On Mon, 22 Apr 2019 16:55:47 -0700, Zane Healy <xxxxxx@avanthar.com>
wrote:

>> On Apr 19, 2019, at 8:19 PM, Jeff Zeitlin <xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com> wrote:
>>
>> Official Traveller material has generally kept away from religion in the
>> game, for very good reason - it can be a touchy subject, and if not handled
>> well, can destroy a game, or a gaming group.

>Somehow this seems like a good thread for me to jump back in on.  I finally
>figured out why I haven’t been getting TML emails, when the list changed
>servers, I obviously got dropped.  I finally found my way back last week.

In which case, a hearty 'welcome back'!

>Touchy subject…  That’s something of an understatement.  I learned that
>about 25 years ago on this list. :-)

It's virtually an aphorism that two things you don't discuss with friends
(if you want them to stay friends) are politics and religion. And in this
day and age, at least in the US, they can be one and the same.

But here, I'm not asking people to opine on religion; I'm asking for
'scholarly' articles about it. Careful handling and avoidance of 'loaded'
descriptions _should_ make it workable.

>It seems to me that at least four Earth religions would likely have
>survived in some form.  I feel that this should be included, but treated
>with care

I expect that more than four Terrestrial religions would likely survive -
and some would be 'revived' as well - but how would they be changed by easy
interstellar travel, by contact with non-Earth people who are as human as
we are (as in take them to bed and make babies with them), and by contact
with non-humans (who are _also_ as human as we are, in the sense of being
_ramen_ in Orson Scott Card's "Hierarchy of Foreignness")?

>           Does anyone remember a Sci-Fi episode from the mid-80’s, I think
>it was the Twilight Zone remake, about a Priest onboard a Starship
>exploring the universe.  They find a dead world whose star had gone out,
>and the Priest realizes this star would have been the one leading the Wise
>Men to Jerusalem for Christ’s birth.

That's based on an older story, from the so-called Golden Age of SF. A
little work with Google (q=dead+world+star+of+bethlehem), and the first hit
is the Wikipedia entry for "The Star", by Arthur C. Clarke
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_(Clarke_short_story)>) (first pub
1955 Infinity Science Fiction, Hugo winner 1956, reprinted in collection
_The Other Side of the Sky_ [which is where I most likely read it], and in
Short Story International issue 1965 Jan.).

It was later dramatized as the Christmas episode of the 1985 revival of TZ,
which is likely what you're thinking of.

The original text can (but probably shouldn't) be found at
<https://web.archive.org/web/20080718084442/http://lucis.net/stuff/clarke/star_clarke.html>.

>Thinking back on the Traveller background you’ll have religions that have
>sprung up around the Ancients.  Probably a few cults as well.  Might even
>be good to have a paragraph touching on how a cult differs from a religion.

That last is a _really_ touchy subject; even with straight up language,
it's often possible to reasonably read "definitions" of 'cults' to apply to
mainstream religions, and there are ... let me use the term 'faith
organizations' ... that are generally agreed to be 'cults', but which
litigate whenever they are publicly so described.

As far as Ancient worship, sure, why not? Write it.

>When in the timeline are you looking at?  Or is this ignoring the timeline?
>Worlds settled by other worlds, but which have sunk to below TL4 and stayed
>there for a good period of time have a real potential for religions based
>on legends around their founding.  I’m vaguely reminded of the Star Trek
>episode, “For the World is Hollow, and I have touched the sky”.

Any and all of the above are fair game; with ostensibly 11,000 worlds, many
of which will not be monocultures, and more than a few of which will have
significant non-human populations, there's plenty of room for virtually
anything.

There's also the question of how a religion (or religions) in isolation -
say, on a "lost" generation ship - will change (or not change) and be
perceived when the ship is found...

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--
Jeff Zeitlin, Editor
Freelance Traveller
    The Electronic Fan-Supported Traveller® Resource
xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com
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