions should be built into settings, but I think the verbal contortions required for characters to have a spirituality yet not call it that is unnecessary.
phedre said:So think about Alliance this way:
What if you *knew* that your spirit went somewhere after death. Irrefutable proof, and not the "I had a vision and saw a tunnel and my childhood dog was there," but a place you can contact the way we make an overseas phone call. In Fortannis, you do; otherwise there would be no "Spirit Farewell" possibilities, and "Contact Other Plane" couldn't include the Graveyard as an option. There's no possibility for religions arguing about what happens, and who's got it right, it's a fact of (after)life. The questions of reincarnation, life after death, punishment or reward for your life's actions aren't theory or sermon anymore.
On Fortannis there are powerful enough entities (dragons, fae, shadow mages, and a plethora of others) that the idea of something more powerful controlling the world isn't only there, it's cataloged and understood as reality instead of dogma. Races created from magic, quantitatively and qualitatively able to do things that others can't. Magic is now more quantifiable, instead of the nebulous "rule of three" and "karma" ideas that we have in many current alternative religions. Alternate realities are reachable via the Planar Gate rituals.
Think about how it would change RL religions if everyone could die and come back a certain amount of times. Miracles as we understand them would become less miraculous and more of a studied pseudo-science with magical healing being done in every major city and most small towns, items transported through space with a few words, and the ability to chant for 5 minutes with the right piece of paper and leaves, feathers and stones and do everything from make an item never break contact with your spirit to change your race.
Morality and religion are distinctly different, and they can and do exist independently. It's easy enough for a plot team in a larp that contains religion to put something into game knowing it will offend the followers of Bob the Almighty Wind God. It's more challenging, and more rewarding and introspective for players and characters IMO, when plot teams figure out how to challenge the morality of characters in a system without religion.
llywelyn said:I am also new to Alliance, but not new to roleplaying or to fantasy.
There are a lot of variations and views on religion from around the world. Sometimes it exists in a moral purpose, but that's rarely its sole (or even its most interesting) role. Same with the literal beliefs in the afterlife. Despite that these are prevalent–especially in the United States–it doesn't mean that they are the only role, or that all (or even very many) conceptions of religion fall within such narrow parameters.
It involves things such as "how to interact with things that are much bigger than you." When you encounter an angry boar-spirit that you have to kill because it is sickened and poisoned, it seems perfectly reasonable to try to perform rites to placate it, e.g., in Princess Mononoke:
O raging god (kami) unknown to us, I bow before you. Where you have fallen we will raise a mound and perform rites. Bear us no hate, and be at peace.
What is notable here is 1) This is clearly a religious set of practices and prescriptions 2) It is a functional set, at least insofar as that individual culture is concerned 3) Absolute knowledge that such things exist in the world doesn't change the outcome much. 4) In a world where I know something can come back, it seems like such would be even more prevalent: "let me make you offerings and do things on your behalf so that you won't come back and eat me."
Religion sometimes involves encoding the cycles of life and the seasons and as a way of both marking the passage of time and of bringing the community together. Hence many of the Western European (and esp. Celtic) festivals, along with the seasonal festivals found in Shinto.
It can also involve how to come to grips with the very fact that nothing is permanent around you, completely independent of any specific afterlife, e.g., from the Pali canon:
(Life in) any world is unstable, it is swept away…
(Life in) any world has no shelter and no protector…
(Life in) any world has nothing of its own; one has to leave all and pass on…
(Life in) any world is incomplete, insatiate, the slave of craving…
Basically "religion" covers a very, very large terrain. It can also be a source of inspiration (e.g., Copernicus), shorthand for cultural boundaries and interactions, a cultural bonding element, etc. It's also worth noting that in many religions what constitutes a "god" is actually less powerful than some of the things I have had personal conversations with in LARPs.
When the high orcs or barbarians are described as being "very superstitious" we are entering into a territory where it is hard to avoid some form of religion or religion equivalent. Especially when we describe Barbarians as being "one of living harmoniously with the earth." The rulebook even says that "Oaths are very sacred and important things in Barbarian society."
Emphasis added. The word "sacred" comes from the Latin sacer: 'holy' and means "connected with God (or the gods) or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration" (New Oxford American Dictionary).
When the NERO Stone Elf racial packet talks about concepts such as the "Rite of Vengeance" we are also well into the domain of religion. I may be wrong since my knowledge here is more superficial, but many of the statements I've seen about Dryads and the "First Forest" have a similar feel.
It is incredibly hard to get away from something that looks like religion. So instead, at least at NERO, we talk our way around things in linguistic circles, while not completely succeeding and ending up with something that feels disjointed. You can end up getting the problems, but not the benefits.
An compromise solution is to have religion, but to place restrictions on terminology and around what it can entail. No firm basis in real world religions (including folklore), no "gods". Another possibility is to have religion, but use a different word for it (e.g., "Path") and have that word be used consistently in that context (a Schleiermacher translation-style approach). No requirement for PCs to follow it (global freedom of religion in player areas?). So you may end up with the "Path of the Shiny" (as, say, a NERO goblin religion) that could have everything from basic tenants to seasonal festivals without any question that it is appropriate, NPCs or PCs might follow it, and while it might make offerings to a local fae (who gives us shinies in exchange for not-shinies!) it isn't called a "god."
meirya said:Okay, wait. Phedre, your post basically boils down to "in Fortannis, we know everything/lots of things, and therefore religion is irrelevant/unnecessary/doesn't happen". I get where you're coming with that - it's basic materialism, plenty of materialist athiests in our world work that way - but I disagree that it's a logical or inevitable conclusion.
First, it assumes that "everyone" knows and believes and trusts that the few educated, skilled, powerful people who've been to other planes are giving accurate portrayals of what's out there. If, that is, the backcountry tenth-generation farmer has even ever heard of these ideas. There are plenty of people in rural areas of the U.S. South who still believe the Earth is 6000 years old despite geological proof, and will argue that the scientists are being fooled by Satan and you can't trust scientists anyway.
Second, such a view assumes that because we know lots of things "for sure", that it's all that's out there. We know the moon is a cold barren ball of rock spinning around the Earth, we've been there, there's even film footage. There are still people who think we've never been on the moon and the lunar landing was a hoax; after all, most of the people on Earth have never been on the moon and never will be due to lack of resources/opportunity to do so. More relevantly to the religion topic, there are plenty of intelligent, academic, educated Hellenics (Greek Pagans), Kemetics (Egyptian Pagans), and Norse Pagans who know that physically, the moon is indeed a cold barren ball of rock spinning around the Earth with an American flag and some bootprints on its surface from our visit. Nonetheless, they also believe in lunar deities and have stories in their religion of the moon as an entity or the moon pulled by wolves/chariots/etc. Just because you know something is a certain way doesn't mean you can't also believe that it is also, on some other level, something else.
Science explains the "how" of things. Religion (myth, legend, lore, spirituality, etc) tackles the "why" in a deeper, personal meaning/personal place in the world/how we are connected to the universe and our environment sort of way. It is not an either/or sort of question, as one might assume from our Aristotle-influenced culture of dualistic thinking. Culture and belief and reality and possibility can be both/and, non-dualistic.
phedre said:My post was about why religion could plausibly not have developed on Fortannis, because some of the major questions that religion has sought to answer are, in this fictional place, not questions.
I'm not particularly interested in debating the merits of religion in the real world, I'm interested in keeping religion from being injected into a game that's 20 years established. I think it would be clunky to implement, homogenize chapters, cause inter-chapter god vs. god wars that sound to me like another reason to keep the mists from allowing armies from one campaign to invade another.
*whew* That's a lot of quotes. Again, good topic, it's been civil so far, let's keep it that way. *sniffs* I'm so proud of you guyse!
*edited because I fail at cut and paste evidently*
