Questions and comments concerning our treatment of religion and old nation-states in Eclipse Phase have arisen in a couple of different forum threads. I'm going to try and explain the thought processes behind some of the decisions we made with the setting, so folks can at least understand a little more clearly where we're coming from with regards to these elements.

The status/decline of old religions was something we actually debated quite extensively as we put the game together. I don't think it's any secret that many transhumanist and religious ideas don't play well together, so when you mix them, something has to give.  We certainly wanted to avoid the trope of having major religious revivals as you find in many sci-fi settings -- while sometimes handled well (see Dan Simmons as an example), it is quite often a poor application of fantasy with sci-fi trappings.