Worldbuilding 201 Spirituality & Religion
Greetings and senile! ...Damn it! Alright, anyway, another blog time! This time I will be discussing spirituality and religion! You knew that clicking on the name, but I say it because many of my friends have goldfish memories! Especially Lady Verbosa! (Anne: Hey! Wait, what was I mad about?) But first the official disclaimer:
Disclaimer: In this blogpost, I will be discussing the aforementioned topics, but I will be discussing them in a factual manner from a historical, cultural, and evolutionary perspective. It is in no way intended to degrade or minimise people’s deeply held personal beliefs. I support everyone’s right to freedom of beliefs. Your own beliefs are yours to believe, and anything I say in this post doesn’t make them any more or less true to you.
We cool? I hope so!
Religion vs Spirituality
These are incredibly broad categories that of course need definitions, but of course, the exact definition varies, and even experts cannot entirely define them. Some say Buddhism is a religion, some say it isn’t, for example. So I will give my own definitions as I see they are best for worldbuilding. I do, however, welcome suggestions in the comments below!
Spirituality or mysticism involves supernatural entities or forces that affect the real world and can be interacted with directly or indirectly by people and creatures of the natural world.
“Natural” in this definition is highly context sensitive to the world. If magic is a factual force that is demonstrably so in a measurable way for your world, then it would be part of the natural world for that world. But in scifi, for example, magic would be supernatural. Just like Telepathy is “natural” in many scifi settings, to my pain.
A religion is a form of spirituality that involves explicit deities who mainly possess human-like qualities to their personalities that reign supreme over generally one or many domains of the natural world.
The key thing here is their supremacy of one or many domains, I would say. Because, for example, fairies, ghosts, spirits, and many other such spiritual or supernatural entities have each individual who is just one of many. But Poseidon, Thor, and Amaterasu were specific to one domain that they ruled. For the Abrahamic religions, the one deity has the domain of “everything,” even if angels, demons, and others might exist by their theology.
Why does it exist?
People evolved, and your people likely did too, and if they didn’t, they were created by deities (which we may define using above analogously as an entity that rules over a domain with their powers over that domain of the world). But for the former, whether you have deities be real or not, why did spirituality and religion evolve?
Well, scientists are not entirely certain, to be honest. It is believed to be a combination of factors. One is the imperfection of senses that makes one see or hear things that seemingly disappear the moment you try to locate them. There are also the heuristics of the brain, which are the shortcuts your brain takes to consume less energy and need less hardware, or wetware, to function. And I have heard some also include the need for agency. That is, people feel they must have control over their own fate.
(Anne: Another big one I would add is the human need for stories. People like explaining how things came to be, especially mysterious things like the sun and thunder and other things outside of primitive people’s knowledge, so we like making stories that lead to various gods or beliefs).
Thanks, Anne! That is, of course, if they arise around the same time; if early spirituality emerged before the spoken word, it might not be a contributing factor, but we will never know!
The senses factor primes people to think there are things where there are none, the heuristic one makes the brain conclude erroneously that it must be something, then confirms it to itself. Finally, the need for agency makes it so it must have humanesque properties because humans can understand each other very well and understand human motives, but animals or just nature is much more incomprehensible. Beyond that wolf clearly wanting to eat me… How is it going to go about it!?
So all these together spark the appearance of spirituality that then keeps on expanding. One benefit that makes this selected for once it exists, even on just a cultural level, is that it creates a much tighter group, and tighter, more effective early humans survived better than those that did not have the same glue to tie them together.
Myths
Many might take offence to having their religion called a myth, but here I will explain why they shouldn’t. Many take the connotation to mean “old” or “false”, but there is generally a much more benign and kinder meaning to it that I prefer which broadly fits.
Myths are collections of important stories that play a fundamental role in a society.
As Anne said above, stories are an important component to all spirituality, which includes religion here. And myths are the very important ones that play crucial roles in a society’s identity. They may no longer be believed by the letter but are still retold time and time again as it is part of the culture.
Here in the Scandinavian region (not Finland), the Norse myths are still told, but there is barely anyone who believes in them. Even though we were christianized, the old myths never died and still go around and around… and to all Marvel lovers, THOR!
Similar things happened with Christianity and Christmas. It is still told that it is Jesus' birthday, despite most biblical scholars saying his birthday was more likely around April and May, but the story is still told!
Sects, Denominations, & Cults
A sect is an offshoot of a larger religion. They are generally very small, a couple of thousand followers at the most, but their beliefs and tenets can be greatly different from the religion they sprung from. There are many reasons why a sect is created, but some are doctrine/theological disagreements, belief that the main religion has gone away from its origin, or sometimes you are mad you cannot divorce your wife who refuses to give you a son, so you make your own sect.
Denomination can be said when a sect grows so big that other denominations or religions cannot pretend your sect does not exist. The number of followers is simply too great. So a sect can graduate to a denomination! Congratulations! Have a diploma!
Cults… are quite the thing. In the olden days, it was a way to refer to sects, but in modern terms, it no longer is. A cult refers to a sect, often, but the big difference is that the leader of said sect is often very charismatic, and they are using extremely exploitative means to extract money from followers. Additional points are that sects generally allow you to engage with others outside of the sect, but cults often forbid it in order to keep a very extreme control of all its members. Cults also tend to feed more fanaticism than sects, and even if all spiritualities can and will develop fanatics, cults lean more on them rather than them being an unfortunate fact.
So no, just because it deals with the occult or demons or whatever spiritual thing one wishes to include, doesn’t that make a sect a cult.
Theisms
So you want deities, eh? Well, how many? A friend of mine who teaches religion had an assignment where the students had to make their own religion, but of course almost went for one deity! So boring! Anyway…
Atheism
No gods. It does not preclude one from spiritualities, just that the person doesn't believe in a god. No, “agnostic” is not the middle ground, you are either atheist (don’t believe in any deity) or theist (believes in at least a deity). There is no middle ground! Agnostic just means “not knowledged in the position,” just like gnostic means “knowledged in the position.” So you can be agnostic theist, agnostic atheist, gnostic theist, and finally gnostic atheist. (A)gnostic deals with knowledge, (a)theism deals with belief.
Atheism does not have an inherent power structure, as it has nothing to unite people around.
Monotheism
As said, this is the one almost all my friends' students went for! It is BORING! But it is also a natural end point for churches and religions coalescing power. If you have more than one god, there cannot be just one power structure for the religion. Even with monotheism, there can be multiple power structures, but with the others, having one makes less sense but not entirely. So yeah, just one god, nothing more.
Paucatheism
Technically not a word, but I am coining it! It comes from latin “paucal” which means “few” when it comes to grammatical numbers. I have done linguistics, so sue me! Or sue Anne instead. It means a few deities. A personal preferred definition for “few” is when a person starts grouping objects to count them. 2, 3, 4, and 5, at least to me, I don’t need to group to count, so that is few to me. 6 and above I start grouping to make it easier. So you have few but powerful gods. This can lead to the former or next category over time. Power is likely to be more distributed, and the different churches are going to focus on different deities of the small pantheon and might be doing power plays behind closed doors even if they outwardly stand together. Imagine having 4 head priests having to outwardly smile and work together, but the moment they are alone, they try to stab each other. Good storytelling potential there!
Polytheism
Polytheism usually means “More than one”, but for here, it will be “more than a few.” You have a large pantheon of deities, all with very small scopes of power and domain. It is very unlikely these have any form of central structures and power plays as you have too many deities that people all worship. If they need a good harvest, they go to that deity, and if they are gonna sail, it is the ocean’s deity, and so on. People form more but less strong bonds with all deities depending on current needs.
Omnipowers
We have heard these in a lot of deities, and I will give some warnings about them, but first the list!
Omnipotent - All-powerful
Omniscient - All-knowing
Omnibenevolent - All-loving
Omnituent - All-seeing
Omnaudient - All-hearing
Omnimalevolent - All-evil
If I missed one, please comment below! Anyway, all of these are not born equal. Let me explain why and how to avoid the main issues.
Let’s start with the worst of them. Omnipotent. It is a classic and often done, but it is 100% illogical and impossible for anything to have. Why, you ask? Can the omnipotent deity create something it cannot move? If it can, it is not omnipotent as the object cannot be moved, thus we found something it cannot do; if it cannot, we have found a task it cannot do. Some have tried to weasel out by saying “omnipotent with everything logical” which is just… You are making it needlessly difficult. “Almost omnipotent” solves it all! How almost? Who cares! You decide as the writer, and the reader never needs to know! That one word solves everything.
Omniscient is second! Do you like free will? Do you like to have a choice? That your life was not predetermined before you were born? TOO BAD! With omniscience, you have no free will, choices are illusions, and your life was predetermined long before you were born! Bummer! How can we solve this? Again, it is simple: omniscient except for the future. The deity does not know the future, thus you can make choices and have free will, but once you make a decision or thought, the deity knows about it and everything else!
Omnibenevolent is next! For the most part, this one is extremely safe. Just loving and all. The issue arises with the classical “problem of evil”, which I modify to say that if the deity is omnibenevolent and capable of preventing evil, then why is there evil? Which of course is an issue. That is why I generally do not include it, or if I do in my making, I nerf the deity’s powers. Of course one can argue in many ways that it is “necessary” and such, but anyone that powerful can do a much better job without evil. In my Stellima universe, I have it so that in the theology of my Limaces, it says that Divinum is not omnipotent and not able to do everything, but had to pick the least worst possible world available, showing zhir benevolence.
Omnituent and Omnaudient are in my opinion entirely safe. They give the deity current information from all points across the universe in different forms, and that on its own is not an issue arising property. Omnimalevolent is similar: the deity is evil, so of course stuff is shit. All these can become issues with other properties of a deity, but it is specific to that combination.
Your own religion
Alright, you want to make your own religion; how does one go about it? WITH STYLE! And methodology.
Step 1: Roles and power structures
Some of you might gasp at this; why is this first!? Simple, it dictates the style. While none of what I have said is absolute, they are strong correlations. So what am I talking about? The religion’s role in society and how much power it possesses over the people. It can be such it is in direct conflict with the secular powers of the state, or they might even be fused together.
But it is important to decide if it is centralised like Catholicism is or has only slight splits like I suggested in paucatheism where several churches work together with, or against, the state. Or if it is entirely decentralised like Hinduism is where the religion has no real power to compete with the state but is still an important part of daily life. The questions to answer here are:
How is the power within the religious leaders structured?
How much is the religion competing with the state?
Step 2: Number of entities
I have hinted, well, outright said, that the power structure and number of entities/deities correlate strongly. Monotheism lends itself more toward highly centralised power structures, but as Protestantism shows, it doesn’t need to go there. Protestantism also shows how religion and state can get quite cosy with each other. Paucatheism lends itself to several centralised power structures that co-exist, while polytheism or general spirituality lend themselves toward decentralised power structures. This is again not absolute and can easily be done differently.
For example, a people I call Mainkinruru (sg: Mainkinru) has a duarchy where one of the rulers is their supreme shaman. I use shaman because they do not believe in deities but spirits of their ancestors influencing the world. They have spirits for everything imaginable, so they would, by what I have said, go for a decentralised structure, which, to an extent, they have, but they also have a centralised power structure that keeps shamen selective. Not everyone can claim to be a legit shaman. So one can go against expectations.
Step 3: What is it all about?
So you have power and deities (or lack thereof), but what is it all about? This is where you start to really show the culture of your society. Their religion will generally reflect the values of their society, or, if the religion is lagging behind, values of the past. In the case of lagging, modern interpretations are likely to align with their values, and they disregard the blatant obvious values of texts that they disagree with in modern times.
This is done to this day; most holy texts are, by today's standards, immoral, but were for their time pretty normal or even progressive! Anyway, depending on how old it is, you can have smaller clashes between values by thinking first on what the culture valued and thought in the past vs what they do today. But if it has morphed along to fit current trends all the way, consider what values they hold high. For example, if they are polytheistic and have reformed their judicial process to be more just, they might develop a deity for the courts and justice.
To bring up the Mainkinruru again, they adapt very easily because new spirits coming about are not unusual for them. In their faith, every person that dies becomes a spirit of something, usually joining pre-existing groups. But when their society changes, new categories can emerge. Sure, it is a bit of work with their central power to accept it, but they have a way to make sure that the existing spirits approve of the new group.
Another important thing to remember is this: your religion does not need to answer “the big questions:”
How was everything made?
What happens after death?
Do we have a soul?
What is “good” or “bad” behaviour?
Will my actions in life have greater meaning?
To name a few. Many people make the mistake of thinking every religion must ask these, and the answer is, they don’t. Some religions and beliefs are perfectly happy leaving certain questions unanswered and focusing on others. Again, the Mainkinruru have no spiritual concerns on how things came to be; they focus more on “how do I honour the spirits of the dead?”
Step 4: Shake it baby!
I mean, now we are pretty much done, but you can always add peculiarities, and honestly, you should! Not everything in a belief system is entirely logically consistent. There is doublethink taking place a lot of times, and you can create sects as offshoots to increase diversity, slight differences in practices and beliefs. On top of this, you can show how tolerant society is for these sects or any deviations. My Limaces that I spoke about earlier have a highly centralised power structure for their religion (with their supposed deity in mortal form as the head), but it also includes mechanisms where sects or soon-to-be denominations can get approved and be included in the church. There are some very central tenets that you are not allowed to deviate from, but the details beyond them are allowed to differ and still be counted as within the religion… Those that do not get approved tend to not last long 😇
Summa Summarum
Religion has for millennia played an important role in society, whether one believes it is true or not. For a great deal of realism and verisimilitude, you will need to include it in some amount. If it is not a huge part of the story, of course, offhand remarks are all that are necessary, but if you wish to make it more fully fledged and all, I recommend you follow these steps and think on it. You can greatly enrich your world with a bit of spirituality. I feel like I’m repeating myself…
(Anne: Thank you for honouring the spirits of repetition!)
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Copyright ©️ 2024 Vivian Sayan. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as religion and established human religions are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. However, specific ideas such as the Limaces and their religion, the Mainkinruru and their religion, and all language or exact phrasing are individually copyrighted by the respective authors. Contact them for information on usage and questions if uncertain what falls under Creative Commons. We’re almost always happy to give permission. Please contact the authors through this website’s contact page.
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