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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Xvartslayer" data-source="post: 6781274" data-attributes="member: 6803305">In general, it was not the promise of an afterlife or the threat of eternal punishment that compelled people to participate in religious life. It was social pressure on the practical level and the supernatural threat to the community that enforced compliance. An Amerindian woman did not refrain from eating beaver flesh while menstruating because she would go to hell. It was because The Beaver would stop feeding the tribe.Why won't it rain? Where are the fish? Why is that big scary mountain smoking and grumbling? These were more important considerations than a theoretical afterlife. I think a lot of modern folks subconsciously think that those old-timey people couldn't really believe that the River God is hungry and needs to be fed. Not really. They did. That is why a person who rejects the civil religion was so transgressive and dangerous. In the modern world a Catholic and a Zoroastrian can get along just fine, assuming that it will all shake out after the end. What if the consequence of your partner skipping church to watch football was potential famine, plague, angry spirits or the community's abandonment and rejection at the hands of an angry god? Even if you were willing to take the risk, your neighbors were not.In the Realms the gods can, in fact, stop the rain, scare away the fish or make the volcano erupt. They might even conceivably come by personally and make it happen. The gods might send a famine to remind the village of the importance of reverence, and in the Realms an actual person or sentient entity might physically come and explain "All we ask of you people is a little humility. But Dave over there read some Nietzche and Sartre in community college and thinks he is oh so smart! Well, no rain for you! Here, have and Insect Plague. I'm outta here."</blockquote>

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