EVE Fiction

Well, not all are horribly devout, but they all consider themself religious. In a rigid theocratic society, you can't really object to the religion.

You have the fervent religious people. We'll look at several. They all believe in God. But they all behave as though their God is different - one might be fire and brimstone, one might be peace and love, another is a maltheist, and so on. They're all following the 'party line' as far as identifying as believers, so they're encouraged. "They're fellow believers!" "But they don't agree with you on a single thing!" "They're fellow believers and we'll stand by them!"

You have the people who treat it as a nice fable - there are atheistic red letter christians, for instance, who don't think Jesus was any more divine than MLK Jr., but they think he was pretty awesome, and they can still talk about religion without tripping too many red flags because, again, "Fellow believer!", so really they do not stand out - they go to church so they're in. Yay them.

You have the people who go to church but really don't give a fig. Ask them and they'll say they believe, and they'll use all the right buzz words and tell you what 'God said'. But they've never really given it any thought or even care. They go to church too, we all saw them at the church picnic, so they must be good people. They're in. yay.

You have the people who actively don't believe. They're heathens, and the Amarr theocratic government actually has the power to make them vanish for not saying the right things.

You have those odd people down the street with turbans.. the Amarrian faith is pretty clear what you should do to them. Lovingly put them in shackles and spend your days working them in a factory while trying to convert them.

So either you actually believe in the state religion.. or you just say the right words that make it appear that you believe in the state religion, because an investigation into your faith is really just too much of a bother when you can avoid the whole thing by saying your prayers. Your language is still going to sound the same. The ideas you are exposed to are going to be similar. How many people today believe in ghosts or demons or angels or what have you, even if they don't specifically have any religious ideas about them?
There is an entire spectrum in between the two. And you have a small handful of dissenters that don't fit in; they are hammered down or removed from society.

Look at an insular church organization. Why are they convinced? Because that's the only game in town, knowledgewise, and even if you have doubts you are unlikely to work at the knowledge hygiene that would remove you from the faithful out of fear of consequences. If you do, there's a pair of loving hands with a collar just for you.

Are you reading the same novels as I am? TEA and T1 pretty much definitively established that very few, if any people in the leadership of Amarr are actually faithful.

Please keep in mind that Templar One and the Empyrean Age only touch on a few of the leaders of the Amarr Empire, some of whom have... unusual circumstances to consider.

The majority of the current Heirs, for example, can be considered to be varying degrees of devout, with Yonis Ardishapur and (the reformed) Aritcio Kor-Azor on one side (though obviously with contrasting ways of expressing their faith) and Catiz Tash-Murkon on the other side (though even she is quite a bit more religious than most; she'd be what I'd call "politically religious").

There are definitely people in the upper echelons of Amarr society who are atheist or otherwise non-religious or (in examples like Karsoth) heretical. But they are the exception rather than the rule. Most individuals in Amarr society at minimum pay lip service to the religion, while most ordinary people are similar to people in highly religious countries, where religion is a simple fact of life. Questioning it for them would be akin to questioning why you stop on a red light and go on a green one; it's simply the way it it.

Let's hold TEA up as the standard by which all Amarrian devout are measured, eh?

My opinion.