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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kichwas" data-source="post: 9741473" data-attributes="member: 891">The biggest flaw with a lot of fantasy pantheons is given that regular people also have super powers - you'd rightly see all those guys running around claiming to be divine beings as full of it. All they are is more powerful super heroes and villains than you.In any 'pantheon' where a mortal can become one of them, it's even more blatantly obvious that they're nothing more than the justice league when you're the mystery men. How can they be the being that made the universe or that keep the rivers flowing when last week one of them was just the local seamstress and you knew her as a kid? That's just someone who gained super powers.The idea of worshiping that starts to break apart really fast. You might fear it. If the Superman who calls himself "Zargon, lord of rocks that go boom" gets a bad director he might start enjoying tearing down castles and watching peasants burn and you've got to hide for a decade until somebody else takes over his scheduling and he's back to saving squirrels.You might actually reach some form of animism sooner than the real world. The idea that you need to stop anthropomorphizing divinity. religion becomes instead the search for the truths to existence, a recognition that all existence is connected - matter, energy, mind and soul. We sort of call that Physics in the real world. Or Animism if you believe in the soul part. And perhaps that the concept of the divine is simply either that everything is a part of it, or its what made everything, and likely both.Stripped down, this is what a lot of the real worlds great spiritual teachers have put forth, and it's even in the teachings of many faiths to not anthropomorphize divinity (don't make idols for example, as well as notions that to actually see the divine would either be impossible or drive one insane because it's too complex to be comprehended).A world where there are super powers (magic) everywhere, and you can put a scale to it all, and yet folks have also figured out an afterlife is real - even if only because they've met the neighborhood bard who's an undead intelligent mariachi skeleton (Ok, it's a character I've been itching to play) - that's a world that probably would have more spiritualism while also having less religion and faith. Faith requires and unknown, and religion is just putting a layer of politics over the mystery.</blockquote>

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