Comments on: Losing Your Religion

By: ROUNDUP - RPG Bloggers Network Carnival - Religion - The Dice Bag | The Dice Bag

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 09:56:18 +0000

[...] subject over at A Butterfly Dreaming was Atheism which is something I’ve been meaning to look at myself for [...]

By: Vampir

Vampir — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:58:53 +0000

The third option reminds me of Stargate…

By: A-to-Z Semi-Monthly RPG Blog/Discussion List Issue 3 » Inkwell Ideas

A-to-Z Semi-Monthly RPG Blog/Discussion List Issue 3 » Inkwell Ideas — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 03:40:09 +0000

[...] homebrew religion. “Greywulf’s Lair” writesThe Opiate of the Masses. Losing your Religion is offered by “A Butterfly Dreaming”. My own humble post on the topic is Flavoring a [...]

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:04:23 +0000

That would depend, of course. Let’s assume that a given figure is known to exist (has manifested before all manner of witnesses, or whatever). It’s possible for that figure to be a god to one culture, a demon to another, and something altogether different to a third.

Atheism doesn’t require the existence of gods, just the existence of myth. The idea of a “completely atheistic world” I mentioned, in which even myth doesn’t exist, is by comparison to our own frame of reference — the inhabitants of such a world would most likely not have a word for “lack of belief in gods,” since there would be no belief in gods.

By: Tommi

Tommi — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 06:27:01 +0000

The thing is that “god” is not really a well-defined concept outside monotheism.

Should Zeus et all be referred to as gods or just very powerful beings? What about the spirit of the ocean, or of a particular pond? If utterly powerful demons and angels exist, in what way are they inherently different from gods?

There are answers, of course, from arbitrary metaphysical explanations, the belief of people, or perhaps so that every spirit with a sense of self is a god. Or maybe all offspring of particular being are gods.

Atheism very much requires that (1) there is a method of explaining everything that functions without whatever the atheists are denying and (2) that there is something to deny in the first place. Aside from few philosophers, it is a very modern concept. Separating religion from other aspects of life is very much a modern concept, also.

(Atheism as simply the belief that gods, however defined, don’t exist does not require such strong assumptions.)

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 01:59:11 +0000

Sounds like a fun concept for a game… and it’s always interesting to try to work a change of systems into an ongoing campaign, rather than stop the old game and start a new one. Difficult, sometimes, but interesting.

By: Dead Orcs

Dead Orcs — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:47:42 +0000

Because I updated my Dungeons and Dragons campaign to the 4E philosophy of “points of light”, it was also necessary (for me) to update how divine power worked in my world.

Previously, divine power came from an all-encompassing life-force called the “Gaia”. Users of divine power tapped into “aspects” of this force. The Gaia sort of functioned like a divine “hive-mind”. In and of itself, the Gaia was unaligned. However, individuals with the ability to utilize divine power, could bend portions of it to their will (clerics, shamans, druids, etc.) I realize that this isn’t an entirely original concept, but that’s what I went with. Due to a cataclysmic event, the Gaia was damaged severely. Certain high-powered individuals were able to take some of this power inside themselves when the Gaia was shattered. Those mortals, in effect, became gods. For now, these gods hold sway. My current campaign involves the characters restoring the Gaia to its original state (which they are unaware of).

So I guess I went from a “sort of monotheistic, but not” campaign to a “pan-theistic, but not permanently” one.