Ijad Atheists

[Grass4hopper]

Do they exist? Could they realistically exist in the current time?

I understand that Ijad culture is heavily revolved about their core beliefs.

There are human atheists from human cultures that center(ed) strongly (currently or in the past) around the major human religions. While humans and Ijad are different species with different physiology and psychology, it seems that some Ijad could eventually become atheists.

That would be interesting to see how Ijad would act if they stopped believe their core beliefs.

[Soren]

Short reply because I'm headed out the door: Are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?

[gusindor]

In humans, you often can't tell someone's religion unless you ask them. Except for the ones who get all up in your face about it, but they don't count. The point is, someone's religion doesn't normally have that big an effect on their behavior. Their values, morals etc. might have religious origins, but in the end it's independent of religion.

Ijad are able to think for themselves, so at least occasionally there must be some who question their religion. Whether their society accepts that is another matter entirely, and probably depends on the specific tribe of Ijad.

[mraichelson]

Do they exist? Could they realistically exist in the current time?

I understand that Ijad culture is heavily revolved about their core beliefs.

That would be interesting to see how Ijad would act if they stopped believe their core beliefs.

Many thoughts here may end up being particularly personal and any discussion around some of these areas seems like it's ripe for heading into troubled waters. So let's strap on some helmets and promise to be friendly about it and dig in then...

If you dice up the Ijad religion (or most of them in general, IMO) I tend to see there as being four buckets of stuff that comes back out of it: Dogma, History, Moral code, Affectations/actions.

Dogma: "The giant space blob Sprillborg sneezed out the universe and everything in it."

History: "We used to live over there, but it snowed too much. Eventually we moved over here. We are happy to spend less time shoveling."

Moral code: "Killing {sentient member of species} is bad, don't."

Affectations/actions: "Because Sprillborg sneezed out the universe, we wear hats shaped like noses on alternating Tuesdays and odd-numbered Thursdays."

Now, being an atheist doesn't necessarily mean throwing all of those buckets of stuff out. Dogma and Affectations are really the main things to get jettisoned. Most moral code stuff is usually A- pretty much common sense ("Yeah, that guy cut you off in traffic. No, don't kill him."), B- relatively inert in terms of its affect on other things. By and large "the past is the past" and always ends up colored by whoever was the one who wrote it down so the historical aspect of it isn't something that needs to be chucked but it may be considered of questionable authenticity (particularly if you're lumping historical records into specifically religious or otherwise non-verifiable content: "This is the part where Harry Potter defines how our tax code should work and why.").

Roughly I think the answer to what you're asking is sort of along the lines of this (Ijad or not): "Because I choose not to believe [Dogma] or take part in [Affectation] does not mean that I automatically {reject/oppose/seek to destabilize or destroy} the stated [Moral code] or [History]."

If this is around the "no rule from afar" aspect of the Ijad religion then that sounds to me like "We [Affectation] because [History]" which was then sort of codified as part of their religion based on History being distributed as part of the same book. Choosing not to believe in the Ahu creation myth doesn't entirely mean needing to reject the remote-rule concept, but not feeling constrained by it (and the rest of the accompanying religion) would mean having the option of rejecting it.

So, yeah, being an atheist Ijad: possible.

Would you be able to live (in general) in Ijad society: yeah, probably. (But if there is some sort of "nose shaped hats on tuesdays" affectation you refuse to take part in you'd probably get plenty of side-eye or more extreme repercussions depending on the society.)

Would you want to get into detailed political or religious debates: probably not.

[Grass4hopper]

Many thoughts here may end up being particularly personal and any discussion around some of these areas seems like it's ripe for heading into troubled waters. So let's strap on some helmets and promise to be friendly about it and dig in then...

I'm not an atheist personally, and generally don't discuss my personal spiritual beliefs on the internet, because . . . it's the internet ; ) That being said I am not offended by anything you said (or are likely to say), and mostly agree with your breakdown of the most belief structures.

I agree that a atheist Ijad wouldn't necessarily reject the 'rule from afar' moral code just because they reject the dogma originally behind it. However I can also see some atheist Ijad rejecting the 'rule from afar' moral code too. I can potentially see a group of like minded atheist Ijad forming large groups, alliances, small empires.

Again I don't necessarily see this happening, but I see it as potential.

[Soren]

I agree that a atheist Ijad wouldn't necessarily reject the 'rule from afar' moral code just because they reject the dogma originally behind it. However I can also see some atheist Ijad rejecting the 'rule from afar' moral code too. I can potentially see a group of like minded atheist Ijad forming large groups, alliances, small empires.

Well, keep in mind that both the definitions of 'rule' and 'afar' are above all flexible...

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Religion is a cultural institution that might include a requirement of its adherents to declare a belief. Many do not. The Ijad religion has no real center; it's a set of mythologies that more-or-less agree, along with a varieties of systems of ethics that have obvious common cultural ancestors. Whether or not they believe in God — remember, God for them is a giant eyeball in the sky — is only a little interesting, and is certainly waaaay down the list of things that are interesting about a religion.

Nowhere in any discussion of the Ijad have I mentioned that they have a fetish for declarations of belief. They have a mythology and a set of ethics. They interact with them in complex ways, like all humans do with all religions. Some of them are xenophobic whackjobs (Armored-Of-God, I'm looking at you) that use their religion as an excuse for their behavior. Others laugh at superstitions, while unintentionally following through on the values that their mythology has communicated to them. While others spend too much time studying planetary dynamics to believe that what is obviously a gas giant is actually a god that has a personal interest in their moral decisions.

They still don't like taking orders from people they don't know, of course. It would just be wrong.