Each of Emma Newman's Planetfall quartet explores a different aspect of the same overarching story of religious driven intergalactic migration. In Atlas Alone (2019), the fourth story centres on an elite gamer & their attempt to uncover & then take revenge for a crime against humanity. To say much more would ruin the plot for you, but as with the others, this is great, fascinating sci-fi, which has a great payoff at the end.
@ChrisMayLA6@bookstodon I'm always puzzled by galactic scale SF which as religion as a thing. Surely, one might expect, by the time any civilisation has reached galactic scale it will long since have left religion behind it?
Who knows? Not only has religion asserted its power in this century, we have also seen pseudo-religious ideologies with their messiahs, promised land, sacred texts - based on rigidly secular philosophies.
Secularism is the religion of the state. Secularism is ecumenicalism taken to its most logical extreme. It is a religion that subverts all other religions to the power of the state. Secularism was the religion of the Roman empire and remains so today.
Go into the capitol building and look up at the dome rotunda, and you will see their secular gods painted a la fresco for all to see.
@TimWardCam@ChrisMayLA6 Not necessarily. I think the greater scale has the potential to expand religion because the immense distances would reduce the potential of clash between ideologies. Looking at it historically, you can see the ways that sects of Christianity evolved and flourished when expanding from Europe to the American continents. It also proves that religion is a really good way to control masses of people. Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch books explore that a lot. @bookstodon
The sole purpose of religion is and always has been to control large masses of people.
There has never been any other purpose for religion. Take people's minds, take their labor, take their shekels. That's all it ever was for, a tyranny and a con so the worthless parasites incapable of making anything useful can leech off the masses and elevate themselves above their hosts.
Christians are especially guilty of this. Revelation says that God hates the heirarchical, pastoral grift model, calling it, 'The deeds of the oppressors of the people, which thing I hate.'
What thing is being denounced? Specifically, and exactly, what is being denounced?
Are you conflating the Bible with Christianity? The twain shall never meet.
More than half of the Bible was written and in circulation 900-1500 years before the existence of Christianity.
If you read the Bible without Christian blinders on, it is plain that the Bible condemns Christianity and all other religions as idolatry. Rather the Bible authors call men to worship God in spirit and truth without regard to a priesthood or place.
@firefly@NeadReport@fskornia@TimWardCam@ChrisMayLA6@bookstodon I mean, technically I think you mean the Torah, a book which has remained copied word for word for thousands of years without changes. The Bible is a distinct and different thing.
The point of the faith that arose from the Essene prophet Jesus, was an intentional break with covenant of the Torah, while maintaining the history of it. As in, this is from whence we came, but we bring a new message from God.
Now, I could go into the splinters therein, and the vast difference between original Gnosticism, the various enclaves, and then the absorption and mistranslated messages promulgated by organized branches of the faith, but to conflate Bible as a term to mean the Torah, but none of the Jesus stuff, is simply not true.
The Aramaic, first version of the New Testament, written in Byblos Lebanon is the origin of the term Bible.
Nonsense. The first five books of Moses are called Torah. Then there is Neviim and Ketuvim. All of them together are called in Hebrew, "Tanakh" or "Miqra". In ancient Greek they were called, 'ta biblia' or The Bible centuries before Christ and the Apostles or any of the New Testament works.
> "a book which has remained copied word for word for thousands of years without changes."
This is not even remotely close to historical and recorded fact. Who taught you this nonsense?
> "The Bible is a distinct and different thing."
Nonsense, as proved above. Greek-speaking Hebrews in the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C. called the writings of the Prophets, 'ta biblia' (The Bible) The LXX (Septuagint) refers to the writings of the prophets as, 'ta biblia'. See Daniel Chapter 9 in the LXX.
> "The point of the faith that arose from the Essene prophet Jesus ..."
Jesus is no Essene. Your claim is New-Age and Hebrew roots nonsense. It's just made-up wooey hooey.
> "As in, this is from whence we came, but we bring a new message from God."
Jesus preached the faith of Abraham, which is not a new message at all, but God's original message recorded in the Hebrew Bible. You are inventing history like the cults and heretics often do. The gospel preached by Jesus is the same gospel preached to and by Abraham well before Moses.
> "and the vast difference between original Gnosticism"
Gnosticism is satanism. End of discussion. Jesus was not a gnostic. The Pharisees and Greco-Roman nobility were gnostics of the school of the Hellenes.
> "but to conflate Bible as a term to mean the Torah, but none of the Jesus stuff, is simply not true."
I have conflated nothing. You're the one conflating things wrongly. You misuse the word, "Torah", which applies only to the Pentateuch of Moses, when you should be using the Hebrew word, Tanakh. But the problem with your false theory is that millions of Hebrews in ancient times didn't speak or read Hebrew. Rather they spoke and wrote Greek, the language of the Septuagint, which is how they started calling the Tanakh "The Bible" instead.
> "The Aramaic, first version of the New Testament, written in Byblos Lebanon is the origin of the term Bible."
This is based on the spurious "Aramaic Original New Testament" theory, and it has exactly zero historical or archaelogical support. And this theory is 400 years too late, since Greek-speaking Israelites had already been calling the Tanakh, 'ta biblia' for 300-400 years before any Aramaic New Testament manuscripts appeared.
Some people hate the gospel of grace so much they will go through years and ages of mental gymnastics to re-write history in support of a works-based gospel that glorifies their, 'superior knowledge'. Thereby the Judaizing or gnostic "believer" can take center stage in the salvation story with his self-aggrandizing superior rationale. Salvation is by simple faith in the Messiah as our sacrifice for all sin, not by some superior hidden knowledge. Paul the Apostle made a fine point of this truth.
In sum: Ancient Jews did call the Tanakh, 'ta biblia' or "The Bible." In fact, many bible scholars insist on calling it specifically, "The Hebrew Bible" to be accurate and consistent. Judging by your claims, you don't know what you are talking about. Take a step back and think things through before you accept such sectarian and gnostic theories as fact. I recommend you read the entire Bible two or three times through, then read several tomes on textual criticism and philology before you read another single line of theological or historical claims.
@TimWardCam@ChrisMayLA6@bookstodon have you read the Hyperion books by Dan Simmonds, there are several very interesting takes on religions and how they could come about in space.