I need help brainstorming a vanilla, mainstream futuristic religion

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This is kind of a weird request: I want a religion that ISN'T for Travellers, space pirates, heroic fighter jockeys or anything wild and crazy.

I'm looking for a religion for everyone else -- the people who want to get up in the morning, go to work, come home, rinse and repeat. It shouldn't be sinister or oppressive (although, like most religions, it could certainly be used by oppressors or to make people feel better about their oppression), but it should give comfort and help the (mostly human, but it should embrace other species, too, to some degree) adherents make sense of life in the Third Imperium.

I don't want to use a contemporary 21st century religion for two reasons: One, I want the setting to feel alien and futuristic, and this is a good way to emphasize that; two, I don't want to ruffle any feathers. (I'll save that for modern horror games, where people know going in to expect cross-waving zealots and the like.)

That said, a space religion that had echoes of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mormonism or even Scientology, would be very fitting, since this should seem believable and be part of the background against which all the wildness happens.

Thanks for your help in advance.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Church of the Sub-Genius.

The Church Of The SubGenius is an order of Scoffers and Blasphemers, dedicated to Total Slack, delving into Mockery Science, Sadofuturistics, Megaphysics, Scatalography, Schizophreniatrics, Morealism, Sarcastrophy, Cynisacreligion, Apocolyptionomy, ESPectorationalism, Hypno-Pediatrics, Subliminalism, Satyriology, Disto-Utopianity, Sardonicology, Fascetiouism, Ridiculophagy, and Miscellatheistic Theology.
—The Book of the SubGenius, page 5

Hmmm.... Maybe they're not mainstream enough.

 

[Celebrim]

If current trends in spirituality were to continue for another few centuries, the most likely resulting vanilla religion would be some sort of neo-paganism rooted in pantheism, socialism, and scienticism.

Basic tenents:

1) Everything is God. We are all part of the great cosmic process that is God. We are the part of the God Universe that looks back at itself. Our highest duty therefore is to study and praise the universe generally, and our fellow selves particularly.
2) Deities are man's natural understanding of the great processes of the All-Nature-God/Goddesss, or specific way of relating to things that are too large for us to understand. There are as many deities as there are ways of looking at the universe. All relgions throughout history are simply individual expressions of our collective human understanding.
3) The greatest dieties are Father Space and Mother Earth, the dual aspects of the universe, the yin-yang, the nothing and the something, order and change. All dieties are merely reflections of one of these two greatest modalities, which are themselves simply the greatest modalities of the all. The star dust of cold Father Space fell on the warm gravity womb of Mother Earth and brought forth life.
4) The purpose of life is to fill the universe with life in every warm spot that Mother Earth has provided. All life should be cherished and respected. All life should be encouraged to evolve to meet its intended niche. The purpose of mankind is through its own striving to survive, to provide shelter for the rest of life from clamity and never to exploit or destroy life for selfish purposes.

That should be sufficiently generic as to not reference any particular modern religion, but sufficiently familiar so as to seem believably comfortable and attractive to the majority of 21st century players.

Now, if you want something a bit wierder, I'll have to do some brain storming.

 

[pawsplay]

That said, a space religion that had echoes of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mormonism or even Scientology, would be very fitting, since this should seem believable and be part of the background against which all the wildness happens.

You specified no real-world religions, but I think there is a lot of room for, ahem, adaptation. I would definitely look at Ba'hai and Sikhism as two real-world religions with relationships with other world religions, that are reasonable candidates for a "future religion." If you don't want to ruffle feathers, I suggest simply looting those religions for ideas. Unitarian Universalism is another you could tap for ideas; to some extent you could merge it with Celebrim's suggestions for a new future religion.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I could totally see an old-style "Household Gods"/animist/voodoun* faith popping up again, where people pray to and leave offerings for the god of the hearth, the god of the forge, the god of tools...and when such a faith goes offworld, the god of air scrubbers, the god of fusion reactor fuel rods, the god of the navcomp, etc.

I could also see Von Danikenism becoming a real faith- the kind of stuff the writers of the Stargate movie & series tapped into- except that the Von Danikenites still believe that aliens are gods. That we haven't met any is immaterial (Unbeliever!)- that just means we're not ready yet.






* and the more voodoun type branches might actively seek out the VacJacks of your other thread to use as the raw stuff of zombie making, because, who knows, perhaps tetrodotoxin & 20 seconds of airlessness is perfect for making zombies?

 

[hopeless]

The Light: literally emphasises the difference between darkness and light given the presence of space travel and the universal fear of the dark, the light is used to provide solace and hope in the darkest of times.
Its literal imagery is that the light represents what is best about humanity (and other species) and the goal to prove yourself better and this would include ancestor worship the idea that this is the easiest form of immortality that you are remembered after you pass on from the mortal coil and it doesn't matter if say you're a crimelord, a pauper, a marine or a navy admiral everyone stands alongside each other when they reach the end of their lifespan and the one means they have to insure whatever awaits them after they die they believe their faith will stand them in greater respect even if they have no children or family they do have their faith and are taught that as long as there is Light they will never be forgotten nor abandoned.
Needs more thought better read the rest of this thread!

 

[Celebrim]

The Light: literally emphasises the difference between darkness and light given the presence of space travel and the universal fear of the dark, the light is used to provide solace and hope in the darkest of times.

I believe any true space faring civilization will have to come to philosophical terms with the vast darkness and emptiness of space in order to be comfortable enough with the idea of space travel that it will seem desirable to place oneself at the risk of vacuum, cold, and radiation. A civilization not able to romanticize in some fashion the reality of space as a place utterly inimicable to planet evolved life just isn't going to do it or at least isn't going to value it highly enough to put resources toward it.

Consider for example what happened to our own civilization when the easy childish dreams of a galaxy teaming with friendly life and habitable worlds (even within our own solar system!) fell apart. We went from a people yearning for space to a people almost completely content to watch highly unrealistic fantasies about a space that doesn't exist and to the best of our understanding cannot exist. Almost no one left wants space, because in the terms of my hypothetical religion, we never loved or wanted Father Space at all, but the comfortable nest of Mother Earth. When we found out it might be trouble to get our selves out of the nest, we gave up on the idea.

Being comfortable with space travel means at some level being comfortable with the idea of a god of the great open spaces; even if you couch that belief in materialistic terms its fundamentally not a material belief but a normative philosophy. You have to accept that its ok to be in a place that is dark, empty, cold, and dangerous and see that in at least somewhat positive terms.

(At this point, I feel like I ought to either shut up or assert a copyright over the above ideas.)

 

[Celebrim]

I could totally see an old-style "Household Gods"/animist/voodoun* faith popping up again, where people pray to and leave offerings for the god of the hearth, the god of the forge, the god of tools...and when such a faith goes offworld, the god of air scrubbers, the god of fusion reactor fuel rods, the god of the navcomp, etc.

Truly pious polytheism has at least one great disadvantage over monotheism - it takes up far more of your day to deal with its rituals and superstitions than monotheism does. This is I think one of the reasons you don't see many polytheistic practices persist, and even fewer of them persisting with true piety. I suspect that in day to day life, truly pious polytheism simply can't exist along side scientific progress if only because all those rituals of sacrifice and the like end up eating to much in to your productivity. It was not by chance that I think Greco-Roman polytheism beat out the Etruscan variaty, or why polytheism itself universally overthrew the animistic religions that preceded it.

If polytheism were to reappear as a strong spiritual force, I think it would be of the softer sort like I described that most strongly echoes intellectual Hinduism (just about the only polytheistic belief system that has survived to the present day).

On the other hand, I feel soft belief systems (by which I mean those that make few concrete demands of their believers) are inherently unstable for socio-economic reasons. If a religion is not at least somewhat hard and demanding, people will find few reasons to believe in it because (materially speaking) one of the primary social values of religion is that it is useful for establishing trust between unrelated social/famial groups. However, if the practice of the religion requires little tangible effort and sacrifice, then it is unuseful as a means of evaluating the trustworthyness of the believer. Too long of a period of soft belief tends to create a society markedly lacking in trust, with the result like in the novel Dune of creating a social movement toward religious upheaval as preferable to the continuance of uncertainty and mistrust.

The belief system I described is probably too soft to persist for long, but you could probably reconcile this by having it undergo period of religious fervor where society rewarded public displays of sincerity and piety. So, backing out for a longer view, the history of the religion would probably alternate between what I described and periods where the faithful tended to believe in the literal truth of Father Space and Mother Earth as personified and aware beings, capable of responding to prayers and being pleased by acts worship and devotion. During each period, the adherents of the previous period would continue to exist as a minority (possibly an oppressed minority) within the religion. Eventually though each side would jump the shark, becoming either so blaise in their belief that the social fabric started to fall apart, or so pious in their belief that it became a heavy social and economic burden (particular when the acts of piety became more and more divorsed from acts of charity and/or colonial/communal investment).

 

[Hand of Evil]

Elvis! (note: this was used in Babylon 5 TV show and BattleMech)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If polytheism were to reappear as a strong spiritual force, I think it would be of the softer sort like I described that most strongly echoes intellectual Hinduism (just about the only polytheistic belief system that has survived to the present day).

While it is the BIGGEST polytheistic faith in the world, there are several others out there- Confucianism, Shinto, Taoism, African tribal religions (and faiths that evolved from them, like Santeria and Voodoun). According to some sources, the majority of the world's faiths are still polytheistic in basic structure.

As to greater time investment, as the song says, "it ain't necessarily so." Polytheistic faiths don't require you pray to each divinity individually each rime you pray. Most of the time, you'd just be praying to a small few to whom you have a personal connection...or to whom you need to pray for a specific purpose.


Polytheism