Monday 13 November 2017

The Future Of Religion

Although the previous post referred only briefly to one of Poul Anderson's many series, it also addressed several relevant issues:

the Roman Empire;
early Christianity;
other imaginative fiction, including another time travel series;
the future of religion.

Olaf Stapledon, Poul Anderson and SM Stirling present several futures for religion:

familiar traditions continue;
comparable traditions begin;
society regresses and religion with it;
after a catastrophe, gifted leaders found communities based on what had been minority traditions;
society becomes entirely secularized.

Future Traditions
In Stapledon's Last And First Men, future religious figures include the Daughter of Man and the Divine Child;
in Anderson's Starfarers, the prophet Selador founds an off-shoot of Arodism.

A Theory of Religion and Its Future
Nature polytheism: primitives unable to understand or control natural forces personified and tried to placate them.
Social polytheism: when society became more complex, social forces, like war and the economy, acquired the apparent externality and inevitability of natural forces, therefore they also were personified.
Monotheism: when societies grew larger, the personified external forces were unified.
Atheism: when external forces are understood and controlled, they are no longer personified.

Different beliefs about the present generate alternative expectations for the future, e.g., the Second Coming or the end of theism.

Does anyone know what the "bonus stories" are in this edition of Starfarers?

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I can agree with Stirling that, assuming a massive disaster and collapse like the Change, charismatic and able leaders. can found new communities and their followers will be likely to adopt the religious beliefs of their leaders. But I still find neo-paganism of the various kinds seen in the Emberverse books difficult to take seriously.

Sean