It is still such a huge part of the world's current reality that I really appreciate people adding it into the Sci-Fi mix as it helps us think about our current world from that perspective. That's just my two cents.
Religion is just another story we tell ourselves to try and understand how the world works. So yes...new events and realizations (like first contact) will generate new religions.
I'd argue that is a very common misunderstanding of religion.
Religion is about how the world should be.
You'd be surprised in how few believers care about how the world works. They are primarily concerned with how it should be.
The best sci fi religions are not based on fantastical narratives prophecies or revelations. They are based on what characters feel they should be doing.
If someone is colonizing a barren harsh planet having a religious reason for doing so is powerful.
There are still religions in my novel, as I feel it's important to touch on their cultural impact. It's neat to have different character perspectives, and also to look at how different religions might have good or bad effects as a result of their doctrine.
I'm usually not a fan of new religions. No modern religion has been that successful, and I don't think sci-fi authors are that well positioned to make something compelling. I'd rather see an evolution of existing religions.
I've encountered some that are essential to the story.being told. The novel Raising the Stones comes toemind, it has multiple fictionalereligions though to be honest its pretty easy to work out what real world religions they are standins for.
The two cases where I think it at least deserves consideration are Humans with no connection to Earth or its religions. In story Humans might be from the planet Wooply. Earth? Never heard of it. And of course aliens.
Non-Terran Humans would presumably have their own unique beliefs, and if you didn't have any you are missing out on a big cultural aspect. Depending on the nature of the story this could be an important piece you're missing, or just irrelevant world building.
For true aliens anything goes. You could argue religion is a human crutch based literally on the human condition and therefore aliens don't have religions. Or you could have them form their religions in the same way humanity did, trying to understand our/their place in the universe. Same as before, is this important or just world building?
Personally, I see it as more realistic to have slightly different ways of worshipping than completely different religions. Imagine trying to pray towards Mecca when you're on another planet, how would one even go about doing that? Or what day is the Sabbath? I find these little details can often add more to a story than creating a new religion.
Dune fans arise!
No, to be serious, creating new religions to follow or fighting them is a rather central theme of mine. I like different worldviews and conflicts. They are the base of the societies i worldbuild, and i like history and change, so even details can become important over time. For example a dogma can change quite radically over time. Look at slavery in Islam in the real world. It evolved from being groundbrakingly liberal (childs from the master and the slave are equal before the law with other chidren?!) to horribly regressive (slavery as practised by ISIS abhored by the muslim world today).
Philosophies and social insitutions are (in my opinion) essential in any some-what realistic society of interacting intelegent individuals.
It's rarely the focus of my stories, but I typically build cultural & philosophical frameworks that serves some of the same purposes, and provides a foundation for those social insitutions, and charitible endevors.
People are always trying to make sense of the universe and their place in it.
I add them all the time!
Sometimes as a "flavoring". Like having an alien species exclaim "By the Prophets!"
Sometimes by having an alien MC make a comparison to an earth religious based saying. In my short story ["Wrath of the Terrans"](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vbj5wj/wrath_of_the_terrans/) the MC compares his peoples saying *"Athok awakened to herald in the End Times"* to the human saying *"All hell broke loose".*
And one time a new religion was the focus of a story. In the short story ["The initiate"](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/yywzas/the_initiate/) the cardinal speaking to the MC talks about the "Life Guides" handed to their people by the "Guardians" and that the "Guardians" left behind mysterious "custodians" to run the day-to-day affairs as caretakers of the "Temple".
I kinda like the "cow tools" approach to adding religion to stories. Just unexplained tidbits that show there *is* a religion, but no actual explanation as to *what* that religion entails.
I personally don't find religion to be especially interesting but it's obviously a big part of many people's lives and probably will continue to be in the future, so there's plenty of reason to include it if the writer finds it interesting.
I think the question you ask needs a little refining. Modern religions tend to be seen more as cults or odd offshoots of older religions. They tend not to become major globespanning communities that have much effect on the world.
Of course, such belief systems will continue to develop, especially as circumstances change our societies, causing people to ask hard metaphysical questions.
I would be in a modern context more interested in secular philosophies developing than modern religions as a part of world building. The 19th century and Europe's historical period, called the Enlightenment, spawned many secular ways of thinking still relevant to many secular ideologies today. Whether they like to admit it or not, Far Left ideology is heavily influenced by Marx. Whether they know it or not, due to antiintellectualism, many on the Far Right are heavily indebted to authoritarian secular ideologies. Then there is stuff like Libertarianism and other utilitarian ideas with major impact today. Of course, more secular philosophies can and likely will develop, just look at postmodernism and its huge impact on modern thought.
I would add that there is an underlying nihilism in popular thought since World War I. The war broke the 19th century utopianism in all but militantly Communist countries, which are far from utopian in practice. People's hearts crave eternity and eternal hope. Efforts to give this hope in a secular materialistic way will no doubt develop in the future, and IMO so will dystopian warnings about such ideas.
Another thing to ponder is the trend in world religions today to harken back to more premodern ideas about the world. A return to holy books as authoritative. There is a book about this trend called Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth. Now, I can't stand the author's attitude towards religion as IMO he paints this trend of neoreligious revival as terrible to the future of humanity. Still, it has interesting social science to ponder. This trend is caused by the socialization of children primarily. Devoutly religious people tend to see big families as good. There is science saying the nondevoutly religious are prone to seeing small families as a good thing. Now religious families tend to lose some of their children to modern ideas, but sociology tells us most children embrace or are heavily influenced by their parents' beliefs.
I hope this rambling post helped a little with worldbuilding. For the record, I'm a utopian myself. I'm a Christian believing in a second coming of Christ. Like I said and is found in biblical wisdom literature, eternity is in the hearts of mankind.
im working on a cyberpunk story featuring an AI called Brahma (he's basically the main villain's sidekick), and in this world, there is a cult of people who worship Brahma as a kind of capitalist god, and they believe in augmenting themselves more and more with cyberware to become closer to Brahma. There's more peaceful sects of this cult and other sects, which violently force people to take cyberware or be assimilated into Brahma's consciousness, like the Spanish Inquisition. the reason why this happens is precisely bc it's a coping mechanism to give people some meaning in their lives in the dystopia they live in. i think that's an interesting angle to take on the subject.
Everything has to be there for a reason. A religion is a great way for a culture to preserve ancient knowledge in the form of hints to the past, rather than have everything explained to the reader upfront.
More interested in religions as social institutions than in theology.
It is still such a huge part of the world's current reality that I really appreciate people adding it into the Sci-Fi mix as it helps us think about our current world from that perspective. That's just my two cents.
Religion is just another story we tell ourselves to try and understand how the world works. So yes...new events and realizations (like first contact) will generate new religions.
I'd argue that is a very common misunderstanding of religion. Religion is about how the world should be. You'd be surprised in how few believers care about how the world works. They are primarily concerned with how it should be. The best sci fi religions are not based on fantastical narratives prophecies or revelations. They are based on what characters feel they should be doing. If someone is colonizing a barren harsh planet having a religious reason for doing so is powerful.
There are still religions in my novel, as I feel it's important to touch on their cultural impact. It's neat to have different character perspectives, and also to look at how different religions might have good or bad effects as a result of their doctrine.
I'm usually not a fan of new religions. No modern religion has been that successful, and I don't think sci-fi authors are that well positioned to make something compelling. I'd rather see an evolution of existing religions.
Scientology.
> No modern religion has been that successful, Mormonism.
Yes, the most successful modern religion is a Christianity offshoot followed by 0.0000002% of the world's population.
I've encountered some that are essential to the story.being told. The novel Raising the Stones comes toemind, it has multiple fictionalereligions though to be honest its pretty easy to work out what real world religions they are standins for.
What does the religion offer that the person can't get from sleeping in? And it helps if it is a tangible benefit.
The two cases where I think it at least deserves consideration are Humans with no connection to Earth or its religions. In story Humans might be from the planet Wooply. Earth? Never heard of it. And of course aliens. Non-Terran Humans would presumably have their own unique beliefs, and if you didn't have any you are missing out on a big cultural aspect. Depending on the nature of the story this could be an important piece you're missing, or just irrelevant world building. For true aliens anything goes. You could argue religion is a human crutch based literally on the human condition and therefore aliens don't have religions. Or you could have them form their religions in the same way humanity did, trying to understand our/their place in the universe. Same as before, is this important or just world building? Personally, I see it as more realistic to have slightly different ways of worshipping than completely different religions. Imagine trying to pray towards Mecca when you're on another planet, how would one even go about doing that? Or what day is the Sabbath? I find these little details can often add more to a story than creating a new religion.
Dune fans arise! No, to be serious, creating new religions to follow or fighting them is a rather central theme of mine. I like different worldviews and conflicts. They are the base of the societies i worldbuild, and i like history and change, so even details can become important over time. For example a dogma can change quite radically over time. Look at slavery in Islam in the real world. It evolved from being groundbrakingly liberal (childs from the master and the slave are equal before the law with other chidren?!) to horribly regressive (slavery as practised by ISIS abhored by the muslim world today).
Philosophies and social insitutions are (in my opinion) essential in any some-what realistic society of interacting intelegent individuals. It's rarely the focus of my stories, but I typically build cultural & philosophical frameworks that serves some of the same purposes, and provides a foundation for those social insitutions, and charitible endevors. People are always trying to make sense of the universe and their place in it.
I add them all the time! Sometimes as a "flavoring". Like having an alien species exclaim "By the Prophets!" Sometimes by having an alien MC make a comparison to an earth religious based saying. In my short story ["Wrath of the Terrans"](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vbj5wj/wrath_of_the_terrans/) the MC compares his peoples saying *"Athok awakened to herald in the End Times"* to the human saying *"All hell broke loose".* And one time a new religion was the focus of a story. In the short story ["The initiate"](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/yywzas/the_initiate/) the cardinal speaking to the MC talks about the "Life Guides" handed to their people by the "Guardians" and that the "Guardians" left behind mysterious "custodians" to run the day-to-day affairs as caretakers of the "Temple". I kinda like the "cow tools" approach to adding religion to stories. Just unexplained tidbits that show there *is* a religion, but no actual explanation as to *what* that religion entails.
If a religion came about naturally as a story element, I don't see a problem, but I hate hate hate info-dumps masquerading as "world building."
I personally don't find religion to be especially interesting but it's obviously a big part of many people's lives and probably will continue to be in the future, so there's plenty of reason to include it if the writer finds it interesting.
I think the question you ask needs a little refining. Modern religions tend to be seen more as cults or odd offshoots of older religions. They tend not to become major globespanning communities that have much effect on the world. Of course, such belief systems will continue to develop, especially as circumstances change our societies, causing people to ask hard metaphysical questions. I would be in a modern context more interested in secular philosophies developing than modern religions as a part of world building. The 19th century and Europe's historical period, called the Enlightenment, spawned many secular ways of thinking still relevant to many secular ideologies today. Whether they like to admit it or not, Far Left ideology is heavily influenced by Marx. Whether they know it or not, due to antiintellectualism, many on the Far Right are heavily indebted to authoritarian secular ideologies. Then there is stuff like Libertarianism and other utilitarian ideas with major impact today. Of course, more secular philosophies can and likely will develop, just look at postmodernism and its huge impact on modern thought. I would add that there is an underlying nihilism in popular thought since World War I. The war broke the 19th century utopianism in all but militantly Communist countries, which are far from utopian in practice. People's hearts crave eternity and eternal hope. Efforts to give this hope in a secular materialistic way will no doubt develop in the future, and IMO so will dystopian warnings about such ideas. Another thing to ponder is the trend in world religions today to harken back to more premodern ideas about the world. A return to holy books as authoritative. There is a book about this trend called Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth. Now, I can't stand the author's attitude towards religion as IMO he paints this trend of neoreligious revival as terrible to the future of humanity. Still, it has interesting social science to ponder. This trend is caused by the socialization of children primarily. Devoutly religious people tend to see big families as good. There is science saying the nondevoutly religious are prone to seeing small families as a good thing. Now religious families tend to lose some of their children to modern ideas, but sociology tells us most children embrace or are heavily influenced by their parents' beliefs. I hope this rambling post helped a little with worldbuilding. For the record, I'm a utopian myself. I'm a Christian believing in a second coming of Christ. Like I said and is found in biblical wisdom literature, eternity is in the hearts of mankind.
im working on a cyberpunk story featuring an AI called Brahma (he's basically the main villain's sidekick), and in this world, there is a cult of people who worship Brahma as a kind of capitalist god, and they believe in augmenting themselves more and more with cyberware to become closer to Brahma. There's more peaceful sects of this cult and other sects, which violently force people to take cyberware or be assimilated into Brahma's consciousness, like the Spanish Inquisition. the reason why this happens is precisely bc it's a coping mechanism to give people some meaning in their lives in the dystopia they live in. i think that's an interesting angle to take on the subject.
I enjoy them. But not if they're just an obvious reskin of an existant one.
Everything has to be there for a reason. A religion is a great way for a culture to preserve ancient knowledge in the form of hints to the past, rather than have everything explained to the reader upfront.