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Aeris: I'm a Jenova's Witness, traveling these parts and spreading the word of Sephiroth! Will you be ready for Reunion? Man: Reunion? Aeris: Yes. The day non-believers will be smoten in the joining of our glorious Mother. Man: So if I join I'll be saved? Aeris: Oh, no. You'll still die. But FASTER. — VG Cats, strip #202
Most often, although not exclusively, a Fantasy trope, the Religion Of Evil is a religion that has no pretenses of being anything other than... well, evil. Quite often it'll be a Card Carrying Villain that refers to itself as evil; sometimes it won't say that magic word itself, but its tenets and actions will be such that its followers pretty much have to be Always Chaotic Evil. Anyone whose idea of temple decoration is the skulls of their Human Sacrifices being used as lanterns probably qualifies.
This religion tends to come in two forms: either a small Secret Circle Of Secrets, or the state religion of Mordor or The Empire. In the latter case, most of the time the masses will follow the religion out of fear rather than any genuine religious devotion. Somewhat more rarely, it will openly exist as a legitimate religion in a "good" state as the worshipers of the evil member of a pantheon. Members of the Deadly Decadent Court may attend, either in search of power, or for the thrill.
This trope is usually seen as unrealistic, as no or very few examples of anything close to it exist in Real Life. (At least, outside the writings of people about their enemies.) However, the actual existence of evil gods in the setting can go a long way toward justifying it.
Contrast with the Saintly Church. Contrast with Path Of Inspiration, where an evil religion masquerades as a more ordinary faith. If a genuinely "good" religion is being twisted into evil, it's the Corrupt Church.
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Examples
Anime & Manga
- Naruto has Hidan, a follower of the Jashin ("evil god") religion, which among other things requires that he kill all of his opponents.
- Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni's "question arc" revolves around an "Oyashiro-sama" based religion. Partially averted when "Oyashiro" makes a proper appearance and is largely powerless and adorable.
Comics
- The Church of Crime in The DCU.
- At least they do it smart, with four branches that focus on four sins: the Deceit wing gets people to learn the religion by claiming that the whole thing is a hoax that they're seeking to expose, the Lust wing runs brothels and either slowly corrupts or outright blackmails repeat clients into Church membership, the Greed wing plays up just how much money there is to be made in crime, and the Murder wing... well, that's for people who already like killing. Hey, sometimes you gotta preach to the choir.
- Don't forget the Church of Blood!
Films
- The Kali worshippers in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, very loosely based on the Real Life Thuggee cult. In truth, the Thuggees were more like highway bandits, who strangled travelers in their sleep to rob them. While a cult did develop that gave religious motivations to their actions, it was not very widespread. Far from an evil cult goddess, Kali is very popular in mainstream Hinduism.
- While She is the Goddess of Death and Destruction, She does not do so with any malice. Just as another natural force of the Universe.
- The Sith in Star Wars. Following the Dark Side seems to pretty much turn you into Always Chaotic Evil.
- Thulsa Doom's snake cult in the Conan the Barbarian movie, which had its members quite willing to die upon the Evil Sorcerer's command and which had a quite nihilistic outlook to boot.
- An early version of Freddy vs. Jason featured a deranged cult that worshipped undead serial killer Freddy Krueger. They were called the "Fredheads".
- Many early horror films employed Satanism as a religion of this type. The Black Cat (1934), The Seventh Victim (1943), and Rosemarys Baby (1968) are good examples.
- The Seventh Victim is a bit of a subversion, as one of the heroes gives a Shut Up Hannibal near the end where he accuses the Satanists of being Nietzsche Wannabe. Plus the Satanists are mostly nonviolent and prefer to use social pressure to make people commit suicide rather than just killing them (one of them even comments on the contradiction inherent in their refusal to commit violence versus their need to kill all who betray them). But the leader does claim that he worships evil and refers to himself as "evil."
Gamebooks
- From the Lone Wolf series, the Acolytes of Vashna and the Cener Druids. The Acolytes wish to resurrect Vashna, the first and most powerful of the Darklords, so that he'd conquer the world with an army of undeads. The Druids plan to kill about every living being beside themselves with biological warfare. And the two are allies.
Literature
- In Kushiel's Avatar by Jacqueline Carey, a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Persia is tired of worshiping Ahura Mazda and getting nothing for it; a cult that worships his enemy, the evil Angra Mainyu kills the leaders of the country and takes over. It seems to pay off, as the members of this cult, who describe themselves as evil, actually do gain supernatural power, but it scares the hell out of everyone else, gods and humans alike.
- The worship of Torak in the Belgariad, a prime example of the case where only the Grolims (priests) have any real faith and the masses follow out of fear. They keep the faith into the Malloreon, even though Torak is now dead. At the end, it's implied that Eriond's first act as a god will be turning the Grolims towards a less vicious path.
- The Black Canons in Teresa Edgerton's Celydonn trilogy. They are noted for camouflaging themselves by taking on the external trappings of whatever religion is currently in power.
- The Faith of the Pannion Seer in Steve Erickson's Malazan Book Of The Fallen is a particularly nasty example, most evident in its conversion of the combat capable population into cannibal fanatic shock troops (through implied Mind Control) and the rest into their supplies.
- The Sisters of the Dark in the Sword of Truth series have it as their stated goal to unleash the Keeper (read: Satan) on the world and end all life. (Except theirs; they believe that they will be granted immortality for doing so.)
- Robin Jarvis has three of these in his two Deptford trilogies; the cults of Jupiter, Hobb (and his co-gods Mabb and Bauchan), and Suruth Scarophion. All of them practice sacrifice of their fellow sapient animals, since there are no human characters, in gruesome manners. Jupiter eats his sacrifices, Hobb's followers skin their victims alive in a process referred to as the "bloodybones", and Scarophion's cult (known as the Scale) poison their victims with his blood, which dissolves the victim into a puddle of tar. In books aimed at children.
- Humans are present in the setting — the Jupiter prequel is set during the reign of King Charles II — The Plague and the Great Fire feature in it.
- Well, yes, but rats are hardly going to be able to sacrifice humans on a regular basis.
- The child cult that worshipped "He Who Walks Behind The Rows" in the Stephen King short story Children of the Corn and the movie series.
- The Chronicles of Narnia has the Calormenite religion. It is based on late-medieval European perceptions of Islam found in Chivalric Romances, which described Islam as having a three-god pantheon. Tash is a pretty clear equivalent of Termagant, a god believed to be in the Islamic pantheon. CS Lewis does his bit for ecumenicalism by saying any Tash-worshipper who isn't evil is actually worshipping Aslan unknowingly.
- A quintessential example is the Esoteric Order of Dagon from the H.P. Lovecraft story "Shadow over Innsmouth".
- The religion Mijak religion in Karen Miller's Godspeaker Trilogy is an example of this, contrasting with the religion of Etherea. It's symbol was a scorpion which they bred in the temples to fill in a pool and swim in for divination. Animal blood was used a lot in ritual, drunk hot from the carcass and poured into pools to determine the will of god. Priests and the rulers of Mijak were chastised with beatings, including a young Zandakar. In fact they are not worshiping a god, but a dark power they believe to be God.
- Worship of Liart in The Deed of Paksennarion by Elizabeth Moon.
- The "Blood Mountain" religion from Christopher Paolini's The Inheritance Cycle. They worship a mountain and kill slaves as sacrifices (as well as doing very icky things to their own skin).
- Played straight and' subverted both in Mike Carey's post-The Sandman novels.
- Played with in the Discworld. There are a few demon-worshipping cults, and Evil Harry Dread has occasionally run a temple of evil, but most people who've compared Discworld demons to Discworld gods have decided the main difference is PR. The worshippers of Bel-Shamharoth, the Soul Eater, on the other hand, are clearly insane. And mostly very, very dead.
- It should be pointed out that there is a "Young Men's Reformed Cultists of the Ichor God Bel-Shamharoth Association", or "YMPA" in Ankh-Morpork...
- In S.M. Stirling's Nantucket novels, the sadistic Dr. Alice Hong starts a cult in Bronze-Age Achaea (Greece), with herself as the avatar of the Lady of Pain, to be worshipped by torture and sacrifice. This cult actually has official status within the Sacred Collegium, as Hong is the senior wife and lieutenant of William Walker, King of Men.
- Stirling also introduced the Cult of Malik Nous, the Peacock Angel, in his alternate history novel The Peshawar Lancers as a particularly nasty creed. It is the prevalent religion in the remains of tsarist Russia following a meteor shower that destroys most of the northern hemisphere and involves the worship of the Slavic dark god Tchernabog, cannibalism and virgins who can tell the future (who are allegedly raped and killed when their prophetic powers start to drive them insane).
- The Yuuzhan Vong from the Star Wars Expanded Universe have an entire priesthood devoted to genocide and non-consensual bio-forming.
- The Order of the Moonless Night from The Lonely Winds. The basic stance of the religion is "vampires are better than everyone and everything else, so let's express it by torturing and killing mortals and generally being vicious bastards."
- The Thebans in the Starfire books, who embark on a holy crusade to bring humans back into the light of worshipping Holy Terra. Never mind that they're aliens (explained later, trust me). There is seriously one Theban dude who does not like the prospect of the campaign.
- The works of author Philip Meadows Taylor in the mid-19th century popularized English impressions of the Thuggee and helped mainstream the word "thug". In his book Seeta, the main antagonist is a Hindu Brahmin who leads to a Kali-worshipping Thuggee cult. The negative impression of Hindu helped make Taylor's underlying point that the British Empire needed to educate their colonies on British culture and religion.
- In JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, the Dark Lord Sauron was worshiped as a god-king by the humans under his control. (The orcs, however, just saw him as their boss.) Aside from their leaders, though, they weren't themselves evil — they were forced to worship Sauron out of fear through lies and threats, not faith or devotion. This doesn't really come across in the movies.
- Sauron also managed to convince Ar-Pharazon and the Numenoreans to worship his master Morgoth/Melkor with Human Sacrifice, as part of the chain of events that lead to the downfall of Numenor described in Akallabeth.
- The religion of the Pah-Wraiths in the Star Trek: Millennium series may qualify, as the "Ascendants"' principle aim was to destroy the universe for reasons of cosmic harmony. This may also be an example of Utopia Justifies the Means.
- The book Friday the 13th: Church of the Divine Psychopath features a cult called the Ministry of the Heavenly Vessel, which worshipped Jason Voorhees as some kind of angel who works for God. He's not killing people, he's just judging them, the Jim Jones-esque leader of the cultists claims.
- The established church in Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun is basically this, since the gods being worshipped, with one or two exceptions, are deranged sociopaths whose idea of a commandment is "Overthrow your government and let me know when it's done; if you sacrifice enough children you'll probably get my attention." Interestingly, though, the church itself is closer to a Saintly Church: individual clergy may be corrupt or unpleasant, but the church as a whole is a force for good, providing education and charity to the poor of the city.
Live Action TV
Tabletop Games
- Most Dungeons & Dragons settings have one, if not dozens of these; the followers of Lolth from Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk and Takhisis from Dragonlance are only the most prominent examples.
- Subverted in Eberron with the death/ancestor worship of the Aerenal Elves. Plenty of trappings that would be red flags in most settings (skull motifs, efforts of worshipers to look more dead, fallen troops remaining on duty) but they are as benevolent (if somewhat less universalist) as the Silver Flame.
- Given that the Silver Flame is primarily a caricature of negative stereotypes for various real world religions, not to mention the actions taken by the priests thereof, being "as benevolent as the Silver Flame" is playing it straight in a roundabout manner.
- Word Of God and the sourcebooks agree that the Silver Flame overall is good and has motivated much good. The problems mostly comes from two things — human(oids) aren't perfect, so naturally they sometimes have tendency of missing the point or falling to temptation, and the fact that there's a demon in the flame, whispering to Flamists and trying to fool them and lead them astray.
- ... And then played straight with the Blood of Vol. Uncharacteristically, the setting information tries to be fair to those guys, despite their obvious black-hat practices like human sacrifice, necromancy, and immortality experiments. The cult's guiding moral philosophy is explained at great length and often from a sympathetic perspective; the faithful truly believe that this life is a torment and undeath is an acceptable escape. It's almost too bad the cult was founded by a diabolically evil lich who is using it for her own nefarious ends.
- Turns out she co-opted a pre-existing faith, and repackaged it into something more organised, and under her control.
- Played even more straight with the Dark Six. A classical pantheon of evil deities cast away from the main pantheon.
- Evil deities... and The Traveller.
- Possibly subverted at the same time as being played straight. The Dark Six could be gods of nature that were removed from the Sovereign Host not because they were evil, but because the Sovereign Host was becoming the religion of civilization. Which, together with Eberron's Absent Deities-situation, leads to their evil possibly being a result of the Dark Six-worshippers gradually, over the ages, beginning to believe the propaganda spread about their deities.
- Planescape's Factions throw a wrench into this. There are quite a few of them who follow a belief system most of us wouldn't hesitate to describe as "evil" if we came across it in reality, but Planescape does its best to portray them from a detached, non-judgmental standpoint, often with inspiration from real life. The ridiculously callous and selfish Fated justify themselves based on, essentially, the writings of Nietzsche and Ayn Rand. The Dustmen, who have all of the trappings of a Religion Of Evil (decorating things with skulls and wearing black robes and using zombies and such) ultimately worship death because of their philosophy that true life can only exist in a perfect world outside of this one, à la the Gnostics or Vedanta Hindus. The Doomguard has a philosophy centered around the inevitability of entropy, which can range from Omnicidal Maniac behavior to a simple acceptance that nothing can be accomplished without destroying something else. Importantly, all these potential Religion Of Evil beliefs are defanged by the nature of the Planescape setting, where the nature of reality is arcane and abstruse enough that few of them actually get to put their beliefs into practice in ways we would consider meaningful.
- Interestingly enough, in the default D&D cosmology evil people generally still go to the so-called Lower Planes (assorted hellish afterlife dimensions, although only one group is considered "Hell" proper) after death to be tortured by the local denizens. Since the game also provides magic that can bring the dead back to life and presumably report their experiences in the hereafter, one may well wonder why this doesn't seem to discourage anybody...
- Because it's not a punishment. They go where their alignment fits the most. In one of the adventures, the players can meet some thuggish petitioners from the Abyss who doesn't think they ended up too bad. Yes, it's dangerous, but if you're sharp and tough, you can survive and even become more powerful. Most denizens of the Lower Planes don't even envision themselves in any other place — with a notable exception of Carceri, where anyone want to escape from.
- Fiendish Codex II notes that most evil people are egotistical — they don't look at lemures or dretches (bottom-of-the-barrel devils and demons, respectively) and think that will be their afterlife. They think they'll shoot to the top of the infernal hiercharchies immediately. In addition, resurrection magic doesn't generally leave the revived with memories of where their soul ended up, so nobody has firsthand information as to what happens after you get killed.
- Both subverted and played straight in the new fourth edition of D&D. Some evil gods actually have large (rational) followings that aren't typically seen as "evil". For example, non-evil worshippers of Bane (god of tyranny) might see him as the patron of "rightful and strong authority", and Grummush (god of savagery) is worshipped by many as the "god of strength and conquest". A new deity, The Raven Queen, is worshipped as a personification of Death without the evil overtones (and is basically a mixture of Wee Jas and Morr from Warhammer).
- On the other hand, for those who like this trope straight, we still have Lolth, Vecna, Torog, etc., and also a lot of classic Demon Princes who are worshipped as gods by deranged cultists.
- Even then, some of the more "evil" gods can be justified. Torog's domains include jailers and torturers. Take a look at the Guantanamo debate and pundits talking about making "hard choices" being made to protect others, and imagine a god that plays to them on that...
- The Raven Queen also has a good bit of My Species Doth Protest Too Much, as plenty of her worshippers are a bit overenthusiastic. (Shadar-kai especially tend to end up random encounters.)
- In the new World of Darkness game Vampire: The Requiem there's Belial's Brood, a covenant of vampires that are debauched and cruel even by vampire standards. And this is a Darker And Edgier Sick Sad World where being a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire is a pipe dream. So trust me: "Debauched and cruel by vampire standards" means they aren't so much at the bottom of the barrel as outside of it holding up a liquor store. Their cults believe that the inner "Beast" that all vampires struggle with is actually a fragment of divinity caged by imperfect humanity; so, in an effort to "liberate" and master the Beast, they deliberately lead their followers in acts that drive the Karma Meter down faster than mercury in Antarctica.
- Enter worship of any of the Gods of Chaos in Warhammer and Warhammer 40000 and you hit Religion Of Evil levels very quickly. Each Chaos God has their own angle: Slaanesh worshipers pursue emotional excesses, Khorne worshippers seek only to spill blood in Khorne's name, Nurgle worshippers spread disease and despair, and Tzeentch worshippers are fuelled by ambition and seek to evolve and change. The downside is that there is a roughly 99% chance of getting possessed, sacrificed, burned by witch-hunters or simply turning into a screeching, frothing, mindless mutant abomination with four heads that vomit blue fire. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but only Chaos gives you eyes inside your mouth.
- There's also the other side of that coin; the Gods of Chaos are the gods of bloodshed, disease, sexual perversion, and mutation. They're also the gods of Honor, Fortitude, Love, and Change. Oh, you bet it's a Crapsack World.
- That said, as mentioned by Ciaphas Cain (in Sandy Mitchell's The Traitor's Hand, many Chaos cultists start out presuming the organizations they're joining are relatively innocuous like crime networks, interesting occult or deviant pleasure groups, or even social reform movements; they often only grasp the true nature of what they've joined when they're far too corrupted to even care anymore. The cult in that book mostly consisted of the bored, and very few of them had any idea what they were getting themselves into.
- At least in Warhammer, many of the cults initially present themselves as organizations for social and political change, something that the Empire could rather use.
Video Games
- The worshipers of whatever ancient deity you pick in Eternal Darkness.
- Except possibly Mantorok, who seems to have posed as a relatively benevolent god for the locals.
- The Cult of the Damned in Warcraft. Originally they were often seduced by promises of eternal life, social grievances, and disillusionment with the Holy Light. In the modern era this is exacerbated by the widespread trauma and suffering experienced by humanity. Members are given a potion after their initiation that removes their ability to object and makes them unquestioning fanatics.
- And the followers of the demons of the Burning Legion from the same series.
- Also the Twilight's Hammer, who worship the cosmic horroresque Old Gods.
- The Covenant from Halo that activating the titular rings will make them gods, and kill everyone else. Sadly, it will just kill them, no godhood included. It will also kill all sentient life in the galaxy. Their leaders know this, but keep the lie for power.
- In Mass Effect, the Geth religion basically comes down to the total extinction of all organic life in the galaxy. Unfortunately, the gods they worship — the Reapers — are quite real...
- And in an expansion of the trope The reaper Sovereign sees them as so inferior that it is insulted by the geth's worship of it.
- "Los Illuminados" from Resident Evil 4 have a massive army of Black Cloak monks, cannibalism, institutionalized child murder, and colossal Body Horror.
- In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, there's the Mythic Dawn, a cult lead by the Big Bad, who, among other things, require you to offer 'red drink' to Mehrunes Dagon (the god they worship) in order to join. There's also the Dark Brotherhood, who are a combination of a Religion Of Evil, a Murder Inc, and Knight Templars.
- Also, in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, there is the Dagoth Ur cult whose followers first start seeing things and then turn into semi-sentient monstrosities who can only do their master's (the Big Bad) bidding and are to be killed on sight.
- Most Daedric cults on the other hand are pretty friendly and just want to worship their kinda evil god in peace
- In Romancing Sa Ga the three Dark Gods each have followers, however the religion supporting the Big Bad is the Religion Of Evil One of the Priests of the Temple of Elore in Melvir is actually the leader of said evil religion, even going so far as to summon monsters into the town and said summoning ritual was directly under the Temple of Elore itself, even more disturbing is the sacrifices and strange deaths at the start of the game
- The Chzo Mythos series of games concerns The Order of Blessed Agonies, a cult whose members worship the eponymous Chzo. The cult has prayer books, religious texts, a symbol, a founder, and a fairly clear objective. Chzo is referred to as a "pain elemental", and appropriately, all of the order are masochists.
- You might also call them a "religion of idiots", because they hadn't got a clue that their objective was completely wrong. They were also being fooled by their "god". Chzo just wanted a new prince, and the order were just a whole bunch of Xanatos Suckers.
- At first glance, the Order of the Harvest Moon from the adventure game Harvester seems like a slightly skewed Brotherhood Of Funny Hats. Of course, once you've passed the final step of their initiation ritual, which involves navigating an Evil Tower Of Ominousness, killing horrible monsters, and having sinister and nihilistic conversations with really nasty people, you've discovered their true colors... and their true intentions.
- Lampshade Hanging in Star Control II: the Ilwrath are theocratic self-declared worshipers of Evil and Death, but if the player confronts them over this ("If your actions are judged by your society as correct, aren't you, in fact, good?") they tie themselves into a logical knot before deciding to attack the player for being annoying.
- A bit of a subversion in Dead Space, as the Church of Unitology seems like this as you go through the game, what with them wanting bring the Marker back to Earth and turn everyone into Necromorphs, but you'll find somewhere in the middle of play that there are Unitologists that didn't think turning into Necromorphs was all that of a great idea, but Mercer killed them. Played straight in that this really seems to be how the Church and most Unitologists are.
- Probably the ultimate example are the the adepts of Lahara in Summoner, the Nhuvisarum. They enslave entire nations and purposely garner a Zero Percent Approval Rating because their magical powers are literally fueled by human suffering. Note that I've only played the first game so far, and the second one apparently revolves around a Dark Messiah of Lahara.
- Pretty much every dungeon in Exile/Avernum will have an evil temple with skulls, bloodstains, and/or traps that unleash demons in it somewhere.
- Played straight and parodied in the Fable games with the Chapel of Skorm and the Temple of Shadows. The latter example involves a rather amusing parody. "On Wednesdays we drain the blood of virgin chickens. On thursdays we annoint ourselves with said blood. Friday is poker night, of course." and "If there's one downside to being an evil cultist, it's that we must take our tea without milk" indeed.
- The Children of the Cathedral from the original Fallout has to count. They're led by an insane mutant made up of several people who wants to turn all humans into Supermutants, after all.
- Dragon Quest V features the Order of Zugzwang, a cult that worships the Big Bad. Interestingly, it counts both monsters and humans amongst its ranks.
- The Multitude in the roguelike Incursion is a, well, multitude of demon ghosts who each want you to go kill and slaughter and rape and be generally depraved in that particular ghost's name, and are willing to bribe you with power for it. Zurvash is slightly more philosophical about it, making no bones about the fact that he has no regard for civilization, ethics, or foresight, and glorying in brutality and domination.
- Breath of Fire II features the Church of St. Eva, who have largely overtaken the old religion of the Dragon God. They're actually a front for a demon cult empowering a Cosmic Horror named Deathevan.
Web Comics
- The Dimension of Pain demons in Sluggy Freelance worship the Demon King, who thinks the highest compliment he can give something is "How evil".
- The same goes for the cult of K'Z'K started up by Chilus.
- The doom cultists in 8-Bit Theater.
Web Original
- Subverted in the Whateley Universe with the Cult of Kellith, worshiping the daughter of Gothmog (and granddaughter of Shub-Niggurath)... who, for all that she's ostensibly a lust demoness, started out as a human, is currently attending Whateley Academy as a student, and is generally not a bad person. (Although there are signs that she's starting to actively distance herself from her previous human existence and morals, so this may change in the future — she is a Cosmic Horror in the making, after all.) Played straight, however, with the Tong of the Black Madonna, an apparent mystical cult opposing the Tao and making trouble for its current Handmaid a.k.a. Bladedancer, including a concerted attempt to attack her in her dreams via a spell powered by human mass sacrifice.
- The Cult of Kellith probably isn't a subversion, but a real example. The head of the cult was actively trying to turn Carmilla evil until she killed him. Cultists have been seen to do things like sacrifice cute animals in her name. And there may be a hundred thousand of them out there doing god only knows what.
Western Animation
- The Uhluhtc worshipers in Heavy Metal.
- Ezekiel Rage from The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest had the Book of Rage, a supposed bible from which all apocalyptic prophecies must come to pass, and which he worships fervently. Subverted in the fact that the book was actually empty, save for a picture of his dead family.
Real Life
- The Aztec religion was long believed to be a Real Life example. Modern research has a somewhat more nuanced view: while human sacrifice played a major role in the religion, it was not as frequent as previously believed and some of the sacrifices may have been willing.
- In the RPG Shadowrun, the Powers-That-Be in Aztlan (formerly Mexico) have twisted this legacy into a really nasty cult/magical power.
- The mass sacrifices of the Aztecs were more about "we want your land, and are using our religion to justify killing you" than real religious faith.
- Some think the entire military/religious system of the Aztecs was set up to distract young male aristocrats, turning them against other cultures so they wouldn't take over their own. The sacrifices were just another symbolic part of this system, showing that death for a higher purpose was a good thing. It was also a convenient fear tactic against the people they conquered, of course!
- Only when the Aztecs got powerful enough to be conquerors. Around the 13th-14th centuries they were the underdogs, the irritating neighbours who just happened to know a good way of building a settlement on a lake. The surrounding empires forced them to pay tributes - which the Aztecs' first ruler dutifully obeyed to get into their good books. To be honest their growing city was much cleaner and more well-designed than many others in the world at the same period, and their calendar was a work of genius—so perhaps it wasn't such a Religion Of Evil as popular culture states, especially in their earlier periods.
- While their technological, social and cultural achievements may be interesting, it's difficult to see how they apply to a religion that ripped people's hearts out while they were still alive, occasionally after burning them nearly to death. Though, that's not exactly 'evil' because the cultural viewpoint makes that the okay thing to do. After all, it... uh, did whatever occasionally ceremonially butchering people was meant to do, in their opinion!
- Feed their gods, allowing them to delay the destruction of the fourth world, in case you were wondering.
- Let's not forget that when there was scarcity of "volunteers" for sacrifice, the Aztecs organized small wars called Flower Wars to capture more victims. Also that the god Tlaloc specifically requested sacrifices of young children and if they were sacrificed while crying the better, in fact one priest became notorious for tearing the children's nails to make them cry before sacrificing them. Shudder.
- It should be noted: yes, (some) people did volunteer. However, can we all agree that there is something wrong with a religion that claims that the gods need to be given fresh human blood to prevent the end of the world? The logic here does not quite work, why would they need our blood? Or, for that matter, all of any given person's blood? Is there some reason they can't take survivable amounts from a wider group of people, pooled together? And why human blood? Are we special?
- As were the (related) religions of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, with supposed sacrifices of children for their god Moloch. It is debated among researchers whether Moloch was a god or just a term related to sacrifice, and others debate just how common sacrifices were.
- It should be noted that most sources on these two civilization are Greek and Roman. One may wonder how much of this was propaganda akin to WWI tales of Germany.
- Which does not make them necessarily untrue (the German atrocities were certainly exaggerated and many were fabrications, but there was no smoke without fire.) Certainly archeologists have labeled a large childrens cemetery as the Tophet. As might be imagined the argument over whether or not sacrifice took place has been politicised, making an unbiased study difficult or impossible.
- Then again the Romans were themselves in the habit of leaving unwanted babies on the midden heaps. You have to wonder why they cared to notice such details about others. Roman law said that if you happened to, say, find a baby on a midden heap and bring it home, it was your slave People captured or sold into slavery simply couldn't account for more than a small portion of the population of slaves.
- The child-burning demon interpretation of Moloch has popped up twice in the Hellboy Universe as either the main instigator or antagonist of the plot (the novel On Earth as it is in Hell and the comic In the Chapel of Moloch respectively).
- Christianity and Judaism were not the only religions to do this, but get the most guff for doing it. They tend to demonize, bastardize and generally do things ending in -ize to rival deities. They originally used the term "Ba'al" (which is a generic word for "lord") as a blanket term for what they perceived as false gods. Somewhere along the way some researcher mistook all these references to a "ba'al" as a single entity and things went downhill from there.
- In particular the Canaanite god Hadad(whose name was considered holy and was thus subsituted with ba'al), seems to be a major contributor to the biblical demon Ba'al Zevuv (Beelzebub), "Lord of flies."
- To say nothing of the accusations tossed around between the various denominations of Christianity itself throughout the years. Even now, there are people who don't consider Catholics and Unitarians (as examples) as "real" Christians and supposedly are "evil and immoral" because of it. Jack Chick being the extreme example.
- A lot of Unitarians wouldn't see themselves as "Christian", either. While Unitarianism has pretty clear roots in any number of the more liberal Protestant denominations, it's evolved into an extremely open, accepting form of spirituality that doesn't require specific belief in Christ or any other traditional religious trappings. It's more of "be a decent person and find something meaningful to believe in, and let's get together to talk about it" than anything that could be called specifically "Christian".
- There is The Church of Euthanasia, which is founded on hatred of humanity and encourages its members to kill themselves.
- That's more like Religion of Nihilism. It's not like they encourage mass-terrorism to murder as many people as possible, like such ideology could justify.
- Wikipedia says that this is a black humor parody religon, so I don't think it qualifies...
- The Westboro Baptist Church has protests in which they proclaim that among other things, "God Hates America" and "God Hates Fags". They once had a demonstration celebrating a coal mine disaster in which they bore signs saying "Thank God for Dead Miners". They even tried to protest at Fred Rogers's funeral, but thankfully were unable to make any significant disturbance.
- When This Troper opened this page for the first time, on the left-hand side there was a large banner advertising dianetics.org... There must be some piece of code somewhere that decided a page entitled "Religion of Evil" was just the right place to display advertising for the Church of Scientology. Heh.
- If Sex Is Evil, then Tantra and its various forms would all qualify.
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