Comments interspersed - have been busy in offline life.

On 12/9/21 9:47 am, Jeff Zeitlin - editor at freelancetraveller.com (via
tml list) wrote:
> As the DGP religious profile generation process has some flaws, and is not
> open to "public" use, I am attempting to work up an alternative from first
> principles.
Hear, hear!
>  One of the aspects that I have come up with is what I am
> calling the "model" of the religion, and have come up with the following to
> define it. Please critique and discuss.
>
> There is some prefatory material that defines some of the terms I use; I
> have not included that material here. If you need clarification of a term,
> please ask.
"Prefatory"?  Typo, or something _else_ you've stumbled across/are
cooking up?
>
> * * * * *
>
> Model
>
> The goal for any religion is to provide a common worldview to bind a
> society into a cohesive whole. Part of that common worldview involves the
> rules for interacting with the religion itself. We call this the Model of
> the religion, and have identified three basic possibilities:

My first reaction here was to conflate 'society' with 'polity or large
chunk thereof' and then ask 'why are you assuming a roughly 1:1 mapping?'.

My second reaction was 'Hang on, it's one Zeitlin, J.  _Ask_ before you
make a goose of yourself.'

>
> Propitiatory
>
> The purpose of devotional activities is to either induce the Deitic
> Principle to favorable action, or to deter the Deitic Principle from
> unfavorable action. This includes devotional activities where no specific
> request is made, such as prayers of thanks or of acknowledgement of
> suzerainty.

EXPN 'Deitic Principle'?  A prefatory (sic) element?

Otherwise, that seems to come across as implicitly assuming monotheism. 
IIUC, doesn't that rule out the majority (at least by number) of Terran
religions, past and present?

>
> Ethical
>
> The purpose of devotional activities is to maintain society as a whole in a
> functional mode viewed as positive, or to remind devotees of the need to so
> maintain the society. This includes self-focussed activities that are
> intended to make one a "better person" to the extent that the normal
> behavior of the "better person" is favorable to maintaining society as
> above.
See comment above re "society".
>
> Transcendental
>
> The purpose of devotional activities is to bring oneself closer to some
> idealized state, representing a "perfection" of the self, or to a state
> where there is no distinction between the self and the Deitic Principle.
> Occasionally, this is interpreted to focus on becoming "more/better than
> human" or to develop abilities that are considered exceptional (for
> example, psionics). (For individuals other than humans, substitute
> appropriate species identifier, e.g., "more/better than
> Vargr/Aslan/Virushi/Gurvin/etc.)
Maybe substitute "baseline" for the specific species?
>
> A Note on Hybridization
>
> It is actually unusual for an "organic" religion (that is, one that
> developed naturally, rather than being specifically 'designed') to be
> purely in one of the three classes; often, a religion will change as the
> society does, and a religion that might be classed as 'Ethical' may well
> have 'held over' elements that would suggest a 'Propitiatory' model (e.g.,
> prayers before and after meals), or one that is principally
> 'Transcendental' may also have elements of an 'Ethical' model regarding how
> the Improved self should interact with those who are less Improved. Even
> 'designed' religions may have 'mixed' aspects, as the designers will often
> take acceptable aspects of other religions into their own for multiple
> reasons, including increasing the "comfort levels" of the devotees
> (familiarity of ritual) or deception (influence non-devotees and
> prospective devotees toward the belief that the new religion is a
> variation/reinterpretation of an older, more acceptable one).
>
I see you've noted some rank ordering of those three metamemes
(Propitiatory / Ethical / Transcendental) already - I'd suspect even a
designed religion that lasts long enough (however long that may be)
would incorporate (whether by design or evolution) elements from the
other metamemes.  Otherwise, it would become an ex-religion, ceasing to
be, and whose memetic processes are now only of interest to historians.

How would a single-metameme-dominant religion, as a class, vary from one
where two of them are roughly equal in import?

Alex