Pieces Of God
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"and may the piece of God which passes all understand … what? Yes piece … I checked…"

Basic Information

Is there a God? What happens when we die? Why does all the matter in the universe gravitate together? Is there such a thing as a soul, and how does it fit into things? This trope tries to answer all three questions as follows: Everyone and thing has a soul, and each is a fragment of God. Consciousness is just God trying to reform himself into one coherent mass again.

This leaves one question: Why is God in pieces? Maybe he committed suicide out of boredom. Maybe he sought experiences and the only way he could do that was as fragments of himself. Maybe he was slain by a rival deity. Whatever the case, there are now fragments where there was a God.

Sources

Game and Story Use

  • After mankind has colonized most of the solar system, a conflict begins to brew between the Church of Assimilationism and numerous groups and people unwilling to countenance it The former seeks to ensure that the fragments, of God are reunified, even if they have to force those who are unwilling to join the hive mind that will ultimately result. The latter for one reason or another value their individuality or that of their members, and oppose the Assimilationist Movement wherever it shows up. So begins a fateful struggle that will decide the future of humankind.
    • Alternatively, two rival religions, one of which seeks to adsorb the pieces in the cause of apotheosis for its members and another trying to reunify the pieces to rebuild their god.
  • This fits pretty well into the Monist worldview - that of an underlying unity to everything ("there is one, only one and but one saith Kabir") and separation between things is only an illusion.
  • It would also fit with the shamanistic teachings of people like Carlos Castaneda, who perceived the human soul as a fragment of something greater that had the ultimate purpose of reuniting with the whole.
  • For a radically different approach (and perhaps a variation on Gods need prayer badly) the deities themselves are not merely creations of human belief, but accretions of human souls - rather than being prayed into existence the gods are made of the souls of their believers.
    • This would also explain the apparent tendency of deities to "evolve" from more primitive forms - for example the worship of fire as a principle becomes first personalised and then anthropomorphised: given a name, then imagined as a fiery god, then a human-like "god of fire" and then, maybe a deity of some other kind who happens to rule over fire… all as iterations of the same religion.
  • Perhaps it was the act of creation that fragmented the Creator - in order to work on such a broad task he had to subdivide himself so as to be able to do many things at once. When he was done he found himself unable to reform properly and so entered into humans seeking to create a mechanism to re-unify his scattered parts.
    • Alternatively, god was reincarnated as humanity and now struggles to re-unify itself.
    • So perhaps demons are spiritual predators, seeking to capture and consume parts of the divine essence before they can re-join into something to big to bite.
  • Would also work if someone had murdered god - possibly a better fit to a polytheistic setting with pieces of a god … the implications of taking out the omnipotent creator of everything are mind boggling, but a lesser power might potentially be killable. Especially with the assistance of its peers.
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