Religion in your writings

re: having lots of sex. What do they do about ST Ds? Also, who makes sure all the babies get taken care of? Or do they have modern or something like modern methods of birth control?

edited 15th Oct '11 12:05:50 AM by BensenDan

Question #1: The existence of STDs is pretty much ignored.

Question #2: Just like in any other "benevolent" society promoting free love, "it takes a village" heavily applies.

Question #3: There are much more efficient methods of birth control than the modern ones.

edited 15th Oct '11 9:00:25 AM by EnemyMayan

^ If this setting has magic, certain handwaves are possible . . .

In the Vlad Taltos stories, certain sexual diseases common to prostitutes are easy to contract but at the same time easy to defend against, if one knows a witch.

That's a bit of a derail. It's almost like people in this thread are more interested in sex than religion.

Anyway, goddess-worshipping tolerant tree-huggers who have lots of sex religion versus authoritarian patriarchal religion sounds a bit strawmannish to me. I haven't read your story, so I'm not going to slam it, but I've seen that kind of dichotomy done badly and anviliciously many times. I'd advise you to subvert it at some point, or at least give both religions their good and bad sides.

Exactly. I brought up the real-world consequences of free love because they're a way to take this religion past the realm of the straw-man. After all, there is a reason why our society doesn't run that way.

1) ST Ds, you can handwave this away with magic, or you can make the society primitive enough that they haven't had contact with outsiders, and so haven't been exposed to venereal diseases. Or you can make them advanced enough that they have condoms and medicine to handle the diseases.

2) babies! 'it takes a village' only if (a) the society doesn't have much in the way of material possessions or land to inherit. Inheritance really makes bastardy a real issue. (b) the population of the village must be small (between 150 or 200) people, so everyone is able to know everyone else, and they are all related in some way. Otherwise, part of your village has no reason to expend energy to take care of whatever child, and kids will start slipping through the cracks.

What more effective means of birth control did ancient people have? I know there aren't any statistics on the efficacy of acacia gum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_control#Early_history), but I would be surprised if it could compete against birth control pills, diaphragms, or condoms. Most of the stuff listed on that other wiki's page are abortifacients, and that's how I think most people managed it back then. There was also a lot of infanticide, it seems.

So no matter which way you cut it, the lives of the happy tree-huggers are going to have a dark side.

Pre-industrial birth control: asafoetida (and a related plant, silphium, which is now extinct) may have had a preventative effect if eaten by the woman before sex. But as the poster above said, with herbal contraceptives and abortifacients, there's going to be a fairly wide margin of error.

[[quoteblock]]2) babies! 'it takes a village' only if (a) the society doesn't have much in the way of material possessions or land to inherit. Inheritance really makes bastardy a real issue.[[quoteblock]]

What part of "tree-hugging" didn't you get? We're talking about a society here that doesn't believe in or use money, and believes that land cannot be owned by mortals, but instead belongs to Nature herself. They share pretty much everything, and nothing is really "owned". And yes, I'm fully aware this would never work with humans.

[[quoteblock]](b) the population of the village must be small (between 150 or 200) people, so everyone is able to know everyone else, and they are all related in some way. Otherwise, part of your village has no reason to expend energy to take care of whatever child, and kids will start slipping through the cracks.[[quoteblock]]

So you assume a complete lack of altruism on the part of all non-relatives? How cynical.

[[quoteblock]]What more effective means of birth control did ancient people have?[[quoteblock]]

Since you might have missed the blue text, I'll post the link again. Yes, they use magic to keep from getting pregnant.

[[quoteblock]]So no matter which way you cut it, the lives of the happy tree-huggers are going to have a dark side.[[quoteblock]]

No matter which way they get cut, and trust me they get cut, the lives of every person in my work have a dark side.

Edit: Quotes aren't showing up for me, so I'm leaving the Wiki markup in so that everyone can see what's being quoted from Bensen Dan's post and what I've said in response.

edited 17th Oct '11 10:26:46 AM by EnemyMayan

(Add a / [[<here>quoteblock]]. At the second one only.)

I did that. It still didn't work. Hence all the edits (if anyone was reading this thread at the time of my last post, they probably noticed it got modified 5 or 6 times while I was trying to get quoteblocks to work).

You need to put a slash behind the closing quoteblocks.

[[/quoteblock]] Like so.

I deal with religion the way "Xena: Warrior Princess" deals with it (at least, the way the first few seasons dealt with it): the gods and goddesses are just there as characters. People might worship them, but the way I understood it, they were sort of like celebrities with superpowers.

@Kraken: Like I already said, I did that. It still didn't work.

Real or fictional ones- All of the eight main characters are atheist. Every other religion is either a Cult that worships those famous Eldritch Abominations that we all know and love, a holy order, or a secret society with some relation to a holy order.

part of the societies or just the character's convictions- Well a majority of the main character's time is spent hunting the Eldritch Abomination worshiping Cults, holy orders and secret societies, so they don't exactly have a very positive view about religions.

Whether or not it has plot significance or a side note- See above

Whether or not it effects the characters' interactions- Over all, they don't have a positive view of any religion.

I don't write in the real world so no real religions. I don't like writing religions into my fictional worlds either as since it isn't the real world I feel I'd have to decide what god(s) there actually are and how closely the people's beliefs line up to their reality and that seems like excessive trouble when religion/gods aren't likely to have a large part in the plot anyhow. Only exception was a semi-comedic cliche-storm fantasy novel I wrote once which did have gods at least but I still skipped over the religion aspect.

Whether or not it has plot significance or a side note.

My religion is more of a side note (as to what my characters believe, but I never write any of them actually praying) in my Sentria stories. In this other story that I'm thinking about bringing back from the scrappy heap I tossed it in back in high school though, religion is everything. It drives the whole story.

Weather or not it effects the characters' interactions.

Like above, in the military-driven society of Sentria, my characters hardly mention religion, but it would be an interesting detail to add to see just who they're praising as these proud soldiers raise their weapons to go to war (maybe they worship a god/dess of war/battle tactics, because their entire nation is built around just how good they are at warfare.)

In the story I haven't quite written yet (I haven't even named the world), there is one supreme God called The Emperor. He rules over the minor Gods and Goddesses who make up the 12 Western Zodiac Signs, and they all have their own temples. The Emperor is revered by his mortal followers, even if he hasn't been a very nice Emperor in the past.

I guess a conflict that could come up is that my main character, a priest could believe in the old fire and brimstone teachings, while some of his companions who follow him on his pilgrimage could believe that he and the 12 Zodiacs are merciful and giving.

Religion is, ahem, 'interesting' in the Stellarum...

It generally depends on the 'Faction' in question. Essentially...

Most primitive cultures connected to a single planet often have many hundreds of different religions (or splinter religions), most of which are quite openly stated to be untrue. In general, once a society reaches the point of space travel, they've nearly all abandoned religion entirely or formed some kind of theocracy.

In the case of the larger factions, ASHE is strictly atheist: while individuals or member nations may have specific religions, ASHE as a whole staunchly rejects them. Most government issued media is specifically geared to portray basically any kind of religious belief as bigoted, decietful, cruel etc. or, at best, unnecessary. They're highly secular, political, corporate and 'materialist'.

The Korper Karada and the Korpers Karnis, meanwhile, believe in a sort of 'Steel God' who grants them power and is obsessed with violence and Might Makes Right. Everyone who either joins or helps either group is required, on pain of death, to mold their life around it. Which sort of makes sense, since the Karada and the Karnis go from planet to planet and devour/scavenge/murder everything, including the planet itself.

Then you've got a mad cult or two, who are actually correct about their gods, kind of, except they're worshipping a race of Eldritch Abominations. Which is not good, obviously.

Lastly, you have the Myriad. I don't know if I should admit this, but fundamentally, they're what happens when you combine my own religious beliefs (which can be seen on my userpage) with Knights In Shining Armour... IN SPAAACCCEEE...!!! They're the only faction that is actually refered to as fundamentally good: some individuals within may be corrupt, but that's invariably due to some outside force or their own imperfection, and they are always found out and either banished or, if repentent, merely reprimanded in some small way. The Code, which they follow, is considered difficult to live with (or even tyrannical) by many outside but is felt by the Myriad to be both a protection and a 'freedom from corruption', they routinely spend their days (when not training or on missions) preaching it to all who will listen, and they're (particularly gentle) Technical Pacifists despite also being extremely Badass.

Problem is, I just know that people will be reading it like some sort of Author Tract and claim I'm biased. -_-

edited 27th Oct '11 1:42:46 PM by Eventua

^ If they're the one fundamentally good faction, you probably are. (ASHE in particular would work well in a setting where all factions are ambiguous, but doesn't sound promising as an ambiguous faction in a setting where any faction is good.)

edited 27th Oct '11 6:40:06 PM by feotakahari

I do like the idea of paladins in space

Religion in my writings? Hmm, well a few of my planned works feature Murphy, the God of Luck and Karma who interacts with the heroes. Not much beyond that.

what? paladins in space? what have i missed here?

Religion comes up in my story, even though it takes place almost 2000 years in the future. The main religious character in the story is Jewish, and a lot of detail is put into her practices and how much her religion affects her life. It works as symbolism, to show how even an ancient religion from Earth like Judaism is still practiced and that the culture very much hasn't died off. Other than that, there are a few offhand references to churches and religious people, though not much. There are very few religious people in the story, given that it takes place far in the future and not even on Earth.

I think he's refering to the Myriad in my worldbuilding project, the Stellarum.

Hmm... feo has gotten me wondering about what I should do about them, actually... make them more ambigious, perhaps? Except then part of me would feel treacherous against my own beliefs, hmm...

Having gone a little further with the Crystal Dragon Jesus syndrome I mentioned earlier:

I wanted to double check and make sure I'm not taking this too far, so here's the updated rundown. In the beginning, Magna Mater (that's 'the great mother'; it's taboo in most cultures to actually name her) existed alone, and to fill the emptiness She made the earth, the sky, and all the plants and animals. After everything was set up and She was satisfied, She lastly created a race to resemble herself, both in beauty and intelligence: the Formica (ant people). To rule them, Magna Mater sent her only natural-born daughter, Asenath, and taking command of the ancient colony made Asenath the first queen. And for a while it was good.

But then Magna Mater's consort, the first drone she made out of mud and clay, grew resentful and jealous of his mate. He began whispering to their daughter Asenath, filling her head with mistrust and dark ideas. "Why does she have all the power? You're the one who interacts with your people personally. You're the one who understands their needs and their suffering. She doesn't always answer their dearest prayers, and it's up to her own convenience when she does. You would make a much better Great Mother, don't you think?" Though her father planted these ideas in her mind, Asenath drove on with them, and eventually her envy and frustration grew into full-on hatred for her Mother. After a while, it became too much for her to stand, and Asenath went mad. She turned to Magna Mater herself and said, "your time as the Great Mother is over. Either step down from your throne peacefully or I shall force you from it." Magna Mater tried to reason with Asenath, but she was too far gone.

Rallying an army of every body the lone colony could spare, she marched for heaven to overthrow her tyrant Mother. (Keep in mind she's going up against a full-fledged Reality Warper here.) Though they fought like animals, Asenath's soldiers were no match for a limitless supply of angels. She even made extra units, composed entirely of drones. (Her father had taught her how to make men out of mud.) But it was all futile. The war drew out for some, but Magna Mater defeated Her daughter without much effort. As punishment for her treachery, Asenath was stripped of her ability to have children, effectively rendering her worthless as a queen. The remaining mortal ants were left behind without their demigod leader, and left to their own devices they went on to divide and conquer into the modern Formica race.

From the day of her condemnation forward, Asenath swore that she'd claim her people's loyalty again, one by one. Modern ants believe that temptations, greed and other mutinous feelings are the calls of Asenath intruding into their hearts. But Magna Mater is a kind and forgiving god, and She took mercy on her wayward descendants by giving them the opportunity to rejoin Her in the afterlife. Ants are taught from their youngest days that if they are good, work hard and do right in the world, they will be reborn at death as one of the Blessed Daughters, Magna Mater's angels. This is the ant's equivalent of heaven: hell is simply disappearing after death.

So what do you think? Did I cross a line? I want a solid, rich mythology, but not at the cost of driving off too many readers. The main thing I worry about is that Asenath as a figure is a combination of Jesus (half-mortal child of omnipotent deity,) Eve (ancestor of modern race, cause of original sin), and Lucifer (agent of God who betrayed their purpose for power). I fear that this mixture is rife with Unfortunate Implications, and I have a deathly fear of those.

edited 28th Oct '11 9:36:34 AM by Takwin

@ Five X, what's in store for the Judaism of the future? Will there be any kind of development between the orthodoxy and the reformers? What will the mixing of different branches do to the doctrine? Will there be a return to proselytizing, or will Jewish-ness continue to be passed mostly by family?

@ Eventua, here's a way you can make your "good guy" religion more complex and interesting. Can you imagine a person who obeys the letter of your personal beliefs but not the spirit? For example, I think it is important to respect the elderly. But the evil schemer who took over my church says we should respect the elderly by dipping them in molten bronze, and turning them into living room conversation pieces.