Grass4hopper wrote:Do they exist? Could they realistically exist in the current time?
I understand that Ijad culture is heavily revolved about their core beliefs.
Grass4hopper wrote: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.