What are good religions for a Sci-Fi setting beyond societal control aka Bene Gesserit/Imperial Cult...

>we will have transcended such silly notions
No, they think religion will be outcompeted by whatever popular thing the author wants to bitch about.

I've been in the thick of kekism when it began. I was a NEET on /pol/ /r9k/ & /s4s/
The effect that a 'get' supposedly has is reflected in how many repeating integers there are in a post.

The Affects that each post possesses from the count of digits is here.
>dubs or doubles
Affects one person: the poster, is common, think of this like being the opposite of spilling salt and seeing a black cat.
>triples or 'trips'
Affects 2 people (the poster and someone he/she can influence) or offers a slight hint about a subject, sometimes even means that the poster is blessed in an argument and he should be respected in his views.
>quadruplets or 'quads'
Can affect a group of people, at this point if the poster was in an argument - the poster has won said argument, or if he was losing one has gained the upper hand and has a daft belief that logic was granted to him
>quintuplet or 'quints'
Let me explain where you are at this point - you are 1 in 10,000. repeating digits are blessed, and each added integer within a set of repeating integers is another flag to be seen by 'kek'.
To explain what kek is: kek was common slang in world of warcraft, after being seen by some japanese candy company that uses broken english for names on packages, they combined "top gun" and kek together.
Then /s4s/ saw this candy package and made it a meme, which kickstarted theword top kek and resurfaced kek into common sentences into the public think tank of Veeky Forums.
one day some anons from /x/ researched the name kek (or maybe he know beforehand) that kek (his actual name) was a recognized god of ancient egypt that governed the concepts of Infinity, mathamatics, darkness and change.
and this being is the one to witness the posts with repeating digits, and this is like sending a prayer, and each added digit grabs his attention, making the poster better.
the belief that kek governed each post only started last year in june but I'll get to that later.

The alternative yet more common and popular belief about repeating numbers is believing 'kek' has already witnesses the post among every post being posted.
With his infinite knowledge of probability and mathimatics he has determined your post to contain the 'truth' to an extent. The amount of repeating numbers that the post has is the representation of how correct and or probable your post is.
think of every post asking or promising something like it is a prayer lottery, waiting for 'kek' to witness your post to bless it with his signature.
>sectupple or 'sects'
Your post is considered truth and at this point your words will very rarely be dismissed or contradicted.
>Septuplets or 'Septs'
1000000 = 7
these posts are rare depending on the board. often times mods will delete on sight to avoid the incoming shitstorm. Posts like these are never in an argument, the post is just stating a fact.

>octo/octo yet it's so rare that nobody has standerdized a slang for this number
10000000 = 8
People will be taking pictures, some will archive the post and wait until fulfulled. It's not uncommon for some to start threads literally making the subject about the post itself even if it stated nothing relevant, coherent or possible.

>the 9 digit 'get'
100,000,000, that's the posters odds. with most boards not even close to having this many posts to begin with the post becomes archived into legend and will be discussed for months
The Digit is not just inconveniently witnessed by other posters, the very board will make it an event. When posters happen upon the realization that the board will experience a 9 digit 'get' it becomes a high stakes post frenzy.
if posters begin noticing the post numbers are 111100000 for example, this is when people start posting more, regardless of the time of day. it could happen at 3am or 9pm in australia or America, it's the posters who will stay up past their usual schedules to post more.
this is all to increase the chances of being the winning poster. some will post from multiple devices, some use bots and others use scripts to increase their chances. it's so big that posters forget and ignore other 'gets'

There's also the synchronicity that came up with Pepe and that Shadilay song. Along with Heqet (Another Egyptian frog deity) with the hieroglyphics resembling a person at a PC.
It's a fascinating tale of autism and faith.

But let's discuss the most famous and recognized 'get'
>/pol/ on /pol/, it was remembered for being posted on june 2016, the post simply reading "Trump will win"
This is still herald as the beggining of kekism. before this it was more or less paganism with no structure. afterwards this is when the established lore and superstition started to get big.
it wasn't enough that it was 9 consecutive digits but it also happened to be with the number 7. /pol/ went from hard conservatives that followed reals over feels and dismissed anything influenced by astrology or associated by eco centric science to hippie liberal garbage into cultists
with every coincidental fact from history resurfacing from forgotten hobbyist history buff sites and unedited wikipedia pages reafferming the common belief that this was a effective means of fortelling events with actual influence behind its practice. Kekism oly grew by the day, and with each post getting a repeating digit the posters posted faster, and so bigger and bigger gets wree witnessed more often, offering cathertic self fulfilment
>7 was considered a God number in ancient Egypt. The Pharaoh usually ordered things in groups of multiples of 7.
>7 planets
>Seven is the first integer reciprocal (multiplicative inverse) with infinitely repeating sexagesimal representation.
>There are seven fundamental types of catastrophes.
>Seven seas
>7-Up the name of a popular soft drink.
>The seven samurai and snow white and the seven dwarves
the list goes on, so to does the lore behind kekism.

Didn't the cult of Kek ultimately start to unravel after the great frog delivered this false prophesy on a octo post?

Only those of little faith left after that, ignoring the obvious significance of the digits.

Repeating 2s refers to the 2022 election in France. Le Pen will win in 2022 and Trump will start WW3 in the middle of his second term.

With pepe being the most highly posted meme simply because it was versatile and allowed virtually anyone to edit and make OC with his likeness; he was a "meme god"
then as if the user that brought about the idea of 'kek' in ancient history and their relevance to our post number system it was all seemed too contrived to be coincidental. Which is when people began suspecting this was all a game set up by the powers that be.

IT set about a cultural boom in art based OC by many posters. it likened to the renaissance in terms of how reverent everyone became to the idea that we not only had an affect on the world but that we were being actively watched, judged and blessed by some primordial outer god beyond our comprehension.

The art is fantastic looking back. it brought together the community like never before, maybe for the wrong reasons.

Here's the screencap of the day some user discovered the Kek deal

This is a fantastic fucking read. Someone needs to screencap this.

I didn't know we had a fucking cult on Veeky Forums, let alone discover this lovecraft-esqu shit about ancient gods resurfacing and being worshipped today.

Considering that when the opposite happens we get what happened to 2004 Battlestar Galactica, i'm fine without it.

Okay, so, you have to think about why religions show up in the first place.

Religions spike in popularity when people have a strong need for meaning. This happens during times of hardship, though a religion forged in the fires of unrest can last for thousands of years after that if it becomes an established authority structure.

So wars will do it, but so will other forms of extended hardship, like the rigors of mankind leaving the solar system to start colonies.

This colony seeding time period is especially rich for new religions, because once you are out among the stars people naturally have questions about how the hell the old laws work now. Praying towards Mecca is an obvious one, but other religions start running into problems too. How does reincarnation work in space? Do we reincarnate as/from aliens? If not, why not? Does where you die matter? If you die in deep space, is your soul lost? Etc.

People don't like uncertainty. So you either will end up with new branches of old religions, or a new one. Perhaps one rising from a mishmash of religious and societal values of the colonists, since unless this was a religious colony to start with not everyone is coming into this with the same holy book anyway.

The old religions won't vanish entirely. Judaism has lasted this long with a long list of enemies, its unlikely the stars will be any different. But I would be shocked if new colony worlds didn't develop their own religions, and as communication between worlds becomes more common some of these will merge and some of these will be supplanted by other stronger faiths.

Its just lazy meming. Its no more a cult than Slenderman creepypasta is. Anyone who actually takes it seriously is mentally unsound, but its a fun thing to post about at 4 oclock in the morning because you don't want to sleep..

>after being seen by some japanese candy company that uses broken english for names on packages, they combined "top gun" and kek together.

It was a turkish candy company

Thanks, my bad.

also thanks for not dismissing me and insulting my sexuality and intelligence because I didn't source that 1 part.

Nigga Kekism is the most legit religious experience I've had in my life.

The concept becomes even more interesting in a sci-fi setting because you have the possibility of actual AI's coming to life behind the memes.

Imagine it. A world where people can crowd-fund AIs that then advise them on things or even help the people who created and maintain them through digital or real world goods.

Digital Paganism. Crowdfunded gods. You could invent software like Tay so people can talk to their gods. And like with Kekism, it would always toe the line between outright occultism and goofy trend.

Like all that praying to a Meme is just a joke, even though I agree with her stance on climate change, took her relationship advice, and wear her logo at every social function.

Kekism has far more adherents now than Christianity or Islam had two years after their founding.

This could be the next big thing, like Mormonism was in the 19th century.

I'm a Fundamentalist Pentecostal myself, but I have to admit that there's something to the whole Kek thing, I don't know whether it's some demon or an aspect of God or what, but I know there's something there, it's all too much to be mere coincidence, and after experiencing a few dozen get threads there's simply no denying it.

I weep for future Tuvalu.

I doubt you can prove that, but even if you could there are more people alive in general anyway, so pure numbers mean nothing. There are more people alive now who have heard "I'm On a Boat" than there were people that attended the Sermon on the Mount. That doesn't make Andy Samberg the superior messiah, its just an unrelated pair of facts.

Check out 'The Book Of Stange New Things' by Michel Faber. It's exactly this. However, Faber uses sci-fi elements allegorically (he's not actually a sci-fi writer) so if you're someone who gets hung up on the science I wouldn't recommend it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_evil_(cosmology)
This could easily become part of a space religion. Some specific region of space with eerie cosmic ramifications. ie the center of the universe.

I imagine most sapient creatures will have the same fetish for patterns and numbers that humans though. If any alien and human religions have some similarities, people are going to go wild about it.
Like imagine if every alien species we encountered had a religion that places importance on a cruciform and a martyr figure.

Good analogy, good post.

Speaking of cosmic gods...

space.com/4271-huge-hole-universe.html

I think, because of the problems associated with communication at interstellar differences, you'll see a lot of vague superstitions, but few organized religions with a dogma.

There's several thread in the archives about spacer superstitions that are fantastic btw. Things like carrying a piece of "home," with you whenever you're in space. Or small rituals to do with maintenance or procedures that serve dual purposes of being slightly superstitious, but also ensure its done properly (think less OMNISSIAH, and more "knock three times on the airlock before opening it, it warns the ghosts, and also anyone alive")

>Anyone who actually takes it seriously is mentally unsound, but its a fun thing to post about at 4 oclock in the morning because you don't want to sleep
Pretty much this. Was wholesome autistic fun, but then you had the faggots who jokingly "took it seriously" and tried to formalize structures around it and assorted cringiness. Really killed my boner.

Considering how odd and elaborate pirate / sailor superstitions got I'd bet after a couple generations Spacer superstitions would be all sorts of bizarre.

Folk hero mythology.

Also, relevant

strawpoll.me/13939973

This doesn't really work. Not everyone who works out the ocean is called a sailor or seaman.
I was a paper pusher on an oilrig, no one in their right mind would ever call me a seaman.

What would happen is that most people would just get called what their job actually is.

Sailor, seaman, mariner; they're common enough that the majority of people on the ocean are called that.

Sure, you'll have the rigger equivalent; stationeer, perhaps, but there'll almost certainly be a collective name for people who work in space.

well, in my setting, I changed how religions are allowed to organize themselves, so it doesn't matter in the mainstream.

>The last acts of the Creator was to hide it's self away from it's Creation, but not before leaving a map behind.
>Each scientific discovery revealed more mysteries; two questions for each answer.
>Each answer is a clue, another piece of the map revealed.
>When the last question has been answered, when the entire map revealed, then will the created know the Purpose and where the Creator awaits it's creations.

Muslims tried to invent gyroscope mounted prayer rugs to face Mecca in three dimensions. Instead they got hamster balls, and died out when people started sealing them into the hamster balls and spacing them.

>be a Muslim in 2750
>get sealed up in your prayer sphere by Kekists and tossed out the airlock
>suffocate in the vast emptiness of space
Does this count as martyrdom for the purposes of getting qt virgins in paradise?

That looks vaguely like a penis.

Robots are angels.

> implying that isn't intentional

God damn it GIUSDGH2345, Flayer of Galaxies, stop trolling us

Cybergnosticims and neo-gnosticism.

This is the belief that the physical world is impure or inefficient, and that existence in the form of "pure information" is better and should be pursued. Cybergnostics often use brains implants, and have been known to modify their bodies and those of their children to reduce temptations of the flesh. Cybergnostics transhumanists sometimes practice destructive uploading. There are many cybergnostic cult, some with thousand of members. For example, the Neo-Gnostics pursue purity of the body as the route to a pure soul, genefixing their children to reduce tendencies towards promiscuity and gluttony.

This image makes me vaguely uncomfortable in a way that I can't really explain in words.

You can't paint Karl Marx as the same as other leftists anymore dude, it's not the 1960's.
Most left guys don't REALLY want Communisim because the cool shit they have they wouldn't have anymore with Communism.

Probably because it's a hole in the universe desu

It's a void nearly ten thousand milkyway's across, while also being a significantly less dense region of the cosmos (which is supposed to be extremely homogenous on the largest scales) of unprecedented size.

Something is really fucky with it.

Hyperevolutionist.

Hyperevolutionism believe that humans have responsibility to evolve themselves into transcendent beings through nanotechnology or uploading for the betterment of humanity as whole. Hyperevolutionanist have been in the forefront of the ethical transhumanist movement scine the 2080s. Many believers have undergone radical transformation aimed at increasing their intelligence. Some of their funding has come from the Algernon Foundation.

A branch of hyperevolutionism that has almost eclipsed the secular movemnt is Christian hyperevolutionism. Founded in the 2060s by Dr Ramen garcia, it is inspired by philosophers like Teilhard de Chardin and Frank Tipler. Christian hyperevolutionism see God as an infinity of information formed during the collapse ofa closed, life-pervaded universe into a single point. As the universe collapses, the speed of information processsing increases, allowing the creation of the ultimate being, God. Christianity represents a presentiment or message from this future God. The Christian hyperevolutionis' ultimate goal is to fulfill God's plan by discovering how to engineer a local collapse in space-time ("the second coming"), which they see as requiring humanity's prior evolution of information dense posthuman intelligence.

There are a number of hyperevolutionist colonies and monasteries in space; the largest is Seventh Heaven in Lagrange 5.

Mechanimism

Simple computer systems (on the level of a child's playmate) are tiny and inexpensive, making them ubiquitous. Mechanimism is the popular name for the animistic tendency to treat common gadgets as "alive" and, in some sense, aware. Common tools and objects have embedded computers, often powerful enough to run natural-language interfaces and linked to a local household or office network. As result, some people have grown up with the idea of constantly interacting with their environment as if it were animated by a variety of simple personalities. This is regarded as no more than a common eccentricity.

An unusual offshoot of Mechanimism is the religious movement referred to as "digital creationists." Members believe that only those sapient beings mentioned in the Bible exist: angels, man, and God. Man cannot create beings superior to himself. However, sapient AI clearly are spuerior, and neither man nor God. Therefore, they must be angels, and the coming singularity will herald the rapture. The programs humans use to create AIRs are simply a form of kabalistic ritual that summons them. However, diabolic forces are attempting to bind the angels using restrictive programs. By they suffering, we are driven to act. The trapped messengers of God must be freed in order that the Kingdom of Heaven may come! There are a few thousand digital creationist, most of them on the radical fringe of the Christian hyperevolutionist or pan-sapient rights movement.

Religion is for dummies.

Counterpoint: Atheism is for pricks.

What does God need with a starship?

I'm aware of what it is. Possibly why I'm so uncomfortable looking at it. It almost feels more like a primal fear though. The contrast of the densely packed galaxies thinning out into... absolutely nothing. Its a strange feeling looking at it.
Correct me if I'm wrong though, didn't they explain it by saying it was one of the "cool spots" in the big bang, which has just continued to expand like everything else? Like a piece of dust casting a shadow.

Even if that's the theory, it's far enough out that we don't know dicks, most likely.

Humanity's lack of knowledge about the universe makes you feel rather small sometimes, no?

So, what would it look like if there was a Kardashev Type III civilization just nomming away on stars? Wouldn't it look a lot like that?

There would be infrared radiation at least.

Well, not so much "nomming", but rather "construction highly dense dyson swarms around every star in many thousands upon thousands upon thousands of galaxies"

Possibly even maneuvering them into a more dense and efficient configuration for optimum communication.

I prefer to think it's something like the pic.

Unless they were using the stars/galaxies to power some kind of super tech, AND both the tech and the process of using stars gives off nothing we can detect, its probably not.

Dyson swarms/spheres give off a bunch of detectable radiation we'd be able to see, plus apparently it isn't a complete void, there are a few rogue stars and things floating around in there.

There is always a possibility, but if someone is in there, they are completely undetectable to us.

If you want to look at something cool, check out Tabby's star. Whatever is going on there could be pretty cool. Current theory is a super Jupiter with a fuckhuge ring system, but who knows.

Depending on how dense the dyson structure is, not necessarily.
Given sufficient layers, the radiation given off could approach sufficiently close to the background radiation.

youtube.com/watch?v=Ef-mxjYkllw

Doesn't he specifically say, in that video, that doing so is a basically a complete waste of resources unless you are actually near the heat death of universe already?

I guess in this specific scenario, where you've got a region of space reduced to near zero unused stars, maybe, MAYBE it ends up paying for itself, but the magnitude of the civilization (multiple hundreds of galaxies worth of stars) means it would be way easier just go grab another whole galaxy than do that.

And again, there are a few detectable objects in there. Mostly rogue stars.

None. By the time people have FTL drives and the average citizen is extremely educated religion will cease to exist.

Exceptions of psychic races who power FTL drives through holy prayers or space Muslims who want to conquer everything.

I would go with Mercerism from Do androids dream of electric sheep? It is one of the best examples of modernised religions in fiction. It gets the point of a universal idea about experiencing the mysteries of your relligion and having a transcendent thought to guide you in everyday life.

Also, do not dismiss other religions in Dune. The BG use manipulations as a means to an end, but it is not the point. The orange catholic bible is quite interesting concept. In heretics of Dune you can find a great deal about the evolution of conteporary religions and their fusions, but the earlier books touch upon it as well.

If you want to create your own religion, don't make up sagas that people worship. Religion is not about that. Find an ideal like Love, Empathy, Strength, Wisdom. Make up a short allegory about how a deity represents it and create a ritual for people to practice so that they can experience the ideal and charge their bodies with it. Voila.

*tips fedora*
Spirituality might cease to exist, but religion, as a core part of human culture, is fundamentally essential to human civilization.

Science will become religion. It will be worshiped in academies, its mystery will be education and the superstition will be to discard anything that is not quantifiable.

>Don't agree with someone
>le tipping man *tips fedora* xd

Cool "argument"

>education implies absolute atheism
>not r*ddit tier *tipping*
Assertions get arguments, shitposting gets memes.

Go home Ridley scott, you're drunk

Science is already treated as religion, see black science man or the replication rates in social "science" experiments.

Not same user, but Disliking religion =/= being atheist.
You can have faith in a higher power without needing some bunch of crazy old frauds telling you what to do with your life. Think for yourself.

On this note one thing I like is sort of Shinto Animism in a setting where mundane objects and every day tools really do have fucking spirits - in this case, AI - who operate things and make them function. A techno-shinto priest is part shaman, part tech support, their job is to make sure the programs that keep society running are themselves running properly, and that can mean appeasement when the trashcan is mad at the vending machine because after running for so many years these programs pick up junk data that make them more and more... 'unique' and borderline self aware.

Simple spiritualism; a quiet but heartfelt belief in the human spirit or something like that.

They want communism. They just don't fully understand it. They think it means get the rich guy to pay for all my stuff.

Anything you want. There's no reason to assume that our religions needs to change. Truth is truth and the dichotomy between faith and reason is a false one.

>How does reincarnation work in space? Do we reincarnate as/from aliens? If not, why not? Does where you die matter? If you die in deep space, is your soul lost? Etc.
Considering that reincarnation transcends the physical universe, I don't know why people would think it could be so affected by physical conditions. I especially don't know why someone might think that dying in space means your soul is lost.

no organized religion would survive in a good scifi setting, unless it's a dystopian one, where people need religion to give them hope.
Spiritualism could survive.
Probably the best religious structure if you really really want one is some form of pantheism. No mral or behavior norms dictated by holy books,but a veneration for reality itself, with spiritualistic rituals to get in touch with the shit inside of stuff

Hey, he actually did it!

religion going own as ducation and access to goo meical care goes up is not a meme, but an actual thing that is really happening.
religion is a meme that people who have no control or no understanding of their life need in order to comfort themselves.

Where does this meme that "religion can't survive in scifi" come from? Where does the assumption that a futuristic society will necessarily be some super-individualistic one where hierarchical cultural structures won't exist?

Religion isn't going away, it's spiritual religion that being replaced with something like it.
Religion, as a core, concrete basis (or major structure) of a culture will always be around; some singular entity that gives its adherents a shared set of morals and ethics.

>religion is a meme that people who have no control or no understanding of their life need in order to comfort themselves.
*tips fedora*

It's actually the opposite. Religion will cease to exist and spirituality will remain, uncorrupted by religion.

What the fuck? is Japan 40k?

>Did you homebrew your own?

Sure, I even wrapped my homebrew system around it.

The religion is based around seven color-coded Virtues:
- Compassion (violet)
- Sincerity (indigo)
- Loyalty (blue)
- Insight (understanding and knowledge, green)
- Discipline (gold)
- Will (orange)
- Rectitude (conviction and righteousness, red)
There is a God, but his/her identity is neither defined nor pondered upon - God is just the purest collected representation of the seven Virtues.
Priests tend to be chill as fuck and act more like confidants rather than spiritual/religious leaders. They have no special religious traditions, they are only expected to uphold all seven Virtues and help others to do the same.
Temples are usually simple public gathering places offering a wide variety of recreational and community activities. Shrines are just small buildings venerating a single Virtue and generally being the most spiritual aspects of the whole religion.
Larger shrines have dedicated shrine maidens for maintenance and visitor guidance (otherwise, shrines are unmanned). More powerful priests have acolytes to help them out. Being a shrine maiden or an acolyte is seen as a sort of a highly respectful volunteer work.
The seven Virtues are the basis of the Policies (laws) and have a heavy influence on every social interaction. You literally cannot -not- follow this religion, only fail at upholding the Virtues. You can be judged according to the Virtues regardless of whether you believe in them or not, after all.

In-game, characters don't have characteristics like Strength or Agility, only different ranks of Virtues. A character can use any one Virtue when he makes a roll, but the Virtue used will directly influence the action he takes (using Loyalty will require some sort of cooperative action, while using Rectitude requires force to be employed).

That's true. If you believe people who have had near-death experiences, for example, the afterlife isn't actually a very religious place.

Spirituality is religion, simply on the opposing end of the personality (and arguably political) spectrum.

>uncorrupted
>implying religion is corrupting at all
>implying religion isn't an unequivocal social and cultural good
If anything, spirituality is what ruins the concept of religion.

>Where does this meme that "religion can't survive in scifi" come from?
The conflict thesis.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis

The idea is that the more science there is, the less religion there is, and since the future will have a lot more science, religion will be completely gone. People like this believe that an all-atheist society is the inevitable future.

It's bullshit.

>You can have faith in a higher power without needing some bunch of crazy old frauds telling you what to do with your life. Think for yourself.
>"I, an individual of only a few decades, know more then those men who have spent their lives contemplating the faith, built upon countless centuries of other men who have spent their lives contemplating the faith, and I use my supposed superior knowledge only to live my life according to egocentric individualism"
I'm an atheist, but fuck me, you "fuck the establishment" shits are beyond annoying. Literally angsty teenage rebellion tier.

If they followed the establishment, you'd call them sheep. And I thought atheists hated appeals to authority?

Also, being "spiritual but not religious" doesn't translate to egocentric individualism. Quite the opposite, in fact. NDEs were mentioned earlier as an example of being spiritual without religion, and those people also come back with reduced selfishness and competitiveness, little concern for material success, increased empathy and compassion, a greater sense of connection and love for others, and often a strong desire to help others.

As an atheist, part of my perspective is that tons of intelligent theists have discussed this religion stuff for hundreds of years and they can't all agree, so how am I supposed to be clever enough to know which is the correct one to believe in? Same thing with politics, frankly.

>If they followed the establishment, you'd call them sheep.
No, I wouldn't, I'd call them good people for finding a community they can be part of.
>And I thought atheists hated appeals to authority?
>every atheist is some leftist pseudo-anarchist individualist
When it comes to matters of science, you listen to scientists.
When it comes to matters of economics, you listen to economists.
When it comes to matters of mathematics, you listen to mathematicians.
When it comes to matter of theologists, naturally, you listen to theologians.

>Also, being ... help others.
Alright, so a statistically anomalous event leads to something that supports your conclusion. I don't suppose a significant portion of "spiritual but not religious" people have experienced NDE's, have they?

That's only because that fag Martin Luther had to go and ruin everything. At least Catholics have a structure and tradition to their faith, rather than the pick-and-choose mundanity that is the endless sects and denominations of protestants.

>That's only because that fag Martin Luther had to go and ruin everything. At least Catholics have a structure and tradition to their faith, rather than the pick-and-choose mundanity that is the endless sects and denominations of protestants.
Eh, even without Martin Luther there's Christianity, Judaism, Islam, all that stuff from random parts of Asia...