Differences

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--- religion [2026/02/16 10:24] – ultracomfy
+++ religion [2026/02/16 11:04] (current) – ultracomfy
@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 A //Religion// is a type of [[Faith|faith]] that has, over time, become a fully fledged //system of worship//. A religion is the belief in something around which a spiritual structure has formed.
-Religions in the way I think of them come with five features:
+Religions in the way I think of them come with four or five features:
   * Head of Faith
   * Sins & Virtues
   * Doctrines
   * Tenets
-  * Holy Scripture
+  * Holy Scripture (Optional)
-====== Head of Faith ======
+While a holy scripture is optional, a head of faith //does// always exist, even if the High God themselves is the head of faith. This list is almost exclusively inspired by the video game [[Crusader Kings 3]], specifically their avilable [[https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Doctrines|Doctrines]] and [[https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Tenet|Tenets]]. Go check them out, this page will make a lot more sense in front of this context.
+====== Structure ======
+===== Head of Faith =====
 Religions, as lived out by humans, are inherently "human", or "earthly" as they will call it. Most religions appoint, through one justification or another, a human //head of faith// who is in charge of leading the religion to some extent. The exact extent and the position granted to that person vary between religions, however.
@@ Line 25: / Line 28: @@
-====== Sins & Virtues ======
+===== Sins & Virtues =====
 Almost all religions come attached with social structures that are followed inside of them. This has weakened over the course of the enlightenment, but was a very significant factor in the past. Regardless, religions still teach these attitudes today and present a defining feature of each religion.
-====== Doctrines ======
+===== Doctrines =====
 To really define a religion and understand what the religion is like, it is very important to look at its doctrines. These are the main rules of the religion itself and determine how the religion works internally.
@@ Line 86: / Line 89: @@
 |:::|Disallowed|Becoming a priest means devoting one's life to the divine. It is inherently unfaithful to consider taking a mortal spouse in addition to that.|
-====== Tenets ======
+===== Tenets =====
 While doctrines describe the order of a religion, tenets help describing their philosophical attitutes, ie. basically their "personalities".
@@ Line 143: / Line 146: @@
-====== Holy Scripture ======
+===== Holy Scripture =====
 Many religions have central scriptures from which they potentially derive their authority or legitimacy. If not that, it can also just be the central rulebook of the religion.
+====== Analysis ======
+Throughout the analysis I will be using the words "Tenets" and "Doctrines" to describe religions because those have become the "correct" terms in my mind. Of course I've learned about a tenet like Asceticism before actually calling it a "Tenet", so even though I use those terms here does //not// mean that I haven't thought about religions before playing Crusader Kings 3. Crusader Kings only gave me a structure that I could use to better understand and categorize different religions.
+So, the first time I seriously thought about religions and their associated doctrines and tenets are two things:\\
+\\
+. How incredibly arbitrary! If you ever ask for a justification for their doctrines/tenets, you will never get a proper response. It's either "because I feel so" or "because a book says so" or "because [High God] says so" or something to that effect. It's all circular. Individuals, ie. adherents of a religion, might actually try to justify their belief in a doctrine/tenet, giving you some attempt at a [[deontology|deontological]] explanation for why their faith correctly considers some things as either right or wrong. However, the religion itself - as opposed to individual adherents - won't even go as far as to try to justify its doctrines/tenets deontologically. It will always point to someone or something else, and that something else always happens to be [[Verifiability|unverifiable]].
+\\
+\\
+. How incredibly replaceable! There are so many doctrines and tenets in there that would be //reasonable//, but many of them are mutually exclusive. Nobody here could ever be possibly be right or wrong, yet most religions have the Righteous doctrine. This is contradictory by definition. Logically, you could quite literally just use this list to make up any kind of religion and it would be equally as valid as every other... and that's basically how it is, no? For any combination of these doctrines and tenets, odds are a religion exists matching or closely matching your choices. By defining themselves in the way that they do, religions make themselves obsolete.
+And this is really all the observations you need to go forward with your life. Until any one religion can prove any of its big claims (most crucially, that their god actually exists), this is just playing teams with your favorite celebrities.