Questions tagged [religion]
For questions regarding the impact of religion in a given scenario or the creation of a religion for use in a fictional world.
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Is a religion which allows cyborgs but not AI or genetic engineering realistic? [closed]
On an alternate Earth I am designing, the entire industrialised world is dominated by a single religion. This religion has many denominations, but in all of them both genetic engineering and advanced ...
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How to make pagan religions popular again [closed]
In my medieval fantasy world, Christianity, or at least it's parallel universe equivalent, is the most dominant religion. However, later in my world, pagan beliefs start to become popular again and ...
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How to create a custom gematria system for a world? [closed]
I just recently asked What are the origins of the various forms of Gematria? and What are the rules for constructing a gematria system? Now I am wondering how to create a custom gematria system for a ...
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What makes a religion popular? [closed]
There have been many things asking on how to make a fictional religion. As I was making my world's religion, I wondered: what would make people want to believe in it? What also gave me the idea is of ...
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Can a real religion exist in a high fantasy world? [closed]
In my world, there are multiple religions, and one of them is Christianity. While it exists in our world, there are some differences, including:
Changing of locations and places
A few characters are ...
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Why would neurodivergent people be sacred individuals?
In my world, there are magical humans often called wizards (their scientific name is Homo magicus) (so, they are still humans, just not Homo sapiens).
They are traditionally a very religious race. ...
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How could a church maintain the illusion of an Eternal Flame for hundreds of years?
In the world I am developing, a group called the Garotakor Kobark base their belief system on a fire that has burned consistently for hundreds of years. It has been contained within a step pyramid-...
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How can a matriarchal religion support a patriarchal structure?
The Cult of the Holy Mother is a female-dominated religious organization that retains a large role in the shaping of society and affairs of the nation. The cult traces its origins to a virgin woman ...
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How can an expression of a god's power be used to authenticate the legitimacy of a sect within a religion?
The Cult of the Holy Mother is a female-dominated sect within a larger religious organization led by a male patriarch. Although the cult is small, it retains a significant role in the imagination of ...
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How can a hypostatic union be the preferred fusion between gods and mortals?
The Great Wheel is a planar cosmology which defines how the planes, worlds, and realms of the multiverse are connected to one another. Throughout this multiverse, there are various gods that exist ...
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How can the law of equivalent exchange lead to diminishing returns from sacrifices?
The astral realm is the place where magic in our world originates from. Priests of the Aztec empire can access that magical power for their own purposes through the use of spells and rituals. The ...
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Awaken after millions of years of spacetravel, what day is today, what time it is and to where should I look at? [closed]
Bob is a 30 years old man who has a religion, called Bobism that is a particular blend of Judaism, Islamism, Christianism, Buddhism, Madeupism and Wtfism. Bob is a strict rigorous practizer of Bobism.
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How do I create a religion unlike greek pantheon?
Most of the religions I see GMs make (& even myself) are basically just rehashed Greek pantheon-esque religions. Several gods, each one governing a specific thing, sometimes different regions have ...
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Why would great white sharks be sacred animals?
In a future web-series I want to create, there is a species of massive humanoids named giants (Homo maximus) (technically, they are still humans, just not Homo sapiens). They are less social than ...
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How can a deity's karma be corrupted by the reincarnation cycle?
Reincarnation is the cycle of birth and death that all human souls traverse in their journey to a higher state, in which they permanently leave that cycle. When the body dies, its soul ascends to a ...
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What types of conditions in an early civilization would create a religion that values joy, celebration, camaraderie and loyalty?
I’m currently in the early stages of building cultures in a high fantasy setting, and what I initially have to work with is a couple of deities- one of which embodies joy, celebration, camaraderie and ...
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Despite scientific advancements that can eliminate all birth defects, why would incest still be a taboo?
First and foremost: do we all agree that the main reason that incest or inbreeding is bad is because it leads to the passing down of recessive genes and these birth defects can severely impact the ...
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How can a deity make his desires known to his followers without communicating with them directly?
The time-stream is the normal passage or flow of time and its historical developments, within a given dimension of reality. Elder gods are all-powerful beings that exist outside this reality within ...
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Religion For Dogs [closed]
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 ...
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How can an authoritarian nation exist as a sovereign nation within a democratic framework?
The Papal States were a series of territories in the Italian Peninsula under the direct sovereign rule of the Pope, from the 8th century until 1870. However, the spike in nationalism around the world ...
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How advanced would Lanka under Ravana (and thus the Rākṣasas/Yakṣas) have to be to supply a 100 billion population of meat eaters?
The population of Lanka under Ravana is 100 billion, over 10 times the world population now (see my answer here for details), in a space of one, not that big country, and the population eats meat. ...
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How plausible is this religion? [closed]
the Cavnians organized their civilization around the geometric structure of Bismuth crystals, this is because it is believed that Bismuth crystals contain the energy of the Provider.
When Ayak, the ...
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How Do You Manage Religion in World Building? [closed]
I may be asking this in the wrong place, as it could be a pretty subjective question- just let me know and I’ll ask elsewhere, but I saw on a recent post that the Code of Conduct on this site ...
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How would modern religions react to magic [closed]
So I have an idea for a scenario in which all at once humans across the world are able to do at least some magic.
This event is entirely random so a Christian pastor has the same chances of gaining ...
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How can libraries retain their relevance as religious centers of power in a world of e-commerce?
Libraries are buildings containing collections of books, periodicals, and sometimes films and recorded music for people to read, borrow, or refer to. They house updated material to meet the user's ...
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Can we Build a World Where Cooking is Difficult?
I want to build a world that satirizes the modern cult of cooking. The cult has a long list of infractions that will ruin a dish and render it inedible. For example:
Chopping an onion the wrong way
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How can a religion rationalize worshipping deities it has enslaved?
Daemons are malevolent spirits that inhabit the astral plane. This religion views these spirits as divine beings and worship them as gods. They are heavily revered in the faith, and are considered ...
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Hypothetical religion [closed]
If some society had religion that didn't believe in eternal damnation with a maximum sentence in hell being 15 billion years and then all people, even the worst people go to heaven, could this ...
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How can a transitory deity be put on equal footing with other members of a pantheon?
The deity Ashura seeks to enter the mortal realm using an avatar. This is meant to fulfill a prophecy, in which he does battle with an ancient demon seeking to conquer earth. However, avatars are only ...
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How can a messiah be forced to incarnate pieces of itself thousands of years apart?
The ancient deity known as Shiva exists on the astral plane and intends to cross over into the mortal world to subjugated it to its rule. However, gods are far too powerful to exist on the mortal ...
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Why convert to a religion that sees you as inferior?
Why would an alien convert to a religion that would make them subservient to humans?
Given a Galactic religion that sees humans as the "chosen" race, destined to rule.
Aliens that convert ...
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How Would Political and Religious Structures Function in a Buddhist Medieval Europe? [closed]
In this alternate history timeline, the Roman Emperor Justinian declared the state religion to not be Christianity, but Buddhism. This wouldn't be too much of a stretch, as Buddhism predated ...
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How can society be convinced into worshiping a consistently failing deity?
The society of an island nation is led by a religion known as "The Church of the Eternal Mother", it is an ancient faith that adheres to a fertility goddess. This faith is led by five ...
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How could breaking a demonic seal weaken a demon's power?
The book of Genesis tells of how God created the earth in six days, as well as the first humans. He created Adam and Eve in his image as pure and uncorrupted beings. However, Lucifer seduced and slept ...
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What benefit would a god who feeds on belief gain from diversifying worship?
This settings' world is united by a world religion that all countries pay homage to. It is controlled by a priesthood who, as well as fulfilling traditional religious roles, keeps the peace between ...
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Could Traditions Such as Human Sacrifice or Gladiatorial Combat Survive in a Modernizing World?
My science-fantasy series is set in a rapidly industrializing galaxy where a group called the Ishgas are dominating militarily, culturally, scientifically, and economically (overall, it's a similar ...
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Is there a difference between spirits and souls? [closed]
I was thinking up a unique religion, and the religion was going to touch on humans being able to return to the here and now, at first they had a soul, but I found when I wrote about them coming back ...
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Why not burn bodies in a world crawling with undead? [duplicate]
In the majority of the modern fantasy worlds the dead are buried in crypts and tombs. At the same time, these places are frequently crawling with undead - skeletons, zombies, etc. I understand ...
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Why would a non-Christian religion suddenly gain a large following among Americans? [closed]
Eighty years into the future, an already existing non-Christian religion has gained a widespread following among Americans. Millions of people have converted to the religion in question.
From what I ...
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assuming the Old Testament YHWH could not create angels, how would He recruit them? [closed]
I mean to tell a story set during the time of the Book of Genesis, leading up to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. YVVH (one of many regional gods) builds more power, as part of a plan to ...
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How would a Low Fantasy Iron Age setting be effected if Inbreeding and Divination were directly connected? [closed]
I'm trying to make a world with a very low fantasy setting in it. The world itself is currently at levels or similar to that of the Classical Civilizations during the later parts of the Iron Age i.e. ...
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Rites of the Church of Quantum Immortality [closed]
Somewhere in the far present there is a Church of Quantum Immortality, whose members believe that they do not die. The idea is generally expressed in terms of the Wheeler multiple-worlds concept: ...
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Would a Muslim pray during a dangerous situation? [closed]
I'm writing a short scifi story in which a small group of people are trying to escape a failing space station.
The characters need to go through a dangerous part of the station. One of them is a ...
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Allowing for Cleric Domain Flexibility With a limited Pantheon
This is my first post so please be patient with me.
My issue is this: I am designing a world in which there is one chief creator god. In order to make the tasks of running the plane less taxing he ...
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How could humans wage a war with Olympus? [closed]
So if all the mythical things, creatures, and gods in the roman Olympus myths spawned on mount Olympus in our world and the military decided to wage a war against the gods how would they do that?
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What would it serve a religion to have two opposing deities with overlapping portfolios? [closed]
The trilogy of Enoch is a set of books within the bible that portrays the divine politics that set the foundation for the canon of its religion. While books 1 and 2 talk of the fall of the watchers ...
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How can the final incarnation of the Anti-Christ be prevented from shattering creation? [closed]
After Yahweh defeated Lucifer in the Great War in Heaven, he cast him and his followers into the bowels of hell, there to spend eternity separated from their brethren. However, Yahweh was arrogantly ...
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How to have a religion that would not impede scientific development
The world setting is as follows:
The main species is human and beastoid(animals that walk on two legs and have hands capable of dexterity, mostly like dog, wolf, cat, bear, rabbit, goat). Half-blood ...
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What benefit would God gain from multiple religions worshiping him? [closed]
Our religion speaks of the creator of the universe, Krishna, descending upon the world in a time of great crisis. This being would be spiritually pure and wipe all evil from the world, ushering in an ...
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How Would my World Have Religious Differences if Everyone Knows the Gods Exist? [duplicate]
In my science-fantasy series, there are dozens, even hundreds of different cultures scattered amongst the stars. However, there is one set pantheon of Gods (as well as a bunch of other divine beings, ...
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