LETS DEBATE: FANTASY RELIGIONS 🙏 

Hot take: Electricity is our world's magic system.

"Stupidity knows no creed" preach

"No one like a religious Zealot. Don't be a religious zealot" gestures to skull WHAT ARE YOU NOT TELLING US DANIEL!!!

I want to see more tinfoil hat conspiracist characters trying to debunk religions with nonsensical theories. Instead of the logical ones.

I can’t believe Daniel killed Greene Daniel and is using his skull as a prop

*Sazed has entered the chat*

"Stupidity knows no Creed" needs to be a t-shirt

“Stupidity knows no creed.” - Daniel Greene, a recent addition to the Hall of Spitting Straight Facts

Daniel talking to a skull is exactly what I was waiting to see.

tbh I feel like Brandon Sanderson has a LOT of religious characters who are not cult members or zealots, like Shallan or Navani in Stormlight.

As a Christian and a writer, I generally can't sand it when the religious or non religious folk are completely either vilified or praised. Both sides have issues and unflattering histories. In the stories where I include Christian aspects, I don't shy away from including unflattering aspects, sometimes even atrocities, and arguments from both sides. Ultimately characters are still people that are flawed, and flawed people disagree.

"Did Lewis have a bias when writing the Narnia books?" Yes. How is that even a question?

Glad you found my “FAQ” example humorous!

Another 30+ mins of Daniel content? We’ve been blessed

Magic and religion don't always have to be related in a story. In some stories, magic is explained more as an inherent aspect of the tech or science. Like the physics and biology have qualities that are magical as part how they function within that universe. All people in the book can access or understand magic, but they may disagree on if it has divine origins or not.

After reading the comments, y’all need Aslan.

I think regarding the point at 20:26, ASOIAF is a good example of this happening. There are many gods in Westeros and Essos and it is never confirmed whether they exist of not. Even with the Red God, Melisandre has these magical powers that she claims are giving to her by the Red God, but it is never confirmed whether or not they come from a god or from somewhere else.

two minutes into the video and this is already the most chaotic greene screene session. more of this please :)

Daniel breaking his chair over Aslan was the best thing I’ve seen this year

"More Fantasy with themes from outside of Europe" YES, but: Even from within Europe, its mostly Christianity, Norse and Graeco-Roman stuff. How many Illyrian, Tengri, Slavic, Finno-Ugric and Basque fantasy etc. is there?

By the way: There are some people who genuine believe that the earth is flat. Of course there could be people e.g. in middle earth to question the religion

You could always do what the Elder Scrolls has done: Look, here are three versions of this legend; they all have some similarities, but also differences! Now go debate which one is true! It's actually pretty brilliant, though; most agree on major points, but disagree on minor ones. For example, we know for a fact that the Divines created the mortal world, but we don't know if A) the elves are right and Lorkahn tricked the other Divines into it and then punished him for it by ripping out his heart or B) men are right and Lorkahn convinced the Divines to knowingly sacrifice themselves and Lorkahn gave his heart to help keep the mortal world stable. So, you could do something similar, and then have different cultures adopt different versions of the legend as the "right" one, which could lead to some interesting conflicts or ways of understanding the world and their place within it.

I don't think GRRM ridicules the faith of the Seven as the hot take suggest, Cat and Davos are important POVs that routinely include their faith in their inner monologue. Davos struggles to manage his faith in the seven with his loyalty to Stannis that suddenly adopts a different religion and even burns the statues of the seven. Catelyn prays to the seven and makes an effort to understand Ned's gods. In fact there are often examples of genuine followers and people ridiculing basically all faiths, be it R'lohr, the seven, the old gods, the drowned god, the mother of mountains and even the many faced god. I would go further and say that it is one of strong points of the setting that makes it feel lived in. There are many examples that make the world nuanced, but every character usually has a good reason for their beliefs.

You overstate the certainty of religion in Tolkien's world. It is critically important, in particular, that humans do _not_ know what lies beyond death, and have to take it on faith that mortality is the gift of the One to Men. Not even the Elves know what the fate of Men is. Arwen told Aragorn, at his deathbed, "For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive." For Arwen, too, had to take it on faith, when she renounced her immortality, that there would be a life 'beyond the circles of the world.' In contrast, the temptation of the Númenoreans by Sauron - the seduction of the Nazgûl, and the corruption and downfall of Númenor itself - depended on his ability to persuade Men that the idea of mortality as a divine gift was a lie. In short, this whole idea of faith (or lack thereof) and mortality is absolutely central to Tolkien's work (and, I fear, will be given short shrift when Amazon adapts the Second Age material). The bit in Jackson's Return of the King movie where Gandalf gives Pippin a description of the afterlife, in words from the book that describe Frodo's first sight of the Undying Lands, is thus doubly wrong. Gandalf is not permitted to reveal the fate of Men (and Hobbits), even if he knows it, which he very well may not. And that fate is certainly _not_ the 'far green country' he described. You say that these matters are easy in Tolkien - just ask Gandalf. No, not in Tolkien; just in Jackson. On a separate point, have you ever read Diane Duane's 'Young Wizard' books (So You Want To Be a Wizard, et seq.)? Her work has a deeply religious and spiritual base, without being Christian polemic. This is one reason why I prefer her books to the Harry Potter books (which came later), in which Rowling treads rather too close to Mammy Yokum's dictum that 'good is better than evil because it's nicer' and leaves it at that.

I LOVE that random skit in the middle of the video at 4:45

Gonna be honest I feel like all those people being like "there is no room for spirituality or argument when ur gods are proven real" are just wrong. Just because someone knows a god exists, that does not mean they agree with the values of that god of the values of that god's followers.

In response to the hot take about paladins in D&D: This video made me realize that my paladin is basically a very loyal and trusting employee of Pelor.

Daniel is finally using a mic stand that won't kill him if he trips over.

Damn Daddy Daniel Delivering Delicous Discussion

The whole "our god is better than your god" comments made me think of a sports fans............ A story centering around gods recruiting a team worshipers to have fights to the death to see who rules the universe...... Does anyone else think that's a good idea?

Yeah Christianity has been involved in some really terrible stuff throughout history. Though it is worth noting, not as a refutation of this thesis but rather an expansion of it, that if you look beyond European History this is true of nearly every religion that gets intermixed with politics. State Buddhism and Hindu have been used to justify horrific acts, including ethnic cleansing. State Islam often tied to really bad things. In general if a religion gets deeply intertwined with the act of the state, represents a significant majority of the people ruled by the state, and said state has minorities or neighbors of different religions bad things happen. Edit: I'm using "the state" as a broad catch all for secular power. It doesn't necessarily have to take the form of a governmental institution

20:27 GRRM has stated that he plans on never confirming whether the gods are real or not. Magic is definitely real, and there are people able to wield magic who believe that their power comes from various deities, but there will never be confirmation that their beliefs are actually true.

Concerning atheists/agnostics in history, there was a group of material reductionists in India known as Charvakas, they along with their contemporary Buddhists and even Jains did not believe in a "God" or more aptly a "Creator God" as we would think today. But unlike Buddhists and Jains their philosophy was predicated on the idea that all phenomena that exist can be perceived through the senses and that there was nothing beyond it. Their school ultimately died out, probably due to a lack of popularity in relation to their contemporaries who had grand metaphysical philosophies as could be derived from the Upanishads and other texts and perhaps due to subsequent invasions from Turks and Mughals. I would think similar schools and philosophies existed in other parts of the world especially Greece and Rome.

"What would happen if magic appeared in TODAY'S world?" Shadowrun: am I a joke to you?

Little known fact: the Saracens sent a letter to the Pope asking for a ceasefire in the crusades because of the Mongols.

You need that green tshirt so we can better read the questions/hot takes

Hot take: This new format is great, don't get me wrong, but I think that now it's going to be really difficult for people to share their random and specific hot takes. If somebody has a hot take, but it won't easily fall into one of the categories that you give, then they aren't going to get the opportunity to share it. I still prefer this new format, but I want the weird and wacky takes too!

It's time to D-D-D-D-Debate!

The thing about God's having different personalities or ideas in different places is kinda explored in Rick Riordan's follow up to the Percy Jackson series where he introduces the Roman personas of the Greek gods he introduced before.even the gods have to deal with their Greek and Roman sides being in conflict

The Elder Scrolls does a surprisingly good job of depicting religious conflict even in a world where gods regularly communicate with mortals, helped mostly by the concept that the Aedrea are powered by their worshipers. No worshipers means no god, which is why the Thalmor want to ban Talos. And then you have the Dark Elves doing their thing

3:19 Scar: "I'm surrounded by idiots!"

I actually agree with the re-branded Christianity comment's conclusion, but not out of any religious or historical scruples. My problem is that in every case I've seen where somebody does base a religion on Christianity or Islam, they never do the leg work of establishing that religion in the text. It ends up being a foregone conclusion that they are understood as a renaming of extant religions establishment and that they are evil, when at most only a bit of lip service is paid to point the readier to the real religion to associate them to. And this in stories where zealots and corrupt priests are primary antagonists. They just don't bother to actually detail tenets of the religion or the character of their followers at all aside from that general association, so you end up literally with a real religion with a new name in places where it really should be much different by other aspects of the world. It's basically using a placeholder as part of a final draft, it's just sloppy.

An atheist in a world where the Gods are known to exist doesn't have to be a crazy person denying the reality in front of him. For example such a person could believe that the God don't actually care about the believers. The Gods are out for themselves and will only assist those that they align with those goals. Or that the Gods exist only BECAUSE we believe in them so the power they wield comes from the faithful and not the God. If the worship stopped then the God would fade. Denying religion does not necessarily have to be denying the existence of the God.

I feel like people seem to forget that more then one religion can exist within a society

"I'm a very just observe and try to find truth in your day-to-day life person" Daniel is an existentialist confirmed

Ya know I think the point Dan made around the middle of the episode about different cultural myths to draw from being way more important than I realized. Like the easiest example I can give for something that is popular in the US now but isnt western is all of the Japanese stories. I might not read novels from japan, but I consume their media and I know a hell of a lot more about shintoism than i do about norse mythology at this point. If we want more stories from cultures outside the western sphere we need to be buying from cultures outside the western sphere. Once those are brought to popularity they will become things that more authors from different groups want to talk about. Again Japan has this pretty well cornered for cyberpunk where there is just an assumption that Japan will be a major part of the future cyberpunk world.

A Canticle for Leibowitz was commercial feasible and 70% of the book is theological discussion (I loved it so much)

I love how respectful you are towards everyone while holding your ground during such a sensitive topic to people I love it (and you still make it funny and enjoyable to watch)!!

Massive Rant time: I’m Christian and I have no problem calling out the problems of the church and toxic Christians! I think it’s important! (Thank you, “Carrie”!) But I had to stop reading the second “Land of Stories” series because every evil character is a Christian. There’s a lot of problems with this: 1) It’s a far off magical world that has no idea ours exists. So how the hell do they have the same God with the same rules? What kind of God is it? ARE they Christians? Were there desciples? Did they know about the crucification? Their timeline is SLOWER than ours so they couldn’t have! It doesn’t fit the world. 2) The message Chris Colfer keeps giving is “love and forgive everyone”. And yet, the MC does not forgive her Christian father when that would’ve shown her as the better person. So the message holds nothing. 3) He says- “Magic is good, but not all fairies are good.” And “Witchcraft is bad but not all witches are bad.” And yet he shows... “Christians are bad no matter what.” 4) The allegories are just...so in your face. It’s not well-written into it at all, like Terry Pratchett or so. All in all, I was disappointed by it since I love the first Land Of Stories SO much. It feels out there, and it doesn’t flow, and sticks out in the world-building.

Now I want Daniel to do a video, where he rates/debates different story pitch from his subscribers

Ah darn, I missed the entry for this hot take. Oh well. Better late than never. Too many treat religion and the religious as monolithic. That's why there's a lot of takes that say not all religion should be bad or not all should be good (and that depends on your definition of "good"). Of course they're different. We can look at the interaction between Christianity and various Germanic faiths in the 800s. Both preach that dying for your faith is good. Both group has fought each other over their faith. However, one actively encourage combat while the other discourage it. Keep in mind this is 200+ years before the crusades, which is a different thing entirely. Even if there is a unifying religion, there could be disagreements that eventually grow big enough to warrant a large conflict. Looking at Christianity again, there's the east-west schism in 1054 which separated the Catholics and the Orthodox. They're still separated to this day. Also don't get me started with the protestant reformation in the 1500s and the wars that followed it. If you ask all these groups, they would agree on a few of the biggest tenets. Going into the details are where the disagreements starts. It all comes down to the core dogmas, really. What's the main shtick. Find out what's the best example to follow, and follow it. If the gods or prophets are warlords, then the followers stance about war will mimic that. If said gods or prophet never said anything about farming or governing, then the followers likely won't have any unifying stance on those topics. However, they will try to do them in relation to the main dogma. If a follower is acting opposite of those dogmas, then they are not considered good (again, depends on your definition of good). That's why there could be atheistic religion. I know it's an oxymoron, but it's an interesting phenomena. The rejection of a higher power, but the reverence of a person, secular group or philosophy. Those things become the core dogma. Their followers are expected to follow them. Otherwise they are not "good". If most people depicted in a fantasy religion is considered "bad", but there're some people that are "good", it says nothing about the belief itself. It might be that the "bad" people are actually good believers, and the "good" people aren't familiar enough with the core beliefs or are actively disagreeing with them. That's why the whole of idea of "zealots bad, moderates good" is a tired trope imo. The reason the trope is popular due to the nature of the medium. The zealots will most likely have clear cut opinions on subjects that readers might agree or disagree with. That makes them unpopular to a lot of people. Conversely, moderates aren't as pushy and compromise even if it tweaks and bends their beliefs. A lot of people might find that more tolerable to their own opinions. However, It entirely depends on whether you agree with their main beliefs. If the core dogma is preservation of human life, a lot of people (I hope) would prefer the zealot over the moderate. If you read this far, congrats. Here's a potato. Edit: Corrected the general timeframe of the Protestant reformation.

I’ll point out Bujold’s The Curse of Chalion, where the two religions in the book agree on the same 5 gods, and they agree that four of the five are good, but they disagree on the fifth god. One religion thinks he is good, the other thinks he is a demon.

"We can still be friends, we can still disagree. Thats allowed" This is my favourite comment he has ever said....if only it could be applied to everything that going on in the world!

This was such an encouraging video! I've only just recently begun including faith/religion more blatantly in my fantasy writing. It took a lot of effort to break away from the idea that including it would automatically be called preachy and, so far, the nuances I'm delving into have led to a greater sincerity within the narrative. After seeing this video, I can imagine the story receiving a more positive response than I originally expected. Thank you so much for taking the time to address what can become a very heated topic. Hail Aslan! ;)

I want to see more philosophical gods akin to the way the medieval Muslim and Jewish pilosophers (Ibn Rushd, Al-Farabi and Mimonides, for example) viewed the monotheistic God.

As someone who is currently writing the main religion of my setting, this was interesting and informative. Thank you for doing it ^^

I'm a Christian and when you said "y'all have been the baddies more often than not." That's just plainly historically accurate. It makes me sad that you felt such a strong need to be cautious about historical fact that you mentioned the video getting backlash. Crazy world man. I'm a new fan and I've been pretty much binging these videos. I only just got back into reading and it's been really enjoyable. There's so much nuance that I can understand better now that I'm 8 years older. Those nuances adds more nutrients to the story to enjoy! Thank you for helping me understand and appreciate them!

I feel that Malazan tackled religion and gods interacting in the world in a very interesting way. Mostly in how the gods are tied to their magic and dependent on their followers, and how certain magics are dependent on one of hundreds of gods in that world.

One of the things I'd like to see more of is simply a more accurate representation of polytheistic religions. So often I see polytheistic religions be basically Christianity with more Gods. Actual polytheistic religions simply don't work on the same principles as Christianity, the entire worldview is different on account of having many, many, many Gods, which affects literally everything. Take the Problem of Evil, if the One True God is Omnibenevolent, why does evil exist? In polytheistic religions, there are many Gods, who may have different agenda's and concerns and domains, some of which may clash. There are Gods of things that are inimical to humanity and thus viewed as bad things, but aren't really bad (Gods of diseases, e.g.). It just fundamentally changes how the world is viewed and how philosophical and theological problems are discussed or even don't exist because of the different paradigm of having multiple Gods as opposed to a singular one. Also, have attention to small details. There are not just major Gods of major things with major rituals. There are also small things people do religiously. Household religion is a major example of that, oftentimes religion is just discussed in societal terms, but religion permeates every aspect of life. Personal, familial, communal, national,... Talk about Gods of smaller things, e.g. the Korean Kitchen Goddess Whose children then preside over the other rooms of a house. To give a Hellenic example, of how people offer the first plate of food to the Hearth Goddess, how they have a jar of fresh foodstuffs to the God of the Pantry to bring wealth and so that the household may always have sufficient food to meet its needs, people having a herm in front of their home where they make offerings to Hermes (or a similar Deity in whatever setting the story takes place) whenever they leave the house to pray for protection while out and about, then again upon their safe return. Artisans having shrines of a Deity presiding over their craft in their workshops where they make offerings like maybe sharing some of their lunch with the Deity in question. There are many more elements I can think of and list here, but I think I've made my point: look towards how actual practitioners of polytheistic religions actually *live* their religion.

Please read The Belgariad and The Malloreon by David & Leigh Eddings, I am yet to find a fantasy series that delve as deep into different religions and cultures.

I really liked the approach of the Temple Knights in Eddings' The Elenium. From memory a large portion of the major characters were literally Knights of the Temple, yet while it seemed as though they believed in their religion, even they struggled to take it seriously at times. They knew that some of their beliefs didn't make sense, and would have to be reminded to act more somber while partaking in some religious ceremonies. The feeling of essentially a bunch of roughneck soldiers who just happened to be working for a temple always struck me as interesting.

20:10 I went to Rhodes (Greece) a couple of years ago and visited the Islands own Temple of Athena (Lindos). This was of course very interesting, but I also came across a very cool story. (I can't remember the story supper well, but I will try my best). As you might know, all males born into a viking family learned to fight, this was of course partly do to the fact that they was preparing for Ragnarok, but also a way of insuring the future of the next generation. Since the oldest son got all of the gold, land and valuables, did all of the other sons have to either get an aprinenship, steal some gold and land from somebody else or become a mercenary. A lot of those Norsemen who those the latter, traveled to Constantinople and became part of The Varangian Guard. This created a problem for the Norsemen, as the Byzantines was Christians and the Norsemen was obviously Norse. But then they discovered The Temple of Athena on Rhodes, learned that Athena was the Goddess of Wisdom, Handicraft, and Warfare, and came to the conclusion that Athena and Freya (The Goddess of Love, Gold and War) must me one and the same God. So Vikings (serving in The Varangian Guard) would sail from Constantinople to Rhodes, pray and make sacrifices in front of Athena (inside Athena's Temple) in hope of luck and good fortune on the battlefield.

"1/5 people are idiots." -Daniel Greene

When you talked about how Egypt and Greece had hybrid temples and you’ve never seen in a book it kinda reminded me about the Elder Scrolls and how some gods are sort of like that. In different Religions and/or ethnic groups call the same god different names and different focuses. Akatosh as called by the Nords in TES is the god of time and dragons with all dragons/Dragonborn being his kin. However he is also known as Auriel to certain Elven groups with a focus on purity and the sun with some elves even being blessed with immunity to vampirism.

Hey Daniel, love your work! I usually listen in to your RU-vid channel on my way to work! This is more of a critic on Philip Pulman than on religion in general, but I did take issue with His Dark Materials. I'm a Christian (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) and I actually really enjoyed aspects of His Dark Materials, particularly the religious corruption, the fantasy world building, and of course the awesome bear kingdom. I will say however, that I think when authors write about religious controversy that they still need to be respectful and I Philip didn't quite act respectful particularly in the final book when important characters and allegories (like Satan and Christ) are specifically referenced and then treated disrespectfully. Granted, I have an obvious bias, but I think I would be equally uncomfortable if another active religion that wasn't my own also was treated similarly which I think has happened a lot. I think it's totally okay to talk about religious controversy in history and to comment on it, but I do think Philip in particular sometimes sounded not just critical, but hateful. Anyway, love your channel! Love the dialogue!

I have been waiting for this video! I'm actually surprised you were nervous about this but that may be because I think religious people like talking about and disagreeing with people about religion more than most non-religious people think. You gave me a lot to think about with your comparison of C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman but one thing I think it misses is that the reason many Christians specifically are not a fan of his books is that it uses a gnostic understanding of the Churches beliefs which are fairly offensive to many Christians. He is also a fairly outspoken atheist which gets a little dicey when you use a not-accepted understanding of religious belief to criticize the current religions belief and you don't subscribe to either. Not saying criticism should come from outside, but you probably should take more care with the way you do so if you're an outsider. However, the same could probably be said of Lewis and Islam, so it does make me think. I think I disagree with many people about their basic assumption about religious belief in religious people. People often totally believe their god(s) are demonstrably real or have prophets that can interpret gods will, and we still have disagreements. Also, it kind of assumes that god(s) are not actually real today, which is a different discussion entirely... Love the work, keep it up!

Bob? Bob...? Dammit Daniel, if you're going to get the best character from the Dresden Files on the show LET HIM SPEAK!!!

10:57 even if there's one deity who's publicly known and acts along with all the different cultures, you'll still find reinterpretations among the different cultures. In Star Wars, the Lassat and a few other cultures interpret the force as Ashla and Bogan, while the Jedi follow the same Force in a different manner. The Chiss see them as Skywalkers, guides in the regions of Chaos. And given how widespread the world is, some never experienced anything related to the force, so they don't even believe in the tales of Wizards wielding laser swords. There is still room for interpretation and discussion about the middle ground if you can try. EDIT: You just clarified what I'm talking about literally two minutes later.

So on Greek/Egyptian/Ancient gods-the Roman Empire is actually infamous for incorporating gods from lots of different pantheons into their own religion. Basically, the way the Roman religion was organized, they generally believed that everyone worshipped the same gods with different ways (this is a bit of a simplification but it's fine), and so whenever they'd see gods elsewhere they'd be like "cool you're part of our religion now". This was great for people of MOST religions cause they were like "cool we can just keep worshipping our gods and they can keep thinking we've got the same gods". This didn't work so great Christianity arrived, because Christianity was like "NO WE ARE NOT THE SAME RELIGION". Some Romans considered the Christian God as part of their pantheon, but Christians outright rejected the Roman pantheon fervently, and this is why they were persecuted for so many years before Constantine decided he liked them.

I think George R. R. Martin tackles well a lot of the things people say in the comments they don't see very often. Like that idea of a fantasy world with magic where you don't really know if the religion is true or not. He even said in an interview "The gods never showed up in A Song of Ice and Fire. Extraordinary things had happened and religious characters interpret those things as their gods intervining on the world, but is just that, their interpretation" (not an exact quote)

I think you're wrong about people who agree and know about their beliefs not sitting around and talking about them. I mean that's litterally what churchs and bible studies are. I don't have first hand experience with other religions but I'm going to guess they're similar because it's a reinforcement of beliefs. Knowing things isn't enough people need to confirm that their beliefs are correct by hearing other people agree with them. Look at social media echo chambers, don't mean to be insulting but, those echo chambers are there to satisfy a similar niche as religion. They both make people feel that they belong and that in a chaotic world that they have the answers. Having the answers isn't enough without reinforcement because you will face new challenges that may undermine those answers.

As a person who struggles with religious trauma, I would love love love LOVE to see the more harmful effects of organized religion on the general populace. Especially in Fantasy, ppl seem to always glide over the fact that some sects are incredibly harmful.

I can’t deny it, the skits are my favorite things. Always perfection.

Chinese Gods are a beauracracy.

So wild seeing ma boy Atun-Shei Films in the vid! Another awesome channel, but a crossover I never expected.

I consider this a collab with Atun-Shei Films and you can't convince me otherwise.

At the end, when Daniel was talking about how he couldn’t remember an author who painted all religion as bad and everyone who liked it was bad for liking it has clearly not read enough terry goodkind

I have so many questions for Philip Pullman about the Magisterium and how the existence of a physical manifestation of ones soul equates to a still parallel Christianity complete with the same etiological stories and similar interpretations of them. Also when did the Magisterium become an accepted world power and were there ever other beliefs in the world? So many questions that are more about my religious studies interests than the thematic ideas he explores in his work, but it doesn’t stop me from wondering.

"that's a good point that I need time to think on" I'm writing that down as a W.

i’ve been waiting for this one, thank you for making my day

1:25 Daniel does not support necrophilia in any way XD

Concerning religious pressure and Sanderson including elements of Mormonism, I don’t completely agree with what you said. For some context, I grew up Mormon. There is an insane amount of pressure to believe in the church, even for children. I’m not sure how much you know about Mormonism but there are a lot of teachings that put pressure on even questioning your beliefs. As for Sanderson, I’ve only read Warbreaker. There were a few elements that did remind me of Mormonism. It’s not a bad thing. But I see where people are coming from. Maybe in order to see it you would’ve had to grow up in the church?

Finally hit the damn bell icon! Tired of missing these vids when they drop.

I recently found your channel, and now I am binge watching you like you're a new season of FRIENDS on Netflix.

Ok, here's my one bit. About atheists being portayed as the snobby asshole. The thing _I_ take issue with that is when it is the ONLY visible atheist in said piece of media. Which is the case in many older cases where it's just "assumed" people are religious until proven not. Whole lot of parallels with issues with stereotyping in general. It's not necessarily the worst thing for X kind of person to have Y attribute, but when that X kind of person is being forced to represent All Of X because everyone else is assumed to not be X.... Media doesn't exist in a perfect vacuum.

I'd love to see more Jewish based mythology used. There is at least one urban fantasy series I know of that uses Jewish myth as the basis of their fantasy but it'd be cool to see more in all types of fantasy

Reguarding the 'villified christianity' aspect - I think another reason why we see this a lot (well two reasons really) is that firstly - a lot of western fantasy writers are, or at least grew up in, a christian environment. As such it's likely a religion they feel relitivly knowledgable and comfortable with, when using to ape another, more fantastical religion. Want me to write 'almost-but-not-quite-Christianity?' Sure. I can do that. I feel comfortable doing that. Want me to write 'Almost-but-not-quite-Buddism?' Er... not so much. I'm simply not as familiar with it. The second point is that there's an amount of 'punch upwards' here. Christinaity - in pure power terms is one of the dominant religions on this planet (one could perhaps even argue the most dominant). So using Christianity as a base for your faux-religion just feels a lot safer in a veriety of ways.

Daniel not having a case on his phone is giving me anxiety.

I swear that thing with “it’s the same god but in different forms” is done in asoiaf with the many faced god in braavos

Earliest I've ever been to a video, cool. I think fantasy religions are far too often boiled down *solely* to a creation story and a very basic set of ideas. Religion doesn't work like that though. I want more fantasy series to introduce a history not only to their worlds, but to the agencies and organizations therein. As for active Gods, I enjoy them if done right. If you place gods into your world to the point where they interact *all* the time, then it's hard for me to think "why the hell don't they just fix this themselves then?". It hasn't happened often, but I've seen a couple stories where that was pretty much all I could think.

3 times. 3 times this video has auto played after watching other videos, making me jump unexpectedly at the Daniel-scare in the beginning. Each time I’ve watched the video all the way through. Good stuff Daniel, love hearing your opinions.

that was one of the most interesting let's debate episodes, really interesting discussion imo

Babylon 5 - one of the best science fiction franchises when it comes to a respectful examination and portrayal of religion.

Thank you so much for being brave enough to have this discussion!

Daniel, thank you for this well reasoned and thoughtful discussion on religion in fiction. It lays good ground for discussion without claiming certainty.

I love this video I find it fascinating different peoples take on religion in fantasy though I would have to disagree with a portion of your argument. I’m a Christian have been my whole life always will be but that doesn’t keep me from enjoying fantasy and fiction even with stories that criticize it but it has become a very popular in modern storytelling to the point it’s like beating a dead horse to death five or six times in a row

The Percy Jackson series gets into the Greek/Roman/Egyptian gods and how they cross over if anyone wanted a rec on that every specific story pitch. There are like 25 interconnected books, so definitely a commitment, but it's really fun middle grade and most libraries have all the books I believe.

The comment about not confirming the mythology or source of magic: isn't that sort of what GRRM does in asoiaf?

“Stupidity knows no creed” WRITE THAT DOWN, WRITE THAT DOWN!

Stupidity knows no creed. Buffoonery invades every community. Foolishness does not fraternize. There's dum-dums in every denomination. Help me, I need moar