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Thread: Monotheistic Religions
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2020-11-07, 08:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Monotheistic Religions
Originally Posted by Devils_Advocate
Originally Posted by An Athar
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2020-11-09, 02:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2005
Re: Monotheistic Religions
None of the other powerful beings grant boons indiscriminately, without requiring something of the beneficiaries. (Mount Celestia is not an afterlife for everyone no matter what sort of life they led.) Why begrudge requiring worship in particular?
Whether any of these beings deserve anything seems a bit besides the point. Does the average person on the street deserve to be alive? And if not, should one run around slitting throats? Seems to me that one comes to deserve better treatment from others by treating others better than they deserve. And even taking this business about "worthiness" out of the equation, doing favors tends to make more friends than does stabbing backs, eh?
To the extent that gods are, as a rule, more powerful than non-gods, then in that very sense they are above all the rest. That warrants special treatment insofar as ingratiating yourself to those most powerful is important to you, something which will inevitably vary from one individual to another.
You just described the Athar claiming that Boccob is a 40th-level spellcaster who doesn't do things that a 40th-level spellcaster can do. I'm guessing that that wasn't what you meant, and you tripped over your own grammar somewhere. (Supporting evidence: There's an unclosed quote.) Try again?
Well, more conventional Lawful Evil religious organizations will tend to be strictly opposed, I assume.
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2020-11-09, 02:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Monotheistic Religions
I think their point was pretty clear:
Boccob's godlike traits, such as his immortality, ability to manifest in multiple places at once, influence over his portfolio, etc -- these are not traits Boccob possesses because of his divine nature. Rather, these traits are the result of Boccob's incredible spellcasting power. Any wizard who becomes that powerful would be godlike, and their divinity is due to this power, not due to their inherent nature.
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2020-11-09, 05:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Monotheistic Religions
I wasn't saying that the Athar have the right answer (insofar as any of the factions do) or that I agree with their stance at all, just pointing out that the characterization of them as viewing the gods as frauds is inaccurate.
Keep in mind also that the Athar aren't the only ones who are conceptually opposed to the gods--the Bleakers believe that any coherent belief system is inherently meaningless, the Free League reject hierarchy and dogma in general, the Sign of One believe anyone can affect reality and the gods are nothing special, and so on--so if you're going to criticize the Athar for opposing the gods, well, there's more where that came from.
More precisely, Boccob's fancy abilities are indeed things he happens to have due to his divine nature because you get them as freebies for being a god--demigods, non-wizard gods, etc. can do the same things without being a 40th-level wizard--but anyone of sufficient power could also have those things without needing to be a god.
Any high-level caster can split himself with fusion or body outside body or, for the epic ones, eidolon or time duplicate or many others; any planar lord can sense and control a good portion of their plane of existence, up to an entire layer or three; various outsiders like Fiends of Blasphemy or Radiant Idols can grant divine spells to people; and so on. So if you put Boccob, God of Magic, up next to Canabalum, sample 50th-level wizard, and they have basically the same bag of tricks, then from a commoner's point of view Boccob being a god matters about as much as Canabalum being a human.
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2020-11-09, 06:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2011
Re: Monotheistic Religions
Monotheism is the belief that one and only one being is divine and owed worship. Those who worship otherwise are, in the eyes of the monotheist, wrong.
There is nothing which requires that belief to be correct. There may or may not be other divine entities worthy of worship, and the one which requires its followers to be monotheist may not be worthy of such devotion.
But pantheism, peganism, and monotheisim coexisted in the real world. Why should they be exclusive in D&D?
If the ability to cast divine spells is linked to personal devotion rather than directly granted by a deity, then divine spellcasters may believe as a matter of faith that their spells are granted and none of the other beliefs are disproven by their ability to cast.
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2020-11-09, 06:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Monotheistic Religions
This is sort of how things worked in 1e. Different levels of divine spells came from different sources, with 1st- through 3rd-level spells deriving from a cleric's own strength of belief, 7th-level spells being granted by a god directly, and other levels being granted by divine servants of one variety or another. Under that setup, anyone from less-than-orthodox clerics to demon worshipers could cast divine spells of up to 3rd level with no issue so long as they had sufficiently strong willpower and sincere faith, so you could have a monotheistic religion side-by-side with any number of "false faiths" and up to a certain point there's no way either the monotheistic priests or the other priests could prove their own religion to be true or the other ones misguided.
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2020-11-09, 08:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2005
Re: Monotheistic Religions
If deities get called "deities" because they can do sufficiently impressive things, and the divine nature is that which deities have in common, then the divine nature is whatever it is that allows deities to do sufficiently impressive things. If the source of that power is epic spellcasting, then divine nature = epic spellcasting, and other traits that are not the source of that power are not divine nature.
That characterization is straight from A Player's Guide to the Planes. Is it contradicted elsewhere in the source material?
But isn't their own belief system then as meaningless as any other? That sounds a bit incoher... oh ho ho, I see what they did there.
There's possibly some sort of comparison to Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems to be made there.
Better no dogma than loony dogma, and Sigil only seems to do loony.
I think that the dominant view is that one of them is imagining everything, although they don't agree who it is. All like "Isn't solipsism great, figments of my imagination? Yes, yes, I'm glad I imagined you."
I don't mind that they do that, I take issue with how they do it.
Oh, hey, a Revolutionary League reference! :P
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2020-11-09, 10:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Monotheistic Religions
The point isn't that there's a Something out there that lets people do sufficiently impressive things and you might as well call that Something "godhood," it's that there are many different paths to Phenomenal Cosmic Power (deity-hood, planar lordship, epic spellcasting, etc.) so godhood is awesome but not worthy of exaltation above all the others.
That characterization is straight from A Player's Guide to the Planes.
The Athar aren't claiming that the gods are literally mortals impersonating gods in the Wizard of Oz or Stargate sort of way and laying claim to power they don't actually possess, but rather that the gods are not qualitatively distinct from mortals--that is, they don't think the key difference between gods and "real" gods is omnipotence vs. limited power, as you implied with the initial bit about omnipotent kings, but about how the gods "have got to keep their followers happy, and they often feud among themselves like children," and so are "just like us" and aren't worthy of the title.
But isn't their own belief system then as meaningless as any other? That sounds a bit incoher... oh ho ho, I see what they did there.
[...]
Better no dogma than loony dogma, and Sigil only seems to do loony.
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2020-11-10, 11:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2016
Re: Monotheistic Religions
Plus it's only "monotheistic" on contrived technicalities. There's the Valar but for whatever reason they don't count
If one of the PCs joins than they're technically correct.
EDIT:
On a related note, I think the Athar's "Great Unknown" is either the DM or Gary GygaxLast edited by Bohandas; 2020-11-10 at 11:59 AM.
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2020-11-10, 06:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2019
Re: Monotheistic Religions
I mean, there's not really a principled distinction between "monotheistic" and "polytheistic" faiths in general. Practically speaking, what a polytheist describes as "many gods of varying power" could very easily be the same thing as what a monotheist describes as "one god and his servants". Even within the polytheistic model D&D normally assumes, there's very little reason to expect that the average person is going to be able to (or want to) draw the lines in the same place the books do. If you're a 2nd level character, and Orcus shows up and tells you he's a god, are you really going to be able to tell that he's not, let alone be willing to press the issue?
I don't think that necessarily follows. Generally speaking, it's not the gods doing miracles, but their agents. Pelor doesn't come down and personally heal the sick or injured, he has a Cleric to whom he grants spells that does that on his behalf. So while it's probably true that a church that organizes itself around a religion that doesn't work would die out quickly, if your Church of Knowledge can produce Wizards at the same rate that the Church of Pelor produces Clerics, there's no reason to expect it to get out-competed.
I suspect that, in practice, even if Pelor and friends exist, the dominant faith in a lot of settings will be a kind of hyper-local psuedo-animist monster worship. It may be true that Pelor is the one of the most powerful beings in existence, but Pelor isn't ever going to show up in your village. You might have a local priest, but he's probably pretty low level, so you're going to be a lot more concerned with getting the local dragons, aberrations, fey, or other monsters to help (or at least not kill) you than making sure his 2nd level spells fire properly.
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2020-11-10, 08:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Monotheistic Religions
It also depends on if anyone considers it "poaching." My example was roman emperors; note that even according to the Romans deification of the Emperor was in no way "poaching," anything from any other entity. Most religions have historically just gone "these are the gods as far as we can tell, and they seem willing to make deals with us when we offer something satisfactory."
For building a world, I see no real point of disagreement.
I'm including this quote here to note I see a larger trend.
When someone notes "some people accept some physically impossible miraculous events," the structure of the statement is "A includes B." It is entirely irrelevant to say "some people deny all physically impossible miraculous events." "A includes B" does not assume "All A are B."
You seem to be confusing "a" source of that power with "the" source of that power. For many people within the setting, they cannot (and aren't likely aren't going to spend time trying) to discern "epic spellcasting," from "divine nature." So as far as these individuals within the setting are concerned, there's no difference. Within the setting, this makes "epic spellcasting" a subset of divine power. If you have "epic spellcasting," people in that world people will treat you as divine. "epic spellcasting, therefore divine power," is fine logically within the world
When describing the setting (particularly for a setting meant to be playable) these definitions shift. You can still have a bunch of creatures labeled "deities," but they don't necessarily even exist in the setting. If they do, most settings define "divine nature" as applying to creatures with such extreme powers that "epic spellcasting," is definitionally included among the abilities posseted by those with "divine power." "divine power therefore epic spellcasting," is fine logically when describing the world.
From this, you cannot look at either of the cases I called logically fine and conclude "divine nature = epic spellcasting." In both cases that fact of the matter is "divine nature = epic spellcasting and other things."
There is also the additional issue here:
- Random commoner #2,386,296 isn't the worldbuilder.
- The worldbuilder isn't random commoner #2,386,296.
When random commoner #2,386,296 looks at something and labels it "divine nature," or "not divine nature," this tell you nothing about the label the worldbuilder gives the exact same phenomenon. When the worldbuilder looks at something and labels it "divine nature," nor "not divine nature," this tell you nothing about the label random commoner #2,386,296 gives the exact same phenomenon.Last edited by sandmote; 2020-11-10 at 08:25 PM.
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2020-11-12, 01:46 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2014
Re: Monotheistic Religions
As others have pointed out, LOTR is not a great example of monotheism in fantasy. There is, however, the Deryni series, as well the majority of the Arthurian stories, stories of Charlemagne's paladins, and the Arabian Nights. The King of Ys series by Poul and Karen Anderson has both monotheists and polytheists in a setting with magic/miracle works for all of them.
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2020-11-12, 02:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Monotheistic Religions
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2020-11-12, 10:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2014
Re: Monotheistic Religions
That may be so, but religious beliefs and practices have almost no presence in the story. LOTR is not a good example of how to present monotheism, or any other religion, as an active, integral part of a character's life, and it doesn't offer any inspiration for religious institutions or practices to draw on when worldbuilding.