scrape_r_rational/data/cache/2pmsbs.md

[Q][D] Does anyone know of fiction positing a purely secular world?

Post:

A world where religion has either died out or never appeared to begin with.

Comments:

• u/BekenBoundaryDispute:

  [*The Invention of Lying*](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1058017/) is the first thing that comes to mind. [Spoiler: ](#s "Though it doesn't last.")
  

  • u/None:

    It was an interesting movie, probably under-appreciated, but I feel like the sudden shift in attention to the "Creating a religion" aspect of it was a waste of a really cool idea. Especially when the protagonist used his skill to do better at his job, by creating fake stories from history. It felt nice and rational, like he was really being creative with his ability.
    

• u/aeschenkarnos:

  JRR Tolkien's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are almost completely devoid of overt religion. People engage in ritual behaviours, and there are clear supernatural events going on, however there seem to be no characters with the social role of priests (except *maybe* the Wizards to some extent), and commonplace religious activity like praying and worshipping, wearing religious symbols, making reference to divine entities etc is absent from the story.
  
  I'm aware that the Silmarillion and other works expand on the Middle Earth pantheon, however in the two major books, the world might as well be completely secular.
  

  • u/Solonarv:

    It's also debatable whether gods existing *as a matter of fact* makes the world non-secular.
    

    • u/aeschenkarnos:

      Good point; but there is no *reverence* expressed in those stories. It's like the way we view black holes bigger than our solar system: a moment of "whoa, dude" contemplating it, and then we get on with our lives. To religious folks, their religion is front-and-centre and they think about it multiple times daily.
      

  • u/Jinoc:

    Elbereth is the name of a divinity, and her name is used a number of time as a battle cry against evil.
    

• u/ulyssessword:

  I have a feeling that it shows up *incidentally* a lot, but I can't think of anything that *focuses on* the lack of religion.
  

  • u/MadScientist14159:

    It would be hard to focus on lack of religion for obvious reasons.
    
    "Hey, are you religious?"
    
    "The fuck does 'religious' mean?"
    
    "No idea."
    

    • u/ulyssessword:

      Hard, but not impossible.  The Bayesian Conspiracy of EY's is quite obviously religious-like, but equally obviously non-religious.  If someone were to make a novel with a similar premise I could call it focusing on the lack of religion.
      
      Another scenario would be sci-fi forensic anthropologists examining extinct religions in the context of their own (secular) world.  If you're willing to stretch the definition of "secular" than it could also be fantasy anthropologists comparing our current religions (that don't work) to their own rigorously tested religion-like systems.  
      
      There's also a lot of room for dystopias.  Simply make everyone part of one specific cult or ideology and have typical religions expressly banned.
      

• u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer:

  Is it religious to obey the commandments of obviously superior beings who regularly and provably walk among people, influencing daily events directly? Does worshiping processes and ideals, such as money, honor, or freedom count? What does "world" mean? Earth? Is this no mentions of religion occurring at all?
  
  Lots of wiggle room here.
  
  Most sci-fi books (especially the "hard" ones, and many from the golden age) feature purely secular worlds, as their writers were much more likely to be interested in the secular aspects of society than ~~boring~~ other genre fiction writers usually are. Gods and religion are usually not mentioned in short stories about a first FTL journey, for example. That's where I'd look for discussions of pure secular societies, though a lot of fantasy counts in a looser sense.
  

• u/MoralRelativity:

  Star Trek? (The Federation, anyway.)
  

• u/Ardvarkeating101:

  The Polity by Neal Asher.  When you can actually live forever, promises of life after death become a bit silly
  

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