# Fantasy religions



## Chilari (Mar 1, 2011)

One thing I always used to completely ignore when writing fantasy was religion. I'm an atheist and don't really think much about religion during everyday life; and in popular culture these days, religion is generally sidelined. It's not part of the everyday lives of TV show characters or film heroes.

But after studying the ancient world for the last three and a half years, one thing that has struck me is that the ancient Greeks and Romans really made the worship of their gods a big thing. Competitions like the Olympic Games and the Great Dionysia (a theatrical competition) were all about the gods. The Olympic Games took place at a sanctuary; the Great Dionysia was named after the god it was intended to praise, Dionysus, who was the god of theatre (and also wine, grapes, dancing naked in circles, etc). The Romans had shrines to the household gods in their homes. Gods were part of myth and legend, the stories they told each other in the evenings; at parties they poured libations of wine on the floor to the gods before they started drinking; mosaics, vase paintings and sculpture depicted gods and in many cases were dedicated to the gods at sanctuaries all over Greece and Italy. Votive dedications were given to the gods by merchants in exchange for a safe journey equal to one tenth of the profits from that journey.

In the modern world, religion is the source of both unity and conflict. Even within one religious group there are wildly divergent views on certain issues - condoms, female priests, abortion, issues of sexuality.

And yet, I realised a little over a year ago, I tend to ignore religious considerations when I'm writing. But religion is something which affects us quite a bit, even if we aren't religious. It can provide a character with a motive for acting in a certain way, create instant conflict or harmony between two characters or groups, or be used to explain a character's prejudices, expectations, hopes or fears. And more than that, it can add believability to a world and can be used to demonstrate precisely how much an event had affected your characters when something catastrophic leads a character to either embrace religion or question it, or change the way they worship.

So what I want to know is, do you include religion in your novel? What is the nature of that religion - a single god, many gods that all require worship, many gods from which each character can choose which one or two to worship, no gods but certain forces of nature, like Water or Wind, which people worship without personifying them? How does it affect your characters? How does it influence the world, the prejudices of the people who inhabit it, and their attitudes?

In my current story, I've got a set of seven gods, each linked to certain aspects of nature and human existence - Linsear, for example, is the goddess of water, rain, streams, rivers, lakes, cleanliness, purity and virginity. Shuve is the god of all things ancient - mountains, ruins and old buildings, cemeteries and the dead, and traditions. Six of the seven gods have had an associated prophet at some point in the last 400 eyars before the story (I'm holding the last one for a future story), and this prophet had a profession in some way linked to the god or goddess - so Linsear's prophet was a washerwoman.

I apply this religion to the story in several ways. Their names are given to the days of the week - Shuve's day, Linsear's day etc. Certain annual festivals crop up, one of them forcing my characters to choose, after a virus has killed three quarters of the population, whether to risk the now unsafe wilderness to go to a pilgrimage site unguarded by the men of the group in order to attend a women only festival, or whether to remain safe at their farm. One character, whose brother, now dead, was a priest, experiences a crisis of faith and questions the very existance of the gods, only to be shunned for expressing such doubts by other characters, who fear the wrath of the gods will follow his disbelief and destory him.

I also have a whole host of swears and oaths based on the gods and the prophets - Dehbu's breath is one, referring to the prophet of the goddess of light, fire, glass and mirrors, who was a glassblower and is a sort of patron saint-esque figure to people with certain skilled trades. Swear phrases like this are selected according to the pre-virus profession or status of the swearer. Gods names are not used to swear, exactly, but are used to emphasise urgency - "run as though Sernald himself was following you" is something I've used, referring to the god of madness, rabies, beer, cats, and opiates and other drugs, in this case in his role as the god of madness. This way I can avoid using realworld swearwords, I can give greater emphasis to the word "bastard" (which crops up a lot since illegitimacy is a big thing to my characters, particularly if the parents are from wildly different statuses, and one of my characters is the illegitimate son of the dead king and a woman from a skilled trade background), and I can avoid certain phrases which are based upon Christian ideas, such as the phrase "go to hell". Instead, I can have something like "Sernald take you for his prophet" (Sernald being the god who hasn't had one yet).

And woah what a long post. I'd love to hear how other people deal with religion in their stories.


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## Philip Overby (Mar 1, 2011)

I almost always include religion of some sort in my novels.  Even if people are praising seeds, praying to their weapons, or worshiping cat statues.  It seems bizarre not to since almost all civilizations known to humans have had some religious views, even if sparse.  Your world sounds similar to certain Native American beliefs.  Their culture was heavily influenced by their crops so it was paramount that they get a bountiful harvest.  Sounds like you put a lot of thought into it, so for your particular story it works well.

I think it is always good to use religion the same as you would use armies or fantasy creatures.  If it enhances the story you are going to tell, then focus on it.  

Actually, I take back what I said.  I don't always use religion in my stories.  If the story is more character driven, then I focus on the characters.  There may be a mention of some type of religion, but only in passing.  

All in all, I think fantasy worlds devoid of any kind of religion would be fine, but I think it always enhances your world if it exists.


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## JCFarnham (Mar 1, 2011)

As far as religion goes I haven't detailed much of it in my setting. Sooo I guess you have a lot more figured out than me really haha. 

What I do have however is that a God [used with the vaguest gender-roles possible], know to the common people as the Divine. This God is the supposed root of the powers of my Nine Stars [aka the mages of living legend] and it is said that the Divine divided its power up between Nine mortals and then swanned off somewhere. That is about it really. I assume that because of this the people of my setting don't really worship deities as such, rather, tend to make oaths like "guardian's protect me" and so on [Guardian here refering to the Nine]. 

Yeah I have thought about it so much, but it would make sense for different nations in my setting to take different views on the divine, based on rumour and folkloric vocal traditions andd what not.


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## Mythos (Mar 1, 2011)

In my worlds I enjoy working on the religion and trying to figure out how it would affect the civilization my MCs live in. In one world I have three types of gods: the Clay Gods, the Stone Gods, and the Chaos Gods. 

The Clay Gods are the five gods of humanity. They are called they Clay Gods because the earth, their mother, formed them from clay. The civilization that worships them use golems as parts of their everyday lives. When a golem is created one of the Clay Gods is asked a blessing from. If you are creating a golem guardian you would ask a blessing from Mealren the god of warriors and war. If you want a laborer you would ask a blessing from Peren the god of laborers. 

The Stone Gods are the predecessors of the the Clay Gods, sort of like the Titans of Greek myths. As you may have guessed they were formed from stone. The Stone Gods are the gods of animals and the elements, everything that humanity finds difficult to control. They share their sphere of power with the Chaos Gods who were once Stone Gods, but they betrayed their mother and had their souls ripped from their bodies. They are the gods of natural disasters and negative emotions. 

This makes the civilization that worships, or at least knows about, these gods fearful of of anything they can't control. The rulers of their pantheon, three goddesses in a class all their own, are the goddesses of order, the goddess of death, earth and life, and love. Because their pantheon is ruled by goddesses, the civilization has a matriarchal society.


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## Ophiucha (Mar 1, 2011)

Also an atheist, and I tend to have atheist protagonists and worlds that are at least somewhat modern, modern-ish enough that atheism isn't abnormal. I have religions in my world, and Mordiggian - one of the characters - is often referred to as the God of Death, but while it makes for a good backdrop to the story, I still don't focus much on it. Things are somewhat incidentally influenced by the religion. Holidays and occasionally places are named for the Old Ones, and out of instinct, my main character often calls the Old Ones gods, even though he doesn't believe them to be divine. Much of the artwork and whatnot has religious symbolism, but my characters just view them as paintings, not as holy in some way.

I think atheism is viewed somewhat differently in my story, and indeed, it reflects my own thoughts on the matter. I think that religion has little to do with belief, but instead reverence and worship. The Old Ones of this world are unquestionably present and very powerful. They created elves, and they created the Earth. My characters are atheists not because they don't believe in them - that would be foolish - but because they do not respect or fear them. They are there, and they are influences in the world, but they would not worship them.


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## Ravana (Mar 1, 2011)

I include it when and for the same reasons as I include anything else in a story: when it belongs there. 

There's no special reason to consider religion a mandatory presence for a world. Tolkien had very little of it: the elves occasionally referred to their gods, but didn't always think of them in the same way we do; it was never mentioned at all in relation to humans, dwarves and hobbits; Sauron _was_ a god, but no mention was ever made of whether or not his followers worshipped him. (If you read the _Silmarillion_, combined with the appendixes in _Return of the King_, you learn that balrogs were also gods… and so was Gandalf.) In Steven Brust's "Taltos" series, the gods appear regularly as characters–but are viewed as "gods" in the sense we usually employ only by one segment of the populace… and it's not clear what the gods themselves think on the matter. In many other settings (Moorcock and Cook come to mind), gods make appearances but may or may not perform religious functions, and even where they are understood to, the religions themselves often don't receive passing mention, much less detail. Fritz Leiber had considerable fun with gods, treated both as religious figures and as characters… including one story where the gods which Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser formerly followed decide to take revenge on them for straying from their respective paths.

In the best-detailed of my fantasy worlds, nobody is an atheist, for the same reason you bring up: the gods are active parts of the world, not remote, hypothetical ideals. Everybody _knows_ there are gods, in other words… "belief" doesn't enter into it. Whether or not the inhabitants are theist in the sense of practicing religion is another story. The only question is how the characters interact with the gods, which, as often as not, comes down to what the characters want to get out of the relationship. And what the god wants out of it… something which, in most settings, never gets explored. And of course, one land's "god" is often another's "demon"–very often the next land over–which is no different from our own mythic traditions.

By contrast, most of the rest of the time I ignore religion altogether. It's just another piece of stage dressing… though perhaps one that can prove more difficult than most, as, unless the religion is transparently similar to something the reader is already familiar with, its effects on the world and what can be expected from the characters in relation to it may either require more delineation than you want to engage in, or else be distracting, even confusing, without contributing anything to the reader's understanding of the action. The reason it's so prevalent in the above setting is because I built that setting "from the ground up," as it were, independently of any use in a story, specifically so that I could use it as a basis for any number of stories should I later care to. (I have in fact started writing bits of a couple stories and a potential novel… on the other hand, my "history"–written as a very conversational, often irreverent narrative–now exceeds 160 pages and 95,000 words. And I haven't even brought it up to the present day.…  ) But since the gods were going to be the reason things were the way they were, I felt like trying to work forward through the events that created the setting, rather than filling them in later "as needed." Whether or not it ultimately proves fruitful–or even convenient–it's been an interesting exercise.


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## Donny Bruso (Mar 1, 2011)

Religion is a major driving factor in my current fantasy project. Essentially the entire conflict is going to come about because of the manipulation of the head of the church. That being said, my personal religious views are complicated, and with the exception of the demon-possessed ones, none of my characters seem to be terribly devout, which is something I need to work on. Every story needs a religious nut somewhere. I have a fairly large document somewhere with the beliefs and religious codes and what not for the church of Yanus, and another one for the cult of Vivendei who opposes him. There is a third religion floating around in the mix, somewhat skin to druidism, but without the magic component of it. One of the things that I've found adds realism to the story is what Chilari mentioned, curses or blessings that are tied to your religion. 

Somehow we got the brilliant idea to name our god 'god' which is utterly unimaginative at the least, but if you look at other fantasy works, where the gods do have names, such as David Weber's  Oath of Swords Series, or the tv series Rome that ran on HBO, or Abercrombie's First Law trilogy to a lesser extent, religion is woven into the fabric of the story, and it adds one more element of realism to the world that they create.


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## At Dusk I Reign (Mar 9, 2011)

I've never included religion in anything I've ever written (despite using its tropes as a convenient hook). It has no place in my mythical world, and as I'm automatically biased against it, it has no particular relevance to my characters' world either. It's not a topic to be avoided, though; given its relevance to the development of Western society it will doubtless play a great part in world-creation. I avoid it merely because it has no relevance to my life, and as what I write is invariably an expression of what I've experienced it never appears. It's a rich source, though, and one which deserves to be mined.


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## Falunel (Mar 9, 2011)

@Donny Bruso: A bit of a chicken-or-egg question- do we call deities "gods" because the Christian god is called God and Christianity played a major role in shaping English, or was the term for a deity "god" and people were uncreative when deciding the name for the Christian deity? 

Anyway, my entire world worships the same pantheon of gods. What differs is how they worship them.

In Clan Meirales, a major theocratic country, the system is half polytheistic and half animistic. There are many gods, and though some are more powerful than others, there isn't a "supreme" god. In addition, the gods are not all-powerful- they embody a force of nature, and coexist with mortals. In that country, people pray to the gods each day under the belief that gods draw strength from it, and hold them in high reverence as benefactors of mortalkind.

However, in other areas, though the existence of other gods is acknowledged, most get sidelined in favor of one god. Clan Kanamara, located in the far, cold North, focuses worship on the god of fire. Clan Libranel worships the god of wisdom, Libra, who made their language for them and lifted them from ignorance.

In addition, not all societies view the gods as benevolent or merciful. Half of the Feralfolk are deer-like beings, while the other half are wolf-tiger-lion creatures who ceaselessly hunt and devour the deer (and keep in mind that _all_ Feralfolk are fully sentient). Their legends hold that once predators and prey were one race- however, one half enslaved the other and began to lay waste to the world. To punish them, the goddess of the earth changed that half to deer and the enslaved to predators, and ordained that the deer would be mercilessly hunted for the rest of eternity.

As for the actual gods, I only have a few named- the three gods of celestial light, Solael (sunlight), Falunel (moonlight), and Celerel (starlight); the god of wisdom, Libra; the god of healing, Lovani; and the White God, who embodies chaos, birth, and destruction.  

Religion was sidelined at first, but it's gradually growing in significance. The Ancients, who were essentially immortals created by the gods to aid mortals, gained greater roles in shaping the world and linking it together. Some of my short stories revolve around the clash of religions. The cataclysmic event that threw the world into chaos gained a new dimension in religion, when it severely shook people's faith and the gods declined in power. Then there's the end of the world, which takes different meanings for each religion- some see it as a great redemption, when the world will be restored to its former glory and the gods will walk the earth. Others see it as an act of divine vengeance and a literal end to all things, and as a result there's a clash between those who want to hasten the coming and those who want to stop it.

I haven't figured out which side is correct yet. It's complicated.


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## Donny Bruso (Mar 9, 2011)

@Falunel I don't go in for those types of Philosophical questions much... I understand it's a thought exercise, but one which clearly has no answer. Or rather too many answers. I tend to follow your latter suggestion, that people were uncreative in naming god. I mean clearly you can't just call him 'Bill' that would be weird. But something better than 'god'. My outlook on life, cynical as it is, it to always assume people took the path of least effort and greatest stupidity.


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## Mdnight Falling (Mar 9, 2011)

I don't think I've ever read any fictional other worldly or fantasy book that didn't include some form of religion being a big thing . I think it's just natural that things like what we write should have a religious base.. Though even that is just sterotypical isn't it  perhaps someone should write about a godless char  Has that been done before


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## Mdnight Rising (Mar 9, 2011)

I have always  have some sort of religion in my stories and in most of my  novel works.....  things wouldnt seem weird without some form of religion or another


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## Ophiucha (Mar 9, 2011)

Mdnight Falling said:


> I don't think I've ever read any fictional other worldly or fantasy book that didn't include some form of religion being a big thing . I think it's just natural that things like what we write should have a religious base.. Though even that is just sterotypical isn't it  perhaps someone should write about a godless char  Has that been done before


 
In fantasy, I would think the most famous atheist character is Thomas Covenant. But it isn't entirely uncommon to not include religion at all, or have characters who actively deny it. _Eragon_ by Christopher Paolini has an entire society of atheists (his elves), and most of the major characters are atheists. None of my characters are religious, and the relatively minor ones who are certainly make no point of it. Some stories just don't focus on it, some stories just don't have it. I think one could also say that atheist authors are more likely to have atheist protagonists, and since atheism in general is on the rise...

@Falunel: To my knowledge, the word God derives from the German word for 'to call' or something similar (to evoke, perhaps), and was attributed to the Christian god. That said, I don't know what the followers of Christ referred to Him as prior to the common usage of 'God', and it may very well have been Deus, which itself just means God or Deity. They may have just called him by Yahweh, though. I could probably dig it up in some book if I could be bothered to get out of bed today.


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## Mdnight Falling (Mar 9, 2011)

Good point.. I've read Eragon and I never paid attention to the fact that the elves were athiests LOL


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## Ravana (Mar 9, 2011)

Falunel said:


> I haven't figured out which side is correct yet. It's complicated.



One of the problems with religion as an active, effective force is that pretty much either all sides have to be "correct," or else none of them: if only some of them were–that is, if only some religions received aid from their divinities–the others would quickly die out… a sort of Theological Darwinism, if you will. People can believe anything they want, as long as no one is _obviously_ receiving benefits from their worship–essentially, what we have in the real world: if you feel you've received divine assistance before, I'm not going to argue with you–but if god was on anybody's "side," it would be hard to explain why that side _ever_ loses… unless there's also a god pulling for the opposition. 

(Does anybody else ever find it odd you never hear football players on the losing team say "Well, thanks to the Lord we got screwed today"?  A maxim I have, which you are free to use as you like: "God does not bet on sporting events.")

Mind you, that says nothing about the _extent_ to which mortal interpretations of their divinities are "correct": if the god in question doesn't care how it is worshipped, or what strange rituals, mysteries, etc. they buy into, then the religions themselves can vary wildly, even when they're worshipping the same deity. There's no special reason any of them need to be "correct" about the end of the world–since odds are strongly in favor of you never writing it, at least not unless you've decided to, well, end that world. (Note that a great many religions worldwide _do_ include "historical" "ends" of the world: that is, it's already happened once, or even several times.)

Basically, I see the interaction of divinities, religions and the world as breaking down into the following possibilities:

(1) There are no religions; or, alternately, you don't bother writing them.

(2) Religions receive no overt assistance from divinities.
(2A) There are no divinities; everybody's "wrong."
(2B) One or more divine beings exist, but for whatever reason do not provide overt assistance. (More subtle assistance may be another matter.) 
- One very probable reason would be the divinities simply don't care. After all, why should they? (See the final bullet point for more on this.)
- Another is that they _can't_. Maybe the only "benefits" involve what happens to the soul after death.
(2C) One or more divine beings exist, but have good reasons not to provide overt assistance on a routine basis; exceptional situations, in which they are willing to provide such assistance, may arise, but will be exceedingly rare.
- One possibility would be that the divinities have a tacit–or even overt–agreement to avoid situations which would bring them into direct conflict with one another.

Note that in both (2B) and (2C), it is possible for some religions to be "correct"–that is, have a real but largely inactive patron–and others to be "incorrect."

(3) Religions do receive overt assistance from divinities. Here's where it starts to get, as you so appropriately put it, "complicated":
- There will be no "false" religions: any religion that survives, let alone prospers, will be receiving assistance from _something_. (They may well be incorrect, even deceived, as to the nature of this "something." It might not be "divine" at all: it could be an impostor, capable of fulfilling requests magically or even by direct, physical action… but its followers _will_ be getting something for their worship, or they'll turn elsewhere.)
- Who receives assistance may be extended or limited in any number of ways, anything from exclusive priestly hierarchies being the sole mediators of divine power, to anyone invoking the deity's name–perhaps even insincerely–receiving some benefit. (Possibly to the invoker's surprise! "You rang?"  )
- What benefits are extended can also vary wildly, and may depend upon the deity's sphere of activity, the petitioner making suitable sacrifice, or just about any other factor imaginable. Benefits may be extended automatically (even unconsciously) at some levels, with restrictions at others. (It's easy to imagine more popular divinities being "busy" much of the time, as they get bombarded by invocations, if the extension of their benefits is _not_ unconscious… though they can always have "staffs"–angels, saints, etc.–dealing with "minor" requests. And it's not hard to see the story possibilities inherent in the divine equivalent of "palace intrigues".…)
- What will _not_ happen is one religion's followers receiving _significantly greater_ benefits than any other: this would result in "natural selection" again. This does not mean that there won't be people who follow certain "narrow" religions that cater to their interests, only that these will necessarily provide greater benefit _within that area_–i.e. to that individual–than following an otherwise more "favored," widespread (and probably more socially acceptable) faith. Choice of religion–or at least the choice to not follow the locally "dominant" religion, if there is one–becomes a cost-benefit analysis.
- Divinities will almost certainly "care" about their followers' activities to a certain extent, if they are going to lend portions of their power to them (and, again, the ones that don't will probably see their followings diminish over time, for various reasons). 
-- Among other things, this means that there will never be actively hostile sectarianism to any great or lasting extent among followers of the _same_ deity. It's hard to see where a deity would find war between its followers to be a good thing–even if it's a war god, or a death god; even then… who receives divine favor in such situations? Both? Then both sides will feel finked out. Neither? Then both sides will wonder why they're bothering with this god instead of one that will help them. Just one side? It wins; heresy stamped out, refer back to previous arguments for why only "real/true" faiths exist.

Finally, for (2B), (2C) and especially (3):
- What are _the deity's own motives_ for doing what it does? Why would a "divine" being–whatever that means in your situation–_bother_ doing favors for worshippers? What's the _god_ getting out of it? The answer(s) to this question can go a long way to fleshing out how the religions work… and depending on what they are, they don't have to be the same answer(s) for each individual deity. Here's where I'd recommend putting in serious "character development" work: if you're going to have "real" divinities, as opposed to remote, impersonal abstractions, define them as thoroughly as you would any other character; the results should breathe life into the religions formed around them. Or, to look at it another way, if they're going to be doing work for your characters, make them do some for you, too.


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## At Dusk I Reign (Mar 9, 2011)

Ravana said:


> Does anybody else ever find it odd you never hear football players on the losing team say "Well, thanks to the Lord we got screwed today"?


 I don't follow sport, but I have seen earthquake victims and the like thank God for surviving their ordeal. Of course, this implies that their nominal deity didn't view those who died as worthy of life, and there's a moral quandary and a half.


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## Telcontar (Mar 9, 2011)

In my humble opinion, you can't have a fully formed world without religion. It's too central to the evolution of early cultures. Their environment shaped their religion, which then shaped their culture, which further shaped their religion, for a very interesting constant feedback loop. 

Inventing religions is fun. Also, studying religion can be a lot of fun. It's very interesting to look at the roots of various systems throughout the world and see the day-to-day worries that shaped these very old beliefs.


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## Ophiucha (Mar 9, 2011)

Telcontar said:


> In my humble opinion, you can't have a fully formed world without religion. It's too central to the evolution of early cultures. Their environment shaped their religion, which then shaped their culture, which further shaped their religion, for a very interesting constant feedback loop.


 
I think most worlds should have a religion, but I don't think it has to be mentioned in the story, or even part of the present culture. I mean, they may follow a different religion to the one that shaped many societal norms (we still call our weekdays for the Norse gods, but few to none of us believe in them) or they may simply be atheistic now. Besides which, it could be interesting to see how a world would have developed without religion. That's half the fun of worldbuilding, "what if"'ing. What if nobody thought to make a deity or Church or any such nonsense, and culture evolved off of something completely different.


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## Telcontar (Mar 9, 2011)

Ophiucha said:


> we still call our weekdays for the Norse gods, but few to none of us believe in them



I never knew that! Cool. Aren't months largely due to the Roman pantheon? Our calenders are kind of like a big God-name carousel...

As to the 'what if' about no one thinking up a deity or a religion, it might make an interesting story indeed. For me, I just cannot conceive of it. Early peoples answered their questions about the unknown - and practically everything was unknown to them! - through religion, and with any race or species that has even a passing resemblance to humans (as most very much do, even in the strangest of stories) I think the same thing would come about.


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## Ophiucha (Mar 9, 2011)

Telcontar said:


> I never knew that! Cool. Aren't months largely due to the Roman pantheon? Our calenders are kind of like a big God-name carousel...
> 
> As to the 'what if' about no one thinking up a deity or a religion, it might make an interesting story indeed. For me, I just cannot conceive of it. Early peoples answered their questions about the unknown - and practically everything was unknown to them! - through religion, and with any race or species that has even a passing resemblance to humans (as most very much do, even in the strangest of stories) I think the same thing would come about.


 
I know Julius and Augustus are July and August, and Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec are certainly Latin, but I can't say for the first bit of the calendar. As for that, I would point out that there are documented cases of atheist tribes, and India had a long tradition of atheism that corresponded to the Vedic religion. This all ignoring the widespread atheist thought among philosophers in Ancient Greece. Theism certainly has a function, but I think a society could and has formed from atheist thought. I imagine a society that lacked knowledge and lacked a religion would form itself around the quest for thought, with philosophers and professors taking positions in the government and an epic quest for a lost tome as opposed to a powerful sword.


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## Ravana (Mar 9, 2011)

January is for Janus, the Roman god of thresholds, who looks both forward and back. June, I would guess, is related to Juno, March to Mars; I'd have to check about the rest, though I would suspect these come from Latin sources as well. 

I see no reason why societies, even an entire world, could have evolved without ever postulating religion. In many ways, it seems at least as far-fetched to me to imagine unseen, mighty beings running the world as it does to imagine that people _wouldn't_ make them up to "explain" things they didn't understand.


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## Mdnight Falling (Mar 10, 2011)

July is and august are for roman rules.... I dunno about the rest LMAO


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## Ophiucha (Mar 10, 2011)

Googled a bit. February comes from the name of a ritual that occurred in the second month of the lunar calendar. April is ambiguous, but may derive from an alternative name for Venus/Aphrodite. May comes from Maia, a Greek goddess. So that covers all of them. Basically, the first six are named after something religious, the seventh and eighth come from Caesars, and the last four are just Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten. (In case you cared, the calendar was originally ten months, which is why they aren't Nine, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve.)


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## Mdnight Falling (Mar 10, 2011)

WOOT! That was actually really interesting >.< I think I need a life if things like this get my interest so fully LOL


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## Falunel (Mar 10, 2011)

@Donny Bruso: Oddly, though I'm a logic-oriented person, I constantly play with thought-experiment questions_ because _they have so many possible answers. Might be because of my not-logical notion that everything needs a logical reason...

@Ravana: The setup goes like this:
Early ages: everyone worshipped the same gods, in the same way, and the gods essentially stepped in to make sure everything stayed calm and played nice. So everyone recieved the same amount of aid, and people were okay with each other.
Then some kind of huge cataclysm occured- what it was exactly, I'm not certain. But it killed most of the Ancients and broke the bonds between the gods and the world, rendering the gods unable to intervene. At this point, the world falls into chaos, and here the original faith begins to diverge. Fast forward a thousand or so years, and there's the world as it stands today, with the same gods portrayed in many different ways, along with the emergence of atheism and other, non-original religions starting to bud.
Right now, I'm going through and trying to patch up the holes. Your post really helped, especially with that last question. 

@Ophiucha: Thanks for the information. Now I wonder why they even switched over to calling God a different name, though. Might be just laziness/some kind of religious exclusivity... 
I remember studying ancient China in World History. The country had a form of ancestor worship and the emperor was considered divinely ordained, but its perception of the afterlife is different- the afterlife is essentially a continuation of current life, with bureaucracies and classes. IIRC, some Native Americans saw the afterlife the same way- you hunted and went to war.
Back to China- the driving force wasn't ancestor worship, though, but Confucianism. Most of life didn't focus around worship, but keeping things ordered and harmonious. It was more important to obey elders and superiors than it was to worship, and your age/rank determined a lot. Hopefully I didn't leave anything important out.


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## Ophiucha (Mar 10, 2011)

I would imagine that one guy decided to write God in his translation of the Bible and it happened to catch on. That tends to be the way of these things. And yeah, that is true of China, they cared far more for philosophy than for religion, and even the religion they did have did not serve the same purpose as it did in Ancient Greece or Egypt. There are a lot of small civilizations with some rather odd 'evolutionary' chains, some of which essentially had no religion at all. I think more fantasy writers/people in general could do to study them, see what makes them different.


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## Mdnight Falling (Mar 10, 2011)

In certain religious texts it's said God has 99 names.. the most common one used in the holy bible is "I AM" as in "I am who I am" or "I Am sent me" etc... I've learned most of the names God has.. aren't names at all they are attributes  Like Gracious, merciful. etc. But yes these are names that people called God too. They say the 99th name is the actual name it's forbidden to say it Why I dunno. I know I'd prefer to call someone but their real name rather than by "nick names" or "assumed" names... but alas this is the world the bible was written and rewritten in. So we today don't even know ALL 99 names God was given other then a few like the ones  the Jews called him which I can't remember the letters that make up the word but phonetically it's pronounced, "Yaway", and the attribute names and I AM, and God, Lord, and whatever else you decide to call the divine entity that pulls ours strings.. But we still do not know the beings true name nor what he looks like.

I think that's the true basis behind religion, even if it's a faux religion in a book. It isn't knowing that the "god" is there actually listening, or knowing what to call it. It isn't even a question of whether or not it truly exists or not. It's simply something to believe, to give faith and comfort in a time of need or thanks in a time of joy. And it's for these reasons religion plays a large part in the creation of fantasy novels. Just like we.. Even if we don't believe formally in God... everyone needs something to believe in, disbelieve in, or dislike >^.^<


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## Ophiucha (Mar 10, 2011)

@Mdnight; I'd tend to agree, at least in regards to Earth religions where the idea of God is an unknown. This is something I explore in my own work, actually, since fantasy so often forgoes 'belief' and skips right over to 'worship'. Many, many fantasy stories have their gods as certainties. They are not "maybe yes, maybe no" gods like ours, where (save a few who can logically be disproved), we are for the most part left waiting for death to know for sure. In my own story, the creatures called deities are without a shadow of a doubt real, and their impact on magic and the world is inarguable. It is the question of worship that drives one's theism - if you praise, fear, revere, whatever these creatures, you are religious, and if you don't, you aren't. I think that plays a small part in our own religions as well. Is belief in God alone enough to make one religious, or is it the reverence of God that makes one religious?


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## Mdnight Falling (Mar 10, 2011)

Hmmm.. That's an excellent question there. Belief alone in OUR world is usually enough to make someone a believer... if not overly religious. In fantasy books like tamora Pierce's Immortal's Quartet,  The gods separate themselves from people.. though sometimes, they mingle in ways they know they shouldn't which is why Dane had the wild magic.. but Dane even though she was half god, didn't know she was. her mother kept it from her. and unless I'm mistaken and need to re-read my tortall books, Dane also didn't truly believe in the gods until the immortals escaped from the god Realm. So really it all depends on the circumstances of the char I suppose  I feel personally, religion in stories is not very different then religion in the "real" world. the gods usually just have different names and most of the time, they are a fact not an assumption. which grounds the religion more if you ask me  Let's be realistic. you can't be atheist if god is standing right in front of you and you KNOW it's God.. Even if you don't want to believe it to be 

Oddly enough.. I think religion is the one thing I've actually managed to successfully leave completely out of my story LOL! It just dawned on me that there are no gods.. well no I do reference one god in my story. but it's not major. I mean religion isn't really a part of my story LOL


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## Ophiucha (Mar 10, 2011)

Mdnight Falling said:


> Let's be realistic. you can't be atheist if god is standing right in front of you and you KNOW it's God.. Even if you don't want to believe it to be


That is, in fact, exactly what I believe. I believe that we cannot know in a God or not, because there is no proof (but there is no counterproof, either, so I accept the chance), but I consider myself an atheist because no matter which God it is, and no matter how true I knew him to be, I _couldn't_ follow or worship them. Even if their ideals perfectly matched my own. This translates into my story where Gods exist, and are undoubtedly the creators of magic and their world, but my characters (the atheist ones, at least) do not worship, praise, or fear them. They acknowledge their significance in the world, but they do not do their bidding or pray to them or follow their laws (beyond the ones that are universal).

This is why I think belief is only really one side of the coin. You have to be able to respect a God in order to be a true theist. Could you call yourself a Christian if you believe in God, but do not _like_ God, perhaps even _hate_ God, and you do not follow his teachings? I don't think so.


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## Mdnight Falling (Mar 10, 2011)

Of course not. then again in our world, there is no proof that god exists. In our world religion regardless of what form God takes to said religion, is mostly based on belief. you belief there is a higher power so you strive to emulate the wishes of said higher power. But even in our world the ones that "follow" god truly don't. If they did. there wouldn't be religious wars, christians wouldn't hate jews and muslims...Mormons wouldn't think they're the only ones getting into heaven.. etc... In every religious book I've read and I've read the three majors.. the torrah, the Koran, and the Holy Bible, it clearly states that we are not the judges of the world. That it isn't our place to judge other people's actions or ways. That we are not to hate someone simply because they believe things differently then we do... Yet, EVERY person in the world does or has done just that...so my next question to you is what is religion? Does a true follow of any god really exist or are we simply no better then the "evil doers" we condemn in our stories for doing what we ourselves do 

I think the reason religion has played such a strong point in fiction novels, and not just fantasy ones either... read some ayn Rand she's epic on religion once you forget that the book is really about philosophy LOL,... Is because we all want to strive to be what we should, what is embedded in us to be good. After all the characters we write about come from ourselves. so isn't it safe to say that while we have written this great story that millions of people have read and still talk about, that when you look back.. It was simply our selves the good guys foiled and ourselves the villain tried to foil. In any book I think it's essential to sit back and look it over from your inner self and see why the story hits the notes in your heart the way it does. Perhaps there's a part of you, a small part of you, that wishes you really did fully and completely believe in god.. Or if you ARE a devout religious person, there may be a small part of you that wishes you weren't so much the "I'm holier than thou art" type


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## Ophiucha (Mar 10, 2011)

I guess that would explain why, good or evil, any character who gets more than a line of dialogue in my story is an atheist.


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## Mdnight Falling (Mar 10, 2011)

LOL! More then likely. Our characters are nothing more then reflections of ourselves. our good, bad, actual, etc each character is like an attribute of ourselves >^.^< That's my belief anyway. and there's nothing wrong with being an Atheist. I, personally fully believe in god and am pettrified of not doing what ever he put me to do, but It isn't my place to judge others. If god never intended there to be other kinds of people, then there wouldn't be  so be proud that you're who you are >^.^<


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## Donny Bruso (Mar 10, 2011)

Ophiucha said:


> Could you call yourself a Christian if you believe in God, but do not _like_ God, perhaps even _hate_ God, and you do not follow his teachings? I don't think so.


 
I think maybe you don't know enough Christians, because that's exactly what a large number of them do... While trying to convert you to be like them.

As far as myself, I make a distinction between believing and being religious. I believe in God. However, I do not attend church services, save weddings/funerals (at which time I get a severe case of nervousness that I will burst into flame as I enter the building) I don't read my bible, and I don't practice the tenets of the faith that I was raised in. So I would call myself a believer, but definitely not religious. 

I will cheerfully sit and discuss the ins and outs of religion with people all day long, as long as they don't preach at me. Organized religion is, in my opinion, a complete and utter sham designed to herd people like the sheep they choose to be. I think I'll excuse myself to get a towel to wipe up the little puddle of cynicism that dripped off of that statement and call it quits before I offend anyone who does happen to be religious, which was certainly not my intent.


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## Chilari (Mar 10, 2011)

I think there's also the issue of monoreligionism, which is a word I just made up, but bear with me. It is assumed that one can belong to one religion only, probably because several of the main religions in the modern world dictate that no other deity can be worshipped alongside their's. But not all religions are mutually exclusive. The way the ancient Greeks worshipped was to effectively believe unquestioningly in the entire Olympiad, but to select one or two of them to worship primarily. Hence you got priests of Poseidon but no priests of all the gods or, until the Roman Pantheon, temples to all the gods. While you could argue that this was monoreligiousism, I would also like to point out that both the Greeks and later the Romans were quite happy to add a god from a different culture to their list - Serapis, for example, or Isis. And the Romans were happy to incorporate the deities of cultures they absorbed into worship by linking the indigenous god to a Roman one. Hence you get Sulis Minerva at Bath in England - Sulis, goddess of the hot spring there, was likened to Minerva, Roman goddess of intelligence and feminine crafts, due to various similarities.

Enabling religions to not be mutually exclusive would be a very interesting thing to see in a novel. Also in protest to the assumption of monoreligioism in the 21st century, I am considering putting down Discordianism, Athorism, Pastafarianism and Invisible Pink Unicornism down in the religion section of the census when it comes round later this month in the UK. They aren't mutually exclusive, provided Eris is considered the foremost and none of them are Thor in disguise. Which they're not, because as an Athorist I don't believe in Thor.

While in real life I am in fact an atheist, I don't want to be, well, preachy about it in my writing. I don't believe in any superior being, but I could be wrong. I want tehre to be that uncertainty in my stories too - while my characters generally assume the gods are there, some continuing to worship them while others seek to rebel against them since they blame the gods for the plague, there is no undeniable evidence one way or the other for anything they say or for the existance of the gods at all, but similarly there is no proof that the gods do not exist.


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## Mdnight Falling (Mar 10, 2011)

Bravo Donny! I couldn't have said it better.. And Chilari... I love that you're forming your own dictionary! I have my own too >.> LMAO!  Anyway, the whole "you can be only one religion" is a crock. that's what society says.. I for one think outside the box. when asked my relgion I say "God" really ask anyone LOL Why? Because I have been, Jewish which I was born, christian, Baptist (I swear they are just their own thing >.<), Muslam, Buddist, and Wiccan. NONE of them sat fully with me. christians trash everyone who aren't christians, jews think they own they own the world (money wise maybe,... but let's face facts money=evil), Buddists are far too detached from the events of the world.. Though I'd love to learn Ta-chi and warrior monk stuff! and Wiccans are too confused within their OWN sectors to really pay attention to the reasons others don't count them as being a "real" religion even though they have been acknowledged in the US since 1935 as a legit religion.

I took the points that spoke to me.. the things all the religious books had in common as to what a godly person does and does not do. I want to be as close to god as possible. I don't believe that can truly be achieved unless you look into EVERYTHING written on the subject. So I have personally read the three major Holy books of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. I have also read about Buddah and I THRIVE of the Tao Te Ching.. My daughter loves the Tao of Pooh and the Te of Piglet which is Buddism told by the only true buddist I know.. Winnie the Pooh. The thing about religion is this. If you aren't 100% comfortable with how you are "forced" of have chosen to be religious, then don't do it.. Find the path that is for you. And always remember.. Our time is not god's, our arms aren't long enough to box with God... and God is the only judge of the people of the world not us >^.^< You'll be happier when you stop looking at the flaws in people and see the good points instead trust me >^.^<


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## Donny Bruso (Mar 11, 2011)

@Chilari - The Invisible Pink Unicorns were supposed to be a secret. Now you've gone and let them out of the bag. Do you know how hard it is to recapture an Invisible Pink Unicorn? _sigh_


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## Ravana (Mar 12, 2011)

Donny Bruso said:


> Do you know how hard it is to recapture an Invisible Pink Unicorn?



Hmm… can't say as I do, since I've never seen one. Or have I…? 

Is this the proper forum for me to reveal that I am the Duly Elected Messiah of the Church of the Carnivorous Eggplant? 

(Believe it or not, that's _not_ a joke. I really am. Long story.)


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## Dragonsooth (Mar 26, 2011)

It sounds to me that, despite your personal aethism, your characters may have need of something to believe in(or an antagonist, not sure).  That you believe as you do and would go through the work to create that in your universe is atypical to the given laziness many of us feel concerining subjects we find trivial at best.  Kudos, thank you for bothering to add a layer of realism to your world!


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## Mdnight Falling (Mar 28, 2011)

Ravana said:


> Hmm… can't say as I do, since I've never seen one. Or have I…?
> 
> Is this the proper forum for me to reveal that I am the Duly Elected Messiah of the Church of the Carnivorous Eggplant?
> 
> (Believe it or not, that's _not_ a joke. I really am. Long story.)



 Do tell Ravana.. I'm sure we're all curious LOL

And Donny.. Dude the pink unicorns aren't THAT hard to catch! You need that new fangle contraption that was made to catch them  x.x! Gimme a minute or two the name will come to me >.>


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