I omit religion it has no role to play because it is fundamentally a human making and therefore not fictional fulfilling.
Practically all the earliest stories ever told were “religious” in content. Myth is part of religion. I would say when anyone writes a narrative they’re doing something that is innately human; that Something I call “religious.”
So... do you mean real world or one created for my world? because my own world does have a form of semi-organized religion, it does play a part in the structure of their society and how they view the importance of the various facets of society.
That is the hard part, LOL. one MC calls it the "Religion of Individuality" but does this only because a hostile empire, and one of the main antagonists the many of my stories, has a religion that mirrors some of the worst aspects of our real world religions. And this was just a way for people to gather around a banner, and fears corruption of his own people by this wicked religion. But honestly, I have no real clue how to clearly define it, and I am pretty shy about sharing it at this time.
Definitely. I am going with a 'creation' mythology for my world, so not only do people believe in gods, but there is one out there. (Just one, some people still believe in multiple gods however.) At least two out of three MCs in current novel are religious, same basic faith but probably different 'denominations' (to use Christian terminology). Third one probably is too, but I haven't gotten to know him well enough to figure it out yet.
Probably because you assume religion is some kind of artificial manmade thing that people adhere to out of fear? I don’t know what you mean when you say “religion” do you?
Well, if I were to cut any form of religious influence from my stories I couldn't use phrases like Eye for an eye, forbidden fruit, go the extra mile, put words in ones mouth, skin and bones, straight and narrow, broken heart, etc., considering they all come from the bible. I also couldn't set them on pretty much any day of the week considering they're all named after gods, nor could it be on almost any planet in the solar system for similar reasons. Not to mention that whole good versus evil thing. There's probably more, but I'm sure you get the idea.
Because I write stories set in a 19th century American historical context, it's hard not to mention religion. However, I am not even slightly religious myself, so sometimes this is difficult for me. My main characters are not religious either, but they do pay lip service to the religions of their day, to some extent anyway. And there are a few peripheral characters in my novel who are quite religious—some of whom bring their various attitudes towards religion with them from the 'old country.' I try to take a realistic attitude toward what people would have felt towards religion, in the old west in 1886 (and somewhat earlier, in backstory terms.) Like any other time period where strict adherence to a religion wasn't required by law, there will have been people placed all along the spectrum—from having no religion at all, to having a religious belief that dominates their lives. I try to make that spectrum obvious without belaboring the point.
I agree that writers use some religious things in their stories, I also like to use. Basically three formal and heavenly religions exist; Christianity, Jewry (not Zionism) as the old religions and Islam as the last, and the source of these three religions is God. Jesus and Muses are among the five greatest messengers (Noah, Abraham, Muses, Jesus, Mohammad) of God in Islam. God sent about 124000 prophets to people in the history but the mentioned messengers are the superior of all. Buddhism or other philosophic man-made religions are something else and they are not connected to these religions of God, though the belief of the followers of these sects is respectable. So Christians, Jews and Muslims that believe in unique God can use their divinely believes in their story and also other people who follow Buddha or other characters can write a religious story based on their philosophy. But usually Jews behave secretly and they are not satisfied to reveal their religious matters and I haven't seen a Jewish write a religious story yet. I remember the only notable religious subject that Jews wrote about five decades ago, was "10 command of Muses" that few years later a movie was made based on the subject. But I have seen many stories of Christians with religious themes, wholly or partially.
@badgerjelly I don't know about artificial but it is man made and fear is essential if one is to follow/adhere to it yes. Yes religion as we now it ?!
How do you know it? Doesn’t appear to be how I know it. Like I said viewing it as “fear” based is not really the whole story - although undoubtedly a big political force used by institutional religious organizations throughout human history. Note: I make a distinction between the institute and the individual though. I started putting together my world (“fictional”) when I was about 15 yrs old. I wanted to create a living breathing world so I asked myself how I could create a fictional religion without being religious myself; how could I understand religion and create the semblance of one if I didn’t understand the machinations and origins of said fictional “religion.” Many, many years later I still find myself looking. The “fear” and “opiate of the masses” views are really no more than hasty assumptions; although they hold SOME value they do not account for the whole tangled history of the human experience and how we stumble through life gleaning the best we can from a game with no manual or rulebook. Eliade is a great source for looking below the surface of how and what “religion” is, was and maybe will come to be.
My stories take place in rather secular realms, which is pretty standard in Science Fictionlandia, tbh. As an epistemology, I was raised without it. Not actively without it, as in religion is bad, but just passively without it, as in wouldn't you rather go to the beach on a Sunday, I know I would, let's go to the beach! We just didn't do it. So while I understand it academically, I lack the appropriate glycoproteins on my cell walls to engage it in any kind of fundamental way that allows me to give it credibility. So, yeah.... No. I don't typically include it.
I have this idea that I think is interesting. In my story, two special types of people are born whenever their predecessors die. This has been going on for as long as people have existed, so they started to treat them like gods. They created this whole mythology around them and made up a religious book for each. The problem is that this reincarnation thing doesn't have any higher purpose, it's just the way they work. Both people are just normal people, except they start out a bit different than everyone else. So the cults that worship them are completely bogus.
Religion is pretty central to my current story, an urban fantasy set in the modern day. The essence of it is that the protagonist is strongly atheist (after being raised Muslim), but then encounters supernatural-seeming events, and people who subscribe to an explanation for those things rooted in Christian teachings. She holds that the events are due to natural laws that are not fully understood yet, another character attributes them to the direct will of God. My interest was to put forward both explanations without making either character look like an idiot to show the merits and for both views to have inconsistencies and things they can't entirely answer.
Any Clive Barker fans can see his religious background shine through. Weaveworld was one that really gave a nice twist to the Garden of Eden myth ... the image of Uriel still hasn’t left me!
And how are the creations of man, and the emotion of fear, NOT essential parts of fiction? (I'm not even touching on the false idea that fear is always essential for religion.)