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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 1423520" data-attributes="member: 6533">Well, but I still think it's important to point out that most monotheistic cultures have no problem with the existence of other deities, they just think that their one god is way cooler than the other gods.It's not until Christianity and Judeaism land in the context of Greek Philosophy that you get all this talk of there being one actual answer to it all and everything you encounter has to land in that answer for everyone.  Something we still pretty innately believe today whatever side of the creationest vs Darwin debate you fall on.Which is cool, but it's also a pretty huge assumption, a pretty huge amazingly common assumption.    I loved Kahuna Burgers post, but it still carries that assumption that there are false cosmologieS  and One true cosmology.But, when you are dealing with creatures who inhabit a very different level of the causality playing field as you and I  that assumption can undergo a lot of stress.Both on the little level, gods share portfolios and totally different beings may do the same things for very different people in a very different fashion.And on the big level, there's no real reason why two entirely different gods might not have created the same universe in entirely different fashions without at all being aware of each other.  By any definition once you are discussing origins of that nature you beyond the boundaries of consistency at the very least and very likely causality as well.This isn't just an RPG spin on things either, take a look at the state of Religion in China from the middle ages through the Renaissance.  Absolutely no problem mixing cosmologies.    And while I don't know a whole heck of a lot about the period it did produce Monkey/Journey to the West which is such an awesome book that we should never ever deny its capacity to influence our games in a positive light.On a side note, also in response to Kahuna's excellent post, religion is not simply a reflection of what you believe.  It's also a statement on how you and your fellows want to live.   Look at the differences between various current sects of say Christianity or Hinduism who have entirely similar belief structures but serve very different communities in very different ways.  Or look at an old religion like Hinduism or Catholicism that has changed a great deal over time and circumstance.  Does the fact that Catholics celebrate Christmans with the trappings of other religions mean that they believe in their system any less or that the Theology is incomplete in any fashion?  Maybe, but it certainly doesn't say that so much as it says that celebrating Christmas at the time and manner that it is celebrated is a cool idea and pine trees make neat decorating experiences.  Which is why it's also starting to show up in China as a more or less state approved purely commercial holiday.  Religion is something that human beings do.  It may also be something we believe, but that level of action is pretty strongly hard wired into us and like other things that are hardwired into us, such as sex, that means there is amazing amount of variety in practice.So I don't see how even a commune spell is going to keep people from making up their own versions of things and resisting being told to change even if it is by a deity who can talk directly to a very powerful magic using guy who is more than willing to tell you what the deity says from time to time.Check out the Old Testament for another literary/historical/theological take on that little phenomena.Religion, and every other aspect of humanity, is almost never as clean and simple and coherent as we in the 20th and 21st would like it to be.  And the games that reflect that confusion and incoherence are truer if not better for it and .</blockquote>

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