How can a long-running religion push its original deity into the background in favor of a new one?

[Erebus]

Faith and worship is the fuel that provides a deity with its power and nourishment. The more worshippers a deity has, the more powerful it will become. In the beginning, a deity created humanity in its image for this very purpose, demanding that his creations worship him as the one true god with no others as equals. In time, humanity grew sinful and disobedient, leading the god to punish his creations with disasters, plagues, and other misfortunes on several occasions. A being known as the Demiurge sees this as an opportunity to hijack the religion and subvert the deity's position within the pantheon. This would allow him to grow in power at his rival's expense, as its followers would be fooled into worshipping him instead. It would take a lot of mental gymnastics for the deity's followers to simply accept that the demiurge is the real thing, disregarding everything that the religion and its history has taught them. Therefore, the imposter has posed himself as the son of the deity sent to save humanity, providing a link to the god and maintaining some continuity to the original faith to make the story more palatable. This 'son' would be born of a virgin through an immaculate conception and spend his short time on earth gathering converts to spread his message, unknowingly passing on misinformation to the masses. Eventually, this imposter allow himself to die as a martyr in a dramatic and symbolic fashion, sparing humanity the wrath of the deity and absolving it of its sins.

This story allows for the creation of a trinity of gods, with the false messiah taking the third spot within a pantheon below his 'father'. The ultimate goal of this dark messiah is to monetize faith as a trojan horse, steering adulation and belief meant for the original god in his direction. In the short term, this necessitates patience, requiring it to remain subservient to the deity and empower it while it empowers itself. In time, the religion would change its focus to the dark messiah entirely. This would eventually starve the god of nourishment and allow the Demiurge to supplant him, killing him off in the process and fully take his place. This comes with risk, as a switcharoo of this magnitude leads to accusation of heresy, leading to schisms. This should be avoided as it leads to unnecessary wars between factions that thin the herd and damages worship, hurting the imposter's goals in the long term. How can a religion successfully accomplish this convincingly after thousands of years of doctrine without raising suspicion among the masses?

 

[JBCrowson]

Apologies if this is too political...
One might argue some branches of christianity have dispensed with Christ / Yahweh / Jehovah in favour of worshipping cold hard cash. Extrapolating that into a story setting, if the new deity allows adherents an easier lifestyle, while not refuting all of the previous dogmas, it might succeed in taking over the structure of the religion.

 

[pmmg]

Well, the above does look like it is borrowing a bit from Christianity.

For story purposes, you pretty much get to make any time period you like. A few thousand years seems sufficient.

But, if I was to read this, I am sure I would be asking a lot of questions. The very least of which would be, in a few thousand years, there was no reaction from the deity? or other deity-like beings?

 

[Queshire]

borrowing a bit from Christianity sure sounds like an understatement. I mean, if you're ripping off Christianity to this point already then why don't you just look at the history of Christianity? Yes, it got involved in plenty of conflicts and wars, but the Demiurge is a fool if he thinks he can get anywhere without taking some risk.

Of course, all this presumes that that the original god is limited in his ability to do stuff in the mortal world or isn't paying attention.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Not sure where's you're going with this. The demiurge is a Platonic conception of the creation / creature where there is a higher "good" god and then a lower. not so good creator (originally called an artisan and these days sort of confused with Satan) working under God. It's one of the first solutions to the problem of evil ie God is all good, God is all powerful, bad things happen. The demiurge is neither all good nor all powerful so the problem goes away.

But that's by the by. The point is that while the demiurge starts with Plato, he continues as a concept / deity in some of the gnostic faiths already. So, while I'd suggest changing the name to avoid upsetting people who may actually follow this faith, you already have your example to follow - save that none of the demuirge following faiths have gone anywhere and the teachings have largely fallen by the wayside. Also nowhere in any Christian tracts does it claim that God gets his power from being worshipped.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[L.L. Maurizi]

Before I suggest a way to do it, a couple of notes:

Your background is a concept very similar to the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church, as in essentially identical (as others have mentioned). This is not to say that it holds no merit as a story, but if your intent is not to write a story that mirrors the catholic church (to praise, or criticize, or expose, etc), I'd consider some major changes.
That said, I am confused about one thing: The Demiurge is trying to replace the original god by pretending to be his son among the humans. Does the original god not see this? is the original god not interested at all in a false son, claiming to have the powers of the original god and be sent by them, gaining traction and power on "earth"?

The demiurge has such a following that he becomes one of a Trinity which includes the original God. Is the original god not noticing?

To finally answer your question: given how similar to the beliefs of Catholicism your background is, why not have the demiurge trigger something similar to what actually happened with Emperor Constantine during the Roman Empire?

In Rome, when christianity was gaining immense power among the masses, the slaughters of christians by pagans and various retaliations were creating severe repercussions on the Empire as a whole, its politics, social issues, finances. Constantine knew he needed to make Christianity the official religion of Rome, so he "revealed" that he had a dream where God told him that Rome would prevail if it followed "this symbol" (Ad hoc signo vinces), the cross.

He incorporated new christian practices with old pagan rituals to make the transition seamless. With a couple of big military victories to seal the deal, in just a few years, the christian religion became the official religion of Rome and its very vast holdings.

Now replace christian with the Demiurge's "religion" and pagan with the old god, and you will essentially have the whole thing already written.

I do, however, recommend you take a different route, unless you're trying to write a story that novelizes the history of Christianity.

 

[Rexenm]

You could always do it with an outbreak of pain. This would act like a catalyst, turning the tides on good and setting them to evil, with this new god. There would be a monetisation of faith and worship, and this could starve the worship and faith of the previous god, and set it to this new god. However, it could be possible to have this father as the demiurge. If one were to look at it through rose coloured glasses, it is possible to make any religion seem false. This is done by falsifying doctrine in favour of hedonism. Then this hedonism is rewarded with a better option than the previous, one being real, the other false. What I see in this situation, is that one could not offer a good enough result with the previous, making it necessary for an alternative. Why not make this previous option worthy of faith and worship, and have either the son or father demiurge capable of worship and faith with this previous religion, so that the only option is monetisation, preventing a great catastrophe that one could perceive in the future with a worship and faith incompetence; like war or famine, the result being betrayal or neglect.

 

[Fettju]

Faith and worship is the fuel that provides a deity with its power and nourishment

Not to be nitpickick, but, no, in reality it's attention. Attention creates reality and it creates/fuels gods.

You could say that faith and worship are attention, but it's not. Fear is also attention. A "demonic" god could be created of fueled by giving it attention by fearing it. (And I don't mean "fear God", but fear as in, there is a monster stalking us outside the nimbus of the campfire)

 

[D. Gray Warrior]

You could have the religion retcon things. Instead of doing away with the old god entirely, they could say that the new god is the same person as the old one all along and merge them. They could then start emphasizing the aspects of the new god while downplaying the old one, thus becoming less relevant over time.