Favorite Deities

[Username17]

Heck, I'm a christian and I have no idea what any of you are talking about...

That is not terribly surprising. For obvious reasons, most Christian sects don't heavily advertise the origins of Christianity. Because Christianity was formed as an apocalypse cult to tell everyone the good news that they should give no thought to the morrow because there was going to be a zombie apocalypse within their lifetimes. In... 100 CE.



Needless to say, the end of the world did not happen, and Christian sects have moved on to making up other reasons for why they needed big temples with a lot of bling. They even created a "wandering jew", an immortal being who has wandered the land for two thousand years now so that technically their original zombie apocalypse timer didn't run out hundreds of years before any of us were born.

Modern Christianity rarely demands that you abandon your children, give away all your possessions, and live in miniature communes while waiting for the extremely imminent end of the world. But early Christianity was basically exclusively about that.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Okay, while we're on the subject of bashing Christianity, I gotta ask:

Why, from a purely literary and entertainment perspective, does the New Testament suck so much donkey balls? For all of the work that went into it and the apocrypha, one is struck by how relentlessly boring it is. The New Testament only has a handful of stories that would make a good movie or radio drama, even with significant adaptation expansion. Just the book of Judges has way more material that would make a cool television program than the entire New Testament. Thomas Jefferson was able to expunge all of the supernatural crap in his Bible and the remainder was still relatively coherent. Try doing that with Greek Mythology.

So... what the fuck? Where are the heroes and awesome superpowers and transformative world-building events and mass battles and court intrigue and family drama and crazy monsters and all that shit? Except for Revelations, a book so vile that even famous Christians tried to wish it to the cornfield, why despite all of the genuinely stupid shit like the census and pig massacres and fish and bread parties is the New Testament so jejune, worldly and just frickin' lame?

[MGuy]

At the risk of pushing this tangent further I also have a question. Curse words/Words of curse: the fuck? Why are Christians typically so up in arms about vulgar language?

[Username17]

At the risk of pushing this tangent further I also have a question. Curse words/Words of curse: the fuck? Why are Christians typically so up in arms about vulgar language?

That one is easy. Commandment 3 is "Thou Shalt Not Take The Lord's Name in Vain". But more generally, it means not to swear. In its most narrow sense, it means not to swear on the name of God, but just as "honor thy father and mother" also implies honoring your aunt and grandfather, it means no swearing in general. The "worst" swear is of course "God Damn It", but all the lesser swears are all also bad.

It's commandment 3, so breaking it is not quite as bad as making a golden cow statue and worshiping it. But it's still worse for your soul than theft (commandment 8) or murder (commandment 6).

Now, that's kind of ridiculous, and I doubt most modern Christians actually think it through like that. But that's the origin of the taboo, and cultural inertia has kept that taboo from completely going away. In the 19th century, people would make that argument explicitly.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Bwah? The Commandments are ranked? I mean, past the first and second one. Is that why Catholics have a different ordering?

[Ancient History]

So... what the fuck? Where are the heroes and awesome superpowers and transformative world-building events and mass battles and court intrigue and family drama and crazy monsters and all that shit? Except for Revelations, a book so vile that even famous Christians tried to wish it to the cornfield, why despite all of the genuinely stupid shit like the census and pig massacres and fish and bread parties is the New Testament so jejune, worldly and just frickin' lame?

Well, there's actually entire subgenres of Jesus fanfic that supply what you're looking for, like the Harrowing of Hell. But as for the official stuff - keep in mind, the New Testament is pretty much about the life and ministry of Jesus and the Apostles as told from several perspectives. It's not the genealogical/mythological epic that is the Old Testament; this is shit that might have been within living memory for the intended audience's grandparents. And more of it is given over to promulgating certain interpretations of early Christian doctrine and invalidating certain points of opposing sects than it is to giving a gripping narrative. And, well, a lot of it is stolen. Jesus wasn't the only messianic figure at the time (John the Baptist, Simon Magus, and Menander right off the top of my head), and several episodes in the New Testament appear to be blatantly ripped from the mythos of some of those competitors.

[Username17]

Bwah? The Commandments are ranked? I mean, past the first and second one. Is that why Catholics have a different ordering?

The different ordering is because the "ten" commandments show up twice in the bible, and they come in a different order in those two writeups. Also, there are seventeen lines in Exodus and eighteen in Deuterotomy. So already we're into some pretty sketchy territory where it's sort of up to interpretation where each commandment begins and ends. Because they aren't numbered properly in the bible. And they aren't the same the two times they are written down.

In Matthew, Jesus is asked to name the commandments and he only gets five right and then throws in an extra one from Leviticus. In Mark, Jesus gets to 4 before he starts coming up with random shit like "Do not defraud". So it's not like even the authors of the new testament had a really great grasp of what the ten commandments actually were.

-Username17

[Voss]

At the risk of pushing this tangent further I also have a question. Curse words/Words of curse: the fuck? Why are Christians typically so up in arms about vulgar language?

Christianity (or at least most sects) is traditionally really hung up on controlling the behavior of its followers. I am currently (much to my own darkly ironic amusement, and occasional frustration) plowing through 18th-19th century church record books for metadata. And deciphering the language and what the fuck is going on provides a fair amount of hilarity and what the fuck moments.

In the current book, the meetinghouse committee got up in arms about 'severely disruptive' behavior and the need to Do Something about it. The behavior? The wearing of hats as they enter the meetinghouse. Now I still occasionally meet people who freak out about this, but they were treating it as The Social Ill of Our Time (1817).

In a previous one (in a less amusing episode), the committee decided to have the community publicly shun a woman because her husband was divorcing her for alleged infidelity. Her response (which was included) was that she wanted to actually meet with her husband in front of the committee so she could hear what she was accused of. Apparently just the allegation was enough that the entire community was going to shut this woman out.

[RobbyPants]

Bwah? The Commandments are ranked? I mean, past the first and second one. Is that why Catholics have a different ordering?

Frank already covered the issues of two separate lists appearing in different books, and the fact that the commandments aren't explicitly numbered either time. That being said, I think the order is the same, but in each "final" list, two commandments from one list are coalesced to one in the other, and one is split into two in the other.

So, one list takes "Don't have any gods before me" and "don't make graven images" and combines them into "Don't have any gods before me". The other list takes "Don't covet these things" and "don't covet those things" and combines them into "don't covet things". So, 1 and 2 get combined into 1, and 10 gets split into 9 and 10. Other than that, I think the ordering is the same (although the numbering is off, since they start fucking around which the numbers right at commandment #2).

[Sashi]

And, back on subject, you don't see this a lot in fantasy religions because presumably the deities in question can pop on down for a spot of tea and to lightning bolt some heretics and give the Official Version.

Don't forget that debates about Christian scripture were purely internal matters for something like a millenium (from Constantine to Martin Luther).

So two clerics of Pelor might have a religious debate over the principles of their faith. But it'll happen in private, and it almost certainly won't happen in a campaign.

[PoliteNewb]

It's commandment 3, so breaking it is not quite as bad as making a golden cow statue and worshiping it. But it's still worse for your soul than theft (commandment 8) or murder (commandment 6).

I have never heard of anyone suggesting that the commandments are ordered in importance, at least not in the sense of "A is worse than B". If anything, I have heard some modern christians profess the (admittedly insane) idea that "all sins are equal in the eyes of God" (so telling your mother to go fuck herself is just as bad as offing a busload of schoolchildren). And some have crazy orderings for unknown reasons...for instance, the mormons for some reason believe that "sexual sin" (which can include stuff like premarital sex and even masturbation) is worse than anything except murder.

So...Citation?

At the risk of pushing this tangent further I also have a question. Curse words/Words of curse: the fuck? Why are Christians typically so up in arms about vulgar language?

That one is easy. Commandment 3 is "Thou Shalt Not Take The Lord's Name in Vain". But more generally, it means not to swear. In its most narrow sense, it means not to swear on the name of God, but just as "honor thy father and mother" also implies honoring your aunt and grandfather, it means no swearing in general. The "worst" swear is of course "God Damn It", but all the lesser swears are all also bad.

I have seen good arguments that the commandment is actually a prohibition on oathbreaking (swearing by the lord and then not holding the oath) or misusing religious authority ("taking on the lord's name", meaning acting in the name of god, but for selfish or wrong reasons). Both of those make a lot more sense than thinking god cares if you say "fuck".

That said, I admit most modern christians seem to interpret it as "don't swear". But there are people out there who have no problem saying "fuck", but who would never say "goddamn".

[hyzmarca]

Like "spell memorization", the idea of gods "granting spells" was just a shitty idea and a meme that needs to die. Wizards "prepare spells" now and we don't try to make things popping in and out of "memory" make any sense. And that's a positive improvement. Things are equally better and for the same reason when we just have Clerics "prepare spells" and get rid of the whole bullshit about begging for spell packets from gods. Having your personal god ration you some cure moderate wounds and a knife spray instead of just giving you an insect plague and a crawling darkness to get their enemies good and smitten makes no more sense than trying to explain how a Magic User "memorized lightning bolt twice".

-Username17

I always assumed that memorizing a spell was actually a process of forcibly twisting your neurons into a specific pattern according to the design of the spell and then casting involved pumping so much energy through them that they literally burned out. So, casting spells causes brain damage. It also help encourage the classic addled/insane wizard archetype, because casting a big spell is sort of just getting punched in the head by Mike Tyson repeatedly.


Anyway, next time I make a evil Cleric he'll be a priest of Darkseid.


EditL

Actually, here's an idea that I remember comming up with a while ago. The gods wear masks and in many ways are those masks. There is, for example, a generic "God of Thunder" or whatever who is just an non-anthropamorphic abstract idea of things being struck by lightning. But people anthromophorize him. They assign him names are personality traits and these become a mask that he can wear so as to better interact with the world. When he puts on the mask he takes the name and traits ascribed to him. When he removes the mask he loses those traits and becomes a primal abstract again. Thus, Thor and Zeus are actually the same guy wearing different masks and their wildly differing personality traits are entirely the result of their followers beliefs.

[K]

And, back on subject, you don't see this a lot in fantasy religions because presumably the deities in question can pop on down for a spot of tea and to lightning bolt some heretics and give the Official Version.

Don't forget that debates about Christian scripture were purely internal matters for something like a millenium (from Constantine to Martin Luther).

So two clerics of Pelor might have a religious debate over the principles of their faith. But it'll happen in private, and it almost certainly won't happen in a campaign.

I don't think that one sect's lull in violence is representative when the other half of its history is bloody sectarian war and other religions don't show a similar lull.

[Foxwarrior]

When he puts on the mask he takes the name and traits ascribed to him. When he removes the mask he loses those traits and becomes a primal abstract again.

Wacky.

How does the primal abstract decide which mask it wants to wear right now?

[hyzmarca]

When he puts on the mask he takes the name and traits ascribed to him. When he removes the mask he loses those traits and becomes a primal abstract again.

Wacky.

How does the primal abstract decide which mask it wants to wear right now?

The primal abstract doesn't care. It has no personality of its own. The mask it wears depends entirely on whom it is interacting with, sometimes to the point where people from different cultures see different gods and hear different messages at the same time.

So when he's interacting with the Greeks he puts on his Zeus Mask and when he's interacting with the Vikings he puts on his Thor Mask. This, in turn, reinforces any bizarre local beliefs and allows weird heretical cults to spring up and become popular.

If there's a group of Lolth Cultists who believe that the Spider Goddess is a benevolent, loving, and forgiving woman who wants everyone to live in peace and harmony without subjugation or violence, that's the personality she'll wear when she interacts with them and they'll have absolute definite proof that they're right and the establishment is wrong. Of course, the establishment will have similar experiences to bolster their own convictions.

Incidentally, this means that people who believe in cruel and spiteful gods who are out to get them personally tend to liver shorter but more interesting lives than people who believe in ones that like them personally do.

[Foxwarrior]

If the deity can wear multiple masks and interact with different people in different ways at the same time, in what way is it only one deity?

And if believing a god wants to help you is the same thing as it being true, aren't "Gullible Belief in Friendliness" genes totally OP?

[Stahlseele]

more interesting:
what happens if the same god has to deal with one group thinking the god will help them because he likes them and the other thinking the god will help them because he hates their enemies go to war with each other?
for egg sample:
a.)"Lolth will help us against b, because she loves us!"
b.)"Lolth will help us against a, because she hates them!"

[Avoraciopoctules]

What happens when a wizard rewrites a bunch of brains into believing that "Elecman is your legendary Pokemon. He'll zap anything you want. Unless you ask him to mess with Professor Yggdrasil, of course."?

[K]

more interesting:
what happens if the same god has to deal with one group thinking the god will help them because he likes them and the other thinking the god will help them because he hates their enemies go to war with each other?

There is actually a god-game where you play god to both sides and your goal is to make the war last as long as possible and advance the tech of both as far as possible. I've been meaning to check it out since it's only like $5 on Steam.

I think a valid way to play is to assume that gods have their own interests in mind and only help their worshipers when it suites some greater divine goal. This means that helping a hero is a worthy thing for a god to do because it increases the god's fame, but helping peasants bring in the harvest is not.

[hyzmarca]

If the deity can wear multiple masks and interact with different people in different ways at the same time, in what way is it only one deity?

In the same way that if you somehow manage to stab Superman in the face with a kryptonite sword Clark Kent also dies.

And if believing a god wants to help you is the same thing as it being true, aren't "Gullible Belief in Friendliness" genes totally OP?

Possibly.

What happens when a wizard rewrites a bunch of brains into believing that "Elecman is your legendary Pokemon. He'll zap anything you want. Unless you ask him to mess with Professor Yggdrasil, of course."?

Then the priest's spells take on an elecman flavor.

[jadagul]

Wikipedia has a pretty good writeup of how a bunch of different groups divide up the Ten Commandments and how this maps on to the two places they show up in Scripture. (It seems relevant that everyone winds up with "ten" even though they distribute them very differently. Probably because we have five fingers on each hand).

I've never heard that the Commandments were rank-ordered, but in Catholic Sunday school we did learn that the first three were "sins against god" and thus kinda-sorta-worse than the other seven, which are "sins against other people."

[Sarandosil]

Sometimes semantic differences denote real differences. This is not the case with the semantic bullshit that Christian sects babble out to simultaneously claim that they only have one god and that their temples are filled with saints and angels and shit. In this case it really is just simple hypocrisy held together with cognitive dissonance. The Calvinists and Iconoclasts are "right" in this instance. The Catholic and Orthodox justifications for their many religious statues in light of their own commandment not to make religious statues do not make sense.

-Username17

There's a similar dissonance in the Shia world. People pray to Ali, Fatima, possibly the other imams too, which they have to explain away by claiming you're using them as an intermediary and basically asking them to put in a good word for you with God. Because he apparently plays favourites with who he grants prayers to, heh.

At the risk of pushing this tangent further I also have a question. Curse words/Words of curse: the fuck? Why are Christians typically so up in arms about vulgar language?

I have to ask whether anyone on this forum was ever deeply religious, like in your bones religious. Buncha liberals "God damn it" didn't enter my vocabulary until several years after I became an atheist because the thought of saying it before that was literally terrifying. That God would smite me or visit some horrible punishment for daring to tell him to do something or presume to know what he would do.

[tussock]

I have seen good arguments that the commandment is actually a prohibition on oathbreaking (swearing by the lord and then not holding the oath) or misusing religious authority ("taking on the lord's name", meaning acting in the name of god, but for selfish or wrong reasons). Both of those make a lot more sense than thinking god cares if you say "fuck".

The simplest interpretation is that it means not to talk about God for your own petty benefit.

That said, I admit most modern christians seem to interpret it as "don't swear". But there are people out there who have no problem saying "fuck", but who would never say "goddamn".

See, Protestants hate joy, and sex is joyful. Protestants ruled England, and they got rid of all vulgar (not latinised) mentions of sex and other fun things from everything and would beat anyone who used them, for centuries. So now the old words for sex are secret and not to be uttered in polite company, lest one of your betters slap some decency into you.

Happily, we've invented thousands of other words and phrases to mean the same thing. So it's groovy, baby. Hehe.

Harry Blackitt: Look at them, bloody Catholics, filling the bloody world up with bloody people they can't afford to bloody feed.

Mrs. Blackitt: What are we dear?

Harry Blackitt: Protestant, and fiercely proud of it.

Mrs. Blackitt: Hmm. Well, why do they have so many children?

Harry Blackitt: Because... every time they have sexual intercourse, they have to have a baby.

Mrs. Blackitt: But it's the same with us, Harry.

Harry Blackitt: What do you mean?

Mrs. Blackitt: Well, I mean, we've got two children, and we've had sexual intercourse twice.

[Sashi]

(It seems relevant that everyone winds up with "ten" even though they distribute them very differently. Probably because we have five fingers on each hand).

The most interesting thing about the ten commandments is that there are ten of them, when the magic number of the Bible is twelve.

[hyzmarca]

I have seen good arguments that the commandment is actually a prohibition on oathbreaking (swearing by the lord and then not holding the oath) or misusing religious authority ("taking on the lord's name", meaning acting in the name of god, but for selfish or wrong reasons). Both of those make a lot more sense than thinking god cares if you say "fuck".

The simplest interpretation is that it means not to talk about God for your own petty benefit.

That said, I admit most modern christians seem to interpret it as "don't swear". But there are people out there who have no problem saying "fuck", but who would never say "goddamn".

See, Protestants hate joy, and sex is joyful. Protestants ruled England, and they got rid of all vulgar (not latinised) mentions of sex and other fun things from everything and would beat anyone who used them, for centuries. So now the old words for sex are secret and not to be uttered in polite company, lest one of your betters slap some decency into you.

Happily, we've invented thousands of other words and phrases to mean the same thing. So it's groovy, baby. Hehe.

Harry Blackitt: Look at them, bloody Catholics, filling the bloody world up with bloody people they can't afford to bloody feed.

Mrs. Blackitt: What are we dear?

Harry Blackitt: Protestant, and fiercely proud of it.

Mrs. Blackitt: Hmm. Well, why do they have so many children?

Harry Blackitt: Because... every time they have sexual intercourse, they have to have a baby.

Mrs. Blackitt: But it's the same with us, Harry.

Harry Blackitt: What do you mean?

Mrs. Blackitt: Well, I mean, we've got two children, and we've had sexual intercourse twice.

Tickle Cock Bridge is an actual bridge in England.

And while there aren't any Gropecunt lanes anymore there use to be plenty.