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[GavJ]

Not only are polytheistic religions currently widespread in modern countries all over the world, but they are VASTLY more commonly independently developed. Monotheism has spread to take over almost entirely as a result of aggressive missionaries in a couple of very specific religious traditions... putting it optimistically. More often it was spread by something more like people converting at the tip of a bloody sword by coercion.

Rarely has conversion to monotheism on a large scale been the result of people freely convinced to change their beliefs by good arguments or "enlightenment." And rarely is it developed independently, relative to polytheism.

If you want to encourage any sort of progression out of a desire to mimic history on Earth, then you should really include missionaries and holy wars as the primary motive force behind that change, not just natural "evolution" that didn't really have much to do with it.

But I'm not personally sure that that's even a characteristic of monotheism, particularly. I think it might be very simply an accident of history that things happened to roll out that way. The super aggressive violently expansionistic religions could, in an alternate history, probably just as easily have been polytheistic. And if so, nobody would really be talking about monotheism much even in 2014 *shrug*

[Azerty]

I would rather, for gods for concepts such as sun, that such gods are universally worshiped, albeit in different names.

[smjjames]

There's already a monotheseium in DF, the worship of Armok, god of blood!

[Putnam]

There's already a monotheseium in DF, the worship of Armok, god of blood!

No.

[GoblinCookie]

So... Are you just ignoring the fact that millennia-old pantheons like Hinduism are still widely practiced or is that seriously news to you? I'm not trying to start an real world faith debate or anything, but your arguments for monotheistic DF appear to be based on a real world historical perspective, and unfortunately that perspective does not apply to much of the real world.

Anyway, from a game perspective, I still dislike the idea because if all the gods in every generation turned out to be the same singular god every time, it would get boring. There's chaos now, ideological conflict and turmoil, emergent plotlines! What good would it do to take that and make the same story over and over again?

All replies like this reveal is how little anyone pays attention to what I am saying! 

I never said the outcome was inevitable.  I said that it might happen not that it will always happen. 

Also, when it comes to universal spheres like the Sun, I think the deities should get a limited amount of extremely potent power. Like, they wouldn't act very often, because they'd need to conserve their strength for the huge finisher-type miracles/curses- like torching a continent or inventing new species.

Hell, DF worlds often seem completely flat, (has anyone ever tried to venture off the edge of a map?) so they probably don't have anything resembling a logical cosmology. For all we know they could a separate sun for every sun-god, there might be places where it's simply never night-time because their sun-god likes it there and never leaves!

Dwarf Fortress worlds are not really worlds.  They are isolated regions within a world that may well be round.

Not only are polytheistic religions currently widespread in modern countries all over the world, but they are VASTLY more commonly independently developed.

The vast majority of the world's religious population are monotheistic.  Polytheism is basically the religious yesterday in religious terms.  Things like Hinduism are basically holdouts, places where for reasons unknown the local polytheistic religion proved able to buck the trend.  This involved them winning a lengthy violent conflict with monotheistic Islam. 

Monotheism has spread to take over almost entirely as a result of aggressive missionaries in a couple of very specific religious traditions... putting it optimistically. More often it was spread by something more like people converting at the tip of a bloody sword by coercion.

Rarely has conversion to monotheism on a large scale been the result of people freely convinced to change their beliefs by good arguments or "enlightenment." And rarely is it developed independently, relative to polytheism.

Yes, the process of religious development should not be peaceful.  It should requires that the breakaway sect with the more monotheistic theology overthrow their less monotheistic rivals.  If they lose then no transformation happens towards monotheism happens (for now).

If you want to encourage any sort of progression out of a desire to mimic history on Earth, then you should really include missionaries and holy wars as the primary motive force behind that change, not just natural "evolution" that didn't really have much to do with it.

But I'm not personally sure that that's even a characteristic of monotheism, particularly. I think it might be very simply an accident of history that things happened to roll out that way. The super aggressive violently expansionistic religions could, in an alternate history, probably just as easily have been polytheistic. And if so, nobody would really be talking about monotheism much even in 2014 *shrug*

The religions are able to be so violently aggressive and expansionist because they are monotheistic, though the reverse is also possible.  The potential to behave in that aggressive fashion is an inherent quality of Monotheistic religions that is present in Polytheistic religions only to the degree that they are Monotheistic. 

If you have one god then you have one true religion.  The other religions are now automatically false and have to be overcome, if they are polytheistic that's because their gods are false, while rival monotheists are automatically wrong and their existence is a direct threat to the authority of your own divine claims. 

The origins of Monotheism however are Polytheistic.  Monotheism did not arise independently from Polytheism out of nothing, it evolved out of polytheism according to a process of 'market competition' among the existing gods.  The clergy of different gods compete for limited funds and political favors, this leads to a constant pressure to expand your god's role and reduce that of other gods.

In the end we can get a single god and a single clergy that has annexed all religious spheres to their own god, which originally was only the god of a limited sphere.  Yahweh was originally a war god, like Mars or Ares; he was not originally worshiped in a Monotheistic manner but gradually expanded to annex the spheres of rival gods. 

[GavJ]

The religions are able to be so violently aggressive and expansionist because they are monotheistic, though the reverse is also possible.  The potential to behave in that aggressive fashion is an inherent quality of Monotheistic religions that is present in Polytheistic religions only to the degree that they are Monotheistic. 

uh... wat.  [Citation needed] much?

Two specific monotheistic religions proselytize more abundantly than other religions do in terms of significant spreading. You have not provided evidence that this is an inherent quality of monotheistic religions, nor have you provided evidence that this is restricted to monotheistic religions. Really, you haven't provided any evidence that it's even significantly correlated with monotheism, from two measly datapoints.

Yes, have religious wars. Yes, have both mono and polytheism. Yes, sure, all that.  The negative reaction to your post is not because of the individual gameplay features. It's because of your continued claim that monotheism is an endstate or more advanced form of religion as part of a historical "progression." Or "In the end we can get to a single God." Which has simply not been justified so far. Why? Why not just as likely in the end get to a specific pantheon of 4 gods that rolled the dice as the aggressively expansionistic religon (maybe a high proportion like 2 of them are war gods)? Or whatever?

(edit: and yes I saw your hand wavey off the cuff "market competition" supposition.)

[Dirst]

Yes, have religious wars. Yes, have both mono and polytheism. Yes, sure, all that.

I think it's something that should be there by default, but tweakable in advanced world generation.

And to bring back something I mentioned earlier, the world simulation is eventually going to have procedurally generated metaphysics for each world.  Some worlds might have impersonal Forces of Nature with no sentient god beings at all.  Note that an absence of gods wouldn't necessarily prevent the development of religions (and if you're an atheist, that describes your view of the real world).

I believe it's actually achievable in the current version to have a world with no gods in it.  The difference is that mortals somehow know exactly which gods and do not exist, and only worship gods that exist in that world.  One consequence is that all mortals are inherently polytheistic (the god you worship does exist, it's just not my god).

Someone who knows more history and anthropology than I do might be able to point us to the ethics/values that lead to one kind of religion over another (animism vs polytheism vs monotheism vs humanism) and how accepting a society might be to changing over time, but this being DF nothing would ever be absolute.

[GavJ]

The difference is that mortals somehow know exactly which gods and do not exist, and only worship gods that exist in that world.  One consequence is that all mortals are inherently polytheistic (the god you worship does exist, it's just not my god).

That is a good point. When you remove faith and replace it with actual gods very clearly reaching down and changing stuff / talking to folks on a yearly basis, monotheism becomes kind of stupid.

The game might be more interesting if the gods were a little more enigmatic anyway, though. Certainly not as enigmatic as Earth gods though *cough*

[Dirst]

The difference is that mortals somehow know exactly which gods and do not exist, and only worship gods that exist in that world.  One consequence is that all mortals are inherently polytheistic (the god you worship does exist, it's just not my god).

That is a good point. When you remove faith and replace it with actual gods very clearly reaching down and changing stuff / talking to folks on a yearly basis, monotheism becomes kind of stupid.

Not necessarily, especially once religions are cleaved from the actual god population.  A monotheist and polytheist could witness the same Messages and come to different conclusions.

Polytheist: The Thunder God is angry and sent a storm, but the River God is pleased and sent the seasonal floods.
Monotheist: God is angry and lets us know through thunder so that we may repent, be He is not so angry (yet) as to withhold the floods from us.

When the mysticism actually gets mysterious, I hope there's a well-flagged bit of Legends mode that we can avoid to keep from spoiling the actual metaphysics.

[GavJ]

especially once religions are cleaved from the actual god population.

What do you mean? How exactly is this planned, if it is planned already?

I'm not really referring to storms and stuff. I'm referring to the events such as "Mr. Joe god in particular came down and had a chat with Urist about his temple profaning and turned him into a vampire, then left" sort of thing, which leaves little to the imagination.

I guess I'm not sure how directly that sort of stuff is known in-world. If it is actually very mysterious, then okay monotheism works.

If so, some people should be worshipping non-existent gods, though (and others worshipping actual gods), as some people will end up mistaken, if the evidence isn't clear and obvious anymore. Maybe that is what you meant by cleaving from the actual god population?

[Dirst]

especially once religions are cleaved from the actual god population.

What do you mean? How exactly is this planned, if it is planned already?

I'm not really referring to storms and stuff. I'm referring to the events such as "Mr. Joe god in particular came down and had a chat with Urist about his temple profaning and turned him into a vampire, then left" sort of thing, which leaves little to the imagination.

I guess I'm not sure how directly that sort of stuff is known in-world. If it is actually very mysterious, then okay monotheism works.

If so, some people should be worshipping non-existent gods, though (and others worshipping actual gods), as some people will end up mistaken, if the evidence isn't clear and obvious anymore. Maybe that is what you meant by cleaving from the actual god population?

You're right "once" is a bit strong.  "If" is more appropriate because to my knowledge Toady hasn't said anything about false faiths.

But in any case the intrepid monotheist (who by now is looking like a Nontrinitarianist, Neopagan or Pantheist) can see a single God appearing as a diseased dwarf, a three-headed dragon and a giant eagle at different times because mortals can only comprehend one facet at a time.  Or God just likes trying on different outfits.  As long as you don't ask, "What does God need with a starship?" everything is cool.

[LMeire]

...
Dwarf Fortress worlds are not really worlds.  They are isolated regions within a world that may well be round.

I've never seen any indication that the worlds extend beyond the displayed regions. Also, since the world's "core" (HFS) is the exact same width and length of every layer of rock above it, I'd say they probably don't even curve.

The vast majority of the world's religious population are monotheistic.  Polytheism is basically the religious yesterday in religious terms.  Things like Hinduism are basically holdouts, places where for reasons unknown the local polytheistic religion proved able to buck the trend.  This involved them winning a lengthy violent conflict with monotheistic Islam. 

According to Wikipedia, Islam and Christianity make up just over 50% of the world's spiritual leanings, about 25% are "unaffiliated" (I assume this means atheism) and the rest subscribe to either Hinduism, Buddhism, or various forms of paganism/shamanism. While 25% may not constitute a majority in this case, 50% isn't what I would call a "vast majority".

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You're right "once" is a bit strong.  "If" is more appropriate because to my knowledge Toady hasn't said anything about false faiths.

...

Megabeasts and demons are known to occasionally fool human populations into believing that they're actually gods, resulting in beastly lawgivers and diplomats showing up in both fort-mode and adventure-mode. I'm not sure if the god they're pretending to be ever existed before the impersonation or if a worshiping population gives them the same cursing powers as other "real" gods, but the false religions are already a factor in world-gen.

[GavJ]

I've never seen any indication that the worlds extend beyond the displayed regions. Also, since the world's "core" (HFS) is the exact same width and length of every layer of rock above it, I'd say they probably don't even curve.

You have no idea what's under HFS. What if it is 8,000 miles of slade to the core? The radius difference from topside to HFS would not even add up to a single tile if the world is sufficiently large.

Also, you have no idea how wide tiles are for sure, so you can't even calculate that. Nor do you have a guarantee that tiles in HFS are supposed to be as wide as tiles on the surface...  Maybe they're 15% narrower, and also the atmosphere down there is thicker so that your movements tend to get slowed down by 15%. Or whatever. (tile physics and space don't make sense in the first place anyway)

[GoblinCookie]

uh... wat.  [Citation needed] much?

Two specific monotheistic religions proselytize more abundantly than other religions do in terms of significant spreading. You have not provided evidence that this is an inherent quality of monotheistic religions, nor have you provided evidence that this is restricted to monotheistic religions. Really, you haven't provided any evidence that it's even significantly correlated with monotheism, from two measly datapoints.

There have never been any historically recorded religious wars fought by polytheistic religions.  There have however been many recorded religious wars faught by different monotheist religions, both against other religions of the same kind and against other sects/heresies. 

Religious wars are unheard of among polytheists.  Religious wars are heard of among monotheists, the sample size is not relevent because there are great number of polytheistic religions and despite this we see a lack of religious wars while despite a small sample size for monotheistic religions we see a large number of religious wars. 

Most wars are secular in nature among both groups, but there is plenty of historical evidence, not two measly datapoints when you take into account the % of the total.  There are 6 Monotheistic religions (Islam, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism) and hundreds of Polytheistic religions.  All six of these have had religious wars at some point in their history. 

While none of the Polytheistic religions have had religious wars against other Polytheist religions (excluding wars faught against monotheists because it does not take two to tango in this case).  With the ratio of 100% to 0% it does not really matter that the sample size for one is small. 

Yes, have religious wars. Yes, have both mono and polytheism. Yes, sure, all that.  The negative reaction to your post is not because of the individual gameplay features. It's because of your continued claim that monotheism is an endstate or more advanced form of religion as part of a historical "progression." Or "In the end we can get to a single God." Which has simply not been justified so far. Why? Why not just as likely in the end get to a specific pantheon of 4 gods that rolled the dice as the aggressively expansionistic religon (maybe a high proportion like 2 of them are war gods)? Or whatever?

(edit: and yes I saw your hand wavey off the cuff "market competition" supposition.)

Once there were no Monotheistic religions.  Now there are several Monotheistic religions.  Dishwashers are part of historical progress even if not everyone ends up with dishwashers.  Once we did not have any dishwashers and now we have some, that makes them part of historical progress.  The mere existance of some people who do not (for now) follow the trend does not mean that there is no trend. 

I've never seen any indication that the worlds extend beyond the displayed regions. Also, since the world's "core" (HFS) is the exact same width and length of every layer of rock above it, I'd say they probably don't even curve.

The fact that there can be oceans at the edge of map without all the water draining away indicates that the world is actually round.  I think a dwarf fortress 'world' is actually an isolated region (like pre-columbus America) within a larger world that is unknown to them. 

They are even explicitly called regions. 

According to Wikipedia, Islam and Christianity make up just over 50% of the world's spiritual leanings, about 25% are "unaffiliated" (I assume this means atheism) and the rest subscribe to either Hinduism, Buddhism, or various forms of paganism/shamanism. While 25% may not constitute a majority in this case, 50% isn't what I would call a "vast majority".

If that were an election we would consider that a vast majority.  History is also not over, Monotheism has not been around for very long relatively.  It went from 0% to 50% in *only* 3000 years. 

[LMeire]

I've never seen any indication that the worlds extend beyond the displayed regions. Also, since the world's "core" (HFS) is the exact same width and length of every layer of rock above it, I'd say they probably don't even curve.

You have no idea what's under HFS. What if it is 8,000 miles of slade to the core? The radius difference from topside to HFS would not even add up to a single tile if the world is sufficiently large.

Also, you have no idea how wide tiles are for sure, so you can't even calculate that. Nor do you have a guarantee that tiles in HFS are supposed to be as wide as tiles on the surface...  Maybe they're 15% narrower, and also the atmosphere down there is thicker so that your movements tend to get slowed down by 15%. Or whatever. (tile physics and space don't make sense in the first place anyway)

Fair enough on the topography display. Though the point I was making is that the generated worlds don't necessarily have to work exactly as they do on Earth to make sense, as long as each generated world is at least consistent with it's own generated rules. They could be traditional planets as we know them, or they could be flat; as long as there's a semi-rational explanation for how things differ from Earth.

Example: The dead cannot live again on Earth, but they can resurrect in DF worlds- as long as somebody discovered the "secrets of life and death" somehow and willed it to happen or if the corpse was affected by inherently evil terrain. The rule is very consistent with itself, and thus necromancy is a logical event governed by natural laws within every world generation. So why not have a "secret of day and night" that determines how the sun(s) move?

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There have never been any historically recorded religious wars fought by polytheistic religions. ...

Religious wars are unheard of among polytheists.  ...

...

While none of the Polytheistic religions have had religious wars against other Polytheist religions (excluding wars faught against monotheists because it does not take two to tango in this case). ...

Once again your point of view doesn't seem to take the world into account beyond Europe and the Mediterranean.

The Aztecs and their neighboring nations waged war for literally no other reason than for their polytheistic religion, initially because they considered their neighbors to be worshiping the Sun god incorrectly, and after that as a way to ceremoniously collect strong sacrifices for this god. It's not like they needed the resources, after all. Central America is and always has been a paradise for agriculture, they didn't work or know about any weapon metals and obsidian was everywhere- the "Flower Wars" were fought specifically in honor of the Sun god.

And over in Japan, we've got Shinto, developed by the Japanese shortly before or after they arrived on the islands from what is now Korea. The Shinto adherents are known to have launched several invasions against the native Ainu people for no other reason than because they worshiped the wrong set of gods.

Not to mention all the tribal wars fought for the sake of ancestors and spirits in pre-colonization Africa, the list would stretch on for miles.

The fact that there can be oceans at the edge of map without all the water draining away indicates that the world is actually round.  I think a dwarf fortress 'world' is actually an isolated region (like pre-columbus America) within a larger world that is unknown to them. 

They are even explicitly called regions. 

A single tile of aquifer has more than enough water to flood the entire map as long as you can design a pumping systems to get it that high without flowing back into the aquifer. No matter what measurements you apply to the individual tiles, a finite water supply shouldn't be able to do that. Since water clearly isn't finite, it doesn't necessarily have to all drain off the flat edge that may exist on the border of a generated world- so long as the oceans are fed by more aquifer tiles than can drain off border tiles.

And I've seen generated worlds called anything from "realm" (An old-timey way to say nation or country) to "universe". (Implying that the displayed world is literally all there is in existence.)

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If that were an election we would consider that a vast majority.  History is also not over, Monotheism has not been around for very long relatively.  It went from 0% to 50% in *only* 3000 years. 

The land-line telephone has only existed for like, 1/30 of that time; and not too long ago everyone had at least one. How long ago something came into practice isn't really a good way to measure how long it'll stick around.