Something about religion, offensive to none

[jimbob27]

Grrrrr!!!!!! Sorry..... yeah. I just re-read it. Tis a bit harsh. I didn't quite meant it to sound like that. I wasn't annoyed with Cam. of Erracht... I was annoyed with whoever has been teaching him nonsence

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Jesus was an Essenic Rabbi, a Jew. Few Jews went along with him, but some of his followers, namely Paul, were the ones who actually started Christianity. At death, Christ, who some people mistakingly name as the founder of Christianity, remained a Jew.

Well Christ was still the founder of Christianity, even though he was a Jew, Just as the founders of the various colonies in America are those founders even though they were British.

This is because of the fact that in those days American was a subdivision of British.

Just as when Christ died, Christian was a subdivision of Judaism. Admittedly it was Paul who was key in Christianity becoming more than just Jews, but the founder of Christianity was definitely Christ.

(Christianity looks different now than it did in his day but so does Buddhism, Judaism, etc.)

 

[JerichoHill]

The Jewish faith is unique as it is passed along the mother's bloodline. Namely. Even if the children of a Jewish woman are another religion, they are still Jewish.

Jesus, being the SON of Mary, and Mary being Jewish, would necessarily be considered Jewish.

Zoroastrianism had alot of influence on the development of Islamic faith. Mohammed himself was first recognized as a prophet by a Zoroastrian.

The story of Jesus is one that allows non-Jews to be saved, because only those of the Jewish faith are saved for being God's chosen people. Had to do something for non-Jewish people.

I think given the mythos surrounding Christ, it would be a shame to call him the first Christian.

 

[SkippyT]

Because Judaism is probably the most influental and most important religion ever founded. Christianity and Islam are based on Judaism and I've always heard of "Shintoism" as Shinto-Buddhism. So if you're gonna have "Shintoism", you better have Protestants [N-America, Scandinavia, Germany, Benelux, Switzerland, Christian Africa], Catholic [S-Europe and S-America] and Orthodox [Russia, Greece and Ex-Soviet] or Shia [Iran] and Shia [Rest of Arabia]

All those have more modern followers than Judaism and "Shintoism", but I think that Taoism or Confucianism even has fewer followers than Judaism. I somewhere heard that Chinese Religions were about 3% of the world and Judaism about 1,5% so either Confucianism or Taoism has fewer followers. Where I live (Iceland) we study each religion, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism [of course Christianity] because in Iceland there is a free religion. But not Chinese religions, I don't know why.. Buddhism is probably about 5% of the country, even though Thai, Chinese, Phillipine, Vietnamese (and other Asians) people are only 2% of the country.

But that's out of subject.

In stead I think they should take either Taoism or Confucianism out of the game since Islam never really becomes a religion. It's founded in a town in the ice because there are no places left and spreads like nothing.

With no offence to Chinese religions

---

And talking about religion. I think Meditation should require Polytheism because it's weird that Buddhism always comes in front of Hinduism, since Buddhism is an "offspring" of Hinduism.

Idea:! If I don't have any religion after founding Polytheism, I will make my own religion. If I was playing fx. Inca, the state religion would be Incan Polytheism, and other "civilized" religions would call me an even more heathen religious guy. That was reality. If a new religion spreads to my city (let's say Buddhism after it has been founded), there is a turn of anarchy, and then you can deside whether you want this as your state religion or not, and another turn of anarchy. That makes more sence than having NO RELIGION. Religion has followed the man since the first day he stepped foot on Earth.

 

[MoonBase]

Y'know what would be nice? Religious decay.

That is, once a new religion is introduced to a city, the old religion(s) have a chance of dying out/disappearing.

 

[SkippyT]

Y'know what would be nice? Religious decay.

That is, once a new religion is introduced to a city, the old religion(s) have a chance of dying out/disappearing.

Well, that wouldn't really be nice. If I had a city, let's say with the state religion of Judaism and an addition Hinduism. Then a Taoist missonary comes and my state religion disappears!! That would be brutal. Missinoaries would be warriors and the AI would use them in wars so we can't use Theocracy or whatever!!

But yeah.. maybe,.. if I have a state religion, it won't disappear. But if I have an addition religion (like in the case before) Hinduism from my city would disappear. that makes more sence. Did you mean that or?

 

[MoonBase]

But yeah.. maybe,.. if I have a state religion, it won't disappear. But if I have an addition religion (like in the case before) Hinduism from my city would disappear. that makes more sence. Did you mean that or?

I mean either way. Catholics didn't hang around in Sweden and Scotland after Luther and Calvin had their moments. At the same time, there have been Christians in the middle-east under every single Muslim Empire in the region.

It should be a chance, rather than a sure thing. A way of simulating the fact that New Ideas are often very persuasive.

And if it takes out your State religion in a particular city, so be it. It'd make having Open Borders with that Taoist state over there a trickier proposition.

Missionaries are already weapons, of a sort, if you've got their Holy City under your control.

 

[jimbob27]

Sounds like a nice idea. Of course..... religious building should slow(stop?) the decay of their respective religions..... and perhaps speed up the decay of religions that don't have any buildings.

 

[Yzen Danek]

Judaism wasn't the first organized monotheistic religion.

What are you suggesting it is, then?

Zarathustra lived, by the earliest accounts, 100 years after the time of Abraham, and by the latest accounts, 1200 years later.

Hinduism is polytheistic.

I've heard arguments for the Aten cult, but it had a pantheon with a primary ruler, which makes it polytheistic, like the Greek and Roman pantheons and Hinduism.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well ideally you could have 'Levels' of a Religion in a city
ie
Absent
Present.. a few weak benefits
Significant..allows most of the benefits of religion +some penalties
Dominant ...only one religion may be Dominant (stronger benefits+penalties)


Religions would "Randomly" increase or decrease their level... various things would provide 'floors' or 'Ceilings'..ie the Holy City will never lose the religion, and if the Holy City also has the Shrine present it would never drop below Significant (if it reached significant) an 'Official' religion would never drop to absent, (if it was present), etc.
[of course moving from Absent to Present would require Missonaries or Free Religious movement.]

So a Theocratic Taoist state that conquered a city that was Dominant Hindu would have extreme unhappiness there... now if the Level of Hindu ever went Down to Significant it could Never Rise to Dominant again (a 'Ceiling') but the presence of a Hindu Cathedral might mean that it would never fall below Significant, which means some permanent unhappiness there as long as you have a Taoist Theocracy.

With High level techs (Communism, Scientific Method, Liberalism)
the 'Religious support' that various buildings provide could be removed (so that only official religions/Holy Cities would keep a religion from Randomly disappearing.
[remove Monastery Bonus with Sci Method, remove Cathedral Bonus with Communism, remove Temple Bonus with Liberalism]
Of course you also could remove the penalty for Missionaries+Free religion spread (probably with Liberalism)... so That multi-religion cities are easier to get (of course the benefits would be easier to lose)

That way you could have the 'No Religion Theocracy' which would prevent ANY religion from becoming Dominant in a city and would allow the religions to slowly disappear from all but Holy Cities (where they would be reduced to 'Present')
(Or a Religious Theocracy where all OTHER religions would slowly vanish to their Holy Cities)

 

[SkippyT]

That was quite complexed Krikkitone

 

[5cats]

Ok, I'm gonna clear up some of your controversial statements.

Polytheism came around long before monotheism. I'm not understanding your reasoning....

Jesus was an Essenic Rabbi, a Jew. Few Jews went along with him, but some of his followers, namely Paul, were the ones who actually started Christianity. At death, Christ, who some people mistakingly name as the founder of Christianity, remained a Jew.

Well, having Polytheism found the Jewish monotheistic faith seems... odd
Worse still, it would be followed by Monotheism founding a polytheistic religion...

Jesus did not die a Jew. He was baptised, remember? And he said things like "I am the way, the truth and the light, without me there is no salvation" Kinda sounds like someone who DID establish Christianity (I'd say "found Christianity" but that was Paul who did that! lol!)

Edit: I like SkippyT's idea for naming the religions after the nation that founds them. Better than assigning them colours, which is also an option. Or allowing the founder to name that religion! I could convert the world to Davidism!!!

Lets see some examples:
Aztec Monotheism, Roman Code of Lawsism, hummm
Blue missionaries, Red missionaries, sounds like Gangsta warfare!
Davidism Missionaries, the Temple of David. Yes, that sounds good!

 

[MoonBase]

Krikkitone, I really like that evolution of the idea.

Perhaps missionaries could be used to "bump up" the number of adherants in a particular city.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Jesus did not die a Jew. He was baptised, remember? And he said things like "I am the way, the truth and the light, without me there is no salvation" Kinda sounds like someone who DID establish Christianity (I'd say "found Christianity" but that was Paul who did that! lol!)

Jesus did die a Jew, baptizing did not make him 'not a Jew'. Paul, Peter, etc. all died Jews. There are plenty of Christians today who die as Jews. The two concepts are not incompatible. (This is especially complicated by the fact that Jewishness is both religious and ethnic, but even considering only the religious part, a Christian can be a Jew or vice versa (Paul just established that it was a) unnecessary and b)of no use in terms of a relationship with God for a Christian to become a Jew.)



As for my Idea... I'd say using missionaries to do anything other than Introduce a religion gets too complicated. The idea is that the best thing they could do is just keep reintroducing it (while the proper 'floors' are built, (religious buildings, declaration of official religion)) For it actually to gain prominence, you just have to get lucky... and reintroduce it if it fails before gaining enough prominence to put the floors in.
[I figured that would be a good way to get unhappiness in....and still have it balanced
Significant 1 happy for state 1 unhappy for non state
Dominant=2 (above)

You would probably have to have a way of demolishing temples... of course that decreases happiness, and the religious unhappiness from the religion wil take time to go away.

(essentially a multi-religious city would have neutral happiness ..every non state religion adds 1 unhappy, but its temple adds 1 happy. As long as a non state religion wasn't dominant, it would be in balance... giving the Monastery benefit and some culture)

 

[pub hero]

There definitely aren't 2.1 billion Christians, and there are definitely more than 14 million Jews.

The problem with counting religious folk is that you get people like myself - who was raised Catholic and was confirmed and everything but I've been agnostic since I was six. Apparently I'm part of the Christian equation, but if you actually measure how many practice the faith you'll find it to be a very short number. Much shorter than 2.1 billion. :\

 

[nyy13andy]

Why exactly do you think Monotheism should come first?

 

[Junichiro]

Because Judaism is probably the most influental and most important religion ever founded. Christianity and Islam are based on Judaism and I've always heard of "Shintoism" as Shinto-Buddhism. So if you're gonna have "Shintoism", you better have Protestants [N-America, Scandinavia, Germany, Benelux, Switzerland, Christian Africa], Catholic [S-Europe and S-America] and Orthodox [Russia, Greece, Ex-Soviet, Ethiopia] or Sunni [Iran] and Shia [Rest of Arabia].

As a quick aside, you got Sunni and Shia mixed up...and Ethiopian Orthodox church is different from Eastern Orthodox church.
Also, Shintoism and Buddhism are two different religions, Shintoism is based on old Japanese polytheistic/animistic traditions (thus making it a serious contender as the oldest established religion...)
Influence of Judaism is a bit tricky thing if the major contribution of it was to produce two other major religions, both which also have a place in Civ IV. Then I guess the ancient animistic traditions of Middle East would be even more important as Judaism is based on those, as are Zoroastrism and number of other religions (many of which are dead nowadays).

Judaism was not a monotheistic religion during Moses' time, at that point it was accepted that there were plenty of gods which other people worshipped but Jews should worship only Yhvh. The idea that there actually were no other gods came later...so in this case monotheism was developed from polytheism.
Later Christianity made sort of breach on strict monotheism by having the Holy Trinity instead of One. This is considered the folly of Christianity by Islam who again went back to strict monotheism (reading some of those monotheism paradoxes of Islamic philosophy tends to make my head hurt...). Similarly, Catholic and Orthodox habit of saint worship is seen as polytheism by stricter Protestants...
So monotheism and polytheism can switch places rather happily and transform from one to another but of the established religions, polytheism definitely came first.

 

[5cats]

Jesus did die a Jew, baptizing did not make him 'not a Jew'. Paul, Peter, etc. all died Jews. There are plenty of Christians today who die as Jews. The two concepts are not incompatible. (This is especially complicated by the fact that Jewishness is both religious and ethnic, but even considering only the religious part, a Christian can be a Jew or vice versa (Paul just established that it was a) unnecessary and b)of no use in terms of a relationship with God for a Christian to become a Jew.)

I'm not talking about ethnics, this is a discussion about religion.

To say "once a {religion x} always a {religion x}" is really hair-splitting.
If you say I've converted, then you're no longer part of your previous religion! If you don't accept conversion, then you're not the new religion. Part of being Christian is to accept Christ as the Son of God & etc, which is against the rules of Judism. Also, Christians reject plenty of Jewish rules, like circumcision and animal sacrifice. So they can hardly be considered Jewish now can they?

While it is true that a Jewish person is allowed to hold other beliefs, this is not true of Christians as a whole.

It is certianly true that counting how many people follow which religion is difficult! lol!
Yes Polytheism definitly came first, but since I consider Judaeism to have been founded by Moses, I consider it to be pretty old.

 

[SkippyT]

I would think pantheism came first. People believed in everything. I'm not sure, but polytheism is definitly sooner than monotheism! And Buddhism is after polytheism so that was just my point.

The tech tree should be like this


Polytheism < Meditation - Montheism

The mix-up with Sunni and Shia has been fixed. Sorry to all muslims

 

[Targon]

It seems that many people here need to understand the way religion works, both in the game, as well as in the real world.

Up until World War 2, the Jewish population in Europe was very strong, and if it wern't for events, would have a lot greater influence than many people seem to think. As a result, in Civ 4, since world events won't turn out the way they did in the real world, the influence of any religion is based on how things turn out in the game.

Now, because events in game will be different from the real world, things like language and even the founders of religions would be different people. So religion really extends beyond the names of the religions, and goes to the ideas behind the religions. Christianity doesn't have multiple factions in Civ 4 the way it does in the real world. If two religions are conceptually similar then, they have been combined in Civ 4, and only major differences would warrant being treated like a different religion in the game.


Now, as a response to some of the posts here, I feel that I need to give some off-topic comments. There are many people who follow the fundamental idea that there is one god. Some will consider themselves to be Jewish, belonging to that ethnic group, while others still consider themselves to follow the same faith yet arn't a part of the ethnic group. It's similar to how you can have "white" Baptists, who follow the religion, yet arn't going to live life in the same way other Baptists would. Just because you follow a religion doesn't mean you fit into the same ethnic group as others.

If you look at Islam for example, the black Muslim population isn't completely accepted by the Middle Eastern Muslim population. Different ethnic groups who follow the same religion. Since religion is primarily a conceptual thing with rituals wrapped around it, many people become confused and angered over people who claim to be in the same religion but who have different rituals. Ritual means nothing in the grand scheme of things, and the world would be a better place if people could just accept the fact, and accept the different ways that people follow religion, since it's a personal thing for everyone.