Not really. I just don't find it particularly creative if the actual philosophical undergirding of your setting is, "It's an unconscious mashup of Judeo-Christian and Greek beliefs, with sexual mores set in the immediate aftermath of discovering advanced sanitation, antibiotics, and birth control.... only Judeo-Christian, Greek, advanced santitation, antibiotics, and birth control won't actually appear in the setting." And in particular, with regards to your topic, if you do have that as the undergirding, it's going to almost impossible to not have your 'goddess of love' be a DiBella like neo-pagan rip off of Aphrodite with a gloss of Judeo-Christian's morals welded klunkily to a general 'if it feels good, do it' attitute. You might could put that all together in some way different than DiBella depending on how realized DiBella is, but it will require conscious understanding of your building materials.
...Judeo-Christian? Where are you getting that from? Also, I don't quite understand why you mention knowledge of science and technology. Related to that, however, is something I feel I should mention now, just in case it becomes relevant later (as things usually end up being when I don't mention them beforehand): Magic, in my setting, is basically another form of technology, in that it works for a
reason. That reason is that magic is just another feature of the universe's natural laws, and as such, in order to use magic effectively, you'll have to be well-versed in those natural laws. In other words, magic is an application of science, and wizards are basically applied scientists, albeit with an entirely different set of tools. That also means that the knowledge possessed by powerful wizards would have to be as advanced as our own knowledge in the real world today, if not more advanced. Of course, that only represents what the wizards themselves know; whether or not they share that knowledge is another story. In Parodesh (the nation that Im-Tinar's pantheon is worshiped in), for example, the spread of scientific knowledge is highly regulated, since the nation is highly religious, and anyone with significant power that doesn't come from the gods is usually considered a threat.
Warning: The next part is about knowledge and such in the rest of the setting. It is a huge continuation of this tangent, which is why I am putting it in a spoiler block.
[sblock]In the other nations, it's different. People in Gondrogar, for example, usually think that magic use beyond basic, untrained sorcery, and indeed most uses of academic knowledge unrelated to warfare, is an excuse for the weak and dishonorable to gain power that they don't deserve (by the way, the biological limits on how powerful one's body can potentially be are vastly expanded in my game compared to real life, so a military made up of brutes armed with low-tech weaponry and little to no magic isn't necessarily suicidal).
In the Calmekanni Wasteland, there's an atmospheric anomaly that makes magic energy regenerate much more slowly than everywhere else, so the people there improvised by using their knowledge to develop advanced machinery. However, ever since the Calmekanni nation was basically destroyed by the Baalican Empire (see next paragraph) about a century prior to present day, most of that machinery, as well as most of the knowledge required to make it, is lost.
In Milandria, knowledge up to a level about equal to the 8th Grade in real-life America is very cheap, though not absolutely necessary, to obtain; more advanced knowledge is much more expensive, though businesses or guilds will often pay most of the bill for a prospective employee that shows promise. Also, since Milandria was founded in revolution against the tyrannical Baalican Empire (which, thanks to the revolution, no longer exists) about 50 years ago, the Milandrians strongly value freedom; thus, the use of "Charm" spells, which forcibly modify the thoughts of the target, is perhaps one of the most illegal things in Milandria, to the degree that there's a governmental organization whose sole duty is to determine whether or not applicants to a paramilitary unit specializing in combating users of such magic should be trusted with the knowledge required to do so.
Then, there's the Remiel Merchant League, an organization of international merchants that has gained autonomy, as though it was its own nation. They have plenty of knowledge, though most of the advanced scientific knowledge they have is taught to high-paying students from the other nations, and most of their research is done on a leisurely basis rather than out of necessity. The fact that their organization has a monopoly on many rare and valuable natural resources means that the right to trade with them is too valuable for the other nations to risk by going to war, so what little military they have is in the form of either mercenaries hired to protect merchant ships, or covert operatives whose purpose is to keep secure the knowledge of where the Remiel Merchant League gets its resources.[/sblock]
It's your setting and in practice few players want to dig into it enough to find out if it is more than superficial, but in general this is not something I believe to be true. But then, I'm a Tolkien fan. I expect a setting to be a like a rich deep loam that you can really sink into.
Well, I never said it wouldn't be deep, or anything like that. What I said was basically that, as my own setting, I and I alone get the final say on what is or isn't true in the setting, and I have no obligation to make the setting true to or consistent with any other setting.
I'm fairly confused by anyone that would view any society and consider the values arbitary. 'Wrong' I could understand, but even those I don't agree with or which repluse me are not arbitrary. What causes her to believe that they are arbitrary other than ignorance? If she is an outsider, where is she from? What was it about that place that caused her to form her opinions?
The "arbitrary" aspect is because Im-Tinar sees certain folkways of society regarding love, sex, and decency as, at best, not serving a purpose. She could, for example, understand why someone would want to wear clothing to serve the purpose of protection or to keep "floppy bits" from uncomfortably flopping around at the slightest movement. What she doesn't understand is why not wearing clothing is considered indecent and made illegal for the purposes of decency, and she and her followers only reluctantly obey such decency laws so that they don't suffer the wrath of the rest of society.
As for being an "outsider," Im-Tinar isn't from a different location so much as she is simply the kind of person who, for whatever reason, was never the type to just go along with things simply because "that's they way it is." I haven't figured out what that reason should be, though; maybe she has abnormal psychology?
Ok, so that's sort of interesting. That makes Im-Tinar the goddess of a particular sort of love. To get back to Frozen again, to Im-Tinar true love wasn't expressed by the love between the sisters - which was mere affection or feelings of sisterly duty - and wasn't expressed by Hans the ice seller when he gave Anna to Hans thinking that this was what was best for her. In fact, that was a betrayal of love, a violation of proper loving behavior because he should have acted on his passion (though frankly, it wasn't clear to me he had any). Likewise, Olaf when he builds a fire isn't expressing love for Anna either, because he has no passionate attraction to her. Again, Olaf might only be expressing mere feelings of duty and obligation. The only love in the movie is when Hans the Ice Seller passionately returns to Anna with the intention of professing his desire for her. Anything else, being less or more than that, wasn't love.
While it would seem lazy on my part, I'm actually considering having there be separate words for those separate types of love in the Parodeshi language simply because I can't think of any other way to deal with this issue. That is, there would be a word meaning what we consider "love for one's family," a word for "selfless caring and giving," and a word for the type of love covered by Im-Tinar's domain. That way, there can still be recognition of those other types of "love" while leaving Im-Tinar's domain intact. Like I said, I myself think it seems lazy, but I can't think of anything else to do about that.
I'm not sure I get how that fits. Without the passionate desire, isn't it just friendship?
(etc.)
Well, a lack of sex does not necessarily mean a lack of passionate desire. Either way, the purpose of that statement was more to lead into the idea that it's not the way in which one betrays the terms of their union, but rather the fact that one is betraying the terms of the union at all, that Im-Tinar condemns. It wasn't supposed to be a statement in and of itself, basically.
That part I do see how fits. Though again, sanitation, antibiotics, and birth control.
I still don't get why you're mentioning those things.
