Smokeskin wrote:

Steel Accord wrote:

In the event of excommunication, I'm just hoping I would be able to find some isolationist Franciscans or some such that may elect to ignore the Pope's decree and allow me to sit in on their mass.

Isn't the pope something like the extension of god's will and infallible? If he excommunicates you, that's like god doing it, and you're going to hell? You seem to be taking that likely, as long as you can find other condemned people that will perform ceremonies with you.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:

Papal infallibility has nothing to do with any chairs. It's more like how you might say someone chairs a meeting; he has a particular position and responsibility. In short, the pope can invoke papal infallibility while standing up, if he so desired. In order for the pope to speak ex cathedra, there are conditions that must be met. One of them is that the beliefs are held by the whole Church (in practice, this means the council of cardinals). If the pope says something and not everyone on the council agrees, it's not ex cathedra by definition. If it helps, imagine it like this; - The Catholic Church is right, and the pope was appointed as God's shepherd on earth until Jesus comes back. - God is invested in keeping the RCC on the right track and won't let it fall into heresy. - The pope is 'head cardinal', and is basically the spokesmen for the Church. Don't think of the pope as a king or a president as much as a prime minister, representing the voice of the majority. - When almost all of the students and leaders of the Church agree on something (as represented by the bishops and cardinals), it's the pope's job to say "hey, we're all agreed, and the answer is 'X'." The pope doesn't have magic pope powers, and does not make things true by saying them. And yes, ex cathedra has only been used a few times (it's hard to get an exact count), almost always for things that, well, all catholics already believed anyway. Ex Cathedra is WAY less interesting than it sounds on paper. BTW, love this discussion. Some real good thoughts here.

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

Tantavalist, I think you're more or less on track, but current trends on Earth are pointing towards increased people being utterly unimpressed by the idea of religion. By the time of EP, it is within the grasp of scientists like the Argonauts to do most of the things religions say the Gods did, especially the important bits like creating life [i]ex nihilo[/i]. They may not be able to make planets - [i]yet[/i] - and it will definitely take more than seven days, but they [i]are[/i] making life, and making barren wastelands fertile. I imagine there would be a lot of people for whom the Fall shook the faith right out of them - after all, if there were an omnipotent God, surely the almost-utter extinction of the race He made in His image was not part of His plan. Therefor, either God does not exist, or God no longer cares about humanity, or actively wished its destruction; ergo, why bother praying to the bastard? Of course, there are always going to be those looking for a sky fairy (nope, not biased at all, no sir[/sarcasm]) to reassure them. So you're definitely right about new religions popping up to fill the void for those who find their old faiths no longer hold their charm but who still want religion to comfort them. (I like that bit about accelerated prayers to allah, I may steal that sect for use IMG,) New religions may fill the void, or they might look to the oldest religion still active and similar to the one they used to belong to. But I suspect that outside of religious enclaves, most people don't give a fuck about religion, to the point that if you ask them about it or openly admit to being religious, they might want to have nothing to do with you. Some folks may even have their muses set to auto-ding anyone they pass near who is broadcasting any religious affiliation.

Tantavalist wrote:

Having just read through this thread, I thought I might as well add how I've been portraying religion in my EP campaigns. I've just re-started my old campaign- a non-Firewall game based around a gonzo journalist and his support team (yes, we've read Transmetropolitan). My own portrayals of religion in the game have all stemmed from two key facts. #1: The Fall has destroyed the religious power structures back on Earth, and forced the majority of the population to go through a process that was likely forbidden by the vast majority of pre-Fall mainstream religions. #2: The basic psychology and memories of the populace are still the same, and so a large number of people still feel the need for the psychological crutch of religious faith, with a religious authority figure to console and reassure them. Especially after the Fall. Looking at these two facts, I found myself thinking that the Fall was probably like a mass extinction event for the big religions. And what happens after a mass extinction? A mass rush by surviving organisms to fill the void, of course! Just as with the governments and nation-states, the Fall smashed the exisiting power blocks and left the field open for any fringe religion to make a play for the souls of Transhumanity. Some of these will be like the fringe cults of today. Others might be whole new movements, created after the Fall. But many will be the remains of the old monolothic religions, mutating into something new. Changes will have to be made, to fit the new paradigm. Resleeving is clearly the big one- as stated before in this thread, what does this mean for a soul? Does it travel to the new body, or go to heaven and a new soul appear? The "soulless after re-sleeving" possibility will be ignored here for the simple reason that any religion keeping that as dogma won't appeal to the vast majority of re-sleeved Transhumanity. Which version is true? This would be a major issue to debate even pre-Fall, after it, the very groups that would have held these debates are gone. So, people will just go with what they feel is best- ie, what the most persuasive local religious figure is arguing for. But, there's another figure that argues the other side, and so that's the old religion's re-sleeved followers split in two. Repeat for every other major theological issue that the Fall has raised, and you get little enclaves of former Catholics, Muslims or whatever who all claim to have the One True Path. And that's without whatever the pre-Fall equivalent of the Scientologists might be trying to muscle in on the action... So, in my game, there's no large-scale organised religion outside of the Jovians. There is, however, a lot of religion- but all of it is pretty small scale, and tends to have at least one bizarre (to modern eyes) aspect thrown in. Like one Islamic sect my PCs encountered who had ruled that the mind and soul are one, and so therefore infomorphs had souls, and the prayers of infomorphs were just as valid in the eyes of God as those of people in a biomorph. These people donated a tithe that was used to build server hardware, where egos restored from cold storage were preached to, and if converted placed in a simulspace on the servers. In accellerated time, these infomorphs would direct their mass of prayers to God on behalf of those who had paid for the servers to be set up. Another thing to consider is that, in some cases, religion and culture have been very strongly merged to the point that abandoning one would be abandoning the other. Judaism is the defining case of this, though the Japanese with Shinto and Latin American Catholics are also examples. In these cases, even if religious faith is shaken I can see groups of these cultures still going through the motions with the old religion anyway. It's not about Faith, but about Community and Cultural Identity.

Quote:

It has nothing to do with disrespect. If I said "obesity leads to increased risk health and social problems", that's obviously not saying something nice about obese people, but it is not an insult. It is the truth. I see nothing that indicates that neither gods nor sky fairies exist. And to make it even more fun, the very guy that complained about the comment himself said so! And on top, religious people tend to believe in the existence of other religions' gods PRECISELY as much as they believe in sky fairies. So let's cut the "it's disrespectful" crap. Everyone only believes in their own god(s) and thinks everyone else's is made up.

Smokeskin wrote:

Lilith, I don't go around quoting health effects to fat people on a regular basis. But when the topic is obesity, I'm not going to go "oh, obesity or not, it is probably about the same in the long run". I'm going to say what I believe is the truth. If people ask me what I think of their personal weight, I tell them. It sounds like if they have a problem, you tell them a white lie instead. I think that is not only disrespectful, I believe it is downright harming them. It has serious consequences in that it diminishes their capacity to lead a life where they realize their potential for good health, social standing and happiness. You cuddle them into a false belief that supports inaction, instead of them facing the facts and maybe dealing the issue. What if they were really asking you because they wanted that motivation to do something about that comes from being told some hard truths? Have you ever seen how motivational coaches do it? Do they cuddle them and say that it isn't so bad? So yes, I tell the truth. My sister says she wish I was always around when she's trying dresses, because when she asks I say if she looks fat in it (and by that she means fatter than she actually is). Then she can buy another dress instead of buying it and going out looking fat. I realize that being honest doesn't always sit well with people, and often it is also very hard for me. I don't like making people feel bad, especially those I like. But what is the alternative? I tell my wife when she cooks something I don't like. I know people who eat food they don't like for years because they can't bring themselves to tell them - imagine the waste of effort and potential taste experience in that, imagine how pissed the cook would be if he/she ever found out that all those hours over the decades making that dish were wasted? Lots of people let their marriages get to the point where they're ready to break up after years of unhappiness, and then they go to counselling and in a few hours figure out that neither of them had any idea that they weren't doing the things their partner liked. Just be honest. Don't tell lies. Sure, it can be hard to hear and hard to say, but it works out better in the long run. If religious people don't like having their gods compared to other fictional entities, then they should either a) stop believing in fictional entities or b) stop entering discussions about religion with atheists. And if they can't help themselves and feel the need to discuss with people whose opinions they find offensive and complain about the comparison, they certainly shouldn't start complaining about the moral habitus of sky fairies. Their god, as described in their own texts, has a habit of acting like a complete and utter psychopath, killing swathes of people left and right, often on a whim. One of his loyal believers, Abraham, he asks him to kill his own son just to test his faith. What sort of psychopath does that? How do you feel about an employer making an employee do something demeaning to "test their loyalty"? Now scale that up to being asked to murder your child. Seriously, if someone gets offended at the comparison because sky fairies are "mischevious and playful", that means they either have absolutely zero ability to judge the moral character or their own religion's description of their god, or their moral compass is completely inoperational. And at this point, if some christian feels like adding "but I don't believe those parts of the bible are true", then fine, you have nothing to be offended at. I obviously wasn't talking about the god you believe in, I was talking about the god described in the bible. And just to be clear, when we're talking actual, individual people, I judge them on their merits. My brother-in-law is one of the nicest, most upstanding people I know, and the guy almost became a priest and he has an 8 inch cross tattoed on his chest. After a few times we just stopped talking religion and that's that. I assume you live in a place where criticizing religion is taboo, where religious people are free to go around talking about God all the time, and bringing him up in moral discussions like there's some sort of moral authority there, and they expect everyone to just take it. Well, I believe in free speech and honest exchange, and I'm going to call people on bullshit. They can't just go "but oh no I get offended at that" and expect that to give them the right to speak unopposed. If they don't like talking about it, they shut up.