Religious Groups

Posted by: Tio Silencio, Firewall Router

Can faith survive the death of God?

If you posed this question before the Fall, I’d almost certainly have answered no. I recall my studies of the victims of religious genocides in the 20th and 21st centuries. Some kept their faith as they faced the ovens or the firing squads. Others became certain there was no God at all, or if They existed, They were no God worthy of worship.

Nietzsche turned out to be half right. Transhumanity struck God a blow, but it took the Fall to deal the killing stroke.

Religion doesn’t always require God. It requires faith, it requires questions, and it offers answers and comfort. God as we knew Them may be gone, and we have given Them rebirth and a new life for transhumanity’s future.

God is dead. Long live God.

Religion After the Fall

Organized religion was already on the decline in the decades before the Fall. Scholars have filled volumes debating the exact causes and conditions. Certainly, the primary influence is clear: communications technologies, global travel, media, and access to education directly exposed previously insular religious communities to global society and disrupted the old power structures. The cynic in me would suggest that technology that outdoes Biblical miracles renders those things moot. When anyone can walk on water or turn that water to wine, what meaning is there in wonder?

Certainly, younger generations took the mask off of religion, seeing that underneath it is just another ideology, and one that did not always adapt quickly to the world’s changing values. Religion was one of the most successful early memeplexes in human society, but it did not hold up well in an ecosystem of memeplexes. What guidance can ancient doctrine give regarding genefixing, AI, or forking? What deity would put such possibilities and miracles in our hands, yet tell us to refuse them? What is the promise of an afterlife when immortality is available? And it was not just the limitations of these ideologies that became clear, but the inconsistencies and hypocricies of religious leaders who too often gave only lip service to their faith while falling sway to the pursuit of riches and power. Media and transparency illuminated the rot at the core religious hierarchies for all to see.

The TITANs did the rest. It is difficult to cling to the belief that you’re one of God’s chosen people when death is so indiscriminate. It’s even harder when those who embraced bioconservativism and refused uploading had the least chance to flee Earth. We perished en masse alongside our stupas, mosques, temples, and cathedrals.

We’re only a decade after a cataclysm that killed over nine-tenths of our entire species. Our cherished shrines and walls and stained glass lie in ruins. Spiritual beliefs are at an all-time low. Those who seek community find it in their online social networks. Those who seek comfort turn to virtual-reality heavens. Those who seek guidance consult their muse. Those who seek solace edit their memories.

Those who seek joy gland new emotional states. Those who seek atonement turn to psychosurgeons. Those who scan the stars for gods have met them, and felt their wrath. What role is left for faith?

Whatever the long-term impacts of the Fall may be on transhuman belief systems, it is not an exaggeration to say that those religions that cannot adapt will perish. Some already have.

Christianity

The technological, scientific, and cultural changes transhumanity underwent before the Fall had already eroded many of the hierarchies that Christianity relies upon. From the Catholic Church to strip-mall Protestantism, the traditional holes Christianity filled didn’t exist anymore. Most of Christianity’s trappings remain unchanged, perhaps explaining its slide towards irrelevance.

After the Fall, the few Catholics that made if off Earth were naturally drawn to the Jovian Republic, where the Catholic Church has re-established itself. The Church remains a cornserstone of the bioconservative movement (though they sometimes disagree with the Republic’s CBEAT over specific policies). Their position is best summed up as, “If God created you in Their image and likeness, there’s no need to change Their creation.” The Church also holds strong political favor in the Republic, lobbying the Senate through the Council of Bishops, but also personal ties between the Pope and members of the Junta’s Security Council.

The notoriously bioconservative habitat Vo Nguyen, in Earth orbit, is home to a large community of Vietnamese Catholics. Remaining Episcopalians, Baptists, and other Christian sects have found fertile ground among other Consortium settlements. The Ilmarinen station orbiting Triton has a small but fervent group of Friends (Quakers), and the tiny Lyos settlement on Titania is home of the last remnants of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Hinduism

Posted by: Sarda Duvurri, Firewall Scanner

One of the hallmarks of the oldest organized religion is its ability to adapt. Buddhism? Islam? Simply bends in the river of time. And when you introduce technology that literally embodies the cycles of Samsāra, it should come as no surprise that small groups of Hindus still exist among transhumanity. The largest concentration is in Shackle on Luna, which remains a stronghold of Indian culture. The cavern of New Varanasi, in particular, is known as the City of Temples. Hindus also embrace life on the habitat Salah, in the rings of Saturn, while others have found a surprisingly welcome reception among the Barsoomians and rural communities on Mars.

Regrettably, the caste system the Mahatma worked so hard to eliminate has been reinforced by the stigmas attached to certain morphs. The economic necessities that have forced so many Untouchables to sleeve into synthmorphs inadvertently strengthened the underlying prejudices against them. Despite our advances, seven-thousand years of cultural conditioning are hard to overcome.

Islam

Posted by: Ali Bin Kalifa Al Thani, Firewall Crow

Peace be unto you. I humbly offer my perspective on the state of Islam since the Fall and how it has adapted to serve transhumanity.

Many early space colonists came from Muslim countries, financed by those seeking to explore and embrace the Solar System’s resources. As the conflicts and technologies of the 21st century polarized the world, the ummah faced a crisis of belief. Those who could see beyond the bounds of Earth adapted, and our faith adapted with them. Those who could not largely perished in the Fall. The humanist, secular movements within Islam before and during the Fall helped save countless thousands.

Though the Sunni and Shia divisions remain, their practices have transformed, and many competing schools of thought thrive. The conservative attitudes towards women, sexuality, and resleeving have largely been discarded. AGIs were welcomed as djinn with free will (though opinions still differ on uplifts). Our muses tell us what direction to pray. We may still fast, and some even sleeve into synthmorphs and biomorphs so they can focus on spiritual matters rather than the needs of the flesh. Some practice sawm by abstaining from the mesh. Though Mecca was lost during the Fall, we can still visit it and complete the hajj in simulspace. Many Muslims are reclaimers, hoping to one day make the pilgrimage in person.

I am from Salah, a station orbiting Saturn that serves as a safe zone for believers. The largest concentrations of Muslims can be found in LLA habitats and Mars. Qurain on Mars was the center of a prominent Islamic city-state before the Fall, though it was lost to the machines and remains in the TQZ. Now our people are scattered across the red planet; you can find mosques and Islamic culture thriving in the hinterlands and the souks lodged between Martian domes. A nomadic Sufi community thrives on helping others in the desert, believing their hardships purify their soul.

Judaism

Posted by: Jakub Held, Firewall Crow

The Shoah nearly killed us. The Fall damn near finished the job. Israel is once again lost, and the squabbles over our homeland now seem trivial. Welcome to the Age of Meshuga.

The Jewish people will survive; that’s never been a question. But there are fewer of us than ever before, and that number dwindles by the day. We once thought our identity came from our shared experiences, from reading the Torah and praying together. But our bodies, our DNA, are us too. Are you still Jewish if you egocast into a new gentile morph? Yes. No. Depends on the person you ask.

There are enclaves of us out there, with the largest in Nectar on Luna, where you’ll find the only remaining yeshiva (religious school) in the Solar System. I know of several Jewish groups inside the Jovian Republic, and the habitat Horeb is home to the Israeli government-inexile and a rather bioconservatve Jewish Orthodox community.

Some Jewish reclaimers have made incursions to Israel on Earth. Their eventual goal is, of course, the restoration of our promised land. Most of us are pragmatic enough to understand this diaspora is only beginning, so support for these efforts is minimal.

Mormonism

Posted by: Ben Mandrake, Firewall Proxy

You may be familiar with Mormon missionaries: cheap morphs, wide grins, always eager to talk to you about their faith. They can still be found haunting the occasional spaceport on habs from Mercury to the Kuiper Belt.

As a younger faith, Mormons didn't quite get caught up in bioconservatist attitudes like other belief systems. they still lost most of their believers during the Fall, but their embrace of resleeving and egocasting means more of ‘em got off Earth than you might expect.

I grew up Mormon, and while I'm not a believer, I've heard things. If the rumors are to be believed, The Mormon Church has a small hab hidden away in the Main belt called the City of Zion. They have over a million Mormons backed up in cold storage here, awaiting the resources to resleeve them. They allegedly also have plans to turn the entire hab into a generation ship and fly it out of the system.

Don’t underestimate the Saints. They’ve done more with less.

Pagan Spiritual Paths

Posted by: Lupe, Firewall Vector

Neo-pagan faiths were always tiny relative to the major religions, but paganism’s loose organization and lack of doctrines allowed it to survive the singularity with numbers fairly intact. Pagans are hard to count, as they rarely form large congregations. The two best known denominations are Wiccans, most common in Mars and the Jovian Republic, and Ásatru, based on Titan.

Although not pagan, it’s worth mentioning the Black Church, which evolved from Satanist groups. More of a humanist social society than a religion, the members’ proclivity for velvet robes, leviathan crosses, and ritual nudity is more fashion than devotion.

Post-Fall Religions

Posted by: Tio Silencio, Firewall Router

It’s to be expected that any cataclysmic event that undermines our fundamental understanding of the universe and our place in it will lead to the creation of new belief systems that attempt to answer new questions. The Fall is no different. A handful of new faiths have found fertile ground in a transhumanity reeling from the Fall.

Neo-Buddhism

Neo-Buddhism mixes pre-Fall Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhist beliefs with the latter-day Buddhism popular in Western cultures prior to the Fall. Neo-Buddhists believe that transhumanity’s suffering can be mitigated with technology, and that the extension of life will eventually lead all transhumanity to enlightenment. Neo-Buddhism is popular because it is treated more as an outlook or philosophy of living than a doctrine and requires little engagement with religious practices.

Technocreationism

If the Fall further eroded the old, organized religions, Technocreationists are the opposite reaction to that social force. They believe the Fall was nothing less than a sign from God laying bare transhumanity’s sins. They seek a new form of enlightenment through the embrace of technology, societal engineering, and collaboration with alien species. The result is a combination of fervor and perceived psychological superiority that has attracted its fair share of converts, including a few Hindus who view technocreationism as an extension or evolution of their own religion.

TITAN Worship

It hurts to say it, but there are those who revere the TITANs as the only true gods. They make excuses for the atrocities the TITANs committed, which mostly boil down to “we are not smart enough to understand.” Thankfully rare, their ranks are composed of singularity seekers who desire to join their machine gods in apotheosis. These believers are a threat given their eager pursuit of TITAN tech.

Xenodeism

When faced with the truth of an uncaring universe filled with intelligences more advanced than our own, the chance of someone worshipping those intelligences becomes certain. Xenodeism is a scholarly term for the various small, isolated cults popping up across the Solar System (and in settlements on the far side of the gates) that have turned the Factors and Iktomi into gods. None of these cults have any significant numbers of followers, but their evolution into full-blown religions is only a matter of time.