Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions

"When a man ceases to believe in God, he does not begin to believe in nothing … rather, he will believe in anything"

G. K. Chesterton.

Basic Information

Often in science fiction, religion -when it shows up - is shown as a tool of control without real moral purpose. Other times an advanced civilization has given up religion as backward or primitive, although a small number of harmless fanatics may still keep to their faiths. In either case it is downplayed as a constructive element in society.

Sources

Bibliography

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions

Game and Story Use

• In the (admittedly biased) opinion of this arcanist, this attitude is a cartoonishly simplistic view of religion and that an NPC holding this view would come off as pompous and condescending.
  • Which isn't to say you couldn't pull it off.
  • In general a society will need to have a governing moral consensus to remain stable - for most of human history, this has been provided by religion (hence the tendency of the pseudo-enlightened to view it as a source of control) … where a society presumes to place itself above religion, it will need to assemble an appropriate alternative structure to replace it. We are yet to see this successfully managed, despite various attempts to replace religious doctrine with political dogma.
• As always, when introducing religious themes into a campaign use caution and make sure your players are comfortable with it.
• This attitude, whether in a society or an individual NPC, is much funnier once you drop the masquerade on them and have them scrabbling to come to terms with the supernatural.