Made up religions

[Hant_iiha_cohacomxoj]

I would like to hear from you the reader
what do i want to hear, ideas of religion ideas that you don't care about giving away and getting no credit for
so like rules, clothing, anything-- feel free to post pics to show
the made up religion and remember if i like ur idea i might take it and make it my own so don't go telling people i stole your idea cause i'm telling you now post only if your sure u don't care about the idea

[Kodos]

Shouldn't this go in Mangaworks or Writers Arena since I assume this is for a story?

Just sayin'.

As for made up religions, it really depends on the setting. For Terminus Est we are dealing with a setting where the gods objectively real and you would have to be extremely stupid or delusional to claim otherwise. For other fantasy or science fiction or modern fiction settings, the gods are less objectively or obviously real, so the approach you'd want to take would be different.

[Hant_iiha_cohacomxoj]

check your messages ^_^ the setting post apocalyptic--shocker lol

[Matt]

Hm. Considering your characters' dress, a religion might be the way to explain your female characters' lack of proper clothing. A goddess could declare the female body a beautiful thing and sex appeal to be sacred? It could be ingrained so deeply in the culture that nobody questions it, yet the results are always there, even if your world moves away from religion at some point. This could be driven further since plenty of people would obviously like the way the girls dressed, and that, in turn, could provoke some sort of rebellion from women who hated showing themselves off and didn't have any reasons to do so aside from social or religious pressure.

Side note: Ray, what in the world is your username?

[Hant_iiha_cohacomxoj]

lol @matt - i was doing more character design and stuff and i mad a home city that Psyche comes from and its not really religious but the city is democratic kinda but also the government runs most of the shit and the people of the city all wear the same colored clothes so this explains her colors and its hotter in this city so public nudity is nothing.

[Kodos]

There's lots of real life basis for that. Hierodules and other forms of sacred prostitution, not to mention symbolic religious sex, heiros gamos and all that. Judaism and Christianity hate women and sex, and while a lot of world religions hate women, the hatred and fear of sex is more unique to Judeo-Christian thought.

But really for people to dress promiscuously you don't necessarily need hierodules or anything - just a less prudish religion than Christianity. Western culture has prudery ingrained into it because one of the founding ideas of Western culture is the Christian notion that sex, and especially female sexuality, is something inherently evil, destructive, and worthy of fear and scorn in equal measure.

Now, I'm not saying prudery and misogyny are solely the fault of Christianity - they're not - but Christianity has been a historically powerful legitimizing force that has created the environment in which those two social diseases could thrive.

Anyway, as for a post-apocalyptic religion - I'd say look to history. The fall of the Roman Empire was an apocalypse of sorts, and what religion became big after it? Christianity. A religion obsessed with death and which proclaimed the world would soon end. I think to the survivors of an apocalypse, something like that would be appealing. Things are shitty and it would be very difficult to convince them otherwise, so it is much easier to win them over by claiming "follow me and when you die - and you will die, believe me - things will be better forever!" The prediction of the imminent end of everything also helps because it appeals to people's sensibilities ("things keep getting worse - it all has to end soon...") and because it makes the need to convert more urgent.

Another thing that really helped Christianity thrive early on was the universality of its message. Salvation for everyone who believed - not just for aristocrats or the wealthy, or the learned. Mithraism was one of Christianity's biggest competitors, and the religion it ripped off wholesale, but it lost because Mithraism appealed mostly to the Roman elite and the legion, while Christianity appealed to the downtrodden and the general masses.

Basically, what I am saying is - look at Early Medieval Christianity and the general state of things in Western Europe following the fall of the Roman Empire. I think that the fall of Rome is really the closest thing we have to a historical apocalypse.

[Hant_iiha_cohacomxoj]

@ both -this info helps a lot thanks
@ kodos wow I'll look in to it and that sounds like something Matt would say lol

[Hant_iiha_cohacomxoj]

@ kodos-so Jubeh, Psy, and Hayashida and u are like GODS haha
and i most defiantly will, i personally think religion is the cause of so much problems and so in real life i hate it but when it comes to my story it makes conflict with reason sets up plots and drives the human aspect stuff u know

[Matt]

Kodos is right. Real life has some of the best references for worldbuilding a religion (or anything, for that matter) in any time period. While you're in the library or the school (or school library), there are resources sitting all around you. That and you've got the Internet.

[ClockHand]

Hedonist Aztecs.