Not counting clerics of course.
Just wondering. Most of my non-secular characters really pay homage to one deity over all others. Occasionally swearing on/at other deities. (I had a Realms worshiper of Tymore who swore on Sune's left breast for example.)
Shoot. You defined henotheism in the post. I was going to slip in a rant about the worship of female ground-feeding fowl.
Given the rather tangible displays of power through clerics of all dieties, I can't see a follower of any diety in DnD disclaiming the existence of any gods. Hard to disbelieve or deny the existence of any diety who's flame-striking your sorry butt. What about allied dieties? So of course clerics put their god first, but henotheism has got to be the only way to go.
Well, Father Zantus is a
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I agree, maybe I didnt' phrase my question correctly.
How predominant is it to have a character pledge to one deity only, while accpeting the existance of others?
I'm not sure if this will help or not, but as I see it, the everyday people all accept that there are more than one god in the setting... see the description of the new cathedral in PF#1, I believe it has places of worship for 4-5 gods in it. I also believe that knowing things like this increases the likelihood of a person praying/offering to more than one god. If you are taking a magic item from a sarcophagus, would your character pray to the god of thieves or the god of the dead to ask for the mummy not to come after you? or both? It would not be realistic in this type of setting for non-clergy to pray to one god exclusively.In the example outlined above, if you only prayed to the god of knowledge, what would you do?
hoping not to threadjack, but I always was hoping for a god of peace in some setting with a perferred weapon of 'the mouth' or 'pen and paper' or something..
I agree, maybe I didnt' phrase my question correctly.
How predominant is it to have a character pledge to one deity only, while accpeting the existance of others?
I think what you're asking here is how common is Henotheism as compared to Pantheism, not Monotheism as some are assuming.
I'd suggest that Henotheism is something of the default for D&D, but given the cathedral I'd say pantheism is a bit more predominant in Sandpoint than most locations.
I think what you're asking here is how common is Henotheism as compared to Pantheism, not Monotheism as some are assuming.
I'd suggest that Henotheism is something of the default for D&D, but given the cathedral I'd say pantheism is a bit more predominant in Sandpoint than most locations.
I don't think that word means what you think it means. Pantheism is the belief that God is everything, and everything is God. (Pantheists, please pardon my over-simplification of your belief system--I'm just trying to give an overview.)
Polytheism, on the other hand, is the worship of many gods. I believe that word would work better in this conversation.
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I think what you're asking here is how common is Henotheism as compared to Pantheism, not Monotheism as some are assuming.
I'd suggest that Henotheism is something of the default for D&D, but given the cathedral I'd say pantheism is a bit more predominant in Sandpoint than most locations.
I don't think that word means what you think it means. Pantheism is the belief that God is everything, and everything is God. (Pantheists, please pardon my over-simplification of your belief system--I'm just trying to give an overview.)
Polytheism, on the other hand, is the worship of many gods. I believe that word would work better in this conversation.
As a pantheist I can assure you your over-simplification is not offensive.
You are correct to point out that Polytheism is often mistakenly called Pantheism. I attribute it to the use of the word Pantheon to describe the Polytheistic collection of gods. Pantheon is correctly used. To help you, keep in mind that the prefix "Pan-" means "All". So ALL the gods of a polytheistic religion is referred to as the PANtheon.
To make matters worse, there is Panentheism, which holds that god and reality are seperate, but god "infuses" reality. My over-simplification is that here God is analogous to mind and reality is analogous to body. GOD is Supreme and Reality is a part of god.
Pantheists do not make this distinction. God = Reality.
To be complete, THEISM is where GOD > Reality.
Pandeism is similar to Pantheism in that god=reality, but takes the view that God was a conscious supreme being that became reality and is no longer conscious or supreme. I imagine it as the "big-bang" god. God is the singularity just prior to the big bang. Although I don't think the original Pantheists knew anything about the big bang, my memory fades on that bit o' history.
Not counting clerics of course.
Just wondering. Most of my non-secular characters really pay homage to one deity over all others. Occasionally swearing on/at other deities. (I had a Realms worshiper of Tymore who swore on Sune's left breast for example.)
I think, if I understand Matthew Morris, he's asking about generalized behavior towards the Golarian gods by most people. It's obviously a given that all known gods exist to them, but how do most people go about and spend their daily lives under this pretense? Do they practice their homage to the gods via Henotheism, and would this upset those gods that might interpret such Henotheism as "lip service?"
For example, ancient Athens chose Athena between a contest between her and Poseidon to become their patron god, and thus Athenians always had to be very cautious when travelling by sea for fear of reprisals from Poseidon holding a grudge. So, if a farmer spends most days giving worship to Erastil but only maybe tosses a copper in a well for Desna when travelling, is that enough to appease Desna, or would Desna become irritated on only getting something now that the farmer decided to travel? During the period when mothers-to-be carry their children, I expect they might offer up prayers to Pazuzu to keep Lamashtu from interfering, but they otherwise might steer clear of him.
Or, as I would imagine it. The farmer that primarily worships Erastil but tosses the copper in the well to earn good fortune from Desna when travelling, that this would be fine and widespread behavior. It's common to find pregnant women sporting medallions of carved heads in the visage of Pazuzu.
I think what you're asking here is how common is Henotheism as compared to Pantheism, not Monotheism as some are assuming.
I don't think that word means what you think it means. Pantheism is the belief that God is everything, and everything is God. (Pantheists, please pardon my over-simplification of your belief system--I'm just trying to give an overview.)
Polytheism, on the other hand, is the worship of many gods. I believe that word would work better in this conversation.
Quite right, thank you.
I would argue that Henothesim is the standard. Even clerics, who dedicate themselves to the doctrine of one god above the others are emminantly likely to give adequate recognition to them--and perhaps be even more earnest in their veneration of all the gods than would ordinary folk. They understand the gods most of all, and know how best to appease them (bearing in mind that they could still be entirely wrong) and are most eager to do so.
Granted there's some religions that just don't like each other, some beliefs that just work at cross purposes or gods who are personal enemies of one another. Likewise nobody has any great love for heretics, those who pervert the teachings of the gods and create cults based on erroneous doctrine. Even the earnest worshippers of an unpleasant deity are more popular than those who corrupt and abuse the teachings of a good deity.
As Grimcleaver has said: It has always been quite common in my campaigns to see characters who make offerings to several deities who do not work at cross purposes, and that it is really only the clerics who put all their eggs in one basket, as the saying goes. So, worship as many gods as you can. It just makes sense.
Having had many players do this, and having done it myself, I assume there are a lot of other non-cleric players doing the same thing.
Having said that, when players in my campaign have thrown their lot in with one god, it has always been because of the party cleric's devotion, which makes sense. The guy who is passing out the healing--and later, who is doing the resurrecting--is passing on the benefits and players (PCs) naturally appreciate it and start throwing some coin and the odd sacrifice in their cosmic benefactor's direction.
The sum of all this is that with most PCs, worship is done out of fear and self interest.
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On the other hand, religion is not particularly known for reasonableness or logic. So, I could therefore imagine an excessively xenophobic culture that belevies that theirs is the only true god, and all other faiths knowingly worship demons and foul spirits, and heathen clerics knowingly sell their souls for unholy power. The fact that their clerics and everyone else's clerics cast the same damn spells would be proof of the evil trickery of their demon patrons, mimicing the miracles of [insert name here] to mock and courrupt [insert name here]'s faithfull. Everyone else in the world is evil, and must be converted to the worship of [insert name here]. By the way, killing someone apparently counts as converting them, at least in terms of how much credit you get.
They certainly sound like irritating bastards.
My party is pretty irrelgious, because their healer is a Druid, and therefore more of a spiritual biologist/ecologist.