When inventing a fantasy religion a lot of people a) make the mistake of assuming that everyone in fantasy world would worship the same gods and b) assume that polytheistic religions see all of their gods as morally good
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of God that I grew up with… the Christian idea that’s so predominant in our society that it often feels like it’s part of the definition of a deity: perfectly good and benevolent; perfectly all-knowing and all-powerful…
like, we see it in some of those thought experiments pointing out the paradox of God (“can he make a rock that he can’t lift?”) …and we see it in (some commonly quoted versions of) the Epicurus quote about the Problem of Evil:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
…and honestly I find it hard to believe Epicurus (who was ancient Greek) ever said that!
Because… “why call him God” if he’s not benevolent or omnipotent?? …dude, pretty much none of the ancient Greek gods were perfectly benevolent or omnipotent by any standards!
I don’t personally believe in a God by any commonly recognized definition. But I do believe that religions develop because our social minds are especially attuned to imagining other minds. We often default to theory-of-mind, imagining what someone else’s motivations were for doing something…. even if that thing wasn’t obviously even caused by someone else’s motivations.
When we start asking questions (why did my friends get sick and die? why did a storm destroy the town? why are humans different from animals? why does sex make babies? etc)… it often feels natural to our minds to phrase the question as “who decided to do this, and why?”
and we’ll answer with whatever patterns we perceive– whether they actually follow some natural pattern in real life, or are just our minds being desperate to see patterns.
And, imagining that someone is making decisions to create those patterns… the conclusion is often going to be “Someone doesn’t like it when people do (x), and will punish them with (y).”
And, since that “someone” is powerful enough to control disease and storms and the very nature of human minds and bodies… it doesn’t even matter whether their intentions are “good” according to anyone’s innate moral compass.
Or even whether they’re totally omnipotent. Because all that matters is they’re way, way stronger than you– and so your only option to avoid their wrath is to give them what they want.
I’m pretty sure that a lot of religions throughout history have been nothing like “love for a perfect and omniscient being,” and more just “pragmatic response to being oppressed by a tyrant who’s too strong to defeat.”
Eventually it turns to fondness, I guess, because… you have to make the best of life, right?