EVE Fiction

The Amarr 's religion from my understanding is based off some aspects of Christianity, but a screwed up and twisted form of Christianity.

In my OWN opinion all religion in particular religions which require a top down vertical power structure are merely tools of control and the concept of "God" is one if not the ultimate means of excusing oneself of all accountability......if you look around the world today..........actually I will leave it that least I go off topic.

I will direct you to the following though:

Scriptures - Explains the Amarr Holy books.

The Cult of Tetrimon

Speaker of Truths

Speakers of Truth

Happy reading, all in all you will come to the conclusion that those high priests are very naughty men indeed.

Thanks

Thanks for that bit. I wish CCP would get more into the different factions cultures.

A little less personal soapboxing about the evil of religion in here would be swell.

Anyway, Julius Longus is very much correct in pointing out that there is nothing actually indicating that the Conformists were Christian in any way, shape, or form. It's certainly hinted at, and may have been the original intention, but ultimately there is nothing about the "Unified Catholic Church" that makes it stand out as a Christian thing.

The earliest timeline reference we have to the UCC is in 3805 AD. That is 1792 years from now. Even if its origins can be traced to Christian groups, the UCC would likely be extremely different from what we consider to be Christian, and it's highly unlikely that the Conformists considered themselves to be Christian.

And then it took 4000 more years until the Conformists settled in New Eden - a longer time than Christianity has existed today. More than enough time for their faith to re-make itself ten times over, throwing off any vestiges of old religions it may have carried with it. Upon entering New Eden, the Conformist faith would have been entirely its own thing - a monotheistic faith unlike any one we have on Earth today.

Next, we have a 15 000 year dark age. This time span is so long that none of our frames of reference for thinking about religion can be applied. Whatever the UCC was, whatever the Conformists were when they split off, whatever they became before settling on Athra, it is meaningless, because the New Eden Dark Age reshaped everything about the cultures that suffered through it.

Now, it's worth pointing out that the Amarr were - after the Jove, Talocan, and Yan-Yung - the first race to restore their science and enter space. This clearly shows that their religion isn't averse to progress, or at voluminous enough to accept dogma and taboos being shifted to accommodate societal needs. It's also been flat-out stated that the Amarr Scriptures include scientific texts, which means that the Amarr have incorporated technological progress into their faith. It's even possible that this was what allowed them to return to space before the other three empires.

Another thing is that other religions arose in the cluster without clear parallels to Earth faiths - the Ida, the Achur, the Way of the Winds, the Minmatar Polytheism...

There's no reason to assume that the Amarr are special from the other religions.

Their scriptures are mighty short, lol


Edit The full Scriptures are far too massive to collect in one place; the Book of Records alone consists of millions of individual tomes. Some of the more well known passages are recorded below.

I'm ********.

The important thing to remember is that the Amarrian faith may seem, on the surface, to be based on real-world 20th century religions, it isn't. It isn't Catholic or Muslim or anything else. Being fictional, is has as much to do with real-world religions as the Jedi.

Just pointing this out because when people make assumptions about the Amarr religion they tend to base them off real-life mainstream religions and this leads to interesting situations. For example, on the IGS I've seen people assume that the Amarr don't believe in booze, sex, drugs, or same-sex marriage (all things forbidden by many real-world religions, natch). Yet it's kind of hard to find anything in CCP cannon Scriptures that mentions any of these things, so ... yeah, don't make assumptions, because there is nothing CCP cannon either way.

For all anyone really knows the Amarr faith thinks that smoking weed & getting hammered is actually considered acceptable (and some fiction stories about "religious revelry" kind of hind that it's perfectly ok sometimes). I mean, the idea of temperance has obviously been established in cannon fiction, but still... While the Amarr may seem totally anal compared to, say, the Gallente, keep in mind that at given moment half the Federation is senate is probably dropping blue-pill. Relatively speaking, the Amarr may well be incredibly liberal compared to a lot of real-world religions (their scientific level certainly to points toward this).

One thing, however, that I've noticed has been evolving in the IGS and role-play angle is one similarity to real-world religion that makes a good plot device/measuring stick: Compare the "traditional" Amarr factions as seen in groups such as PIE and the 24th Crusade versus the more "modern" groups who favor the Pax Amarria and a more diplomatic, liberal approach towards things. The parallel of these groups between the Old Testament (God of Wrath) and the New Testament (God of Love) is something worth considering.

It should also be noted that while Amarrian architecture screams Catholic, if you go into the character editor and load up a True Amarrian male you will notice that the facial features are distinctly Arabic.

Booze is one of the Empire's biggest exports, so they certainly believe in that. Just that there are appropriate times and inappropriate times to do things, as implied in several sources (such as the female Exotic Dancer item). There seems to be a "cult of privacy" like a Victorian society. Drunk and disorderly in public isn't appropriate, drunk during religious or family revelries would be appropriate. Sex and romance are problematic in public space, but fine when kept to the private space. Excesses seem to only be a problem when they're done at inappropriate times.

Same-sex/cross-race/status marriage however... these things have root in the culture. At least among the nobility and royalty, lineage is very important and would require members of two houses to be joined by blood through their children. On the other hand, there's little to indicate that same-sex relations outside of marriage are a problem, as long as they, like all romantic activity, are kept to the private space. Though cross-race/status relations are improper, as seen in the Khumaak chronicle, so who knows. Empire is a very insular society, both against outsiders and internally across its various social classes.

But yeah. People shouldn't be using IRL influences when talking about the Amarr. Some things may be similar, but only because the culture itself supports it, not because they're "Catholics in space".



Amarrian architecture screams Arabic or Persian to me. Also their names.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardashir_I

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapur_I

Most of the Latin/Catholic/European influences came from players, rather than original lore.

It is, frankly, best not to look to closely at The Empyrean Age as a source of examples, as it manages to hideously screw with the portrayals of just about every culture in New Eden. It seems to particularly have it in for the Amarr and Caldari cultures, though - and this has been discussed to death elsewhere - so there was plenty of hamming it up to show just how darned evil those Amarr and Caldari were, even when it really didn't fit with the Prime Fiction of either faction.

Wow, after all these years, you still don't see the Persian and Babylonian parallels? Babylon, the sundering of language and the factionalization of humanity? The beginnings of civilization.. He who forgets the past is doomed to repeat it..

Nah, much earlier than Islam.. Persia, and Zoroaster, who introduced a novel concept, monotheism.. Both Judaism and Islam sprang from this source, Judaism introduced another novel concept,, messiah....