Hello, Gods

[Asperion]

In most fantasy campaigns it seems as though religion and gods are everywhere.

There might be more gods than there are those who would like to worship them.  However,  as society develops the gods seem to disappear.  Many would say that people stop believing in them.  I refuse to accept this.  Looking at reality,  religion is still as strong as it ever was,  just not in the same way.  This indicates that the need for gods is still prevalent today,  but SF games seldom seem to include them. What are some ways that you have included religion and gods in a scifi game? How well did it work out? Were they extensions of current religions or some new ones? Any other comments that you would like to mention are welcome. 

[DShomshak]

In the US, at least, SF was developed by a fairly peculiar fraction of society that didn't have much patience for religion. (Heavy on scientists and engineers.) (Though John W. Campbell, who probably did more to shape American SF than anyone else, became an early booster of Scientology, the religion invented by second-rate SF writer L. Ron Hubbard.) Religion sometimes entered obliquely, though. E.g., the benign Arisians and malevolent Eddorians give a God vs Satan cast to E. E. Smith's Lensman series, with a schmear of transcendence/ascension to godhood at the end.

 

But no, I see no evidence that humanity as a whole has become much less prone to believe in gods with the increase in scientific technology and technological power. Religious fashions have changed over the millennia; the religious impulse has not.

 

For both Traveller locations and my Star Hero campaign focusing on Sard, Planet of Adventure (Planetary Romance, fun!) I've assumed that humans would carry major contemporary religions out with them to space and new faiths would develop, ranging from seriously philosophical or mystical, to completely nuts.

 

One of my Traveller characters came from a planet where Neo-Egyptians heavily influenced the founding culture. After centuries of cultural drift, the result was -- among other things -- a tradition of masked vigilantes which he carried off-planet as the jackal-masked vigilante Bloodhound, devotee of Anubis.

 

Another character came from an iceworld orbiting a red dwarf star, a place where literally *everything* people need to stay alive must be manufactured and carefully maintained. The inhabitants invented the joke religion of Kludgianity, which portrays God as a harried engineer beset by substandard impossible demands, substandard materials and an incompetent labor force. Though there was a point to the joke: Don't expect God to save you from your own carelessness, He can work miracles but even He can't fix stupid.

 

Sard, Planet of Adventure, had a large contingent of settlers from India so three new strains of Hinduism developed. The country of Vajranagar was dominated by a tiny caste of Avatars who used advanced technology such as holography and bionics to counterfeit divine powers. Religion as pure show biz flim-flam, but contemporary India sees this. The country of Tamilore is caught in civil war between two rival neo-Hindu sects that use technology to induce psi powers in the few people with the natural aptitude, the Rishis who control their powers through ascetic discipline and ritual and the Rakshasas who channel their powers through the induced delusion of being possessed by a demon.

 

There are a few more, including one or two of (I hope) more philosophical or mystical depth, but this will do fornow.

 

Dean Shomshak 

[Lord Liaden]

Hero Games' sci-fi future galaxy setting, Terran Empire, devotes several pages to religion as it exists some six centuries in the future, both among humans and several alien races. While certain human-colonized worlds preserve older faiths, two new major human religions, and a couple of minor cults, originating with humanity arose, and are described in TE. The book also details seven alien faiths. The book notes that some of these religions have attracted converts among sapients from other species, including humanity.

 

The two most prominent faiths in the Terran Empire are clear evolutions from the theology and philosophy of the past, but also show the influence of science. I'll include excerpts from their descriptions on TE pp. 98-99 for illustration.

 

The Galactic Church of the Creator: The theology of the Galactic Church derives from Earth's old Abrahamic religions - Christianity, Islam, and Judaism - and has for its sacred book the Logos. The Logos includes portions of the Torah, the Gospels, and the Koran, along with writings of the Church founders and some other major Human writers and philosophers.

 

Church doctrine claims God chose the Human species to bring His message to all other intelligent life, that all beings who accept the Church's covenant become equal before God, and that at the final collapse of the Universe God will judge the actions of all beings who ever lived and allow the virtuous to live again in a new cosmos. Those who belong to the Church must participate in five observances: baptism; daily prayer at dawn and dusk; pilgrimage to Jerusalem; fasting during the Week of Purification; and observing the weekly Sabbath. Church ethical teachings emphasize cooperation, charity, protection of Humanity and Earth, and the continuing mission to spread the word.
 

Teleology: Less a religion than a common philosophy, one especially popular among scientists and psionics, Teleology holds that intelligent beings have a destiny to spread life through the Universe and evolve to a state at which they become, in effect, gods. Some adherents of Teleology believe time-traveling gods from the future designed the Universe, so the teleological purpose becomes predestined.

 

Teleologists advocate terraforming, new colonization, and exploration. They don't seek out converts, but they find Teleology itself so compelling they sometimes use it as the basis of works of art or literature, thereby spreading the concept.
 

EDIT: The example of one of humanity's colony worlds, called "New Canaan," is also interesting. "A barely-habitable world, New Canaan was deliberately selected for its harsh conditions by its original settlers. Motivated by religious faith, they sought to create a society that met the most exacting requirements of all religions. The original settlers were Christian, Jewish, and Muslim, but since then settlers from dozens of other religious groups have immigrated to New Canaan. Under New Canaan's constitution, all citizens must obey the tenets of all religions represented on the planet. In cases where practices directly conflict, a citizen can choose, but otherwise he has to follow all the rules. New Canaanites eat no meat, drink no alcohol or caffeine, may not divorce or use contraception, and wear robes and veils. They use only the minimum technology necessary to support life. Needless to say, the planet's not exactly a tourist destination." (TE p. 71)
 

Edited October 17, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, Asperion said:

What are some ways that you have included religion and gods in a scifi game? How well did it work out? Were they extensions of current religions or some new ones? Any other comments that you would like to mention are welcome. 

 

Most modern religions have a presence in my Traveller game, albeit spotty.  The characters may travel to world after world and not notice more than the occasional church or temple, then land on a world completely run by an organized religious sect.

 

Most significant, though, is the Church of Brotherhood, which does not worship a deity, but an ideal.  This is the organization that runs the TAS, and is aupported entirely by donations and individual members begging for coin on almost every inhabited world.  Generally, if the planet has been inhabited for over a century, there is at least one church.

 

Their ideology is complete pacifism, love of their fellow man (my Traveller games don't usually feature aliens), and a universe completely at peace, striving to find away for humanity to survive final entropy.

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

One of those minor cults I mentioned above, The Church of the Infinite Dark, was greatly modified and expanded in the supplement Scourges of the Galaxy, in ways that I've always wanted to run, but never had the opportunity. Its members are various alien species including humans, who while in space under one circumstance or another, encountered a King of Edom, the Hero Universe's analogue to H.P. Lovecraft's "Great Old Ones," godlike but utterly inhuman entities imprisoned eons ago. The experience drove them mad and placed them under the control of the Kings.

 

Each faction of the Church is directed by a unique super-powered disciple of the Kings called a Void Messiah, and roams space aboard an enormous starship known as a Darkhold. Each Darkhold is equipped with a super weapon inspired by the Kings of Edom, able to reshape entire solar systems in profound and disturbing ways; from transforming all the life forms of a planet into horrific "Edomites," to reconfiguring entire planets into non-Euclidean geometric shapes, to transforming stars into system-devouring black holes. In this way the Void Messiahs seek to create celestial patterns which will act as keys to unlock the prisons of the Kings and allow them to enter and ravage our universe.

 

This organization is one of the best implementations I've seen of the horror subgenre of science fiction. It also differs from most presentations of "Lovecraftian" entities and themes, in eschewing mystical/supernatural elements in favor of science and pseudo-science.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[tkdguy]

The church in the Fading Suns rpg is a powerful faction in the game.

[Scott Ruggels]

In the Traveller games, I tend to portray many Vargr as religious, but their worship is many scattered faiths, based on how charismatic their preacher has been. Solomani Himans carry their faiths with them, predominantly Catholicism, Buddhism, and Judaism. But there are a lot of sects and cults that were early colonists during the Empire of Man, and a lot of those shifted over the past millennium. 
 

My aborted new future solar punk gold rush game, it was mostly snooty Atheism, with a few spiritualists that got infected by seeing Earth from space. 

[Rich McGee]

It's become a fairly common trope to have a "god-emperor" as the focal point of both religious and secular power.  Sometimes they're explicitly some kind of post/superhuman entity (eg Paul Atreides in the Dune series, the Emperor of Man in the Warhammer 40K IP), sometimes they're mere mortals playing a the role (often with the assistance of a behind-the-scenes AI or alien advisor) and sometimes they were never human at all and may not even pretend to be (ie the advisor steps out into the limelight).  In the latter case worship is even more likely to be propitiatory than devotional, but for the most part all of these types are someone/thing where it's best to avoid being noticed. 

 

The whole thing's pretty much the next logical step to (often militaristic) expansionist religions with a "space pope" in charge of things, which turn up pretty often too.  They stop claiming to be the word of god and just claim the ultimate throne for themselves, usually with a space armada to back them up.

[GDShore]

Hey, L Ron Hubbard wasn't a second rate SF writer, at best he was a third or fourth rater.

[DShomshak]

To the roster of god-emperors I'll ad Ptath, god-emperor of a far-future Earth(?) in A. E. Van Vogt's Book of Ptath.

 

We've discussed before the tendency of alleged future SF settings to emulate past forms such as empires with feudal nobility. I don't find this implausible. Humans had monarchies and empires, including god-emperors, a lot longer than we've had liberal democratic republics. If one does *not* assume an irreversible force of social progress, it seems plausible that the social forms that were most common in the past would be more likely in the future, too. Just regression to the mean.

 

(Though by that argument, the overwhelming majority of future societies should be hunter-gatherer bands. OK, I'll grant a compelling force of technology that might limit high-tech future societies to forms that developed post-agriculture, with larger and denser populations.)

 

God-emperors especially. Humans invented god-emperors at the dawn of recorded history, and they never went out of style. See Stalin, Mao, Hitler, and other recent despots to whom people ascribed more-than-human status. Something in humans wants to grovel in awe before an incarnate god. We will continue to see god-emperors as long as humans stay human.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

In the past a noble class claimed their status due to their heritage, either a "divine right" resulting from being  "chosen" to be born into a noble lineage, or due to "superior breeding" as a result of belonging to a distinct ethnic group or bloodline. In a future setting in which transhumanism is a reality, that distinction might be demonstrable. Genetic engineering or mutation might grant someone physical and/or mental superiority to most of their species, or some actual superhuman powers, which their descendants would inherit.

[DShomshak]

For instance, the psionic aristocracy of Marion Zimmer Bradley's "Darkover" series objectively has power that other Darkovans lack, which they maintain and strengthen through selective breeding. (With, in the planet's past, catastrophic results when the powers became too strong.) Though the distinction is not as clear-cut as the aristocrats like to believe: The lords and ladies of the Seven Domains are still all too human, which means there are by-blows and their further descendants -- an important plot point in at least one of the novels.

 

The psionic technology of Darkover also resulted in at least one relic from that catastrophic past that could evoke the psionic construct of a god that was worshiped by one of the planet's subcultures. An extremely dangerous divine/psionic construct, especially when being evoked by a group of people with, IIRC, pretty serious hang-ups of their own.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Rich McGee]

9 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Genetic engineering or mutation might grant someone physical and/or mental superiority to most of their species, or some actual superhuman powers, which their descendants would inherit.

If you really wanted to lean into the future feudalism thing, different packages of geneering would be associated with different parts of society.  If the tech has slid over to the point where post-utero mods are possible (or consciousness transfer, or any other trick to allow body-hopping) you could even see the rare individual who changes class/caste getting a new set of upgrades to replace their old ones.  A "ruler" package with enhanced memory, problem-solving and charisma might be served by "soldier" mods with physical and sensory enhancements and some kind of enhanced "publicists" who partly fulfill the role of priest/educator by playing up the benefits of the whole system - which might be where "spare" rulers wind up, much akin to the actual historical system.

 

Of course, since people being awful to each other seems to be a universal trait, the "work/serf" class probably gets mandatory mods to suit their projected field of work as well.  Probably past the point where lowering their intelligence makes any sense, but tweaking brain chemistry for higher degrees of passivity, loyalty and obedience and reducing need for sleep or recreational stimulation would probably be on the list.  Some poor folks destined for heavy labor might still get a "big dumb guy" mod - perhaps a downgrade forced on criminals?  To go full horror show, take a page from the ghastly 40K universe and combine the mods with task-specialized cyberware and removal of free will like their "servitor" drones.

6 hours ago, DShomshak said:

For instance, the psionic aristocracy of Marion Zimmer Bradley's "Darkover" series objectively has power that other Darkovans lack, which they maintain and strengthen through selective breeding.

Worth noting that all of Darkover's psionics ultimately stem from a few cases of interbreeding with the planet's original nonhuman population, which (if you can get past that in the first place) just contributes to the dangerously small genetic pool of the powerhouse practitioners.  Also reminded that TSR quite shamelessly cribbed the "colony world ruled by feuding psionic noble houses while a distant Terran empire tries to maintain control" for the setting of their Revolt On Antares game.

 

Oh, and a pox on MZB.  Another somewhat interesting setting irrevocably tainted by posthumous revelation about the author.

[Lord Liaden]

3 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

Oh, and a pox on MZB.  Another somewhat interesting setting irrevocably tainted by posthumous revelation about the author.

 

I had not heard about that, so I looked it up. Truly appalling and deeply disappointing.

 

But if we can't separate the personal failings of artists from appreciation of their work, the world would be far less colorful. Hopefully Bradley's daughter gets revenue from the sale of her books.

[Lord Liaden]

3 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

Worth noting that all of Darkover's psionics ultimately stem from a few cases of interbreeding with the planet's original nonhuman population, which (if you can get past that in the first place) just contributes to the dangerously small genetic pool of the powerhouse practitioners.  Also reminded that TSR quite shamelessly cribbed the "colony world ruled by feuding psionic noble houses while a distant Terran empire tries to maintain control" for the setting of their Revolt On Antares game.

 

 

Realistically that kind of interbreeding would be practically impossible, at least not without major deliberate intervention by genetic engineers. But obviously, it's become a common trope of popular science-fiction. In the Star Trek universe we have had examples of humans producing offspring with Vulcans, Betazoids, Romulans and Klingons, with at least one example of that last asserting that "the DNA is compatible, with a fair amount of help."

 

Hero Games' "Terran Empire" setting postulates that "life identifies with other life," i.e. that alien species can interbreed if they have significant physical similarities. Hence humanoids can breed with other humanoids, reptilians with other reptilians, insectoids with insectoids, etc. (See Terran Empire p. 23.)

[Lord Liaden]

In this discussion it's extremely pertinent to mention Frank "Dune" Herbert's novel, The God Makers (actually stitched together from several loosely-connected short stories). It presents an order of religious monks on the planet Amel who set out to deliberately create new gods. Exactly why they do this is shrouded in philosophical musings by Herbert, but how they do it appears to involve genetic manipulation of a subject's ancestors to bring out "psionic" powers in progeny somewhere down the line, then a series of tests and trials to bring those powers to fruition. This despite most of their creations having been derived from animals and even inanimate objects.

 

The monks don't know in advance what sort of form and power the new god will assume, nor what its personality and motivations will be. This strikes me as an incredibly dangerous and potentially self-destructive activity, but hey, religion, I guess.

[Rich McGee]

7 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Realistically that kind of interbreeding would be practically impossible, at least not without major deliberate intervention by genetic engineers.

Absolutely.  Trek belatedly threw a pseudoscience fig leaf on the problem with that TNG episode where it turns out most humanoid species (certainly all the major ones) were originally meddled with by a single long-extinct precursor species, but it's a pretty tiny leaf. 

 

I find it interesting that EE "Doc" Smith took a very similar line with most life in either of the two galaxies being derived from "life-spores" the Arisians scattered around before they'd fully moved on from the physical, but even the species his characters sometimes refer to as human without further comment aren't capable of interbreeding and wouldn't be called human IRL.  A Tellurian human is not a Chickladorian human (they're entirely pink, hair, nails, teeth and all and their eyes are square) or a Vegian human (who have cat tails and inhuman reaction speeds) but the basic humanoid body shape gets them lumped into the same broad category compared to the many other body plans out there.  Human becomes a shape, not a species.  It's kind of progressive really, especially given how much other aspects of the series are products of their time.

3 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

The monks don't know in advance what sort of form and power the new god will assume, nor what its personality and motivations will be. This strikes me as an incredibly dangerous and potentially self-destructive activity, but hey, religion, I guess.

Yeah, God Makers was a head scratcher all the way through for me as well.  Herbert managed to be pretty consistently interesting, but some of his ideas just don't make much sense when examined closely.

[Rich McGee]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

I had not heard about that, so I looked it up. Truly appalling and deeply disappointing.

 

But if we can't separate the personal failings of artists from appreciation of their work, the world would be far less colorful. Hopefully Bradley's daughter gets revenue from the sale of her books.

Ah, sorry to be the bearer of that particular news.  Wholly agree with your assessment, especially in regard to someone who was such an important figure when it came to encouraging female scifi authors.  At least we still have Cherryh and Le Guin and Jo Clayton.  

 

I believe profits from remaining sales of her books are being donated (with her child's approval) to a non-profit that helps victims of similar abuse.  Several other authors in her circle have done the same with sales on projects related to her - Darkover spinoff stories, some of the anthology stuff - as a show of support and, I think, an apology for not realizing what had been going on.

Edited November 27, 2023 by Rich McGee

[DShomshak]

Oh, hey, and how could we forget Zelazny's Lord of Light and Creatures of Light and Darkness? In the former, another case of humans posing as gods using advanced technology and possibly artificial psionics. (It's been a while since I read it, but I remember one of the quasi-Hindu god-men saying that the new Agni [fire god] still has to use a flamethrower.) Plus demons who are actually the conquered energy-being indigenous inhabitants of the planet in question. Lord of Light was a big inspiration to me in designing the rival psionic aristocracies of planet Sard, mentioned upthread.

 

Creatures of Light and Darkness is harder to gauge. Some of the characters might be god-men enhanced/ascended through indistinguishable-from-magic technology. The Steel General is called out as once having been mortal. (And likewise his steed, which was once a horse.) But others...? They may, indeed, be gods.

 

Dean Shomshak