Whilst having a canter through my newest game Skyrim it occurred to me there is a lot of work that has to go into making up fictional religions. If you want them to be more than simply a real one with a different name you have to consider all the different components, think up some doctrine and philosophy, a history etc. It’s no small thing to do if you want it to be taken seriously, as we have found out when people do it in reality (oh no he di’ent!).
It got me thinking that it might be a fun exercise to create a new religion from scratch here on the Dope. As religion is an area of interest of mine (from a sociological and historical point of view) and I’m pretty knowledgeable about the subject given that I’ve studied it academically and a lot as a private interest, it was something I wanted to suggest we all try.
I consulted the mods and they were happy for this to go ahead, so if people are game I propose turning this into a series of threads dealing with the constituent parts of a religion, including a poll for each one, to see which are the most popular and talk through the pros and cons. So for example there could be a thread on the deity of the religion – is it a pantheon (polytheistic? Monolatrist?), a monotheistic god? A deistic philosophic concept? A spiritualist belief? You get the idea.
If this proves to be really popular/fun then anyone who wants to and has the right skills could even contribute artwork/writing to the process to flesh things out. Maybe we could even make something worthy of some short fiction?
I want to stress this is purely an intellectual exercise for entertainment only, I’m not actually proposing creating a new belief system or anything that someone could join. In the marketplace of ideas this one has a large disclaimer on it saying “for novelty purposes only – this religion should not actually be used for spiritual enlightenment or as a pathway to a deity”.
Please indicate whether you’d be interested in this as an intellectual/sociological exercise and I’ll start organising things. Thanks!
Worshipers have special temples in their homes where they regularly pour water over themselves, and place their waste products in water and send it to a common storage place.
A breakaway sect interprets the precepts differently and in addition, regularly pour water over their Auto-mobiles.
Well I’m glad some people want to come and play with me in this
The first step in this is the most obvious: what is it that this religion has as its focus of worship? Do we want it to be something as conventional as a god(s), something more diffuse such as a philosophy, a tradition of wisdom (like Buddhism or Confucianism) or an abstract concept like nature, knowledge, time?
I’m leaning more toward a type of god or gods, if only because you can do something more interesting with that then simple belief structures like nature worship. Furthermore those kinds of beliefs have in time tended to move towards personifications as godheads or gods of whatevers, either alone or in a pantheon. Then of course there are less conventional forms of worship like ancestor veneration or druidism, although this is still worship of something external. Finally there are the really out there religions of left hand esoteric traditions like thelema, or mystical traditions such as kaballah. In these the focus is not on worship of an external deity but on exploration and actualisation of the self, and the existence of a god is ultimately unimportant (even kaballah as a jewish tradition was less interested in the existence of god than it was the journey of the mystic through the Sephiroth). Or we could have some combination of the above (a pantheon where the followers of one particular god purport that it is the only one and the others are wrong?).
My pick: a pantheon of of gods with a monolatrist focus, that is a number of gods are recognised to exist but an individual would belong to a sect exclusively supporting one or at least only worship one individually. Lots of room to make some interesting deities as well as structures of worships/temples around them as well as a narrative about orthodxy and perhaps even rivalry between sects.
I propose worshipping nachos. The peppers speak to the stoic in all of us without actually being torturous; they have the quality of being made from numerous items, and yet being joined by cheese which grows stronger with time–signifying the relationships of the adherents of our new religion; they provide happy nourishment and support the consumption of beer. And let’s face it, nachos are always good.
In practice that’s going to be inventing several religions. I’m okay with that.
I propose a triad of major gods, loosely based on the Freudian id, ego, and superego. Most people follow one of them primarily, which leads to a lot of conflict, particularly between the id and superego analogues. Minor gods can fill in the gaps between them. Sects may disagree on whether the minor gods are gods in their own right or aspects of the major ones. They can disagree on who they’re supposed to be aspects of, too. I’m only familiar with Freudian psychology in passing, so I’m sure the following is an absurd oversimplification. My apologies if it makes people cringe:
The Id is “the unorganized part of the personality structure that contains the basic drives”, according to Wikipedia. It includes instinctive drives with not a scrap of logic or morality to be found. This would be the god of lust, food, desire, and unrestrained pursuit thereof. (Inigo’s nacho god belongs in this category, I think!)
The Ego is the logical part of the mind that can think and make plans. This god would preside over the sciences, rationality, and the like. Vulcans worship this one exclusively.
The Superego is the conscience. The associated god is the really square moralistic one, but also the mother figure that wants people to get along with each other.
I’m terrible at making up names. Anyone got suggestions?
I quite like that idea Flybynight512, it was kind of what I had in mind. I wouldn’t worry about names too much at this point, that can come later in the process.
The id god could be a sort of devotional offering focus point, something representing various simplistic ideas together rather than any one thing (your classic nature, love, fertility). The other two gods (and I like the idea of a male eg and a female superego) could be seen as maybe ruling the universe together but focussing on different parts, with the ego being the law giver and the super ego being the kind and compassionate carer and personable deity that we identify with. How does that sound?
I like that idea, and I further think that it could be interesting to add some sociopolitical elements - basically there is the “high-class” deity and the “lower-class” deity that impacts what people think of a person socially. Especially the id god - I am really seeing that loose “nature ideals” as looked down upon by the people who have more concretely-realized personas of their objects d’worship.
I think this is very interesting. But I’m curious about the goal of the new religion. Is the point of this just to come up with something fun? Or is the idea to create a new religion that could (for entertainment purposes only, of course) actually grow and prosper? If it’s the former, then that allows for a lot more creativity (multiple gods, different moralities, etc.). But if it’s the latter, then I think it’s more important to build off of existing religions. It’s no coincidence that the 3 biggies of today are all built off the same underlying God and morality. So if we want a plausibly succesful, yet new religion - I think we’d need to build off of one of the current biggies. Something like a religion that says the 2nd coming for Christians, and the return for the Jews are all the same thing - and it’s already happened, etc.
Anyway - just wanted to clarify this. Is the point to build something brand new from scratch with no limitations? Or is the point to build something that could conceivably grow, prosper and compete with the current biggies?
The origins would be of a much older center of the galaxy civilization where humanoids and energy-based beings known as the GOD lived in complete symbiosis and harmony. One of the energy beings, a younger and cruel one, was often criticized for its cruel abuse of the humanoids, so it sent out (was cast out) to the farthest most distant edge of the galaxy. There, it re-sequenced the DNA of the Neanderthals on one of the planets containing life with formats of the humanoids it was used to and set up endless battles and hatreds between the humanoids of various geographic regions for its own spiteful entertainment.
In due time, its actions were discovered and it was forcibly removed by the GOD from the planet it had so cruelly scarred and abused with hatred, lies, straw-religions, and war. The GOD felt pity for the world that one entity had changed and left it to advance on its own as an experiment on how humanoids might survive without the symbiotic relationship that was the cornerstone of the GOD culture. Stories differ as to the fate of that one energy being: Imprisonment? Form change? But no one can argue about the occasional probes sent to study that distant experimental exhibit known as Earth…
This was my idea (sort of) for last year’s NaNoWriMo. I wrote a sequel to the Qur’an. I created Abrahamic religion’s part IV where Abraham, Jesus, and then Mohammed were all considered to be just prophets and the savior had finally arrived.
A big part of my book was the fact that the new savior’s disciples tried to sway him* away from using parables and ambiguous language to actually get his point across. He would agree and then automatically slip into rambling stories where both side could be seen as being valid. My favorite part where was where he tried to stop both sides of an abortion protest by finally laying down his edict of what god wanted. Both sides conceded and left thinking that they won. And were later quite upset when the other had declared victory.
I think we’re doing this just for fun and not in any attempt to make something believable.** Illuminatiprimus** may need to weigh in, though.
Sounds good, although a male ego and female superego is very much in line with traditional Western gender roles. Just for the sake of doing something different, want to flip those? Or each god could be a pair, a male deity and female deity that are identical for all practical purposes.
Ooh, good origin story. So the GOD that takes pity on Earth makes some contact with humans and that’s how this religion gets started? The human mind tends to split complicated ideas into small ones and compartmentalize, which is how we could end up with a pantheon when there was really just one being that we were in contact with.
Yes I really like that, it leads quite nicely into later consideration of the social, philosophical and ceremonial aspects we’ll have to come up with. I’m picturing the ego god being the house god, someone you ask for blessings of in times of need or want a simple prayer to, who you ask for rain or protection or whatever - the religion of the plebs. The other two gods would then be more complex and as you say potentially the thinking peoples’ religions with each fulfilling a different role.
This is purely for fun and is a fictional religion in a fictional world, it’s not supposed to be something that you could (for want of a better world) market today as a new religion. I think if we were doing that we’d have to go down a completely different avenue of thinking and development which I wouldn’t find as fun, personally.
Actually yes you have a point. I quite like two pairs of male and female gods for the ego/super ego roles, that’s very interesting. Or maybe a single gender for one and a pair for the other (like a male for ego but a male/female pair for super, to indicate that it’s scope is greater and more encompassing?).
I was intending for us to create this from the user perspective. What has been supposed here is a creation story based on a misunderstanding of something real, is that what we want to pursue? I do like it though, it could definitely be adapted into a creation story. In fact this isn’t a million miles away from the shape of Hinduism. On the face of it Hinduism is a simple polytheistic religion, and historically it was in the Vedic period. Around 1000BCE at the start of the Brahamanic tradition another layer was added to it where a meta god being was developed and all the previous gods were turned into expressions of it, this later developing into the god head of Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva (creation, maintainer, destroyer/regenerator). The pantheon of gods is there to help the common people relate to god, whilst those following a more philosophical path attempt to understand god in a mystical way as a the sum totality of the universe.
Are we suggesting something similar for our religion, that though these gods are the focal point of the worship they actually represent something greater? Maybe our religion had a similar evolution as Hinduism and they went through their own period of philosophical development where the old gods gained a more substantial underpinning.
I would have written that there were no valid religions; just straw-organizations fostered by superior technological tricks designed to keep the Gladiators from each side interested in the Games and to keep the wars and slaughter going. One side losing? Pop-goes-the-Miracle.
There being only One being wasn’t a Revelation. It was a warning (that went unheeded) as that One being put on various masks and performed tricks to ‘stir the pot’.
The GOD got stuck with Earth (quite like you might get stuck with a piece of furniture from a dead relative) and have completely separated from it. I’d write that it was donated to educational institutions as a museum to be kept pristine and designated only for very rare field trips / study.
No Battle-cruisers, no Ultimate Galactic Significance (hidden by umpteen riddles and clues).
Just us.
(…we’re just lucky we don’t collect dust. )
There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy.
There’s nothing you can make that can’t be made.
No one you can save that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time -
It’s easy.
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