Replacing Religions

[Martinus]

Anyway, I hope you can capture wandering lions, and then put colloseums in my empire to good use, with all those Christians sauntering about.

[Solver]

BTW: for a full religion mod, you would also want to mod some graphics. Like, the Christian (any, in fact) missionaries are highly recognizeable.

[Fried-Psitalon]

Geez, folks. Let the guy play the kind of game he wants to play - what's it to you? All he's asking about is how easy it will be for him to go about making his modifications, and he's asking for suggestions for pseudo-religions. If he hadn't told you his reasons, this thread would be filled with happy, cheerful suggestions. I'm a pretty firm "non-organized-religion" believer myself (quasi-agnost?) but I don't have any problem with him doing what he wants to do - that's his business. Have fun, go forth and enjoy, say I.

And on that note:

Consumerism - worshippers of the almighty coin!

Epicurianism (sp may be off, sorry) - the second American religion - food worship

Technocratism - The Machine Stops, anyone?

and heck, why not... here's a religion for you..

Athleticism - worshippers of athletic fitness, dread enemies of the Epicurians.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Senethro
It would be an American to post a thread like this...

Note, I am not calling you ignorant.

But that is an incredibly ignorant thing to say.

[nbarclay]

Purely from my own perspective, trying to replace the graphics would be more trouble than it's worth - especially since art is not one of my talents. Keeping the default graphics might even be advantageous in making it a little easier to move back and forth between games with the stock religions and games with the replacement pseudo-religions, and in helping to keep track for purposes of strategy discussions.

Lockstep, replacing the standard religions with minor historical ones might be interesting for some people, but it wouldn't fit my own goals. What I really want is to reduce religion to a game mechanic that has some relationship to the secular aspects of how religion affects civilizations, but where it is clear that I'm not dealing with real-world religions.

[windupmerchant]

Just thought I'd pop out of my cage to say that I think your beliefs sum up just about everything that is wrong with western civilization.

For god's sake, its just a game, and i find it amazing just how intolerant you are to be upset with the fact that certain religions were included in a piece of software. What are you like with people of these religions you don't like?

If you are really too bigoted to do otherwise, just confine yourself to spreading the Christian religion. Or alternatively, respect other religions and realize thats its just a game.

Edit: Holy ****, i just read your post on slavery and realized the extent of your stupidity. Forget what i said, you're a lost cause. Why the hell are you playing this game?

[Locutus]

Cylonism and Colonialism -- after the best TV show ever

Football - for many people around the world this is more a religion than anything else...

[dearmad]

Originally posted by nbarclay
I got to thinking about religion from the perspective of fictional people living in a fictional world created by human beings, and I may have a viable set of pseudoreligions.

The Firaxian family of religions:

Firaxianism - Worship of all the "High Firaxians" who created the game.

Sidism - Focuses on the worship of Sid, who defined the fundamental nature of the universe.

Sorenism - Credits Soren as the source of all intelligence and as the driving force behind making the world the way it is now.


Web-based Religions:

Apolytonism - Believes that people should live their lives according to the guidance of the Apolytonians.

GOTMism - Believes that every month of a person's life should be lived as if it were a great game.


Other religions:

Playerism - Believes that the human being playing the game at a particular moment is worthy of the highest worship.

Randomism - Belief that fate is guided by the mystical Random Number Generator.

At first I thought your idea was cute and your reasoning sound, but then reading the above I thought- this is sort of creepy idolatry. Isn't that a tenet of your faith?

Why not just stick to xtian religions:
Orthadox, Catholic, Lutheran, Ecuminical, Baptist, "Christian" the sort of general feel-goody people, and Anglican. 7 little xtains all in a row.

And just leave it at that? if this text in the game really bothers you. Don't create a golden bull instead.

[conmcb25]

Bananaism

Worship of anything and everything relating to promation and agknowledgement that the Great Banana created Apolyton so we would all have a place to screw off at work

[Locutus]

Originally posted by windupmerchant
For god's sake, its just a game

Not aimed at windupmerchant specificially, but this goes both ways: if nbarclay wants to mod his game, what's it to you? It's only a game, and nbarclay is only using this mod in the privacy of his own home... I also know several people who prefer playing with fictional civs (e.g. Hexagonians ), noone ever makes a fuss about that. I'm borderline fanatical in being 'anti-(organised-)religious', but I don't see anything wrong with this. The key issue here is that nbarclay's view is oversensitive and intolerant to some, but if you rant about this you're kind of being a hypocrite, aren't you?

If you don't agree with this, just don't read this thread, noone's pointing a gun to your head...

[windupmerchant]

Originally posted by Locutus

If you don't agree with this, just don't read this thread, noone's pointing a gun to your head...

In the same way, no one is forcing him to play this game.

Yes, he can do whatever he wants with his own game. However, I resent the fact that he describes other religions as"wrong". If he chooses to express these beliefs on a public internet forum then I think he should be open to some flak. I'm sure there are some members of these forums who belong to these 'heathen' religions.

I was simply suggesting that he accept the other religions and stop filling up this board with useless posts.

Edit: Changed a misquote

[dearmad]

ignoring the thread is a lot easier. The OP requested info on modding and happened to give his reasons. Seems reasonable to let him ask the question and eminently reasonable to ignore the thread if it doth affend thee.

Oh and it is VERY RUDE of you to misquote someone. He wrote: " believe are wrong"

IMO you are bearing false witness. So calm down.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by windupmerchant
Just thought I'd pop out of my cage to say that I think your beliefs sum up just about everything that is wrong with western civilization.

For god's sake, its just a game, and i find it amazing just how intolerant you are to be upset with the fact that certain religions were included in a piece of software. What are you like with people of these religions you don't like?

Tolerance is not about believing that people who disagree with us aren't wrong. Only an idiot or someone who doesn't bother to think can believe that he is right about an issue without believing that other people who hold directly contradictory views are wrong. A wise person will be open to the possibility that it could be he that is wrong and the other person that is right, and will thus be willing to listen to evidence in support of a competing viewpoint. But as long as a person believes that he is probably or almost certainly right, logic demands that he also believe that other people who hold conflicting views are probably or almost certainly wrong.

The true difference between tolerance and intolerance is found in how we treat people who we believe are wrong. Do we call them names, and perhaps seek to mistreat or punish them in other ways, merely because they believe differently from us? Or do we try to express our differences of opinion respectfully, trying to agree to disagree without being disagreeable if neither side can persuade the other? Do we seek to bully or coerce others into adopting our views (or at least pretending to do so) whether they want to or not? Or do we respect their right to make their own choices of what to believe? If people follow the latter paths, they can hold conflicting beliefs yet still be friiends.

Take a look back at your tone and ask yourself whether you are being tolerant or intolerant. Are you expressing disagreement in a respectful way, or are you attacking a fellow human being just because he believes differently from you? Are you respecting the right of other people to hold beliefs that you consider wrong, or are you taking the attitude that you will only treat people with respect if they conform their beliefs to yours? Are you following a path of true tolerance, or merely expressing intolerance in a different direction from what you accuse me of?

There are also two nuances you completely missed. First, I do not regard your characterization of me as feeling "upset" as accurate. The way Firaxis decided to do things makes me personally a bit uncomfortable, and since all it takes to eliminate the discomfort is a minor, purely cosmetic mod, it makes perfect sense to me to do the mod. (And since others might feel similarly, or might be interested in discussing the idea even though they would never use it themselves, I decided to bring it up here.) But there is a significant difference between preferring to do things a bit differently in one's own games and being upset.

And second, it is not the fact that other religions are included in and of itself that bothers me, but rather the prospect of having it be good strategy to promote religions in the game that I disagree with in real life. If I could always play the religion I want to without giving up any strategic advantage, the inclusion of other religions and the ability of other players to play other religions would be no big deal. But because religion in Civ 4 doesn't work that way, people of all religions - not just Christians - can find themselves pushed to actively promote religions in the game that they disapprove of in real life. (It is even possible that there could be atheists who feel better about promoting obviously phony religions in a game than about promoting real-world ones.)

[dearmad]

Well said. Even though I totally disagree with your religious take on the game.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by dearmad
Well said. Even though I totally disagree with your religious take on the game.