OK, this is interesting: I just rolled a 9 on 3d6 for the next religion's God View, which means that it's an interactive monotheism. Like Mormonism and some evangelical Christianities (and, I imagine, some Judaisms and Islams, too), this religion says that there is only one God and that that one God is constantly and ongoingly actively involved in the lives of sophonts. This is “God is My Co-Pilot” and “I Have a Testimony” territory. How is this going to interact with the Spirit-Listeners' watchful eagerness to take the path the spirits of the dead have made easy? Will they be great allies on this tech-worshiping world, or will they be at each others' too-similar throats? Let's find out!
Also, the Lost Secrets of the Rose Brothers are monotheistic, meaning that this might be the successor to the previous religion, perhaps a Mormon-like and/or fundamentalist shift in the guild's teachings?
Well, rolling a flat 2d6 gives us a Spiritual Aim of 6. It appears that this is a religion focused on getting into a heavenly paradise after death. That certainly doesn't sound like anything the Rose Brothers would put forth, nixing that idea. So, is that highly-interactive God trying to get you into Heaven, trying to create situations in which you have to make that choice, or trying to prevent you from going to Heaven after you die? Those last two are more interesting to me than the first. On the one had, you have a God actively campaigning against indecisiveness, apathy, and going with the flow and on the other, you have either a malevolent God who wants to hurt everyone (a maltheism) or a benevolent God trying to save sophonts from the numbing euphoria that awaits them.
The 9 we roll on 2d6-1 gives us a point of similarity between this religion and the Lost Secrets of the Rose Brothers: both have meetings only every other month, Isheean religions don't ask for much in the way of formal worship from their members! (So far, anyway.) I get the sense that Isheean culture, whether Fraternal, Oleinikan, Jermainish, or TCI focuses primarily on the ethical and embedded elements of religion, rather than orthodoxy or ritual. Rolling an 8 on 2d6+2 merely provides more evidence, as we learn that this religion has a loose hierarchy that leaves most decisions to the local level. I'm starting to get a sense that this religion might be similar to some Mormonisms, with a strong focus toward receiving testimony from Heavenly Father, Heavenly Mother(s), and/or the angels. In the case of this science-fictive religion, the hierarchy would mostly be chosen on two bases: (1) a higher-than-average rate, comprehensibility, accuracy, and detail in the messages they receive from the divine, and (2) more importantly, their skill and creativity at incorporating the testimonies of their congregants into a guiding plan for the community as a whole. Above the local level, clergy would be receiving more testimonies and, as they rise in rank, more summaries of collections of testimonies and trying to synthesize them into a whole ~ high clergy's role is reactive, rather than proactive.
Maybe their theology is modeled on distributed computing? A syncresis of Mormonism and distributed computing? We are all the sons and daughters of God, which means that we are all components of a massive distributed algorithm designed by that God for some ineffable purpose. But how does Heaven fit into this? Ah! If we take it as a God who is creating situations in which we need to make a choice between Heaven and Hell, then each life could be a bit in the process, bit as in the technical, computer-science meaning of the term.
It seems Isheean culture as a whole sees religion as something more akin to philosophy, as we again roll a 10 for liturgical formality, resulting in those bimonthly meetings being formal study groups discussing and interpreting holy writings. As I develop this idea of a testimonial/oracular distributed theo-computing, I imagine them discussing and interpreting not only the writings of the past that laid out the foundations of their beliefs, but also the testimonies of other worshippers and communities, reflecting on how those visions intertwine with their own.
There are active efforts by this religion to acquire converts across the subsector, if not further (rolled a 4 on 2d6-2). After all, the more sophonts engaged in God's distributed computing efforts, the faster, more powerfully, and more effectively the program can run. However, certain sophont species possess nervous systems so divergent from those that devised this religion that its followers cannot see how their testimonies (if they have testimonies at all) could fit together with those of the church as a whole, and so such sophont species are left alone by the missionaries.
3d6-4 gives us hundreds of thousands of adherents to this religion. Random.org tells us that the precise number is a highly respectable 810,552. That's smaller than the remaining available population of Ishee, so I'll invert my process and roll to see what percentage of those adherents live on Ishee. 53% of them live on this planet we are creating, which comes out to 429,593 Isheeans.
Finally, we roll the dWikipedia for a seed of a name . . . how about the Beaumont Cosmological Computing System? Yeah, let's go with that, with a note that the name doesn't capture the heavy Mormon influence on the origins of the religion ~ I'm seeing it as a techgnostic take on Mormonism.
The religious landscape of Ishee so far:
4,966,607 sophonts (31% of the population) atheist/agnostic/non-religious
7,690,230 sophonts (48%) Liberty Fellowship of Spirit-Listeners (known as Fellows, Associationists, or Listeners)
6 sophonts (essentially 0%) Lost Secrets of the Rose Brothers (generally just called gerontocrats or old fogies)
429,593 sophonts (app. 2.7%) Beaumont Cosmological Computing System (generally called Beaumonters, Algorithmists, or Systemites)
2,934,918 sophonts (app. 18.3%) not yet accounted for
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