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Earth stuff setting aside philosophy and minced words to address traumatized nonsense from toxic beliefs. Apologies for my boldness, SDJenn, it comes from experience with shedding toxic dogma in general, obviously not insight into your particulars.
tl;dr: Faith is an emotional placebo which can be replaced with healthier alternatives, often with time & turmoil.
I was tempted to leave a spoiler empty to demonstrate what you've lost when you lost faith. But feeling that, even after knowing that, often takes years of deconstruction. It's an unmapped journey from that first seedling of questioning to shedding the tenacious fear of hell that outlives one's belief in it. And yes, that does seem the most pernicious myth, one possible scar among many. Which is to say that while some escape quickly, the traumatic tendrils often run deep and take finesse to extricate. Often w/ the pain one might imagine extricating tendrils.
(*hug, one that suits you*)
A few days back I discovered Britt Hartley on YouTube, and she addresses this journey and its obstacles (including her own bout w/ nihilism). She emphasizes spirituality & personal well-being in a way lacking in most atheist channels which lean philosophical or cultural (though others are out there, as well as mentors who ignore faith). The main theme for Britt being to shift to a new worldview rather than only discard the old and be left bereft of any (and the flourishing elements that help one navigate life). Plus she has some credentials and research to back her points. And there's Recovering from Religion I mentioned previously.
Faith serves a purpose so occurs naturally as part of the human condition, but the same could be said of other forms of shortcut-thinking/flawed thinking (plus human flaws all around). IMO faith's purpose is to help fill in the spaces that are prone to fear if left empty. One can go down the list of most common fears and see how faith addresses nearly all of them (or all with some cunning spin). Easing our fears is a key role. And it's rough to learn there's no substance to the putty that's been keeping oneself together, patching those cracks. But that doesn't make faith essential. Other concepts can ease those fears (or give purpose, grounding, etc.) like love, wisdom, knowledge, and acceptance. (Reject the claims that those rely on some other ideology!) When you identify your fears, what you've lost, what roles go unfulfilled, then you can create more grounded replacements. Faith is the generic placebo, overpromising yet bringing relief (however illusory or transitory). No need for such a stopgap solution, nor for scooping out one's PC's mind to investigate and reclaim a worthless concept.
Look at the Piraha tribe, noted for having no religion and scoffing at faith (and lacking a few other concepts we take for granted). A missionary lived with them, learned their language to preach to them, and eventually gave up his faith because of his admiration for them. Years if not decades of study and effort traded in when he saw a better alternative. So yeah, faith may play an essential role, but is not essential itself, not at the personal level, and not at the cultural level.
One of the pitfalls of escaping a toxic sub-culture is falling prey to another toxic sub-culture. The BITE Model provides a list of traits to beware in one's communities (or relationships IMO). Plus remember that deconstruction impels reconstruction, piece by piece w/ no quick fix, and IMO requiring reason and a clear alignment with one's principles. One common analogy for leaving a toxic religion is it's like leaving a toxic relationship, w/ the complete spectrum of implications and story-types. Yeah...
(*another hug that suits you*)
Edit: fixed YouTuber's name
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It is worth noting that the Pirahã culture does in fact incorporate a belief in spirits, so there is still the existence of faith there, even if it is not necessarily religious. I would also be mindful not to promote alternatives to faith by disparaging faith itself, and I say this as an atheist with no spiritual leanings and a strong dislike of organized religion. It is all too common for celebration of something to be expressed as a shaming of its opposite, and I've too often seen exploration beyond heteronormativity expressed as a vilification of monogamy, body positivity turned into thin-shaming, and emancipation from repressive religious institutions get stuck in hatred for any and all religion. It can be liberating to reject the thing that once held power over you, but I also think that is an approach one needs to move on from in the long run, otherwise you just stay fixated on it in a manner that's not healthy.
I think what can help is actually the way Pathfinder frames its magic system: its four traditions of magic rely on four types of magical essence, which when combined form the totality of a mortal being. You have physical essence for the body, vital essence for lifeforce, mental essence for the mind, and spiritual essence for the soul. Normally, the soul is the domain of religion in many cultures, but in Pathfinder it's also the domain of occult magic, which is made to emulate a lot of the spiritualism that was especially common in and around Victorian England. If you want to stir people's hearts, you can do so as a Cleric, for sure, but you can also do so as a Bard, who need not be religious to create the same kind of fervor you'd find in a church or temple through their art. In many cases, the heart of a community won't be a Cleric, but a Druid, whose faith isn't concerned with the soul at all, and instead hinges on making the most of the life you have in the Universe. Even in matters of the divine, your faith doesn't just have to be expressed in terms of a clergy, because the Animist is there to bridge the mortal world with that of spirits and apparitions.
All of which is to say: no matter what part of your identity you're trying to connect with, there is a wide variety of paths you can take, each as valid as the last. There are multiple approaches to faith, and even spiritual approaches that don't rely on faith at all. If what you seek is a sense of community and belonging, then that too is something you can attain, and it is up to you to decide what you want your community to revolve around. I definitely agree it is important to ensure that you join a healthy community, and keep an eye out for indicators of toxicity, but that healthy community can come from anywhere.
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Thank you, I hadn't known the Piraha believed in spirits. The documentary I'd seen hadn't mentioned that, which seems suspect given it covered the lack of religious concepts. Then again, that might be my faulty or selective memory. Hmm.
As written much earlier in the thread, pinning down faith in a way that covers the breadth of uses (and opinions of those uses), while satisfying all parties, eludes even scholars who specialize in such discussions. Which is to say, taking time distinguishing nuances of trust vs. certainty; evidence vs. belief would've detracted from my advice aimed at a specific audience, SDJenn and those escaping toxic environments that promote having faith to gaslight and manipulate. BTW I'm including non-religious, non-supernatural high-control groups that reflect the BITE model or promote faith in perhaps a self-help guru or dodgy corporation.
That said I did and would again disparage faith when used as self-supporting certainty or a tool for foundational knowledge of the unknown. That's faulty methodology. But usage falls on a spectrum, right? Some use faith minimally, many judiciously, while another many gorge on faith in this sense to where they deny established evidence and justify harm. And in a discussion with a victim of toxicity, I'm going to address the toxic end of that spectrum. And it deserves disparagement.
But I disparage not to elevate its alternatives. You're right, one mustn't go negative to promote the positive. The alternatives have to shine their own light. But IMO both topics needed addressing, and without trying to gauge when harm outweighs help if faith itself is optional. And again, it's an option that's hurt the target audience.
Your examples of movements with good intentions that resulted in overcorrection should give pause to navigate wisely. Thumbs up. But I'd hope beneficent believers wouldn't see themselves in my descriptions, would decry the BITE model as antithetical to their community, and empathize with SDJenn and others hurt by faith rather than scoff. I share more in common with my priest uncle than any faithless authoritarian. Yet that doesn't mean I'm going to send a person emancipating themself from a repressive religious institution (as you put it so well) to my uncle's church for aid. Hair of the dog? Nah.
I appreciate your goals with the last paragraph, but disagree that all paths are equally valid. Many don't work, many warp one's principles, others destroy oneself or those around. And that assertion's also conman territory to assuage suspicion. As is the concept a healthy community can come from anywhere. The whole point of addressing toxicity is that yeah, there's toxicity out there, and it beckons. One would be lucky if all their advocates flew red flags (though some inexplicably do and persist). Perhaps I'm overselling wariness because I agree there's a bounty of beneficial belief systems and communities based on them, some religious, some metaphysical, some neither. Yet while they might diverge on methods and worldviews, the healthy ones converge on universal values and pro-social principles. Some litmus tests I made while helping my cousin involve checking out the web pages: do they lead with charity work outside their group, inclusiveness, and volunteer opportunities? Or in their inerrancy, mission to expand, and setting up donations to themselves? And are they open about or masking their affiliations? And I'll add a new one: Do they aim to let you transform or make you conform?
While Golarion reflects those four aspects of the self in its magical traditions, I don't think the way PF blends them correlates with reality (never mind that I also think two of them only exist as useful metaphors). The grim aspects of those traditions muddy this further, like Occult also ties to mind-breaking horrors & Divine with Unholy. And IMO a Druid would be concerned with the soul, and its connection to nature rather than the planes. There can be useful metaphors (et al) one could extract from Pathfinder, but wouldn't that require a personal metric & schema outside the game that should operate well enough on their own?
(I want to add that I've been appreciating everybody's input, even and maybe especially when I heartfully disagree.)
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To be very clear, I am not in any way advocating for faith as an alternative to science IRL, nor as a source of objective truth. I'm fairly certain that was not even implied in my answers either, nor am I claiming that Pathfinder's four magical essences exist in real life. Rather, I am inviting a look into Pathfinder's plurality of choices for characters who are spiritual, religious, or just connected to emotions and communities, and seeing that there are many different and valid ways of connecting to one's emotions, spirituality, and sense of belonging. The topic here is personal truth, distinct from scientific truth, and personal truths tend to have more to do with emotions and feelings than anything else, which means that to many (though certainly not all) that is expressed at least in part through some element of faith or spirituality.
Similarly, I am well aware of the toxic elements of many real-life religious groups, and am not suggesting to steer anyone towards those. I am simply cautioning not to tar every remotely religious or spiritual community with the same brush, because if your intent is to help someone heal through the trauma inflicted by their own group, that approach hinges on the same dogmatism and isolationism that has hurt them and that they've distanced themselves from. It is once again possible to criticize the evils, abuses, and excesses of faith without asking people to cut all elements of faith or spirituality out of their lives, even when they have been healthy to them or have a chance to be in the future.
Finally, I think it is worth addressing the implicit conflation being made here between Pathfinder and real life: in real life, there is no objective basis for the existence of deities. In Pathfinder, there is, and in spades. This means that while it is irrational to rely on deities to explain natural laws in real life, it is irrational not to do so in the world of Pathfinder, where even atheists in-universe acknowledge the existence of gods as objective fact. By asking people to consider in-game faiths that spur people towards education and personal growth, I am not asking people to believe the deities involved are real or that religion is a source of scientific answers in real life, even if I am indicating that in a roleplaying scenario at the very least, certain religions can serve as sources of knowledge and freedom, rather than ignorance and oppression. I can understand the vigilance that comes from leaving an abusive or manipulative religious upbringing, and the desire to never see oneself or anyone else enter a toxic community of any kind, but I would once again caution against letting that vigilance overreach its boundaries and turn into prejudice. Inviting people to consider healthy examples of fictionalized faith in a tabletop roleplaying game does not equate to telling those people to join a religious group in real life, much less a toxic one, and given OP's curiosity towards Clerics and faith in Golarion I think it may even be to their benefit to use the safe space of a roleplaying table to experiment with characters of faith and create narratives that differ from their own.
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Did anybody comment on science? I suppose it was the elephant in the room. Hmm. Arguably whether one accepts science (as tentative as its results are) is a better benchmark of well-being than faith/no faith. But both pale in comparison to having community, expressing gratitude, and doing charity. If one's faith delivers those traits, it's a net positive (at least for those criteria alone, negative elements might corrupt that).
I felt you didn't think the magical essences exist in a magical sense, but it seemed you were positing them as existing as part of ourselves. But whether those (conversationally useful) essences are tangible or metaphorical is tertiary to my point about how PF blends them, i.e. mind + matter = arcane. Those are contrived and make a poor template for self discovery (much less knowledge beyond oneself). And it's those blendings and dry numerical mechanics that PCs interact with. Absent any emphasis on blendings, I agree RPing is a good place to investigate different outlooks, much like reading and acting can be. (I may be biased as an avid reader w/ a Drama degree.)
But let's refocus: SDJenn mentioned trauma from faith. I'm operating with her lived experiences. And trauma requires a therapeutic approach (often with a lot of time) that PF can't provide. Stepping away from the source of trauma seems crucial. Dabbling feels dangerous, at least without a real-life mentor that few if any tables would provide.
And for the record, I had positive religious experiences, and as an atheist have hosted dozens of multi-belief discussion groups at a nearby megachurch (which funnily enough has its own internal struggle between the toxic and healthy factions). So yeah, not operating out of a competing dogma, but am suggesting SDJenn step away from faith and its pitfalls until she can get her bearings and emotional stamina to navigate around those, if such paths remain fruitful after investigating alternatives.
I'm unsure where you saw conflation between Golarion & Earth religions. I've posted about those first points (though maybe not on this thread), and a majority of my PF PCs (to my surprise upon reflection) have had Clerical or Druidic aspects. And the rest I feel I addressed above.
Cheers to you for your empathic engagement.
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Did anybody comment on science?
Yes, you did, several times:
Faith serves a purpose so occurs naturally as part of the human condition, but the same could be said of other forms of shortcut-thinking/flawed thinking (plus human flaws all around). IMO faith's purpose is to help fill in the spaces that are prone to fear if left empty.
That said I did and would again disparage faith when used as self-supporting certainty or a tool for foundational knowledge of the unknown. That's faulty methodology.
It is certainly a valid criticism to be made of faith when it pits itself in conflict with science, but that is not the topic of present conversation.
I felt you didn't think the magical essences exist in a magical sense, but it seemed you were positing them as existing as part of ourselves.
I'm not. I don't believe in the existence of lifeforce, the mind, or the soul as entities distinct from our physical bodies, my point is simply that these are useful constructs that help articulate otherwise complex and abstract concepts, and the way Pathfinder incorporates them into roleplaying elements that mirror elements of our own cultures is itself a useful way to express how we can relate those concepts. I don't believe in the existence of some immortal, supernatural soul, but I do think that our belief systems and decision-making are both shaped by our feelings, perhaps even more so than our logical thinking, and these are all emergent concepts from our brain processes that we can isolate, recognize, and discuss in terms more abstract than the firing of synapses, much like how one can discuss a computer application in terms less basic than 0s and 1s. Pathfinder connects these different concepts to different life paths, and in so doing demonstrates a plurality of perspectives. This is, by the way, something you yourself endorsed:
Also, despite the philosophically rigorous** arguments trotted out by proselytizers, if you delve into their own journeys they're more often one akin to falling in love than deciding what's true with objectivity.
You mention romance and religion as capable of eliciting the same feeling, I mention Bards and Clerics. We're saying the same thing in slightly different terms.
But let's refocus: SDJenn mentioned trauma from faith. I'm operating with her lived experiences.
With all due respect, I don't think you are. I think you're operating from your own trauma, not hers, and that's where the problem is coming from. Deciding what's best for this person, ignoring the curiosity they themselves expressed and that started this very thread, and specifically telling them not to touch certain topics even in the context of a tabletop roleplaying game doesn't sound to me like listening. The way you chose to deal with your own trauma is valid, and I certainly won't dispute it; my point is that what's valid for you is not automatically valid for everyone else, and there is a plurality of valid choices to be made here. I fully agree with you that there is also a large number of unhealthy decisions that could be made, and it is beneficial to be aware of the signs of toxic communities and how to avoid those, but that still leaves room for alternatives, including in this case faith, however different that may look from the original, and as one possibility among many. Dictating a single valid course of action is dogmatic, no two ways about it, and again, I think that is quite possibly the least helpful approach for this particular context.
I'm unsure where you saw conflation between Golarion & Earth religions.
Here, specifically:
While Golarion reflects those four aspects of the self in its magical traditions, I don't think the way PF blends them correlates with reality (never mind that I also think two of them only exist as useful metaphors).
I appreciate your goals with the last paragraph, but disagree that all paths are equally valid. Many don't work, many warp one's principles, others destroy oneself or those around. And that assertion's also conman territory to assuage suspicion. As is the concept a healthy community can come from anywhere.
The last paragraph in question being this:
All of which is to say: no matter what part of your identity you're trying to connect with, there is a wide variety of paths you can take, each as valid as the last. There are multiple approaches to faith, and even spiritual approaches that don't rely on faith at all. If what you seek is a sense of community and belonging, then that too is something you can attain, and it is up to you to decide what you want your community to revolve around. I definitely agree it is important to ensure that you join a healthy community, and keep an eye out for indicators of toxicity, but that healthy community can come from anywhere.
Which in turn stemmed from this immediately preceding paragraph:
I think what can help is actually the way Pathfinder frames its magic system: its four traditions of magic rely on four types of magical essence, which when combined form the totality of a mortal being. You have physical essence for the body, vital essence for lifeforce, mental essence for the mind, and spiritual essence for the soul. Normally, the soul is the domain of religion in many cultures, but in Pathfinder it's also the domain of occult magic, which is made to emulate a lot of the spiritualism that was especially common in and around Victorian England. If you want to stir people's hearts, you can do so as a Cleric, for sure, but you can also do so as a Bard, who need not be religious to create the same kind of fervor you'd find in a church or temple through their art. In many cases, the heart of a community won't be a Cleric, but a Druid, whose faith isn't concerned with the soul at all, and instead hinges on making the most of the life you have in the Universe. Even in matters of the divine, your faith doesn't just have to be expressed in terms of a clergy, because the Animist is there to bridge the mortal world with that of spirits and apparitions.
It is quite clear that you are bringing criticism of real-life cults, harmful religions, and other toxic elements of faith into analysis of the fictional world of a tabletop game, when not only did I establish a distinction between the game and real life, I also myself addressed how plurality of approaches does not equate to literally all possible approaches being valid, nor does it exclude the existence of toxic communities one must be aware of. The simple point I was making is that Pathfinder, by inviting its players to look at life through the lens of different characters with drastically different worldviews, invites people to consider different perspectives, including different ways of reaching the same thing. Again, the intense feeling some people get from a powerful religious sermon is the same feeling some people, sometimes the very same people, get when they fall in love, or when they connect deeply with a work of art. This is something Pathfinder can help implicitly convey when the game does something like allow both divine characters like Clerics and occult characters like Bards spur someone to heroism, the spell. Different paths, same result.
All of which is to say: roleplaying games, by their very nature, allow players to not only abstract and articulate complex concepts, but embody them through roleplay and experiment with them in a safe creative space. While not literally every concept in Pathfinder ought to be taken uncritically and at face value, the game is very much designed to convey pluralism of experiences and perspectives, and does so in a variety of surprisingly smart and sometimes beautiful ways. The emotional connection one person seeks through faith, another can find by entirely different means, and what faith even looks like varies tremendously from person to person, even among people of similar beliefs. This is very much a game about finding your own path among many, and while as said before, StarDragonJenn's personal journey is one where most of the legwork will be done in real life with hopefully the help of therapy and personal support, Pathfinder and its many constituent elements can serve as useful tools to play, experiment, and connect with independently of that.
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I have to say, of the four tradition-essays presented in Secrets of Magic, the one on Divine magic was by far my least favourite. Admittedly, this is perhaps my bias toward rational approaches and knowable things more suited to Arcane (although my favourite essays were the Primal and Occult), but for a series of essays that are supposed to be a look into how these casters approach their traditions of magic, the Divine treatise was notably lacking in any kind of sense of how the magic worked.
And I get that maybe "how does it work" is an inherently antithetical ask of the tradition most rooted in the essences of faith and intangible things, but even that being the case I was somewhat disappointed that this opportunity to talk about the specifics of divine magic was spent on a Nethysian zealot saying esentially "Nethys is great, don't gotta explain anything" - particularly from the perspective of my headcanons on clerical divine magic and the training it requires even with an external entity handling at least some of the load of spellcasting (after all, you don't gain divine magic just by believing in a god hard enough--there's clearly some manner of work to it).
---
Incidentally, I have been studying a little of historical polytheism lately for interest, and while one of the pillars of the Divine tradition is 'faith' (often interpreted to mean belief without knowledge, but I find this view simplistic), I think one could do well attempting to read a certain amount of the Roman "Do ut des"--what I assume the 'transactional' comments are referring to above--into the clerical relationship. "I give, that you might give" - gods are like super powerful neighbours who can and will do things for you if you do things for them and foster good relations.
Further, I want to reinforce the idea that Pathfinder gods are a lot more like pre-packaged philosophies. Belief in one of these fantasy gods isn't to me so much a matter of "this is the best, strongest, wisest etc god" (or even "this god is the right one or real one") but rather "I stand for the things this god believes in." Maybe there are plenty of faithful (maybe even clerics) out there who chose to follow Sarenrae because she's Sarenrae, but I suspect just as many if not more choose to follow Sarenrae because they value the things she values--kindness, healing, fighting evil, and redemption--as good things that make their lives tangibly better. Probably most people value these things and Sarenrae as a result of their upbringing, but even if/when the clergy is corrupt, Sarenrae removes their connection--she doesn't expect obedience, she expects followers to live kind, merciful lives and to put a stop to cruelty where they find it.
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I'm an atheist but I can't say I've ever had issues playing Clerics or other Divine casters. Probably because Golarian deities bear no resemblance to Judeo-Christian religions.
That said, there are other options for divine casters besides Cleric. There are divine bloodline Sorcerers, Oracle, and Animist. So, don't feel like you have to play a Cleric if you want to be a divine caster.
If you do still want to be a Cleric, then I recommend choosing a Chaotic God and pay special attention to their edicts and anathema.
I'd suspected you were applying an "angry atheist" template as your interpretive lens, and now you've now verified it. You've repeatedly asserted I have trauma even after I'd explicitly described my religious experiences as positive and gave an example of how as an atheist I'd hosted dozens of multi-belief discussions at a church. Can you imagine Hitchens doing such a thing? My atheism stunned more than a few believers there after I'd helped them hash out their beliefs and how to express them. To reiterate, no trauma. I feel lucky (especially when reflecting w/ others), some might even say blessed. :-P
SDJenn introduced the concept of trauma. In seclusion I would have inquired more before running with that ball, but that's invasive in a public forum much less as a stranger.
I found it awkward when you asserted I'd commented on science then provided quotes about epistemology. It's natural to mix the two, but to me science is a more rigorous subset of the other. And since we're dealing with personal matters, science itself does seem a bit off topic. Yet faith interacts with epistemology, so that did seem appropriate.
Judging by when and where you plucked your quotes, we may have been (almost certainly were) talking past each other, i.e. paths of life on Earth for ourselves vs. paths of PC life on Golarion for players dabbling. I have zero qualms about Golarion religions...as long as the baddies remain in Golarion-verse. :-) (Again, a majority of my own PCs have had religions ingrained into their personalities & powers.)
Let me clarify my positions a bit. There's been confusion, thanks:
-I do find life, spirit, mind, & matter to be useful concepts conversationally whether they're real or metaphorical. Chewy.
-I find arcane = mind+matter, or the other combinations that create traditions, to be useless even as metaphors, whether discussing philosophy or worldviews, in game or out. (And as other threads have pointed out, the soundness fades when analyzed.)
-PCs interact with the traditions far more than the essences, so I don't think PF magical metaphysics are useful in discussions.
Meanwhile...
-The Edicts & Anathema provide lots of fodder to chew on, as might the deities, their histories, and their personalities. Coo beans.
-I do think RPGs can provide a safe space for exploring outside one's comfort zone, cultural bubble, and much, much more. Heck yea, therapists use RPing.
-From that, yes, Golarion/PF w/ its Edicts & Anathema (et al) can provide a proper venue for such exploration.
Yay!
-Except most tables won't bother with this stuff and at many it'd be counterproductive to try, so it's an iffy option.
-There's a limit to how much safety & distance RPing can provide, right? And when trauma or being triggered surfaces, it's time to step back from encouraging them forward. I read SDJenn's words as being in that league. IMO, such impact kinda washes away the earlier points. Time to subtract triggers from one's RPing and play on.
-So yeah, I've been dissuading the attempt to understand faith & faiths (her triggers) via RPing (her recreation). Not yet, maybe once it arises naturally or inspiration strikes.
-I also don't feel RPing can replicate how having faith feels, as opposed to "having a faith" which I believe it does well enough. If one doesn't understand the difference, I haven't the space to explain (worsened with the breadth of interpretations).
-My advice also covered personal faith, since SDJenn had expressed that she felt she might be missing out on something. I reassured her she wasn't, neither in life nor in game. I endorsed alternatives.
-Her negative views of faith are valid. A contentious position as most people have positive views of faith...which is valid for them (w/ caveats re: results & costs).
-Despite Teridax's assertions, I have felt zero religious trauma.
-I have aided people with their faith (belief system/community/culture) despite rejecting faith as a method of knowing or justification.
-My zeal comes from my familiarity with deconstruction and its rewards (et al), which perhaps has led me to overcompensate beyond SDJenn's desires. But maybe my shotgun approach will hit something useful, and maybe other somethings for other readers.
Cheers
Edit: fix spoiler tag
Edit 2: tagS :-)
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I'd suspected you were applying an "angry atheist" template as your interpretive lens, and now you've now verified it.
This is a mischaracterization. I am specifically referring to how you refer to faith as a "placebo" and "traumatized nonsense from toxic beliefs" (your words, not mine), and explicitly mentioned you were drawing from your own experience:
Earth stuff setting aside philosophy and minced words to address traumatized nonsense from toxic beliefs. Apologies for my boldness, SDJenn, it comes from experience with shedding toxic dogma in general, obviously not insight into your particulars.
Trauma does not have to be violent, and ultimately it is clear that you're setting your own experience as the gold standard here. Similarly, your mention of faith in relation to obtaining knowledge about the world is a contextualization of it in opposition to science, i.e. the method of obtaining knowledge about the world, even if the discussion of how either relate to knowledge pertains to epistemology.
Except most tables won't bother with this stuff and at many it'd be counterproductive to try, so it's an iffy option.
This is an example I think of putting one's experience over that of others. You have no empirical evidence to support your claim that "most tables won't bother" with the layers of roleplaying featured in Pathfinder's rulebooks, and judging by the small sample size of this conversation it is clear that many players recognize edicts and anathema, and specifically those of deities, as ways of engaging with different worldviews. Furthermore, the amount of page space dedicated to these edicts and anathema in the rulebooks and its expansions, with a recent one heavily focused on this with its mega-list of deities, shows the developers value this roleplaying element enough to include a lot of it in their work, and the result is a rich diversity of perspectives to draw from and experiment with, which does happen in at least some tables. There is therefore ample room for experimentation, and I don't think engaging with game material as presented and intended is counterproductive or iffy. It does not mean anyone should have to engage with this material, but it is certainly a valid option.
-There's a limit to how much safety & distance RPing can provide, right? And when trauma or being triggered surfaces, it's time to step back from encouraging them forward. I read SDJenn's words as being in that league. IMO, such impact kinda washes away the earlier points. Time to subtract triggers from one's RPing and play on.
I fully agree, as per what I've already said:
For this reason, I will say that part of what you're looking for may not necessarily come from tabletop games, at least not completely. RPGs, while sometimes therapeutic, aren't therapy, and finding that part of yourself that you feel has been taken from you is likely something that is going to have to happen with the help of someone professionally trained to assist you in untangling that complicated and deeply personal ball of emotions, memories, and trauma. However, RPGs, and in this specific case Pathfinder, can also be a space for simulating lives you didn't or couldn't live in real life: if you want to try roleplaying a Cleric whose faith drives them to become a better, more fulfilled person, you absolutely can. It doesn't even matter that Pathfinder lets you do this out of the box with its rich world: even if that richness and diversity of faiths didn't exist, it would be in your power to create your own and break that mold. It is up to you to determine what faith means to you, whether it has a place in your life, and if so what place that might be. Pathfinder can give you roleplaying prompts for characters whose faith aligns with what you want from it, and can set the stage to express that faith through your character, but it can't tell you what that faith will look like, nor which one is the right one. In fact, it does the opposite: there is no one true faith; it is up to you to choose your own.
It feels like throughout this exchange you've been mischaracterizing me as attempting to push faith onto a person who's been hurt by it; I'm not. I don't think anyone should have to pick a Cleric or any character of faith, regardless of their upbringing. You also seem to be addressing a straw man argument wherein people are advocating roleplay as therapy, when nobody has done anything of the sort, and this has in fact been discouraged.
But ultimately, all of this discussion is about you, when that's not the center of focus here. If StarDragonJenn doesn't want to play a Cleric, that is absolutely valid.
StarDragonJenn: what you're saying makes a lot of sense. No matter the tenets being presented for any particular deity, approaching faith using the structure of organized religion may not be the best way to go about it, because these fictional religions invite us to draw parallels with real-life clergies, and the main parallel you have to draw from unfortunately is a toxic structure that has hurt you and that you've escaped from. It may therefore not be the right way for you to explore faith in roleplay, in that case, and the same would apply to the Champion class.
In this respect, I have a couple of questions, if that's okay: is faith of some description still something you're interested in exploring in a roleplaying context? If so, have you considered character classes whose faith doesn't fit the structure of a clergy? The Animist and Druid, for instance, are both characters who deal with faith and spirituality, except the Animist communes with various spirits much like one would talk to a relative (and, in fact, some apparitions are your relatives), whereas the Druidic faith answers to no god in particular, and is instead about embracing the natural world, even the entire Universe, in a variety of ways. In both cases, you needn't follow a god at all, and in the case of the Animist in particular you'd follow no rites or structures, no class-specific edicts or anathema, and would interact with apparitions entirely on your own terms. Depending on how central you want this to be to your character, you can even just play literally any class, and give them a facet of druidic or animistic beliefs, even if they're not a part of their mechanics.
The flipside to this is that you could also try exploring a character who doesn't operate on faith at all: if so, you might be interested in the fictional nation of Rahadoum, which was once ravaged by religious wars and swore since to live completely independently of the worship of any god. Not only did the nation prosper under this philosophy, known as the Laws of Mortality, they actually made significant advances in medicine and alchemy as a result, as other nations too often rely on Clerics to provide healing. Depending on what you're looking for, this could provide a different way of approaching certain people's way of life, while also potentially exploring how faith is more abstract than deities or religion, and can take on a variety of forms even among people who don't worship a god at all.
That's actually a fantastic character concept! A lot of people like playing Champions because of how committed they are to a deity's cause, but a character who passes up the opportunity to become a deity's Champion, despite aligning with the core of their beliefs, in order to figure stuff out on their own makes for a lot of beautiful nuance and complexity. If the Oracle interests you as a class, I'd say definitely go for it, whether for this character concept or another, as their relationship to the divine is very different from that of a Cleric and they have some interesting powers of their own.
