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Mecca after the Fall

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Thu, 2011-09-29 17:43
Higgipedia Higgipedia's picture
Re: Mecca after the Fall
Re-Laborat wrote:
But it seems to me, even as an outsider, that Islam is not Mecca. Islam is not the Hajj. Islam, as I understand it from an outsider's perspective, begins with service to God.
Islam isn't Mecca, but the Hajj is a fundamental part of Islam. In any of the sects of Islam I'm aware of (and I'm neither a scholar or a practitioner of Islam, but I've been around it a lot over the past couple years and read more than a few books on the topic) there are a set of core fundamentals that every Muslim is obligated to do. This includes swearing your service to god, charity, the fasting during Ramadan, prayer, and the Hajj. Some sects have more restrictions, none have less. It's pretty much considered the sacred duty of every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it to take the Hajj. Huge parts of the charitable aspects of Islam are geared to helping those who can't afford the trip to take it. It's a core feature of the religion, every part of it, from what I can see. There's nothing like it in Christianity (The religion I was raised in).
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Dennis "Higgipedia" Higgins
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Thu, 2011-09-29 17:56
Yerameyahu Yerameyahu's picture
Re: Mecca after the Fall
I guess we're just using 'fundamental' differently. :)
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Thu, 2011-09-29 18:39
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: Mecca after the Fall
Isn't this discussion going around in circles? Some think the Hajj is super-important and without it Islam would wither or mutate wildly. Others think the religion is adaptive and will just cope. Clearly the only real solution beyond saying "in my campaign X is true" is to actually go out and (politely) ask some Imams about what they think.
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Extropian
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Fri, 2011-09-30 03:23
Re-Laborat Re-Laborat's picture
Re: Mecca after the Fall
Higgipedia wrote:
It's pretty much considered the sacred duty of every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it to take the Hajj. Huge parts of the charitable aspects of Islam are geared to helping those who can't afford the trip to take it.
If there's an allowance for people who can't afford to go, surely that allowance must extend to people who can't get there because it's in the past and time-travel is still somewhat iffy. ;) Mind you, anyone who DOES get in and out of Mecca in EP has surely fulfilled any obligations towards making a difficult pilgrimage that can be imagined. I'm inclined to also point to the differentiation between 'the true holy city' and Jerusalem as it was under Muslim occupation during the time of the Crusades. Some sects basically believed that if they did everything right, the 'real' Holy City would descend from the clouds. This seems like a belief (although I admit I have not done my homework on tracing its origins) that probably originated around the time of the loss of Western access to Jerusalem, and became a 'Well, the real Jerusalem the-way-we-want-it is restorable if we fulfill the duty God has put upon us.' meme. Then again, I'm kind of just throwing options around. What I've encountered when studying Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism suggest that there are always schisms and splinters with differing beliefs, and that's why I have difficulty believing that elements of Islam wouldn't 'adapt' to the loss of access to Mecca. But...That's purely my belief. I'm less arguing 'It should be this way.' and more 'Here's another possibility.' In the end run, it all depends on what the GM and the players find fun, with no disrespect intended to any religion.
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Thu, 2011-10-27 19:29
weaver95 weaver95's picture
Re: Mecca after the Fall
I wonder.... if the setting of EP is largely godless, then (excluding author bias) could that mean the TITANS preferred absorbing/uploading minds of the faithful?
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Thu, 2011-10-27 20:59
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: Mecca after the Fall
weaver95 wrote:
if the setting of EP is largely godless, then (excluding author bias) could that mean the TITANS preferred absorbing/uploading minds of the faithful?
There would be a selection effect: people with cortical stacks or OK with emergency uploading would escape Earth much more easily than people without. The believers who thought uploading did not preserve souls paid for their belief by becoming TITAN fodder. (But targeting of the faithful might also add to the creepiness of the setting - maybe the TITANs are the forces of darkness... or have gathered all the good karma of billions!)
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Extropian
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Thu, 2011-10-27 21:34
weaver95 weaver95's picture
Re: Mecca after the Fall
Arenamontanus wrote:
(But targeting of the faithful might also add to the creepiness of the setting - maybe the TITANs are the forces of darkness... or have gathered all the good karma of billions!)
I think where I was going was something like this (and this is merely random speculation so take it with a grain of salt): the TITANS were forcing humanity to mass upload...but they had a problem. How to take all those brains and diverse personalities and hammer them together into something useful? what if the TITANS decided (based on their studies of human minds) that the easiest way to convince all those billions of minds/souls to meld seamlessly into one giant mega-brain was to play on their religious beliefs? now that can take you some very interesting places. putting aside for a moment the variations of religious sects and doctrine, what if the TITANS melded brains together into mass consciousness based around common religious memes? so you'd have an abrahamic mass mind (encompassing Judaic/Christian/Muslim thought patterns), a Buddhist/Shinto mass brain, or whatever you wanted to have. you get the idea. Maybe the only way the human minds could handle being forged into one singular god entity would be to make them see the universe from what could only be referred to as a 'divine perception filter'? now that's not to say that their plan worked. Maybe they didn't take that route at all...but it's something of an interesting concept. Even a small group (say...10,000 minds?) welded together into a mass god mind and infected with the exsurgent virus could be the basis for any number of campaigns and/or story ideas. But that's just my random thoughts. take it for what you will.
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Fri, 2011-10-28 03:16
750 750's picture
Re: Mecca after the Fall
Supposedly believers have a easier time accepting authoritarian decrees, so them AIs could simply play on the ultimate authority figure. Sometimes reading religious texts end up oddly similar to the classical image of mother threatening child with punishment from father once he gets home from work. Btw, i am not sure one can lump Buddhist and Shinto in that fashion. I am not even sure if Buddhism classify as a religion in the normal sense.
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Fri, 2011-10-28 22:14
weaver95 weaver95's picture
Re: Mecca after the Fall
750 wrote:
Supposedly believers have a easier time accepting authoritarian decrees, so them AIs could simply play on the ultimate authority figure. Sometimes reading religious texts end up oddly similar to the classical image of mother threatening child with punishment from father once he gets home from work. Btw, i am not sure one can lump Buddhist and Shinto in that fashion. I am not even sure if Buddhism classify as a religion in the normal sense.
I was thinking that religious backgrounds and/or faith might make integration into a godlike ETI easier. consider this for a moment - a galaxy spanning ETI fits the bill as far as omnipotent godlike beings go. it really CAN do anything humanity can think of that needs doing. But that depends on your version of the ETI. i'm just throwing out ideas after all.
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Sat, 2011-10-29 02:21
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Re: Mecca after the Fall
Evil irony. Theists expect to go to heaven, get uploaded into a secular VR hell for eternity instead.
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Sat, 2011-10-29 02:56
weaver95 weaver95's picture
Re: Mecca after the Fall
Smokeskin wrote:
Evil irony. Theists expect to go to heaven, get uploaded into a secular VR hell for eternity instead.
it might not have been 'hell', it could have been something akin to what the Reapers were trying to do in the Mass Effect series. I guess the answer depends on what you decide the TITANS were trying to achieve in your campaign. its really left wide open for individual campaigns to forge their own path. For myself, I think (and again let me stress this is JUST my opinion. agree/disagree as much or little as you'd like) the TITANS were supposed to facilitate humanity's acceleration to a state where it could speak to the ETI on something approaching similar frames of reference. forging a bunch of faithful/religious people into a godlike entity might be one such way to accomplish that end goal.
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Sat, 2011-10-29 03:07
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Re: Mecca after the Fall
We don't really know the intelligence arithmetic at work when merging. I would suspect it would be a case of adding negative numbers ;)
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Sat, 2011-10-29 03:10
weaver95 weaver95's picture
Re: Mecca after the Fall
Smokeskin wrote:
We don't really know the intelligence arithmetic at work when merging. I would suspect it would be a case of adding negative numbers ;)
well obviously this is all just a theory...but if you want to get a bunch of minds all moving in the same direction then you could probably speed up the process by brain-napping people with similar outlooks and using them as a basis for your god mind. of course, the TITANS could have just been insane. there might not have been ANY discernible reason for their mass uploading of human brains. In which case, a god mind of religious souls becomes something else entirely.
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Tue, 2011-11-15 10:10
SEÑOR FASE SEÑOR FASE's picture
Re: Mecca after the Fall
750 wrote:
Btw, i am not sure one can lump Buddhist and Shinto in that fashion. I am not even sure if Buddhism classify as a religion in the normal sense.
Hi: 'Tis EZ for buddhists: tell 'em their gonna be all in/part of Nirvana. SF
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