Current Official Stance on the Monotheist Religion in the World (Possible spoilers)

[glamourweaver]

In 1e these clashes also lead to, or were caused by clashes among dieties. I haven't seen any material to date that would confirm or deny that the same aproach has continued in 2e, but your best bet to find out at the moment would be to check pantheon previews and see which pantheons theyre most hostile to.

I actually really liked the approach to monotheism in 1e, it's a conspiracy by mortals to control dieties via the manipulation of fate bindings. It works really well with the setting and means you dont have to remove or severely alter 4 of the worlds major religions.

Neall has said that Aten and the Order of Divine Glory are still in the setting, but he doesn't want to imply, as that material did in 1E, that monotheism is a theological monolith. So they're still there, but they aren't going to be the be all and end all of monotheism - but I'd put good money that the Netjer in particular are given to THINK that Aten is lurking behind any and all manifestations of monotheism, monism, and henotheism.

[Kyman201]

My personal interpretation of the dynamics of the Monotheistic Religions in Scion is... Well...

Most people probably take the First Commandment of "I am the Lord, Thy God. Thou shalt have no other Gods before me" to be less "There ARE no other Gods than Me" and more a command of loyalty. There are other Gods out there... And the Nameless God demands that you worship only Him.

(The events of the Book of Exodus may have been one HELL of a power play between the God of Abraham and the Netjer)

[glamourweaver]

My personal interpretation of the dynamics of the Monotheistic Religions in Scion is... Well...

Most people probably take the First Commandment of "I am the Lord, Thy God. Thou shalt have no other Gods before me" to be less "There ARE no other Gods than Me" and more a command of loyalty. There are other Gods out there... And the Nameless God demands that you worship only Him.

(The events of the Book of Exodus may have been one HELL of a power play between the God of Abraham and the Netjer)

Yeah, I agree Henotheism works well as the historic nature of Judaism and Christianity in setting. I just think Islam isn't recognizable as Islam if you make the same adjustment there, since the central founding point as expressed by the Shahada is absolute monotheism.

On Exodus, I see three possibilities...

- It's the Primordial El, the progenitor of the Elohim.
- It was a the Midianite God YHWH, who through his Jewish worshipers would Fatebind Himself into El to uplift Himself to Primordial status over the next millennium. Note that there could be a retroactive temporal factor here, and after merging with El, it became so He was always El.
- Freud was right, and it was Aten.

[racain23]

Since the Exodus is more myth than history, 2e rules would probably mean all three are acurate.

Has anyone thought about Sikhism in these terms, since it is a major monothiest religion?

[Samudra]

Has anyone thought about Sikhism in these terms, since it is a major monothiest religion?

Whether Sikhism is monotheistic or monistic or panentheistic depends, much like Hinduism, on who you're asking really. Also, I've had a lot of contact with a number of Sikhs in my life, but I am most definitely not an expert, so take all this with a grain of salt and if anyone with greater knowledge feels I'm mistaken in any of this then please feel free to correct me

In any case, Sikhism is a religious tradition founded on the teachings of ten individual Gurus, and I see no reason why any of that history would be affected by the World... it helps that Sikhism originated in India and India in both the world and the World is a majority Hindu region so it's social structure is likely to be less strongly shaken by the various changes the World posits. Most Sikhs I've met, and the religion in general, are pretty tolerant of other faiths and I've seen Sikhs pay respects at both mosques and Hindu temples. Sikh Gurudvaras themselves are open to all people, as is the community meal that they organize within.

All in all I don't think Sikhism will have any problem fitting into the World just as well as it does in real life... which, speaking purely politically for a minute, is helped primarily by the simple fact that Sikhism never achieved majority status anywhere outside of the Punjab region, and it was already surrounded and outnumbered by a religion that waffles between being polytheistic, monotheistic, monistic and panentheistic itself (Hinduism), so the changes that shake up the Abrahamic religions so much really shouldn't affect the Sikhs

[MorsRattus]

The name dropping of Mammon as an actual god in New York has implications here, because he wasn’t. The idea of Mammon as a pagan god or demon is wholly medieval, as the reference was originally just a Syriac word for money.

So there may well be Chosen of Saint Michael the Archangel or Jibril (or Beelzebub or Iblis, for that matter), though certainly not direct children of angels. Angels don’t fuck. They would all probably not claim to be gods...well, on the angel side...and the thing of it is, the demons wouldn’t fit the standard Titan definition at all.

[Samudra]

The name dropping of Mammon as an actual god in New York has implications here, because he wasn’t. The idea of Mammon as a pagan god or demon is wholly medieval, as the reference was originally just a Syriac word for money.

So there may well be Chosen of Saint Michael the Archangel or Jibril (or Beelzebub or Iblis, for that matter), though certainly not direct children of angels. Angels don’t fuck. They would all probably not claim to be gods...well, on the angel side...and the thing of it is, the demons wouldn’t fit the standard Titan definition at all.

Honestly, and I'm no Abrahamic expert so I may be reading this all wrong, but I always liked the idea that God is a Primordial, the Angels, beings absolutely dedicated to upholding their part and duty in creation's Order on the Will of God, were Titans of Order plus whatever Purview they need to be to do the Lord's work at the time, and Demons 'fell' so to speak, by becoming Gods and tying themselves to the foibles and vices of humanity.

[unnatural1]

Technically, angels CAN fuck. They're just not supposed to. The Bible does speak of the Nephilim, who were human/angel hybrids.

Now, the Nephilim appeared to be considered pretty evil and violent. I've heard some Bible scholars theorize that Goliath was one of them. Apparently, large size was a trademark of the Nephilim. Some scholars also theorize that Noah's flood was really more about wiping out the Nephilim than it was about punishing sinners.

You could argue that the Nephilim were bad because they were made without God's permission. If you really want an Angelic Pantheon, you could argue that God gives certain angels permission this time and their Scions are just like everyone else's.

[MorsRattus]

Don't isn't can't, yes. Also, I don't think declaring 'the angels are all titans, comma, the primary bad guys of the game' is really a great idea - certainly not in canon, rather than at your table.

[Samudra]

Don't isn't can't, yes. Also, I don't think declaring 'the angels are all titans, comma, the primary bad guys of the game' is really a great idea - certainly not in canon, rather than at your table.

I apologize if I offended... That was not my intention... But I thought one of the biggest differences this edition was that Titans aren't all evil and automatically bad guys, just deity level beings who are immersed in their Purviews.

[Dataweaver]

IIRC, 2e allows for Primordials who are members in good standing of certain Pantheons — specifically, Pantheons that include the concept of an “overgod” that is to other gods as gods are to men. I think the Orisha are one such Pantheon.

More importantly, 2e has gotten rid of the notion that Primordials and Titans must be Evil: the Dark Virtues are no longer a thing as far as I can tell, meaning that Titans don't have to be spiteful, vindictive zealots anymore. So the notion that the Abrahamic God might be a Primordial with Angelic Titans serving it isn't necessarily a problem in 2e.

I think the bigger issue is that 2e doesn't appear to be offering one answer to who or what serves as the supernatural backing behind the Abrahamic faiths. Aten backs some of it; the Order of Divine Glory is responsible for some as well; and the Canaanite Pantheon (the Elohim, IIRC) might back some as well. And it doesn't necessarily end with those three.

[MorsRattus]

I apologize if I offended... That was not my intention... But I thought one of the biggest differences this edition was that Titans aren't all evil and automatically bad guys, just deity level beings who are immersed in their Purviews.

They aren't, but the game definitely treats the Titans and their escape from their prisons as one of the primary conflicts, at least in Origins' fluff stuff. It could be done well and interestingly...but I also don't think it fits the character of angels as typically held in most Abrahamic faiths. At least as of the Middle Ages, the angels care just as much about humanity as the demons do - that's rather the entire point of the thing, after all - but are bound from interfering in human free will.

I will note - I'm not personally offended; I'm an atheist. However, comparative and historic theology is an area I find deeply interesting, and I have a lot of respect for it.

[Purple Snit]

I personally feel that what we consider the main religions in our world, simply wouldn't be as important in the Scion world. Maybe there are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and so on, but society would naturally be far less "us or them" than it became, simply because tales of the Gods and their progeny aren't set in the "way back then", but in the here and now. Islam wouldn't overrun the Alihah, Anunnaki, Elohim, etc. because their Gods and Scions would fight back. The Theoi would actively oppose Christianity. Odin would bolster the Norse. And so on. We're looking at this from "how do I change the present" when it's really a question of "how did the past change and evolve and affect how things turned out"? Sure, there would be monotheistic branches of some faiths, because people will accept every shade of belief if it fits their needs, but the huge organized faiths of today aren't likely to ever have developed on the world of Scion.

[MorsRattus]

Well, I mean, canonically the monotheistic faiths exist and became socially dominant in terms of organized religion. That's text. They're just changed and different from our world; it's something that requires a bit of suspension of disbelief, but that's the text. The big ask is 'like our world on the surface' and that includes the fact that Christianity, Islam and Judaism, among other monotheist faiths, exist and have a lot of cultural cachet.

[Dataweaver]

As far as Scion: Origins is concerned, it should be possible to play an Abrahamic Saint, regardless of what the truth or truths behind said faiths happen to be: you just need to establish what the Abrahamic Virtues are.