Gods and religions

If gods exist would religion as we know it exist? I'm building a world where gods are known not to be omnipotent, omniscient, or immortal. They're ageless but they can be killed.

So what form would religion take when you can just walk down to the local bar and actually talk to your god? Would religions be more like imperial cults? Would you even need a priests? Or would the priests be more like bureaucrats who control physical access to the gods?

Look at Ancient Greece and Rome. The gods were not omniscient or omnipotent, they consorted with humans (in all senses of the word) they could be killed by a sufficiently powerful entity ( although that did usually mean another god).

I haven't heard of any of the gods in Greek and Roman mythology being killed outside of the God of War games.

Not technically killed, but Zeus threw his father Chronus into Tartarus forever, which is pretty close.

Uranus also bit the dust, courtesy of Chronus. And he was far more powerful than a god.

@Madrugada

I thought about them. Their gods fit the bill, but I wondered if their religious practices were too close to those of modern religions in that they still had religious figures who interpreted signs/omens and acted as intercessors between the people and the gods. I mean, the ancients believed in their gods and believed the stories about them, but they couldn't go over to the market and punch Bacchus in the face.

The can make the practices whatever you want. Your question was "How would making the gods like this affect the practices?", hence my answer: look at the religions where the gods were basically like that. If you want something different, do it, and don't worry about whether it worked that way historically.

Also look at the Norse religions. Again the gods can be killed by sufficiently high powered entities, and they also consorted with humans.

edited 30th Sep '14 11:52:48 AM by Madrugada

The Norse gods then? There's that one story about that one dude being killed by that douche Loki, where he convinced a blind god to throw a dandelion root or something - and of course it's that god's mortal weakness.

...Anyone who goes to a bar and gets advice from a drunk god deserves what they get. But I'd expect it'd depend on how much they want to get along with the puny humans. In my mind, it'd look more like a bureaucracy that's in addition to the local government, the 'department of Thor' if you will. "Please take a number and wait there; his mightiness Thor the God of Thunder is currently off fixing someone's ventilation system and will be back around 3."

Just because they exist doesn't mean they're ALWAYS there. Who knows how long giant squid have been considered mythical, but we only got confirmation of their existence a few years ago.

With the gods, I really doubt that obscenely-powerful beings would go out of their way just to prove their existence, at least to people who aren't their followers already.

Please keep in mind that until Christianity and its "only one god REALLY exists" belief (plus the unfortunate "kill everyone who isn't Christian" practices), most people didn't really care whether other peoples' gods were real. It wasn't their business to worry about OTHER people's gods—as long as the people weren't trying to invade/conquer, you took care of your own gods' business and left outsiders to do their own shit.

Post-Christianity, everything seems to be a very black-and-white "GOD(S) MUST BE REAL OR ELSE YOU'RE DELUDED AND YOU NEED TO FIND A REAL BELIEF SYSTEM WITH ACTUAL GODS WHO ACTUALLY DO ACTUAL THINGS."

edited 30th Sep '14 12:30:20 PM by Sharysa

indeed the pagan religions usally handwave other gods are just the same or something of that efect, if christianity(or judaism) who throw the know "my god is real, your is not"

anyway if gods are real then yes, religion will be like a cult of personality, like kim-jong in north korea, just this time every power they clame to be is truth

...not exactly.

For one, the attitude you're describing as "Pre-Christianity" was pretty much limited to cosmopolitan Rome (and other multicultural trading civilisations to a lesser extent), which took the approach of saying all the pantheons of the people they ruled were actually just one pantheon under a bunch of different names so really we're all on the same side. This was important, because previously the distinction between "culture", "nation", and "religion" was pretty much nonexistent.

For another, Christianity for a substantial part of its history was basically henotheistic - the difference being not "your gods don't exist" but "your gods are only creatures like the rest of us, unworthy of worship".

...basically, the change you're describing did not happen that abruptly or for that reason (and, arguably, never happened at all).

...leaving aside the ridiculousness of crusades in the first century. :P

...

Anyway. Historically there were a number of religions who claimed that some of their gods were actual, physical people (often, like Rome and Egypt, their ruler), so I don't expect that alone being true would be too incredible a change.

edited 30th Sep '14 1:48:55 PM by Noaqiyeum

Oh, that actually clears up a lot regarding the stuff I can glean off the Internet and assorted texts. Thanks!

Plus I was raised Catholic, not Christian, so "other gods don't exist" was the most common idea among my family.

I find it somewhat amusing that you make that distinction.

Also, the "only one God exists, all others are fake" didn't even start with Christianity, it started much earlier with Judaism.

Anyway, back on topic. I can think of several religions that did not have omnipotent immortal gods, but I can't think of any that supposedly had gods live among humans (unless you count Jesus and the avatars of Vishnu). One difference would be that if a god really was that accessible, it would certainly be easy to prove his/her/its existence.

Catholicism is not Christianity. It's a very prominent sect of Christianity, but oh boy are there differences.

Plus, Filipino Catholicism is even MORE different from Christianity.

@Logo P: I thought Uranus just doesn't have a groin anymore.

Actually, there is an example in fantasy literature, specifically in The Lord of the Rings and in The Wheel of Time. Remember, one of the reasons why people study philosophy and theology and attend churches part of supernaturalist (as in, having supernatural and/or metaphysical qualities or creeds or doctrines) religions is that they may learn about supernatural and transcendental entities and realities. In The Lord of the Rings the constant physical manifestation of literal supernatural entities like the Valar and the Maiar meant that organized religions weren't a very big thing. Why set up churches to gather together and contemplate the divine, when you could just go up to a literal angel and talk with them yourself? In The Lord of the Rings, mass organized religion is often associated with Sauron, who set himself up as a God-king and set up a sort of Imperial Cult to control all the Men that came under his dominion.

The same thing with the Wheel of Time. Since magic, known as the One Power, was an every day thing, and the Creator, the Dragon, and the Dark One were constantly manifesting and intervening in temporal affairs, large scale supernatural religious institutions, where theologians and philosophers would gather to discuss and define their faith, weren't really necessary.

@ Sharysa: Oh, believe me, I know there are huge differences. That's precisely why I found your comment so amusing. It is somewhat rare to find someone who has come to the same conclusion.

There are literally hundreds of trickster gods amongst all the pantheons. Those fuckers aren't going to give anyone straight answers to their existence.

edited 1st Oct '14 10:38:00 AM by Sharysa

Really? I always figured 'Are you a god?' would be the one question you could reliably get a straight answer to from even a trickster.

...It occurs to me that religion can form separately from the acts of a god, to the point of not including that god within it at all. I don't expect anyone to have heard of it (...and I mean that in a literal, non-hipster way), but I remember this one Doraemon movie.

So, the main character gets the chance to make a whole universe in a 'universe-making set' (available from your local department store, a couple hundred years in the future), effectively making him 'God'. When he makes his first trip down to new-Earth, he has to invent religion after saving some Stone Age kids, because that system of thought (is that the right phrase?) hasn't occurred to them.

Later, he gets to discover that, not only does no one believe he's a god, but religion has flourished the way it has in the real world (ie: there's a lot of them, and none of them are Nobita-ites). Oh, and because he screwed up the universe-making part a little bit, he has to apologize and provide a hollow-earth race with a second new-earth, to prevent a world war that is somewhat more literal than usual. So it's both a good and bad thing there, that he's not revered as a god.

So yeah, I can picture a situation where you could go talk to a god, but not really care that he's a god because he isn't your God.

Then there's the Red Dwarf situation, where Lister is a central part of Cat religion and very much their God. ...then The Cat (a severely lapsed, er, 'Cloisterite') meets him, and finds this out, and asks him to turn some object into a woman. Lister, being an ordinary human (well, a Scouser), can't actually do this or he would have already on a ship where he's the only human on board. After a bit of horror at how some comments he made some three million years ago about retiring in Fiji have become dogma and the source of religious wars, Lister gets to find that the most he can do with his newfound divinity is provide some comfort to a old, dying member of the Cat religion.

A religion (depending on one's definition of religion) may not even involve deities at all. Certain versions of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism have little to do with deities.

Well, the Red Dwarf situation doesn't make any sense to me. Lister could have just told them that their doctrines were wrong. Any reasonable member of the faith would have at least listened to him. A lot of religions, both secular and supernatural, were formed by people who perceived flaws in the old belief system. For instance, Martin Luther found a flaw in the beliefs and practices of the Catholic Church to be wrong, so he ended up founding Lutheranism. The Mennonites were founded because they believed that politicians were all too often exploiting church-goers and using church doctrine to justify their wars. Also, according to Karen Armstrong in the Great Transformation, Zoroastrianism emerged because Zoroaster believed that the deities and powers that were being worshipped at the time weren't moral enough. Zoroaster came up with the idea that some deities, or spirits, sided with asha (truth) and were good, while some sided with druj (lie) and were evil.

Sorry, I don't mean to sound preachy.

I think a rather hilarious example was in Exterminatus Now, when Tyrus, the God of Justice, answers someone's prayers, and proceeds to heavily edit His own scriptures because hsi followers got a lot wrong. he even commands his praying follower to go forth and play role-playing games because he thinks their awesome, despite his church's tendency to be very much against RP Gers.

i'd imagine a religion with an active, accessible and talkative god would have considerably less off-shoots based off different interpretations of that god's words. any confusion could basically be solved just by asking the god in question unless the god just isnt interested in asking it.

it'd also probably mean that any changes to the rules wouldnt cause too much of a split; while some people might resent the changes unless they forsake their god as no longer being the real thing, they wouldnt have much of a choice but to accept and move on with the new rules.

i'd say the biggest problem with religions based around verifiably real gods is accountability. while a god can probably shrug off questions he doesnt want to answer, i doubt they'd be able to get away with outright being wrong too much of the time.

obviously a lot of people are going to stick with him no matter what, but when it comes to credibility from the outside, being wrong can crash the chance of that religion spreading much further, i think.

edited 1st Oct '14 3:30:00 PM by Tarsen

I get the feeling "Are you a god?" would elicit Trolling from most tricksters.

Speaking of which, is everyone assuming that the god(s) in question is honest/direct? Because a lot of gods are known for being really intelligent/cryptic/dishonest, which leads to a lot of misunderstanding by humans.

edited 1st Oct '14 8:05:51 PM by Sharysa

One way to get around that is to make the gods polytheistic gods (little "G") or godlings.

For instance, in the Lord of the Rings, the Valar aren't really omnipotent gods, just really powerful angels, or sentient forces of nature. There's Iluvatar, whose Big G god, but he prefers to work in mysterious ways. So mysterious, in fact, that while the people of Middle-Earth acknolwedge his existence and respect him accordingly, they don't go out of their way to overly worship him with grand temples or anything (Sauron was the one who liked lavish temples and cults). The Valar, on the other hand, are much more referenced and revered by the people of Middle-earth. Yet they make mistakes and they quarrel. While most of them are certainly nice and pleasant people, and they are very wise and intelligent, they make the occasional slip-up.

Similarly, in Greek polytheism, the deities are pretty much like really dark superheroes. They are one big dysfunctional family Sure, they fight monsters and make sure big bads like Typhon, and they get heroes like Heracles to take care of monsters, but they are also so scheming, selfish, whoring, egotistical manchildren (and womanchildren) who all too often forget the collateral damage of their fights. An example of this is the Trojan War. The whole mess began because Eris wasn't invited to a wedding.

Please note that I'm not trying to make fun of any Greek polytheists out there. This is just my interpretation.

edited 2nd Oct '14 2:07:33 PM by Coinage

May I recommend Neil Gaiman's American Gods and his Sandman comic series and subsequent spin off Lucifer series.

All the gods are real. And even more are created. But their power and their life is directly connected to how many people believe in them and how devout their following is.

Coinage: Basically, that's a LOT of pagan mythologies.

Besides, if the gods are STATED to not be omniscient/all-powerful/what-have-you, then of COURSE they would make mistakes and still keep their followers, because these followers don't have the Christian mentality of "MUST BE RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING AND THEREFORE MISTAKES ARE BAD."

In Celtic Mythology: The Morrigan is a Blood Knight with a habit of Disproportionate Retribution, but she's also the goddess who saved the Tuatha De due to her powerful magic. Besides, if you don't piss her off, she will reward you for similarly trivial things like helping an old lady across a river (hint, the old lady was her) or giving an old woman a kiss in exchange for water (the actual goddess isn't named in most accounts, but it's most likely the Morrigan, Eriu, or Danu). Most people greatly respect her even if she's most famous for 1) starting giant wars for kicks, and 2) killing Ireland's greatest hero just because he wouldn't sleep with her.

edited 2nd Oct '14 3:19:42 PM by Sharysa