Seizure of the Gods: Theology in Fantasy

It's not a State secret that, since I was a kid, I was steeped in religious epistemology, my education operating on the truth that moral objectivity exists; that evil is an absence of good just as darkness is an absence of light; that that which does not empower use with discipline and, through discipline, understanding-- what does not protect, comfort and progress mankind--is evil, because it is the opposite of good, because it is antithetical to our survival ,and, thus, our progress as individuals; and, by extension, our survival and progress as a species.  I was taught that, while mankind is often subjective, truth is objective, and that truth applies to mankind the same as the laws of nature to the cosmos; no amount of sophistry will ever subvert the truth any more than a polemic will stop a tornado. Morality and science, growing up, were not, and could not, be diametrically opposed. God was, to me, not a preternatural creator, but an engineer, organizing life by manipulating natural laws to which he was bound. (Why else would a God destroy his favorite Son if not to fulfil a Law he could not, by his singularity with that Law, disobey and thus cease to be God?) Science and Morality were two facets of philosophy, two ways to observe natural law, the physical a similitude of the spiritual, "as above so below". Religion has withstood the test of time because religion is the oldest tradition of epistemology. Yes, there are religions, such as Catholicism and Islam, that have weaponized their beliefs for the sake of conquest, the rape of their fellow Man, that is a fact. As well documented as it is regrettable; as it is, with the privilege of hindsight, most certainly in its blackest hours, detestable.

 But even in these moments of fanaticism there is, through the meditation of natural Law, genius, as well as, dignifying these dogmatic traditions in their worst extremes, an unnerving and vibrant poetry.

 The complexities of religious zeal are at the heart of 'Seizure of the Gods', my dark fantasy heist, because, honestly, while I appreciate Dune's cynicism about how religions is weaponized as propaganda, a fiction that doesn't just touch on the aspects of a given faith merely to twist them into authoritarian devices, is criminally rare. It seems like every story just builds a religion for the purpose of taking a thematically-extravagant shit on it. My script references  the 'Thief' series with its title screens, quoting the prophet Cosp, his gospels, and the commentaries by the Cargulian emperors, the Gran Saa'cri-adi's, but, whereas 'Thief' just contents itself to illustrate the absolutism of the Lawful Hammerites, or the anti-human bile of the Chaotic Pagans, or the zealous pacifism of The Keepers in maintaining the Balance, Iiii wasn't satisfied with that.

 I looked at that and said, 'But where's the Gospel of John?' Where's the "good stuff"? Christ said, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another..."; whereas Muhammed said, "if anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he had saved the lives of all mankind.” 

Every religion worth a damn has something warm and fuzzy in it.

The Icelandic Havamal advises:

"To his friend a man should bear him as friend, to him and a friend of his...", buuuut, that proverb pairs with, "Wherever you know of harm, regard that harm as your own; and give your foes no peace." See how one truism pairs rationally with another? These proverbs aren't innately malicious--they're positive things to do--but they can be easily pursued to their worst extremes. Too often, in fiction, I only see the brutal aspects of a faith, the calls to violence or judgement--'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!'--'If a man lieth with mankind as he doeth with womankind, they have committed abomination, and they shall surely be put to death!'--you know how it goes. I'm not saying those parts don't exist and aren't significant, they just need their humanist antecedents.

 Loving someone can mean avenging them, say if they were killed in cold blood. Scriptures naturally are meditations on what's good and proper, and maintaining law and order is good and proper, which inevitably extends to inter-cultural law, like contracts with other cultures; so, naturally, any religion is going to have a protocol for things like capital punishment and war. "Vengeance is God's.", after all.  For a society to survive, it doesn't matter how wholesome its values are, they're going to coincide with a capacity for systematized violence, a capacity that is necessary for those values to even be instructed to future generations.

 Religious extremes don't just happen by accident, there's always a logic to these things.*  The Spanish Inquisition had the Malleus Maleficarum because a witch trial is a trial, and trials operate on due process. Due process is based on rules which naturally one numbers, orders and cross-references in a collection of written text. A book being most preferred for the sake of use, transport and storage. Everything I just described has a rational through line, even for things as inhumanly absurd as making someone burn themselves with a hot coal to prove they're not in compact with the Devil. That's, in retrospect, incredibly silly, but what's rational is based on natural law and what little we know of it. Religion seeks to understand natural law within its epistemology, the context of its deities or supernatural elements. That's why people have a smart-ass tendency to poke fun at theocratic gaffe's back in the day, because they are funny. They're also products of their time and the information available.

 If all I can do to enrich the discussion about religion--to help a disenchanted generation of fantasy nerds hard bit by things like the Satanic panic in the 90's--is just to portray how religion and its relationship with government is not the same as its relationship with the individual-- how any good idea can by highjacked--I'll consider this story well told. (That said, I still have to write the fucker.)

 *As an aside, that's why 'The Handmaid Tale', just as a premise, is shit. Because why on earth would a society where women have to be hyper-classified, to be preserved as breeding stock for a theocracy's preservation, be awarded to sterile men? Makes no sense.