I’ve been developing a world in which humans have disappeared, and pedigree dogs have returned to their country of origin. The story is set in the UK, roughly 3 years after the event. My idea was that religion is beginning to form within packs, with different ideas competing.
My question was, what adaptions might have to be made for a canine religion? What ideas might they have that humans couldn’t?
Seems to me, in just three years, dogs might naturally regard the humans that used to care for them as Gods.
Humans tend to create gods that resemble humans; dogs might have gods that resemble humans too.
With magical powers; like producing food and water at will; sheltering dogs from storms, etc.
If you are a good boy or a good girl. The religion might include hygiene, you don't eliminate where you live, you wait until you can get outside.
Maybe, like saviors, they believe the humans will come back. Or perhaps they believe that when they die, they go back to live with kind human masters that provide love and everything they need.
For a lot of dogs, including the one sleeping on my foot right now, their current circumstances may constitute dog heaven.
The idea of humans being gods is good, but I think a lot will also depend on how/why humans disappeared and what the dogs know about it. I mean, it's a very different story if humans died (and their bodies were laying around being eaten by cats) than if they just vanished one day. You also have to figure that there would be a tremendous die-off of dogs, especially pedigree dogs. All those "super cute" cosmetic breeds that humans have developed almost certainly died out pretty fast. The circumstances around the human disappearance will have an impact on how it is understood and remembered by the dogs.
On a related note, depending on how people disappeared and what happened immediately after that, you might lose most dogs who know anything about people. I mean, most dogs that live with people live inside, and if there are suddenly no people to open the door, those dogs might never make it out of the house. That could mean that human worship is a sort of fringe religion among the few survivors who actually did live with people. That would be a great source of conflict if you paint the house dogs as a fanatic sect largely discredited or possibly feared by the rest of the dogs.
What you could also do, if you want human-worship to be more wide-spread, is to make those few surviving house dogs almost oracles. Obviously, in a post-human world, many of our inventions and contraptions are still around, and after only three years, most of them would still be in play. Things like grocery stores might still be mostly intact (again, depending on the nature of the human disappearance), so dogs who have been into those stores with people in the past might know how to get inside, or where to find food in them. Maybe dogs who used to live in houses know that food comes in cans, even though you can't smell it. Service dogs would know how to open all kinds of doors too, and flip switches and do all kinds of "magic" things with these human artifacts.
If you don't want dog religion to be that human-centric, dog religion would probably reflect human religions in many ways. For example, their deities would likely be canine. Just as humans had the fey, dogs might view wild canines like wolves and foxes as semi-divine creatures. Because dogs are pack animals generally living in family groups, they are well-suited to a familial pantheon featuring different gods in different roles. For example, the father deity who protects and punishes, the mother deity who cares and provides, the sibling deities who get up to mischief and create many of the stories and legends that will be told. Only three years after humans, this kind of established religion would probably have to have come from wolves or coyotes or something.
What might be interesting to look at would be different pantheons for different breeds. Generally, people have gods that look like them, whatever that means to them. It might be just have a human shape, or it might have the same skin color, or it might have the same oblong heads, but people usually make their gods look like them (there are, of course, exceptions). With so many sizes and styles of dog, whether or not you choose to go with a human-centric religion or not, there is fertile ground for breedism. For example, if humans are gods, surely the Pomeranian is more divine than the husky because humans put so much more effort into Pomeranians. That also means that the dogs who would be most devoted to the Divine Human sect are likely also dogs who have the most to gain from it. After all, a pedigree dog could claim superiority through breeding while a former stray might rebel against a faith that makes them second-class citizens. Alternatively, if you broadly adopt a wolf religion that has nothing to do with humans, human-altered breeds would either be no different or would be scorned.
Whatever you decide, remember that religion is a practical concern. It serves a purpose, often an emotional one, and creates a sense of understanding of the world and the practitioner's place in it. If a pack lives in an area with severe weather, their gods are likely to be temperamental and strict. If they live in a fertile and safe area, their gods are likely to be generous and kindly. The issues that the pack faces will determine what they need from their religion, and so will change what they believe and how they practice or express it.
The priest held up his paw for silence.
"Hear me, for on this, the third anniversary of the Change, I bring you the truth. The Furry Mother herself appeared to me in a dream last night and gave me a vision. She revealed to me why the humans were taken away.
All have sinned, even I. Our Furry Mother forgives us, because She is a loving mother. All she asks is for us to repent and try to do better.
But there is one sin that isn't easy to forgive. Two groups among her creations kept creating false religions. One group was the humans. She permitted this, since she created humans to be foolish creatures, existing only to serve. Their silly views amused her.
And sitting before me are so many members of the group that refused to discard their blaphemy, even after the humans were removed.
Humans are not gods! They did not create the world. Our Furry Mother created them last and then took them all away without even twitching one of Her whiskers.
Dogs must learn their place. Even though you are not cats, the Furry Mother loves you. She is ready to forgive you, but until you give up your sins, you are all just bad dogs.”
(amadeus excuse me, we seem to have found about the same answer within minutes..)
Humans have disappeared, the dogs won't know why that happened. The religion of the dogs could have something to do with that. They'll miss us. For dogs, there will be a mythical past, where humans took care of them and gave them a purpose in life. In exchange, dogs had to be obedient. The religion will idealize this obedience.. and same time blame disobedient dogs for the disappearance of the humans. They sinned. The dog priests will sanctify the human period as the "time of the Gods".
As far as what dog religion can have that human religion can't I recommend incorporating smell. Dogs communicate in part by smell and can use smell to discern all kinds of important information such as where another dog has been, their health what they have eaten, as well as tracking. A scent of divinity or of evil would be interesting. Smell would almost certainly be used to define places of worship in much the same way we use color and sound.
As for adaptations... there's a lot. The most important question is how dog-like are your dogs? Are they essentially humans in a dog's body? If so why didn't they already have religons? The most common religions today took multiple generations to form as history turns into legend. 3 years even for a dog is only a generation so if we assume dogs didn't have religion before the changing, the events of the changing wouldn't yet form a cohesive mythology, that's not to say a religion can't form just that it would be more like a cult or set of useful superstitions. A bigger problem is communication. As far as I have read, dogs can communicate their current state, but I haven't seen any ways to describe the past, different settings, instructions, or abstract ideas. Even if you made dogs smart enough to develop religions how would they communicate? Do they already have a language to boot?
There's a decent chance secular leaders will also be religious leaders. Leaders would likely either have survival skills for natural enviornments(like hunting dogs or feral dogs) or man made enviornments (guide dogs or once again feral dogs). A guide dog may be more likely to profess a human centric religon vs a feral dog.
Dogs aren't dominate in the ways humans are so they would likely see animals such as cats and wolves as moral agents which would be interesting to see
