Most of my races are very, very traditional-almost to death. This would tie in to their cultures.A problem I've encountered as I try to create the culture of races is the concept of feasts, or religion.

Most feasts are based in religion in some way or another, and while I could work around that, it wouldn't be quite the same. So that leads me to creating a religion of some sort, or at least the remnants of one, in my world. And this leads me to the crux of the problem.

In creating a religion for my world, no matter how closely aligned it is to Christianity, isn't it still creating a false religion? The only way I could see around this is to make Christianity their religion, but that's even more weird-especially as they have no contact with earth yet. I don't know what to do. On one hand, a few of my races would be better witha religion; but is it a form of sacrilege and blasphemy?

I would really, really appreciate some help with this. And I warn you I will probably play the devil's advocate for any suggestions and I apologize ahead of time.

Thank you for your time!

In my mind, creating a false religion has been along the same lines as creating an evil murderer. Neither of them are good, but that doesn't mean it is sinful for a writer to have them appear in his story. If that makes any sense. Personally, I wouldn't say it's blasphemous or sacrilegious.

All the same, though, I don't go too deep in making one, like I wouldn't spend long periods immersing myself in a wicked murderer's POV. It affects your mind, the things you think about, so I think it's good to be wise about such things. * grimace *

If you want to see how other authors deal with it, most Christian fantasy books these days have some sort of take on religious matters, I believe (though I haven't read all too many of them myself).

The only other ocassion's I've come across are in C.S. Lewis' books, and in Ted Dekker's; and neither of those really count since they both cross over and tie in to the real world and Christianity, in book.

I'm sorry I can't tell you of many off the top of my head, I don't tend to read many modern books... But 'A Cast of Stones', the Dragonking trilogy, and all the fantasy published by Enclave Press (formerly Marcher Lord Press), have religious and Christian elements in them.

The thing is, though, that the Narnian Chronicles don't have 'Christianity', they have the otherworldly equivalent of Christianity, which is what most Christian fantasy books I've read tend to do. They don't have a 'Christ' because that's a Greek word and there are no Greeks, and they don't have 'Jehovah' because that's a Hebrew word and there are no Hebrews, but they do have a Christian theology present in the world anyway.

I don't either. I only know Dekker's because I have a friend who reads them and discusses them-at length- with me. I read them so I'd have an idea what she was talking about.



Well, yeah. That. It's just, isn't that almost a form of blasphemy or something?

I apologize, this is just really driving me crazy. Man (or aliens) need a reason to be moral. Without a reason, laws have no impact. And then...I run into the problems of religion...

But you are helping a lot! Really!