'Beluaterranism'

[Nosferatus]

I am starting a concept of a religion alot similar to medieval christianity.
A religion that sees everything in life as being part of religion and thus almost everything a man does should be out of religious motivation.
I hope this gives alot of depth and makes alot of stuff happen from this religious view of life.
it could spark massive wars on all fronts, with a real and passionte reason instead of all the silly conflicts we have most of the time, in which there is so much lack of reasoning that people don't seem to bother finding one anymore.
Basically i hope this will help making the game even more interesting than it is on Beluaterra.
I personally find other religions very lacking in that extend.

Anyone who feels the same or is simply interested, please help by contributing ideas or suggestions here or by simply altering the wiki page i started.

http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Beluaterranism

What it needs most now are the following:

*religious icons, symbols
*a decent and fitting name
*a list describing sins on the tablet of sins.
*more descriptions on the different castes and there individual rituals or rites.
*any extra input or criticism for the original concept.
*stories to be added to the book of faith, or the whole stories of the existing summarized ones.
*I hope to have a quite a big holy book in the end, full of fun moral stories.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

If your goal is to appeal to ALL of BT, then I'm not sure how well having named saints and stuff would go. I think that it might be possible to get more appeal by keeping things as abstract as possible, and have people find their own flavors, if you'r really aiming for pan-continental. Make sure not to let people make their own faiths though.

That's just what I believe though, so who knows, maybe the opposite is true.

[Chenier]

If your goal is to appeal to ALL of BT, then I'm not sure how well having named saints and stuff would go. I think that it might be possible to get more appeal by keeping things as abstract as possible, and have people find their own flavors, if you'r really aiming for pan-continental. Make sure not to let people make their own faiths though.

That's just what I believe though, so who knows, maybe the opposite is true.

Agreed. Abstract means that people who followed other faiths can continue to worship their faith while attending this church. A list feels exclusive and makes one's prior beliefs unwelcome.

[Nosferatus]

Agreed. Abstract means that people who followed other faiths can continue to worship their faith while attending this church. A list feels exclusive and makes one's prior beliefs unwelcome.

I'd rather say that any room for personal opinions or philosophy is what has created splits.
The biggest religions in the real world are monotheistic and have an answer for nearly any philosophical question.

But i agree on the saints, that there shouldn't be a list with the 'real' saints.
It would perhaps be more fun and logical to have different saints in different parts of beluaterra and the freedom for people to worship there own saints.

[Perth]

Agreed. Abstract means that people who followed other faiths can continue to worship their faith while attending this church.

Yeah. And bbbbboooorrrriiinnnggg.... 

[De-Legro]

Yeah. And bbbbboooorrrriiinnnggg.... 

It does seem to limit some of the options for conflict, but then I am sure they will find at least some wanting to combat the spread of such a all encompassing religion.

[Nosferatus]

It does seem to limit some of the options for conflict, but then I am sure they will find at least some wanting to combat the spread of such a all encompassing religion.

The more sucsesful it becomes in spreading non violently, the more enemies it will make and the more desperate they will get.

[Naidraug]

The idea is interesting, but reading the wiki, don´t know, sounds too much like cristianity, the idea of heaven and hell and the creation story (god created everything and then created a man and a woman? too biblical)

Besides, with the idea of god drinking blood for power, would open for the nobles to do the same...and don´t we have a blood cult in BT already(i may be mixing islands, so please correct me if I´m wrong)

I like the idea of creating religions but, like Tom said, we should avoid too many similarities with the existing religions...

[Indirik]

The more sucsesful it becomes in spreading non violently, the more enemies it will make and the more desperate they will get.

Hmm.. where have we seen that before? I can swear that I've seen something like that happen IG already... Was it on Dwilight maybe?   

[Indirik]

Agreed. Abstract means that people who followed other faiths can continue to worship their faith while attending this church.

I always hated when religions tried to do that. "You can worship anyone you want, any way that you want, so long as you sign up on our membership list."

IMHO, those are the kinds of "religions" (and I use that word very loosely) that kill the religion game in BattleMaster.

[Nosferatus]

I always hated when religions tried to do that. "You can worship anyone you want, any way that you want, so long as you sign up on our membership list."

IMHO, those are the kinds of "religions" (and I use that word very loosely) that kill the religion game in BattleMaster.

I fully agree, thats why i am starting the project.
If you wish to contribute your very welcome!

[Nosferatus]

The idea is interesting, but reading the wiki, don´t know, sounds too much like cristianity, the idea of heaven and hell and the creation story (god created everything and then created a man and a woman? too biblical)

Besides, with the idea of god drinking blood for power, would open for the nobles to do the same...and don´t we have a blood cult in BT already(i may be mixing islands, so please correct me if I´m wrong)

I like the idea of creating religions but, like Tom said, we should avoid too many similarities with the existing religions...

That is unavoidable, especially for a monotheistic one.
In history, the most 'sucsesful'(in terms of beeing used/followed by most numbers) religions have alot in common.
And the thing they have most in common is perhaps the genesis found in Sumerian(and other later Mesopotamian societies), Jewish, crisitian and muslim faiths, which your referring to.
Its a hell of a trick to avoid all this or something like this when trying to achieve the goals i have set.
If god is the greatest being in existence, then anything that is is because of him and the things that are most similar to god are thus more devine.

How would your monotheistic genesis look like? god waved his pancy little magic sceptre and poof! there is humanity? Please tell me.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Cycle of transcendence. "God" was once mortal but its existence was altered to immortality (Not important to know details because you, as a human, sure as heck will never understand). It is the one and only "God" because no others of its "types" ever transcended mortality, nor did any others gain control over "reality". Therefore, that former mortal being is no longer mortal, and is the one and only absolute divine entity in this "reality".

"God" formed a separate fully enclosed space (Again, who cares about the fine details, "Great magic", good enough for followers!) for whatever purpose. Perhaps it is a Xanatos Gambit with the lifetime of nearly eternal eons, that with enough iterations of its created "realities", "God" can discover the answer behind the mystery of its own transcendence. And yes, that means in my theology, "God" has one and only one thing it does not understand: How it became "God".

Now the question might be: Where did "God" come from? Cycle of transcendence. It is implied that "God" arose out of a previous cycle whereby the previous "God" did the same thing, trying to figure out how it became "God" by creating a Universe and observing its progression. Presumably one human from this iteration can become an absolute "God", but no, that would be massive hubris, and that's a big no-no in my faith's creed.

However, "God" remembers what it once was, and has recreated them perfectly as they were from the beginning, for "God" knows what his former mortal species was like at its origin. He also knows the state of the forged Universe at its origin, and so from the instant closest to origin, because for whatever reason even "God" in my theology cannot create directly at the absolute origin point (Not important for humans to know. Wouldn't help them anyway). Then he watches the progression of the cosmos, and the origins of "life". Unknown trillions of years later, the first spark of human life appears, just like "God" predicted/calculated, for it set the conditions of the Universe correctly such that after a certain amount of time, there would be a 100% probability of humans appearing in that Universe.

That means, "God" did not directly create humans in my genesis. It rather created the Universe with the intent and the 100% chance that humans would come into being in that Universe precisely at the time "God" had set when it created the Universe. Think of it like tuning the settings of your software such that it performs a certain action after some time delay. Only "God" thinks in units of time, if at all, that are far longer than we can comprehend. As such, even trillions of years is nothing to "God", and "God" can wait that long before beginning its observation of its target species.

There, I think I just gave some weird variation of intelligent design. Oh well, that's coincidental, as this came directly from my imagination, more or less while I was thinking about how to consider what daimons were. Incidentally, daimons have nothing to do with what I have written thusfar.

[Perth]

Here's the monotheistic religion I founded a few months ago on FEI:

http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Church_of_Echad

[Chenier]

Yeah. And bbbbboooorrrriiinnnggg.... 

The goal, I believe, wasn't to create a particularly amazing religion, but rather one that seeks to spread everywhere. One can only realistically seek one or the other within the current system, so one has to chose. For a religion with such objectives as Beluaterranism, staying as vanilla as possible would be the best path.

Nothing prevents a vanilla religion from having flavored orders within it, though. Imo, this would be the optimal path to take.

I'd rather say that any room for personal opinions or philosophy is what has created splits.
The biggest religions in the real world are monotheistic and have an answer for nearly any philosophical question.

But i agree on the saints, that there shouldn't be a list with the 'real' saints.
It would perhaps be more fun and logical to have different saints in different parts of beluaterra and the freedom for people to worship there own saints.

In the real world. Not in BM. BM favors bland religions with little content. I've fought for a long time and proposed a bunch of ideas that would help religions with actual content to compete with the edge being vanilla grants, but there was not enough interest in helping making fun religions successful. Which is why, as I said above, one must seek either being well-developed, or being successful.

I always hated when religions tried to do that. "You can worship anyone you want, any way that you want, so long as you sign up on our membership list."

IMHO, those are the kinds of "religions" (and I use that word very loosely) that kill the religion game in BattleMaster.

What kills the religion game is how religions are implemented. People just adapt to best use what's available. I've written murals of text to propose changes that would help improve the religion game. People are happy with religions doing fine as hollow shells. Don't blame others if they opt for hollow shells if doing otherwise is just shooting oneself in the foot.