Well, I don't want to derail this thread, and it's been years since I watched the series, but just for starters ...you've got people worshipping Greek gods, eating sushi, driving jeeps and calling each other 'hot dog', etc ...which would all be semi-believable if they had all been colonies that went into space from present-day earth (where we know about greek gods, eat sushi and hot dogs and drive jeeps). Oh, they've even got cats and Border collies. But it turns out no, they're not from earth at all. Earth was only one of the colonies; Caprica was another. Caprica was a sister colony of earth, not a child colony. Since Greek gods, sushi, jeeps, pussycats, collies etc all developed on earth—and these colonists' ancestors never came from earth—the likelihood of both of them developing exactly the same items, religions and pets in a galaxy far far away seems ...inconsistent. This was all 'explained' (at the end) by "everything that has ever happened before will happen again an infinite number of times." Well that's a load of crap to swallow. Where's the evidence for that honking theory? Okay, it sounds good, but wtf.
But that's not religion as a theme, is it? That's just an implausible premise. Bee tee dubs, that theory is correct, it's just that application of understanding probability is over an enormous spance of time and space. It doesn't just happen willy-nilly, it's merely a possibility that will eventually come again after enough billions of years or perhaps now but forty five thousand star-systems away.
In at least two books that I have read (actually one book and one set of books) gods exist because we make them exist. In these stories, the gods therein were not fictions, not just stories, they were very real within the text of the story, but they don't create us; we create them. In one of these books, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, the gods in question are central to the story. The other set of books is the Wraeththu series by Storm Constantine. The gods in this set of stories are much less central to the story arc, but again, it is made clear through the tell of the tale that the gods exist because we believe them into existence, not the other way around. When you have a central mythos that allows for this concept then any god is valid and is no more or less valid than the god conjured up by another group. ETA: @Iain Aschendale, I just read back through the thread and saw you also mentioned American Gods for the same reason.
In case of Supernatural, I've understood Christianity is the major religion in North-America, so, I don't know, probably explains why it's in the center of a TV show made by Americans and Canadians. It's also the "safest" religion to butcher because the makers were probably either most familiar with it or Christians themselves. However, it did bug me that Christian god was suddenly the one true god. Sure, I kind of saw it as the result of the Christian god being the most popular god people believe in in the world right now and that made him the biggest badass in the block, but I can't remember if the amount of believers correlated with the power the gods have in Supernatural's canon. I wish they had done more with the other deities, though. I'm an atheist, so religions are to me basically mythologies, so if you implement them into your stories, I see them as such. I mentioned Glen Duncan's I, Lucifer in another thread, and its treatment of Christianity was witty and hilarious. For me that was urban fantasy. To some, however, incorporating the Christian god or Allah / Jesus or Mohammed as characters into a fictional story can be very offensive, so you have to decide if you can deal with the criticism your story may draw from religious people.
And that was it? The premise of the show? Nope, sorry, don't buy it. The writers of the show themselves admitted they were just flying by the seat of their pants. The original premise, the useful one, about how we treat sentience that we create, and when does a machine become a human, just got left in the welter of quasi-religious waffle.
@Wreybies I was also going to mention American Gods by Neil Gaiman, and the Wraeththu series by Storm Constantine although I have only just started reading that series. This is a strong topic and I'm very much interested in it but don't have much of a view myself, or should I say, I think I'm too much of a novice to have a view and don't want to offend anyone! I believe it's up to the writer what they put in their story as long as they are happy with it. I don't mention religion in my story but I do have 'Christmas' and 'Hallowe'en' is a big part of my story, but they are not Christian or er....pagan? (Is Halloween Pagan?) I was also brought up with a religion that sheltered my life from the outside world and pushed away anyone that wanted to be my friend who wasn't the same religion, and when I eventually left I lost all my friends in that religion, even my mum was told not to talk to me but thankfully she overlooked it and supported me throughout! So I have some bitterness surrounding religion.
*Shakes the cup* Yahtzee. Oh wait, there wasn't any dice in that cup. I dislike all organized religion. I dislike some more than others. I dislike theology, but am a fan of mythology. Spirituality to me means trying to be a better person -- I could care less about the spirit part. I've watched Supernatural and read The Dresden Files (/watched a few episodes) and really gave it little thought. I care soooo little about anything religious that it's all just a side-note. Angels are bad. Makes sense. Fallen angels after all.... Christian god 2.0 is all powerful, odd he ever had any competition. Maybe he just doesn't care, hell he gets my worship vote. It's just too hard for me to take religion seriously. Plenty of bigoted hate-filled Christians who oppose other religions, but can't open a history book and realize Christianity was adapted from a mix of "conquered" pagan religions. For God's sake even the "only worship me" is just a man-made advent to dissuade from practicing other beliefs. Power, money, control. My honest opinion? Who cares. All religion becomes antiquated eventually. Another 1000 years and people will laugh saying their ancestors confused angels for ancient aircraft while they themselves bodily fly. I mean... consider the image of an angel. Human in form, yet with gift of flight albeit wings. Back then... flying was godly, I.E. closed to heaven. The "light" is reference to the sun as being the most "powerful" force of nature/life. Science just makes it all seem silly. Then comes the overcompensating explanations and vague meanings assigned to continue justifying any relevance. Blah... Ranting. I promote spirituality, but disregard theology except as a slightly curious bystander. Religion in works? Whatever. Prefer to not have it at all, but it doesn't ruin anything for me.
Halloween is pagan adopted by Christianity as part of one of it's campaigns to slowly turn pagan ideas into Christian faith. In this case, the Celtic culture of West Europe, obviously particularly Britain.
I don't really want this to turn into a religious debate, but it's at least worth noting that some of your conceptions about Christianity are *mis*conceptions, or at least make the most condescending assumptions possible. 'Only worship me' is pretty explicitly not a man-made concept, it's in the bible, it's the very first of the Ten Commandments. You could say that, as an atheist, you belie everything in the Bible was man-made, but at that point we're arguing semantics. It's not some concept that was made up after the fact. (The Trinity was conceived later, though.) Also, Angels weren't drawn with wings because being in the sky was somehow closer to God, they were given wings because artists needed a way for viewers to tell Angels apart from men, and they're described as appearing in the sky sometimes. It's the same reason why Saints always have a glowing Halo, and later on why Jesus has a blue sash: An artistic conceit to make the action clear. And no, there's no reason to believe that the "Light" references in the Bible were any kind of weird, neo-Sun Worship. Considering that the metaphor of "Dark = Bad, therefore Light = Good" already has an obvious, clear message, it's just a huge stretch to assume extra steps in the middle there that don't need to exist and don't have any evidence to exist. Occam's Razor and all.
I've been avoiding this thread. I should have stayed away. Dresden Files are awesome! Jim Butcher is my god.
I, of all people, understand the desire to argue, and I know your trying to be restrained, but let's not debate the nuances of religious inspiration here, please. Otherwise I will call a mod, especially given @ToBeInspired's tone. Unfortunately, it's not going to end well, even if it doesn't turn into a flat-out atheist v christian thing, just this specific bit could still be sensitive. (@ToBeInspired religious people can be sensitive since their beliefs are very emotional for them, don't provoke them like that on a shared thread about writing advice, go to the debate room and do it respectfully.)
I don't really write urban fantasy, so my ability to address the OP is a little limited. However, I'll say that this matter is one reason why I don't typically set stories in the real world. Fantasy, in a broad sense of the term, lets you do a lot of things and frees you from a lot of rules. So I'd rather take things, put my own spin on them, and work them into a secondary world. Setting it in the real world brings back a whole host of problems, including the previously mentioned problems of mangling myths and offending folks if you assert one belief system as true. I don't openly declare a true religion in my secondary worlds, either. And deity level powers aren't openly active. To me, having those things out in the open destroys the...uncertainty and tension around them. You can wring a lot of conflict and character development out of religious conflicts, crises of faith, faith-based redemption, etc., but that fades if the audience knows who's right and wrong. Yes, you can get great stories out of settings where the truth is common knowledge, but the tension is of a different sort. That's not to say I won't every touch on real world myths in a real world setting. One story, the only one I've gotten accepted so far, features a creature from Ponca and Omaha legend (the Taxti Wau aka Deer Woman) as the main antagonist. But her existence doesn't mean much to the protagonist on the religious front. He can easily rationalize his tribe's legends about the creature as describing some form of demon, which is made even easier by the legends treating such creatures as rather malevolent. But I don't ever intend to reach up to deity-level and say something is definitely true in-universe.
I will mention that I wasn't so much offended or upset as I was annoyed. I argue just as fervently over plot holes and movie preference, it just bothers me when people get the subject matter they're talking about wrong. Allon-sy... @X Equestris, I rather agree. My WIP does have a "Correct" religion, but it's impossible for a layperson to tell one way or the other since the gods' impact on the world at large is pretty minor to the casual viewer. (They play by the butterfly effect.) If this works i to a series they will eventually become major players, but even knowing about them it's not clear which religion is 'True', since they never name themselves and could fit several religions' descriptions of angels, demons, or demigods.
I get what I said could be offensive to some people. I don't persecute anyone for their beliefs, gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. I expect the same freedom in my own personal opinions. Not trying to start any arguments, but if you ever throw a dinner party the two subjects to avoid are politics and religion.
