Religion World Building

I've been working on world building for my setting's 'central' religion and although I've done some extensive work with it, I've had trouble with two crucial parts of it

• The creation story
• And the "why terrible shit like death and stuff exists" story

Any tips would be appreciated

For creation, you can just make stuff up.

For death and bad stuff, some religions have them result from a temptation, like Pandora's box or the forbidden fruit.

Another possibility for the latter ("death and other untoward things") is that they're unpleasant, but a part of the workings of the world: death is painful, but admits one to the afterlife or returns the flesh to the earth; destruction makes space for new creations; etc.

Share with us what you have so far. Whatever you decide should "fit" with the rest of the religion you have created.

One significant “fable” of the religion is a “Three Brothers” type story (I refer to the one from The Tales of Beedle the Bard from the Harry Potter series, I apologize if you don't catch that allusion) where ultimately, the moral is that even with the help of the gods, things cannot continue forever without ending/changing into something else (specifically focusing on human mortality) The only thing is, I don't really have a specific ‘explanation’ why things/people die in the first place (which is kinda important) other than “it makes room for new things/the gods work in mysterious ways” (unless that’s as much as necessary)

For a creation story, do you think “Mother goddess and Father god exist in a realm of nothingness, they bang and beget the rest of the gods: who make the world, animal, people and shit” is enough?

For comparison, the Norse creation story had a cow licking ice to make the first god. The Bible itself doesn't really go into too much detail until it gets to human creation. So it's not weird at all if your creation story is both brief and either crazy or mundane.

That tidbit seems to hint that death is an intrinsic and intended part of the universe, rather than an unintended consequence or punishment. In that case, it may make more sense to take the Tolkien explanation instead of the Biblical explanation for death. According to The Bible, death is Cessation of Existence and is unintended; thus humans naturally fear death because they were designed and intended to live forever. Tolkien inverted this in his universe, where humans were meant to die and Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, and it is the fear of death that is unnatural. Luckily, humans in Tolkien's universe can choose to die early and miss the whole nasty dementia and bedpan issues that can come with a slow and agonizing dying process. It may make more sense to do something similar to what Tolkien did.

Apart from death, generally evil or badness is explained through the existence of a Devil like figure.

How exactly would I justify the creation of a 'Devil like' deity though. I would have to portray the gods as someone fallible, right? Because otherwise, why would they be like "Oh drat, we created the source of evil and we can't stop it, sorry guys."

Balance Between Good and Evil is a common justification. The theoretical entity is all-powerful and benign, but for the universe to properly work or somesuch, there must be two sides to the coin.

To draw from past references...Zoroastrianism takes on a "Good vs Evil as eternal conflict" thing. Taoism sees "Balance". Catholicism sees "There is only good, and we make our own hell". Some forms of paganism, such as that of the Ancient Egyptians also saw the fight of "Good and Evil" as a sort of cycle and added the concept of Justice to that (The whole Ma'at thing).

In other words, there are a MILLION sources from which you can justify a religious creation myth of "There's evil gods but our gods can't really kill them, you see".

Rearding Death, there is reincarnation, the "Realm of Hades" style of "We let souls chill here", the judeochristian thing of "reward and punishment depending if you were naughty or nice", pure oblivion or a Three-headed monkey.

What sounds more like the religion you are building?

Regarding the evil deity, where did it come from? Are there others more powerful than it? If so to the latter, what are their views?

For example, you mentioned a pair of "cosmic parents" (which sounds reminiscent of Gaia and Ouranos in Greek myth): if they gave birth to all gods (good and evil), but are themselves neither (or take a strictly neutral stance, or simply can't bear to punish or destroy their children), and the good gods aren't more powerful than the evil, then there's little means for the evil gods to be destroyed.

For another example, perhaps look at Tolkein, in particular the stories behind Melkor and Sauron: where they came from, why they were allowed to run around for so long, and the ends that they met.

In both The Bible and Tolkienverse, the Devil-like entity is an angelic being who made the first Face–Heel Turn. Of course, you don't have to be limited to that. You could even reverse the roles if you wanted.

Your thinking is too limited. Just because a deity is good and is capable of stopping it in its tracks does not mean that it will do so immediately. Sometimes allowing the evil to exist for a limited time serves a purpose. And an omnipotent deity may reason that they can fix all the wrong done afterwards just as easily as preventing wrong from being done in the first place. An immortal omnipotent diety may not have the immediate sense of necessary justice that mortal humans do.

edited 27th Jun '14 2:47:55 PM by shiro_okami

Easy to have evil and death with pagan gods. They usually don't care about that sort of thing and human suffering just isn't their problem. They don't claim to be omnibenevolent like the Christian God does. An evil deity can just be a normal deity who, for whatever reason, has different ethics than his peers. Maybe he wants to rule over the entire world himself. Or maybe he's just a psychopath.

As for creation story, you can have anything, and I do mean anything. In Christianity, everything just formed from God's will. In Greek mythology, the Milky Way was Hera's breast milk. You can do literally anything your heart desires for creation myth.

In addition, you can have multiple interpretations of a single creation story— who, how, why can all vary greatly, but can still be linked to a single thread.

As with many here who have pointed out regarding creation stories, I'd say you can get very creative. The existing stories of preestablished and real religions are already quite wild.

As for the existence of horrible things and why the deities didn't stop them from coming to be, I tend to solve that issue with a pinch of Blue-and-Orange Morality. Deities don't have to follow our human 'fallible' logic. Even if some of them may favor humans, there can be others that don't, and among those who do, how they take care of humans or the world in general may not even be that nice, in a sense. Classic stuffs like death and destruction. They happen because without them, the world wouldn't change much and wouldn't go anywhere. One of the deities I write is the goddess of mercy and solitude, but you wouldn't know that looking at her, considering she killed millions without care for some obscure purpose.

edited 29th Jun '14 6:38:54 PM by arreimil

Tealdeer: Read mythology. Norse mythology, Celtic mythology, and the ridiculously overdone Greek are a good start. You still have quite a few Christian elements evident just from your questions.

What do you mean by "pagan?" If you mean "general nature-based pantheon with a Chief God And Goddess pair," you might be mixing paganism up with Wicca. Do not do this. It's either a Berserk Button or just really fucking annoying to both pagans and Wiccans.

And why are you world building a religion for the story? Are you specifically focusing on that aspect of world/culture-building, or are you planning on making the gods active in the story?

Also, what general climate is this religion for? Climate is really important for religion with me because too many people use a generic, temperate/four-season based religion for nearly every culture. It gets boring to people who actually follow a pantheon from a temperate climate and know that their deities have much more personality than fictional ones.

edited 30th Jun '14 10:52:22 PM by Sharysa

I've asked that this be moved to World Building for obvious reasons, but moving on...

Cultural associations are crucial in the creation of fictional gods. What does your culture associate with what and why do they make that association? Consider the Egyptian god Set, whose domains were chaos, storms and the Sahara desert, then later lawlessness, warfare and strength. Now, think about that progression. Makes sense for an agricultural society on the edge of a vast desert, does it not?

And what exactly is a "four-season based religion", and how would it be different from a religion that is not "four-season based"?

Four-season pantheons tend to have 1) "season" deities that often have no real role besides that, 2) a few tree/plant-based deities akin to dryads, 3) an agricultural deity (often goddess), 3) a hunting/forest deity based on Cernunnos/Herne, and 4) an ominous god of death. Often they conflate Wicca with paganism as well, and stick in two ruling deities who represent the masculine/feminine aspects of the world.

Which is, surprisingly, not like most actual pantheons at all.

Basically, do your research on actual mythology and use that as a springboard for your own.

edited 2nd Jul '14 8:59:27 AM by Sharysa

So it has nothing to do with historical pantheons? That's probably why I've never heard of such a thing before. So you're saying that writers have a tendency to have a god(dess) for each season? And why would someone have a tree god, agriculture god, and forest? That sounds kind of repetitive.

With regards to the last question, I imagine that it would be drawn from Greek mythology: I'm not sure about the tree deities (that I'll confess seems odd to me), unless they're just promoted dryads (but then why more than one?), but the hunting/forest deity would take after Artemis and the agricultural deity after Demeter and/or Persephone. In terms of portfolios, the forest deity covers wild places, while the agricultural deity covers human-controlled nature.

In all fairness, I don't recall encountering such a pantheon myself (excluding actual pantheons, that is—and even then I don't think that I recall one that's quite like that).

Sharysa, do you have any examples of such a religion? (I'm genuinely curious.)

edited 2nd Jul '14 9:09:48 PM by ArsThaumaturgis

is it really unusual for there to be multiple gods for more or less the same thing?

I don't think that it's all that unusual to have some degree of overlap—Sekhmet and Set are both associated with warfare, for example, as I recall—but the figures will generally have fairly distinct personalities, I believe—continuing the warfare example, Ares and Athena were both associated with warfare, but the former with bloodshed and bloodlust and the latter with tactics and generals.

edited 3rd Jul '14 8:58:07 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

Responding to your original post you need to decide what sort of religion you want it to be. So far a lot of discussion has come from a Abrahamic perspective but the issues you mentioned need not even be a problem if your religion is closer to other religions.

The issue of good and evil is only a problem if the gods are morally good, involve themselves in human affairs and are omnipotent. For many religions this hasn't been the case. It isn't unusual for gods to have limited power and be much more human in their personalities- they have flaws and agendas and don't exist just to help out humans. Many religions had good and evil gods of equal power and who didn't really care about the average mortal.

@ Ars & Tarsen: Yes, Greek mythology has all of those archetypes, but it also has a ton of other gods for just about everything else, and "tree deity" isn't the only office that is shared. It would be really odd for several deities of a pantheon to share the same aspect if you could count the entire pantheon on one hand, unless that aspect featured heavily into the culture to the point of defining it. Generally overlaps occur in a pantheon when you have a lot of gods.

edited 3rd Jul '14 4:25:33 PM by shiro_okami

@Shiro: Ah, good point—that hadn't occurred to me.

I do still think that a "god of the wild" and "god of the harvest" as two separate entities works with so small a pantheon, given how separate cultivated nature can be from wild. The "tree" deities on top of those two does seem as though it might be a bit much, I think. I suppose that a separate tree deity could make sense if trees, specifically, were particularly important to the culture in question; that does seem likely to be a fairly rare case, however.

edited 3rd Jul '14 4:38:20 PM by ArsThaumaturgis