Creating Religions
A religion is a set of tenets and practices, often centered upon specific supernatural and moral claims about reality, the cosmos, and human nature, and often codified as prayer, ritual, or religious law. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and religious experience. The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction.
In the frame of western religious thought, religions present a common quality, the "hallmark of patriarchal religious thought": the division of the world in two comprehensive domains, one sacred, the other profane. Religion is often described as a communal system for the coherence of belief focusing on a system of thought, unseen being, person, or object, that is considered to be supernatural, sacred, divine, or of the highest truth. Moral codes, practices, values, institutions, tradition, rituals, and scriptures are often traditionally associated with the core belief, and these may have some overlap with concepts in secular philosophy. Religion is also often described as a "way of life" or a life stance.
The development of religion has taken many forms in various cultures. "Organized religion" generally refers to an organization of people supporting the exercise of some religion with a prescribed set of beliefs, often taking the form of a legal entity (see religion-supporting organization). Other religions believe in personal revelation. "Religion" is sometimes used interchangeably with "faith" or "belief system," but is more socially defined than that of personal convictions.
Religion has been defined in a wide variety of ways. Most definitions attempt to find a balance somewhere between overly sharp definition and meaningless generalities. Some sources have tried to use formalistic, doctrinal definitions while others have emphasized experiential, emotive, intuitive, valuational and ethical factors. Definitions mostly include:
* a notion of the transcendent or numinous, often, but not always, in the form of theism
* a cultural or behavioral aspect of ritual, liturgy and organized worship, often involving a priesthood, and societal norms of morality (ethos) and virtue (arete)
* a set of myths or sacred truths held in reverence or believed by adherents
Requirements to make a Religion
* All religions are mod and Headmod Approval only.
* By submitting a religion to customs, you are acknowledging that you will abide by mod decisions on the subject.
* Any bigotry within the post will be grounds for archival and a warning. Keep your religion custom free from anything that might put down a real world religion such as the word “myth”. Things like that word imply it is not true and therefore is basically saying your religion is wrong. Just keep it respectful.
Name:
* This is where you place the name of your religion. If you feel the need to use another language for its name that is fine, in parenthesis next to it you can place the English version.
Dieties:
* This is where you will list and describe the deities of your religion if there are any. Not all religions have deities, but many will. Those with a large pantheon should probably focus on the most influential ones. This along with hierarchy should take up practically all of this first post. They both need to be extremely in depth.
Hierarchy:
* This is where you will list and summarize the important leaders and positions of your religion (for example: the Pope would go here if I was making Christianity. Just an example, but we are not using real religions here.). This should be fairly in depth, and cover most of this post. It is very important to be very descriptive of each individual when possible. Things like rank (example: priest/nun/alter boy in Christianity) are placed here as well. A rank is something for your religions followers to aspire to.
Personalities:
* This is where you will summarize the basic personalities of the people who follow the religion. Some may be a mix of different personalities, while some may have to have a certain personality to follow a religion. Be creative and descriptive. You are basically creating the followers of your religion here.
Description:
* This is where you will describe the fundamental things within your religion. What do their places of worship look like? What kind of life style do they lead? Things of a visual nature that will
Special Days:
* This is where you will list and describe all of the special days and holidays of the religion. It is very unlikely your religion doesn’t have some sort of special day from its history. Whether it is the day the religion started, the day some important figure was born/died, a day when crops are generally good, etc. Be creative. It is possible if your religion is followed heavily on the site that there will be some sort of events involved because of this.
Blasphemies:
* Every religion has some sort of idea of right verse wrong. This is the section where you will list what the wrong actions are, and the consequences for those actions. These are like the rules to live by of the religion. One example of a punishment would be excommunication. Be creative.
Requirements and Restrictions:
* What are the requirements for being apart of/joining this religion? This is where you will list them. Is there a personality requirement? Do you have to pay to be apart? Is there some sort of test involved? be descriptive.
History:
* Some may wonder why this one section has its own post. Well, that’s because of how in depth this needs to be. You don’t necessarily need to fill the entire 60,000 character maximum of a post, but it needs to be extremely well thought out, and full of information. One page in word is not going to be enough to cover the amount of info that you are going to need to present in this section. This section contains everything about the creation and documentation of your religion. All those dates you listed above as important, this is where you can explain how people started seeing them as such. How did the religion start? What is the main message of the religion? You need to really be descriptive in this section to have a chance of passing. Do not be surprised if staff specifically asks for more in this section.
