@Sharpmango - you seem pretty pro-Zoroastrianism but it really doesn't seem more than just a local Iranian paganism/national pre-Islamic cultural heritage than a major world
religion as such. What separates religions from cults or cultural heritages is that they have a universalist dimension. Even Judaism, which could be said to be similar in this respect to Zoroastrianism, has had an influence beyond the Middle East, particularly into Europe and America, and Islam spread beyond the Middle East similarly because it had an easily universalised appeal. Besides during the Islamic revolution in the 1970s most Iranians supported Khomeini because of the decadence of the Shah and your friends are more likely to be elite dissidents rather than genuinely representative of the Iranian masses. Doesn't make the Islamic regime any better, but at the time of the revolution it had mass support and appeal otherwise it wouldn't have gathered momentum in order to be as genuine as it was. Whether or not Zoroastrianism represents a genuine Iranian (as opposed to outside) influence, it's mostly like saying that the neo-pagan community worshipping the Norse or Celtic pantheons represents British culture more than 1500-odd years of accumulated and shared Christian tradition.
Influence over a longer term matters much more than just having a few prominent Zoroastrian figures at any one time. No religion is going to spread through the actions of three or four charismatic businessmen; it needs a real spiritual cause or political reason to spread further. Judaism at one point was a missionary faith but it cooled down because Christianity took the Jewish God and made Him universal and therefore it spread further than Judaism did because it released its adherents from temporal rules ("Nothing I have created is unclean") and adapted better to practice over a wide area rather than being exclusively linked to a particular region, country or culture. Islam has had more success in spreading beyond its Middle Eastern roots because of a similar universalist principle. Zoroastrianism meanwhile hasn't been as successful. It may be an accident of history, but what you state about Sikhism does it an injustice and actually confirms what you are saying about ZA being a minor bit part in world religious affairs. It will take more than just a few businessmen to make it into a serious global contender and thus worthy of inclusion in Civ.
Sharpmango said:
by the way about including sikhs.....there are less sikhs in india than christians...in game terms, thats like founding islam just before rifling and having it in like 2 cities =p
You could say - in fact you have just said - the same thing about Zoroastrianism. There are large Sikh communities in Britain as well; it is living religion as much as Zoroastrianism and one that is more recognised as such.
a4phantom said:
In Norse mythology the beautiful noble heroic gods are destined to have their heads bashed in by the stupid, ugly, evil giants. Does that mean the gods aren't gods, only the giants are? I'm not sure what you're getting at with "superior".
They are not Gods in the conventional sense, they are heroes of myth and legend elevated to semi-immortal status through stories. There is no concept in Norse myth or legend of an over-arching, immortal, omniscient/omnipresent Supreme Being - not even Odin was that powerful, especially since he and Thor both die at Ragnarok. Scandinavia ended up being Christianised because the appeal of monotheism or modern religions which survive and perpetuate themselves and become significant world religions all have a concept of a Supreme Being or, failing that, an ultimately perfectionist ideology such as Nirvana/achievement thereof. Therefore it could be said that Judaism, one of the first religions to achieve such a concept, influenced Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam; what Christianity did for Judaism was to spread this concept further than just . Whether or not Zoroastrianism has this concept and influenced Judaism or vice versa (and I have a hunch that it is vice versa since the concept of Manichaenism was a
Christian heresy popular at the time of St Augustine, whose philosophy owes much to it).
In my opinion, much myth and legend is actually either legends of mortal heroes/early kings who were deified over time, or conversely prophecies of things to come (Ragnarok corresponds a lot to Revelation as a prophecy of the apocalypse and is frighteningly
human rather than natural in nature). Christianity took hold in Europe because conventional paganism didn't allow for a Supreme Being which could give people absolute moral direction. Even neo-pagans have the concept of the Goddess (anachronistic and based largely on people mistaking Stone Age fetish items for ancient idols) and ascribe to her most of the characteristics of the conventional monotheistic God.
Also, knowing a Jew myself (how many of you are speaking from actual personal knowledge of Judaism?! I suspect most of you are trying to do down Judaism because of political motivations rather than actual first hand knowledge and I suggest you visit your local synagogue and talk to your local rabbi before making any more judgement on this relying on biased sources or your own imagination) I can tell you they definitely do believe in a devil and that he is not just a heavenly bureaucrat designed to punish sinners. Otherwise Jesus, as a Jew, would not have had the concept of Satan to admonish his disciples with, nor would he have recognised Satan in the wilderness when he was being tempted. The devil is a real concept in Judaism but the OT is more a history of the Jews as a people and thus references are rarer than references to pagan gods such as Baal because these were the enemies the people of Judea faced.
