Béliiksémism

[Johnny Pneumatic]

I'm needing to create a religion for my worldbuilding group; the problem is I'm not a religious person so I have trouble making my brain work that way.
The religion is called Béliiksémism. One of the beings that follow this religion are vecs(sentient robots) that live in atmospheres. The vecs look like balloons, and are vacuum balloons. The best idea I have for the religion so far is it's based on believing random events aren't random. i.e. they will follow what a random coin toss tells them. Say they say "heads" means they will do a thing, "tails" means they won't do that thing, perhaps they will do something else instead. They make sure to decide what "heads" and "tails" means before the toss(a toss, in the case of the flying vecs, would be a random 1 or 0 generator ) The Béliiksémists believe that a supernatural power decides how the random(but not to the Béliiksémist) toss will happen. Thus the supernatural being guides the being's behavior(at least that's what Béliiksémists believe).

What do you think? How can I improve the realism of this religion?

[Beleth]

Originally posted by SkepticJ
I'm needing to create a religion for my worldbuilding group; the problem is I'm not a religious person so I have trouble making my brain work that way.
The religion is called Béliiksémism.I think your religion is full of crap, and that all followers of it should be killed.

Does that make me...

wait for it...






an antibéliiksémite?



Thank you! I'll be here all week.

[TragicMonkey]

I would think a robot would be least inclined to attribute divine action to random number generation, because a robot would know how random number generation works. (Or rather doesn't, it's just doing a bunch of math from a seed number.)

Wouldn't they find organic life strange and fascinating? Mechanisms much more complex than the robot itself, yet with no apparent designer or plan or purpose, and in such variety. I'd think robots would naturally tend to nature worship, something between Shinto and Taoism. And if they're aerial floating robots, then their religion should have a lot of wind metaphors, just as Taoism is all about water and streams and floating on the current.

[Robin]

Originally posted by SkepticJ
What do you think? How can I improve the realism of this religion?
Sounds good, but all good religions have schisms. Maybe one faction could believe that it is heretical to have more than two choices and only the Decimist heretics believe that it is acceptable to have 10 choices.

Of course there will have to be a brutal suppression of the Decimists - hence the expression "decimated".

[Phideaux]

I think you're on to something.

If I let my house be used as an official meeting place for your religion, can I get a tax break? I'd be happy to play along with whatever your new religion believes, depending on the write-offs. Hey, do you think you can ask your new members to pay tithing to help run my house?

Inventing a religion is usually about making money. Learn from the pros.

[Roboramma]

This reminds me of a science fiction story I read once in a collection called "Bible Stories for Adults" I think. Don't remember the author.
It was about a colony of robots that had been living on their own for some time. They had a copy of the origin of species and figured that they'd evolved following the same principles.
Some human science teachers or something like that came to their colony tried very hard to convince them that they were wrong - showing them the massive evidence of how they had been designed by humans, but the robots wouldn't accept it. The teachers were told to just teach science and leave their ideology out of it. When it was pointed out that the robots couldn't evolve because they couldn't reproduce, they responded:
They were waiting for the "Great Genital Coming".

Anyway, anyone know the author? It was a cool story, and I liked they way it parodied creationism.

[Zep]

It needs a fundamentalist faction too. One floating robot that has nearly no on-board intelligence or RAM, but lots of amplification in the sound-card (SurroundSound plus enough subsonics to rattle a continent). It would have a short, stupid but loud message inserted in that tiny RAM, plus a player app on permanent loop. Then it would sail around forever shouting this message at top volume all the time.

[Hawk one]

Carl Barks made a story once about the philosophy of using a coin toss to decide most things you do. And Barks would, with his good story-telling that really excelled in the 50s, show us in terms so easy a kid could understand the folly of it all. Good ol' Barks.

[drkitten]

Originally posted by SkepticJ

What do you think? How can I improve the realism of this religion?

Obligatory cheap shot -- they need to kill all the followers of other religions.

Seriously, though : the idea that a supernatural power influences apparently random events is nothing especially surprising (this is in many regards the fundamental basis of all human religions). My question is what other attributes the supernatural power has.

For example, why do they follow the results of a coin toss? Is it because the supernatural power is somehow beneficent and will tell them what is the "best" for the individual diviner, or is it instead simply tapping into some sort of individual deterministic model of light, where the entity tells them what will happen, and, just like the destiny of a Greek tragedy, you might as well follow it because it will happen to you anyway....

Is the supernatural entity intelligent? Does it have wants and desires of its own? Can it be influenced? Can I, for example, pray to it that it influence some other, sexually compatible, Béliiksémist's coin so that they drop by my apartment with a bottle of good wine? Does this entity have the ability to affect other apparently random events (can I pray for it for the recovery of my injured or ill child by said Béliiksémist)?

Does it get annoyed? If I decide that I want to make a decision on my own based on rational analysis, will it decide to be jealous and make events conspire against me? Will it strike me with a "random" bolt of lightning if I start going around preaching that random events are, in fact, truly random? (It's hard to be an atheist in a world where the gods really do control where lightning strikes....)

[c4ts]

Originally posted by SkepticJ
I'm needing to create a religion for my worldbuilding group; the problem is I'm not a religious person so I have trouble making my brain work that way.
The religion is called Béliiksémism. One of the beings that follow this religion are vecs(sentient robots) that live in atmospheres. The vecs look like balloons, and are vacuum balloons. The best idea I have for the religion so far is it's based on believing random events aren't random. i.e. they will follow what a random coin toss tells them. Say they say "heads" means they will do a thing, "tails" means they won't do that thing, perhaps they will do something else instead. They make sure to decide what "heads" and "tails" means before the toss(a toss, in the case of the flying vecs, would be a random 1 or 0 generator ) The Béliiksémists believe that a supernatural power decides how the random(but not to the Béliiksémist) toss will happen. Thus the supernatural being guides the being's behavior(at least that's what Béliiksémists believe).

What do you think? How can I improve the realism of this religion?

Give them my play about tacos instead. If they are not convinced, beat them with a bag of taco shells.

[Johnny Pneumatic]

bump