C2C - Religions discussions and ideas

I don't mind religion founding techs being dead-end techs at all. It's up to the C2C team though and as far as I understood most of the C2C team was against it.

But if you think about it, how did the Maya and the Zulu's have close to the same religious philosophies being 1000's of miles apart? Well actually most of the world, Shamanism/WitchDoctors etc.

Because they based their mysteries on the same basic things that are found everywhere in the world; what they could see. It was either nature, celestial bodies, animals, or plant life. Not much else to start basing things of until a lot later in the evolution of knowledge.

Why do Non religious ppl persist in this absurdity?

Is it the mentality that if you say it enough times it must then be true?


Science came from religion, history shows it over and over.

Atheism (the Religion of not believing in God or gods) is not more scientifically advantaged.

Maybe atheist should Not be a religious choice in the game? Put in a Societal Civic and take it out of the religions choices. Problem solved.

JosEPh

*chuckle* I only have one point to make here JosEPh:
Science doesn't come from religion, nor from non-religion. It comes from people that are in a position to theorise, test, prove, and advance their ideas.

In many past times that has been under religious influence, at other times it hasn't. At times religion has curtailed, or at least delayed, scientific progress, but then again that has also happened outside of religious influence.

Monasteries, and religion pushing for science, plays it's part but the extra Science from those monasteries should be phased out and replaced as new methods and broader understandings come. This is the same for all and everything really, for instance:
Sewer Systems when it came was innovative and changed a lot. Today in many countries it is part of the planning of towns/cities and should really not have to be specifically built (in the game that is) in new cities but should rather go obsolete at some technology that also automatically grants all cities the same bonuses that building a Sewer Systems give.
Meat handling originating from Shamanism becomes part of society and lives on long after Shamanism is no longer followed. The bonuses from Shaman's Hut should not obsolete and in a way doesn't as Granaries and Modern Granaries and Refrigeration takes over and improves on the old ways.

And so it goes. Things aren't lost, usually, when old ways go obsolete, they are just handled and viewed differently as humans understanding of the methods used increase.

As for science being "invented" in religious environments I'm not sure that is really the case. Myths and mysteries have existed as long as human nature has sought answers to unanswerable questions but I doubt any such environment had anything to do with human curiosity leading to learning to use glue, or knapp stones, or observing animals habits, or learning what plants are edible. All those might later on have become part of a myth/mystery/religion to help people know and remember the what and how of things, but in most cases after the fact, not before, or because of.

Cheers
 
So, what about the idea of removing atheism from the Religions and making it a Societal Civic? It would alleviate the "perceived" problem of Religion's having a science bonus/buildings and it not.

JosEPh:)
 
but monasteries contribute to science even in modern times just think of Mendel who discovered genetics. he was a monk and worked in a monastery
 
but monasteries contribute to science even in modern times just think of Mendel who discovered genetics. he was a monk and worked in a monastery

Right, though Mendel wasn't really in 'modern' times, he certainly was past some level of general education. However, monastry benefits in C2C are % boosts, and monastries sure don't produce boosts to the rate of science production from all other institutions today. If the percentage boosts were phased out, but modest absolute science prodcution left in/replaced it, I think things would be ok
 
So, what about the idea of removing atheism from the Religions and making it a Societal Civic? It would alleviate the "perceived" problem of Religion's having a science bonus/buildings and it not.

JosEPh:)

I think Atheism should stay with region since putting it under another category would not work such as having Atheism and State Church. In fact just about any of the combos with the religious techs doesn't make sense with Atheism under another civic.

If the percentage boosts were phased out, but modest absolute science prodcution left in/replaced it, I think things would be ok

This would be a lot better. However that's up to DH since he is in control of he religious buildings.
 
Could it be possible to purge every religion out of a city with Atheism, similar to the inquisition with intolerant ?
 
There are a number of issues being discussed here and I'd like to comment on nearly all of them.

First, to address the game function issue. Monasteries definitely need to phase out their Science bonuses (I like the idea of allowing the % benefit to go and keeping a small amount of + benefit.) It would be nice if this took place around the time something else would replace that benefit in a more modern scientific manner, like public schools or whatnot. Or perhaps the % benefit from monasteries could be a matter of the civic one is on and to get a more powerful benefit, one must switch. Or perhaps, even better still, we could establish that only the monasteries for your state religion actually work for providing science output at all. (in this case they would really all need some and need to be reworked to provide some alternative benefits based on the religious flavor as well, a-la Asatru.)

Another game impacting concept I've been mulling over: I really feel that Atheism would be better expressed as a religion rather than a civic. This is for a few reasons. It's a professed 'faith stance' in people who believe it. It exists as a percentage of a population and mixes in with other belief systems. And it can be adopted as a state religion, a-la Modern China, which has the same, if not greater diplomatic impact on religious states as any other selection. There may not be much in the way of 'buildings' per se, surely not in the conventional sense, but it could certainly influence the functioning of OTHER buildings when it is the state religion, and there could most certainly be 'missionaries' called 'Naysayers' or Heretics that go about trying to spread their views.

Now, the third thing I wanted to comment on was the religious resistance to progress. Science has certainly benefited from some religious elements. But lets not be completely ignorant here. Religion, while representing a set of philosophies and theories, presents a model of reality, a faith-dependant belief mechanism that can answer many otherwise unanswerable questions. This causes people, looking for answers to tough questions in their lives, to turn to religions to fill those blank spots in our unbiased scientific knowledge. What happens when we die, what's the point of life, what's right and wrong, etc... Many of these blank spots really can't be answered with any kind of proof whatsoever so religions step in and offer a set of answers that 'feels' at least true enough in enough of these areas that a large populace might profess that religion as 'the answer'.

The more people turn to a given religion, the more power it has as it becomes woven into the culture to accept these 'answers' to the unanswerable. The more it becomes woven into the culture, the more its expected of others to believe the same things and before you know it, completely unsubstantiated religious claims become perceived to be incontrovertable truths, such as the existence of heaven, hell, angels, demons, God's morality code, reincarnation, etc...

As soon as you have these beliefs woven so strong into the fabric of your culture, those who represent and become the authority of those beliefs become powerful. VERY powerful. For they can tell you what your life should be. Do not think, for one moment, that this power is in some way undesirable to those who wield it, that it has never been misused, abused, manipulated, and protected from dissenting interests and the greatest threat to this power is a new idea that replaces any of those 'unanswerable questions'. In short, when such questions become answerable, they challenge the power of the religious authority and threaten to shatter the entire fabric of the societal world-view it has come to push for the sake of greater and greater power and control.

DAMNED straight, religions have impeded science to a horrendous extent for just this reason. Science is a method of taking an UN-biased approach to discovering what is real and what is not and it is a direct threat to religious authority and as a result has been repeatedly under attack by a continuously weakening church network since its induction and the more prolific science has become, the weaker 'faith-based' belief becomes because people are more and more unwilling to accept that any unsubstantiated answers can be sufficient. This is due to how many faith based fill-ins have been challenged by science, substantiated with proof and are in direct contradiction to the answers the church previously delivered us. This leads us to ask, how many other questions have we accepted the religious answer on faith alone which blinded us and why did we ever accept those answers to begin with?

I'm not an atheist, but I understand this. Religion has felt threatened by science, has counterattacked, in some cases quite savagely, and recognizes the danger it is in... and it should.

This is not true for all religions of course... some faiths preach, themselves, against the amassing of such power and sway over politics and people and have not attempted to presume that they are ultimate authorities but present themselves for what they are, philosophies that can help to guide. These Eastern religions have not reacted with such hostility towards scientific progression, but eagerly await greater revelations of knowledge so that they may adapt the new understandings into their belief models. This is, nevertheless, still threatening to some nations who feel that any faith based union can threaten the sovereign power of a nation over their people.
 
What we need is a civic that represents "Separation of Church and State". Such an idea has let science bloom. However it is not always good, forced medical experiments on "unimportant" or "sub" people for instance. It would still allow you to have a state religion but is different from Atheism.

I agree Atheism should be a religion in C2C terms.
 
What we need is a civic that represents "Separation of Church and State". Such an idea has let science bloom. However it is not always good, forced medical experiments on "unimportant" or "sub" people for instance. It would still allow you to have a state religion but is different from Atheism.

I agree Atheism should be a religion in C2C terms.

Now i really like these ideas.:)
 
What we need is a civic that represents "Separation of Church and State". Such an idea has let science bloom. However it is not always good, forced medical experiments on "unimportant" or "sub" people for instance. It would still allow you to have a state religion but is different from Atheism.
That is what is usually known as secularity.
 
That is what is usually known as secularity.

I would say 'separation of church and state' and 'secularity' are not quite the same. USA today is a good example. It certainly has separation of church and state (well for practical purposes if you ignore some 'One Nation under God' rhetoric), but I'd not really call it secular, in the same way as I probably would the UK.
 
I would say 'separation of church and state' and 'secularity' are not quite the same. USA today is a good example. It certainly has separation of church and state (well for practical purposes if you ignore some 'One Nation under God' rhetoric), but I'd not really call it secular, in the same way as I probably would the UK.
Well, I usually understand as secularity the loss of binding to religion and in the case of states the separation of religion and state.
So how would you define secularity?
 
Well, I usually understand as secularity the loss of binding to religion and in the case of states the separation of religion and state.
So how would you define secularity?

Difficult question ;)

To me it's more about how a society feels to live in. The US doesn't feel secular because religious belief is typically very publically paraded (by politicians or whatever). The UK (where I used to live) did, because religion was a much more private matter, so was rarely the subject of public discourse in other fields (such as politics). You could argue that the US doesn't really separate church and state, because religion and politics are intertwined to a practically large degree, but that wouldn't really be correct either, because the legal framework (including the implications that has on what politicians can actually do) very much does separate them as a matter of constitution (which is the highest body of US law).
 
Difficult question ;)

To me it's more about how a society feels to live in. The US doesn't feel secular because religious belief is typically very publically paraded (by politicians or whatever). The UK (where I used to live) did, because religion was a much more private matter, so was rarely the subject of public discourse in other fields (such as politics). You could argue that the US doesn't really separate church and state, because religion and politics are intertwined to a practically large degree, but that wouldn't really be correct either, because the legal framework (including the implications that has on what politicians can actually do) very much does separate them as a matter of constitution (which is the highest body of US law).
I'd say then that the US are not really secular any more, especially in the bible belt. While Germany has some secular traits, there is still some quite significant binding to both catholic and protestant churchs.
 
I'd say then that the US are not really secular any more, especially in the bible belt. While Germany has some secular traits, there is still some quite significant binding to both catholic and protestant churchs.

I Agree, but the US very much does have legal separation of church and state, which is why I think is a difference, though I can't quite define it exactly, and it's subtle.
 
Then since you all feel so strongly that atheism should stay in the Religion Civics what do you propose to give it an "equal" science footing to Religions?

As for reducing Monasteries science production what era should this start? It should really be at least held off till the Industrial Era imo.

To replace the science that will be reduced/lost from the reduction to monasteries will a larger % be introduced for the education system for the masses? Not only libraries and Universities but schools both public and private should have the means to replace the lost beakers. Which means that more education buildings maybe needed starting in the Ren era.

@T-Bird,
Quite the impassioned post, but... for the most part it's intellectual elitism dogma that has surfaced in the liberal/amoral university settings of recent years. Science majors are being indoctrinated with this idea, "Religion and Science can not co-exist". Which is very untrue. And because someone disagrees with it don't label them, "But lets not be completely ignorant here." No one in this discussion is ignorant or unlearned. :)

JosEPh
 
@T-Bird,
Quite the impassioned post, but... for the most part it's intellectual elitism dogma that has surfaced in the liberal/amoral university settings of recent years. Science majors are being indoctrinated with this idea, "Religion and Science can not co-exist". Which is very untrue. And because someone disagrees with it don't label them, "But lets not be completely ignorant here." No one in this discussion is ignorant or unlearned. :)

JosEPh
The essence of religion is belief while the essence of science is doubt. They rarely coexist well.
 
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