I'm really glad someone linked me to this, because you're the first person I've seen who is anywhere near on the same page in the way we see the human religion on BSG.
I think the lack of any sort of specific cults on the show gives us some difficulty in parsing exactly how the religion would be practiced, especially considering how the framgmentation of "established" cults in the Empire era (and even just in the Republic) really fell cult to cult. I do think you see some "christian" tendancies in the Herculian and other messianic-style cults where the focus was more on "belief" in a redeemer figure as much as cultish participation. Correct me on that if I'm totally off the mark, but it's been my reading that the whole "redeemer" archetype was hardly invented by the 1st cent CE hellenized jews.
Anyway, I see the BSG humans as having moved away from the classical concept of religion as devotion and votive offereings to something more personal. Amongst some of them. But not in any way all. I agree with you totally that planet to planet the worship of a given figure would be totally different. I think in the same way, what is considered "normal" practice religiously varies from planet to planet, so we have the Gemenonians (um, ? Gemenonites?) being considered very hardline--which I read to mean more based on strict interpretation of the Scrolls and also bound by ritual and practice rather than personal feelings or beliefs--and then people like Starbuck who obviously has a personal, "christian" relationship with which ever dieties it is she worships.
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I'm really glad someone linked me to this, because you're the first person I've seen who is anywhere near on the same page in the way we see the human religion on BSG.
I think the lack of any sort of specific cults on the show gives us some difficulty in parsing exactly how the religion would be practiced, especially considering how the framgmentation of "established" cults in the Empire era (and even just in the Republic) really fell cult to cult. I do think you see some "christian" tendancies in the Herculian and other messianic-style cults where the focus was more on "belief" in a redeemer figure as much as cultish participation. Correct me on that if I'm totally off the mark, but it's been my reading that the whole "redeemer" archetype was hardly invented by the 1st cent CE hellenized jews.
Anyway, I see the BSG humans as having moved away from the classical concept of religion as devotion and votive offereings to something more personal. Amongst some of them. But not in any way all. I agree with you totally that planet to planet the worship of a given figure would be totally different. I think in the same way, what is considered "normal" practice religiously varies from planet to planet, so we have the Gemenonians (um, ? Gemenonites?) being considered very hardline--which I read to mean more based on strict interpretation of the Scrolls and also bound by ritual and practice rather than personal feelings or beliefs--and then people like Starbuck who obviously has a personal, "christian" relationship with which ever dieties it is she worships.
Yah for you, been dying for this.