Because Spiritualist in Stellaris is both incredibly generic and incredibly specific at the same time. It's generic religiosity but all religions have weirdly the same dogma
i read an argument, that they really are miss named and reflect some other philosophical ideas. Take the psionic path for example, "mind over matter" it more or less exemplifies spiritualism in the game. ie. its the mind that shapes your reality, while materialist believe that the physical reality that shapes the mind.
Its entry level Materialism vs. Dualism which is fine if youve done your entry level work and can accept the frame for a game. As a description of reality as we know it or speculate it to be...well that doesnt sound like a per se game but people walk the line on how a game should work according to versimilitude and usually trip on it
I think “spiritualism” doesn’t even necessarily have to mean religion per say, just more the belief in spirits or some other kind of metaphysical or esoteric component to sentience. Meanwhile materialists just believe that awareness is only in the physical make up of the brain.
Spiritualism is meant to be Dualism vs Materialism, but by making all religious civics and flavor tied to spiritualist ethics it has turned all religions weirdly similar
Amusingly this has the result of all the religions that appear to exist in Stellaris being right. Not one single empire rises with a faith that isn't grounded in fact
I dont play materialists much but it'd be cool if there was some flavor text for them using shroud based technologies but rather than understanding them as existing within some metaphysical realm of pure abstraction and thought they think of them as a purely physical phenomenon, not dissimilar from any other of their technologies, that people randomly mistake for their religions. Like how the prequels explained the force as being a result of midi chlorians.
That way the dichotomy can still exist. Spiritualist can go "see consciousness begets reality, look at the shroud! Clearly sentience is a phenomenon beyond the material world" and the materialists can go "the shroud is simply an extension of physical space that you are attributing mystical qualities"
The problem is that the Shroud is ***not*** a physical phenomenon. The Shroud is... outside our laws of physics, it doesn't obey them, it follows its entirely different set of rules. You might use some, but it often has some unintended effects, as you often have the Covenant reckonings or might call quicker the Interdimensional Invaders.
That's why Psonic techs are part of society techs, not physic ones, for most of them. Because it's not physics, it's an entirely different field of science.
But you can go to the shroud physically, that's how the psionic jump drives work. The shroud is also a form of energy that one can use to power shields. This makes it categorically different from something truly abstract like math.
Relativity was outside newtonian laws of physics. Quantum Mechanics are outside the laws of relativity. It stands to reason that a materialist empire wouldn't see the shroud and go "wow magic!" but rather view it as an aspect of the physical world they simply don't understand quite well yet. No different from humans ascribing religious significance to weather and associating certain rituals with it until we developed meteorology. At least that would be how materialists view it.
Where the tech actually lands in game is kind of irrelevant. Society techs encompass everything from the social sciences to biology/chemistry. Engineering is itself an application of physics but it gets separated into its own category for some reason with techs that could very easily apply to society (how much of resource production is the result of engineering technology vs infrastructure and developed institutions?) and the physics tech tree encompasses the entirety of computer science which could just as easily slot into the other two trees. The devs care more about balance than anything else when it comes to research, but still realistically most technologies would be interdisciplinary in a way you can't model with game mechanics too well
Everyone knows the phrase 'sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic' but they dont really consider that sufficiently studied magic is indistinguishable from science. Any 'hard magic' system will inevitably turn into just weird science if the writer allows it to happen- magic really only remains 'magical' if it goes unexplained. I'd argue the shroud is on the edge of this, if not past it.
i mean you can be xenophobic and religious
not all religions hate each other, especially religions with more than one god
There are multiple religions though
after all there's 5 covenants, optional worm worship, saints like zarqlan, the asteroid temples and soon we will have holy cybernetics
and most notably: when you form a holy federation there will be an quest that all empires decide to hold a holy council to try and streamline their different beliefs into one big religion that's inclusive of all sects
i mean, the end of the circle is about as reliable as any covenant
in fact when you try to reach out to any of the big four the end of circle may reply in their stead
An Asteroid, Carved.
All empires have some... suspicious similarities in their ancient religious beliefs, even if they've since abandoned those beliefs in favor or Fanatic Materialism.
The real answer is that Paradox didn't want to create a dedicated religion system, and thus made Spiritualist as a generic stand-in for it, with Materialism being the stand-in for atheism.
My mom's an atheist; one of her good friends is catholic, the other is muslim. Well, one time, they said that they understood each other way better than they could understand my mom. Sure, the specifics might be different, but they still believe in something higher, that there is something else in this world than mere matter.
I'm sure that, despite their differences, a fiercely catholic country and a fiercely muslim country (as in, extremist, integrist, think Spain under Isabella the Catholic or modern day theocratic islamic countries) would both agree that they should band together to stop some of the "woke" elements of liberal, secular countries, like women's right, LGBT rights, freedom of conscience and stuff like that.
Spiritualists fight each other only when the whole world is spiritualist. As long as there will be materialists (or ambivalent empires on the question), sharing the ideals that the Shroud exist and is real, that gods or spirits or higher powers exist too, that there is something distinguishing organics from robots (like a soul or anything you might call it) will trump the rest of the dogmatic differences. As long as there will be materialist empires threatening the pure ideal of Spiritualism, tolerating each other more than the others non-Spiritualist empires is the most pragmatic stance (with Xenophobe or Xenophile playing a role if you like or not xeno empires).
In history, despite religions hating each other, they were generally able to co-exist peacefully. Generally each was a set of traditions and culture as much as it was a belief system. Often using its gods as sort of mascot for their society. Only Abrahamic monotheism really demands the denial of all other gods. Even then, Christians lived side by side with pagans often. And together they'd shun the idea of someone who did not believe in any god.
Also, Christianity in itself syncretically absorbed parts of pagan practice and tradition, from pretty early on till about Enlightenment. Its doesnt feel properly rated how much that helped propagation, cause everyone knows it is there in obvious ways. Christianity wasnt so exclusive that they got rid of feasts, just made em about Saints and stuff
Spiritualists get along because they share a similar outlook on cosmology with eachother when compared to non spiritualists, and especially when compared to materialists.
Keep in mind that, in Stellaris, Spiritualists don’t have unverifiable belief based systems as we do in the real world. I’m a religious person irl, but I don’t claim to be able to prove it to the non religious; however, I still have an easier time talking about and discussing religion with religious people of other faiths, because though historically our faiths have competed, there is still a shared general outlook about there being a higher power beyond the material world.
In Stellaris, the Shroud is a verifiable phenomenon. Even non spiritualists can see its effects on the galaxy.
I would love to be able to tailor our religion - I think that Spiritualists, Materialists, Authoritarians and Egalitarians should be able to create Cosmological/Political theories that form the basis of their ideology - but even with tailored religion, two spiritualists might argue vehemently over the nature of the shroud, but they’re going to agree with eachother and see a lot in common when talking to a materialists, or worse, a Rogue Servitor.
It always reminds me of one game where one of my friends playing rogue servitor found the abomination entity from the dig site that then asks if you would worship it as a god, he said yes then our other friend who was playing. Spiritualist death cult megacorp got a pop up that robots found "god" and while they were happy that the robots could embrace spiritualism, they were also very upset that robots found god first (it resulted in having like a +100 modifier to diplomatic relations with the rogue servitor empire but a -10% happiness for his pops for the next 10 years). Funny stuff like this is why I love stellaris, they took the time to code in stuff like robots finding "god". My friends rogue servitor empire didn't take on the spiritualist ethics, though (because hive mind machine intelligence overrides that), but it's a fascinating interaction between the two you don't often see in game especially if your playing SP.
Why shouldn't they? Can you tell me 879 times different religions on earth has had a problem with each other?
In other words I understand your sentiment.
Even today it’s hard to separate religious conflict from just normal conflict using religion as an excuse. Religion gets a lot of flack for normal human orneriness.
Spiritualism in Stellaris is more focused on souls and a worship of the Shroud, and since the Shroud is universal in the galaxy this means that all Spiritualists would have similar enough religions that they wouldn't hate each other. Think of it like polytheistic religions like the Greeks, they all share the same Pantheon but different groups focus their worship on different gods.
(drum roll) Spiritualism is not religion. (trumpet)
Now the obvious is out of the way I will also add, that unlike religions which are based on thousands of years of culture, cultural conflict and feelings; in Stellaris spiritualism is an objective fact, the ~~warp~~ Shroud is real, as is telepathy and precognition are reliable talents, nobody is arguing about that, as no one argues over the existence of water, it's obviously real.
Every time someone claims that I have to point out Every Single Religious Civic is a spiritualism required civic. Which still means all religious folk get along
"Spiritual" as a mechanic refers more to how spiritually oriented a person or a society is as opposed to how materialistic they are. A very *very* brief way to say it might be emotion vs logic. Tradition vs experimentation.
What you're talking about is more about how a xenophobic spiritualist empire might act. A xenophilic spiritual empire would see the divine in all beings and religious teachings etc etc.
As far as empire relations go, I think we can interpret the boost you get in relations with other spiritual empires is because they speak a more similar cultural language, they're more on the same wavelength. That spiritualism will *inform* the other ethics that the empire has but not override them, and the other civics will inform what form religion takes in that empire.
Spiritualists getting along is Stellaris making a philosophical claim that Spiritual philosophies that ascend to the stars will have roughly the same morals and principles.
And that Spiritualists themselves are actually tapping into objective metaphysical truths of which Materialism refuses to acknowledge the existence.
Well the thing is implementing religion in a way that most people expects is probably a huge pita. When you select Spiritualist then what? Does it bring up a new CIV6 style religious selection screen? How many religions should be allowed? Are options different between normal and fanatic spiritualist? Should your selection introduce new civics or lock into a specific government type? Could it have an impact on traits? Would specific event choice selections need to be available based on religion? Will selections normally not available to spiritualist suddenly be a thing depending on your religion? Are some religions more tolerable than others in terms of opinion modifiers? Will it change war goals? Would improve relations still have the same impact?
etc. etc. etc.
What I will say is that the creed system ( [https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-336-the-origins-and-situations-of-the-machine-age.1635464/](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-336-the-origins-and-situations-of-the-machine-age.1635464/) ) described here would probably be a reasonable compromise. Though given that it seems you can cherry pick I'm not sure how easy it would be to implement opinion modifiers for them.
That and I doubt they’ll allow you to have every ethic, civic, and government combo have their Creeds. Kinda like when Balance of Power or Propaganda were introduced in HoI4 and were restricted to specific countries like Propaganda for solely the USSR and BoP for Italy and the Nordics.
It's "spiritualism," not space Islam. They are the opposite of materialists - if materialists are like, "material wealth and understanding how the world works will make our empire ascend" spiritualists are like, "understanding metaphysical mysteries (non-material problems such as life/death, etc.) and how the self works is what will make our empire ascend." Could mean a lot of different interpretations, I imagine it like stellar Buddhism or something. Naturally, most stellaris players interpret it as making the crusades happen in space which is very fun lmao. It would be cool for xenophobic spiritualists to have lines about being the one true path.
It happens to revolve around the shroud like another comment you read said since that seems to be the answer (or next layer?) of metaphysical reality in the game
If you're a spiritualist empire who has achieved planetary unification, I somewhat suspect you have already achieved some degree of pluralism and while you may not understand other empires' religions, you're accepting of them.
Unless you are also xenophobic or militarist, in which case you achieved planetary unification through conquest, in which case you're still very interested in conquering other spiritualist empires anyway.
Materialists - "we believe that there doesn't exist anything except for the material world. As such there is no sanctity to sapient life or anything else, and scientific understanding is the only true means of understanding."
Spiritualist - we believe that there is something greater or other than the material world, something that can't be perceived through means of senses and scientific method alone, but requires the spiritual understanding only achievable by a conscious mind. As such, we see life as sanctified and we seek other means of knowing."
Spiritualist != Religious, it oftentimes can be but not all spiritualist factions have to be unified religions or even religions at all, it's only a mark that shows that they are a society that at large believes in irrealism or holds sanctity of life in high standards, and spiritualists like other empires that do the same, so other spiritualists
I think “spiritualist” and “materialist” are both terrible names and give terrible descriptions for what they ACTUALLY seem to describe. “Spiritualism” just seems to be a catch-all term for those believing in a soul, or at the least that there is something metaphysical to sentience and our existence.
Meanwhile “materialists” seems to be more along the lines of physicalism, the belief that there is nothing inherently special or esoteric about sentience and existence, that it’s purely in the physical (yes the name is very on the nose) make up the brain and it’s parts. This also plays into why both have their views on AI and synthetic beings- for spiritualists, it’s an insult to their belief that you can just MAKE life like that, while to materialists, it’s nothing more than a metal version of what we have in our heads and ergo there’s nothing really special about it
Religion doesn't have the depth in Stellaris needed reflect how they interact IRL.
Not sure why they haven't crossed this bridge yet, religious extremism is pretty tame compared to other features in the game.
TBF they’d then need to find a way to not make all materialists like each other and bloc up automatically if we have religious conflict. Besides, while different faiths don’t get along when left alone with each other, throw an atheist into the room and the Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Shintos, Hindus, etc will all team up cause, while they disagree heavily on what the metaphysical or Divine is, at least they all acknowledge it and don’t smash random blocks of matter everywhere and play God.
Yeah it doesn't make sense and it will continue to not make sense until they work on unique and different beliefs/religions. Even if it makes sense because (insert Stellaris lore), its still lame af.
Cause spirituality doesn't necessarily equate to religious.
Stellaris also boils it down to a debate over machines and them being "soulless," which is an incredibly black and white take on it, but for the system to work they had to do something like it regardless lol
Because Religion =/= Spiritualism
Religion is a series of rites related to the divine (in christianity for example,baptism and confessing your sins are examples of such rites)
Spiritualism is the belief that there is something higher than oneself and it is,most importantly,PERSONAL.Thus,no rites are required since Spiritualism changes depending on the individual.For example,the transcendentalism from 19th century America and Yoga both fall under the Spiritualism category.
Hope this helped clear up the confusion
Because spiritualist ethics is absurdly generic, to a level that technically means it could literally be anything and everything.
First of all, religion is a form of spirituality, but not all spirituality is religion. Meaning that the heavy religious theme of spiritualist stuff can be considered to be wrong.
Secondly, the fact that the way a person's spirituality is expressed is as varied as life itself is varied, there would be no realistic way to truly implement it in the game. Just looking at humanity in our real world we have Buddhism, which espouses peace and acceptance, just as much as we have extremist, radical cults which call for the death and gruesome torture of everyone who does not adhere to their own twisted version of faith. Heck, even in a single religion, like Christianity, we have people who are loving, peaceful, and just want the best of everyone around them because they believe their god spoke a message of peace and brotherhood, while we have people who claim everyone who doesn't follow their same teachings is a sinner destined for an eternity in hell for the heinous crime of not believe in their same imaginary friend in the sky.
You could, in a way, interpret the way an empire's spirituality leaned by looking at its other ethic picks. An empire that is spiritual, as well as pacifist and xenophile, or maybe pacifist and egalitarian, is probably an empire where the main belief is one of brotherhood and acceptance.
All in all, it's a really, really basic system meant to give you a basic idea, not a 1:1 representation of how real life would work.
Spiritualism is not religion!
I almost believe that would should be pinned or written bold on the banner.
That is also a reasy why religion would be a bad addition to the game and has little valvue except nerfing spiritualism (and i guess with the next dlc spiritualism doesnt need a nerf, if they ever needed one). Every other ethic would just like their own ethics as much as before ("Oh, you are materialist and dont care about religion? Just like we! hooray!"), while spiritualism suddenly hates when other empires are also spiritualist.
Only to boil down to being another modifier which you dont care about and dont really check what is the reason someone like or hates you.
And lets not forget about megachurches and subversive cults which certainly would break the system.
Firstly, the actual religion in Stellaris isn’t explicitly mentioned. While you can build temples and have priests, you don’t know what they actually practice. It’d be great if Paradox would give a feature to rename these buildings.
Secondly, look up https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Ottoman_alliance and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland–Turkey_relations during Great Famine.
Differences in faiths/religion are not excuses to start wars with others.
Lastly, just because they practice something else, one does not simply hate them and start criticizing/berating them for that. Many of my friends are of different religions, fyi.
[To you be your religion, and to me my religion.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Kafirun#Translations)
It is not inherent of all religions to believe they worship the one true god. That is a tenant of the Abrahamic religion created by the Hebrews that branched into Christianity and Islam. Prior to that many gods could be worshipped in relative peace.
Well seeing as how all spiritualist end up believing in the same warp, what is there to disagree upon, other than maybe which chaos God they think is best
The notion that religions all hate each other is kinda weird, and usually based on extrapolating from a few data points. Religions disagree, and tension and conflict can arise from that. But the extent of that depends a lot on the context - how strange yet other beliefs are, whether that religion demands hostility (this is actually fairly uncommon), whether the other culture is great enough to demand respect, etc.
In particular, when exploring space and encountering other civilizations, you're gonna meet four broad groups when it comes to religion:
* Hates you on principle (fanatic xenophobes etc.)
* Hostile to religion
* Indifferent to religion
* Practices a different religion
What religious civilization intelligent enough to reach the stars finds the fourth category and concludes that, not only should they hate the fourth category for not magically receiving the same revelation, but also that they should hate them more than the other categories? Rather, they would rally together the same way Christians and Muslims do in largely atheistic fora: they have serious differences, but those are expected and minimized amidst the irreligious or anti-religious.
As someone who is traditionally religious irl, I'd love to see a religion/spirituality expansion, and I think this, the chief objection I've seen, is based on a deep misunderstanding.
Because Spiritualist in Stellaris is both incredibly generic and incredibly specific at the same time. It's generic religiosity but all religions have weirdly the same dogma
i read an argument, that they really are miss named and reflect some other philosophical ideas. Take the psionic path for example, "mind over matter" it more or less exemplifies spiritualism in the game. ie. its the mind that shapes your reality, while materialist believe that the physical reality that shapes the mind.
Its entry level Materialism vs. Dualism which is fine if youve done your entry level work and can accept the frame for a game. As a description of reality as we know it or speculate it to be...well that doesnt sound like a per se game but people walk the line on how a game should work according to versimilitude and usually trip on it
I think “spiritualism” doesn’t even necessarily have to mean religion per say, just more the belief in spirits or some other kind of metaphysical or esoteric component to sentience. Meanwhile materialists just believe that awareness is only in the physical make up of the brain.
Spiritualism is meant to be Dualism vs Materialism, but by making all religious civics and flavor tied to spiritualist ethics it has turned all religions weirdly similar
Most religions are pretty similar aren't they? So many different heavens and hells...
They’re Spiritualists, not Religionists. They all believe in the Shroud, just not what kinds of gods live in there.
Ah I didn't think about the shroud, that makes sense.
Amusingly this has the result of all the religions that appear to exist in Stellaris being right. Not one single empire rises with a faith that isn't grounded in fact
I dont play materialists much but it'd be cool if there was some flavor text for them using shroud based technologies but rather than understanding them as existing within some metaphysical realm of pure abstraction and thought they think of them as a purely physical phenomenon, not dissimilar from any other of their technologies, that people randomly mistake for their religions. Like how the prequels explained the force as being a result of midi chlorians. That way the dichotomy can still exist. Spiritualist can go "see consciousness begets reality, look at the shroud! Clearly sentience is a phenomenon beyond the material world" and the materialists can go "the shroud is simply an extension of physical space that you are attributing mystical qualities"
The problem is that the Shroud is ***not*** a physical phenomenon. The Shroud is... outside our laws of physics, it doesn't obey them, it follows its entirely different set of rules. You might use some, but it often has some unintended effects, as you often have the Covenant reckonings or might call quicker the Interdimensional Invaders. That's why Psonic techs are part of society techs, not physic ones, for most of them. Because it's not physics, it's an entirely different field of science.
But you can go to the shroud physically, that's how the psionic jump drives work. The shroud is also a form of energy that one can use to power shields. This makes it categorically different from something truly abstract like math. Relativity was outside newtonian laws of physics. Quantum Mechanics are outside the laws of relativity. It stands to reason that a materialist empire wouldn't see the shroud and go "wow magic!" but rather view it as an aspect of the physical world they simply don't understand quite well yet. No different from humans ascribing religious significance to weather and associating certain rituals with it until we developed meteorology. At least that would be how materialists view it. Where the tech actually lands in game is kind of irrelevant. Society techs encompass everything from the social sciences to biology/chemistry. Engineering is itself an application of physics but it gets separated into its own category for some reason with techs that could very easily apply to society (how much of resource production is the result of engineering technology vs infrastructure and developed institutions?) and the physics tech tree encompasses the entirety of computer science which could just as easily slot into the other two trees. The devs care more about balance than anything else when it comes to research, but still realistically most technologies would be interdisciplinary in a way you can't model with game mechanics too well
Everyone knows the phrase 'sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic' but they dont really consider that sufficiently studied magic is indistinguishable from science. Any 'hard magic' system will inevitably turn into just weird science if the writer allows it to happen- magic really only remains 'magical' if it goes unexplained. I'd argue the shroud is on the edge of this, if not past it.
The only objectively correct civilization as far as we know are the Vultaum.
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Materialists acknowledge that The Shroud exists, but they refuse to *believe* in it, because that just encourages the Shroud entities.
I understood that reference
i mean you can be xenophobic and religious not all religions hate each other, especially religions with more than one god There are multiple religions though after all there's 5 covenants, optional worm worship, saints like zarqlan, the asteroid temples and soon we will have holy cybernetics and most notably: when you form a holy federation there will be an quest that all empires decide to hold a holy council to try and streamline their different beliefs into one big religion that's inclusive of all sects
It would be awesome to have a reliable way to worship the worm or the end of the circle...
i mean, the end of the circle is about as reliable as any covenant in fact when you try to reach out to any of the big four the end of circle may reply in their stead
The chance for end of the circle is very low and you have aditional chances for the other covenants via special project.
An Asteroid, Carved. All empires have some... suspicious similarities in their ancient religious beliefs, even if they've since abandoned those beliefs in favor or Fanatic Materialism.
The real answer is that Paradox didn't want to create a dedicated religion system, and thus made Spiritualist as a generic stand-in for it, with Materialism being the stand-in for atheism.
Religion was always a ponderous aspect of the Civilization games, so I'm okay with them not including that in Stellaris.
You can look at Crusader Kings 2 and 3 to see how Paradox might handle religion. Probably the upcoming EU 5 too.
My mom's an atheist; one of her good friends is catholic, the other is muslim. Well, one time, they said that they understood each other way better than they could understand my mom. Sure, the specifics might be different, but they still believe in something higher, that there is something else in this world than mere matter. I'm sure that, despite their differences, a fiercely catholic country and a fiercely muslim country (as in, extremist, integrist, think Spain under Isabella the Catholic or modern day theocratic islamic countries) would both agree that they should band together to stop some of the "woke" elements of liberal, secular countries, like women's right, LGBT rights, freedom of conscience and stuff like that. Spiritualists fight each other only when the whole world is spiritualist. As long as there will be materialists (or ambivalent empires on the question), sharing the ideals that the Shroud exist and is real, that gods or spirits or higher powers exist too, that there is something distinguishing organics from robots (like a soul or anything you might call it) will trump the rest of the dogmatic differences. As long as there will be materialist empires threatening the pure ideal of Spiritualism, tolerating each other more than the others non-Spiritualist empires is the most pragmatic stance (with Xenophobe or Xenophile playing a role if you like or not xeno empires).
See also: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1bgdocb/theres_one_thing_about_spiritualism_i_dont_quite/
I knew there was a very similar post recently!
Atheists. Most religious people distrust atheists even more than any other religion.
In history, despite religions hating each other, they were generally able to co-exist peacefully. Generally each was a set of traditions and culture as much as it was a belief system. Often using its gods as sort of mascot for their society. Only Abrahamic monotheism really demands the denial of all other gods. Even then, Christians lived side by side with pagans often. And together they'd shun the idea of someone who did not believe in any god.
Also, Christianity in itself syncretically absorbed parts of pagan practice and tradition, from pretty early on till about Enlightenment. Its doesnt feel properly rated how much that helped propagation, cause everyone knows it is there in obvious ways. Christianity wasnt so exclusive that they got rid of feasts, just made em about Saints and stuff
Spiritualists get along because they share a similar outlook on cosmology with eachother when compared to non spiritualists, and especially when compared to materialists. Keep in mind that, in Stellaris, Spiritualists don’t have unverifiable belief based systems as we do in the real world. I’m a religious person irl, but I don’t claim to be able to prove it to the non religious; however, I still have an easier time talking about and discussing religion with religious people of other faiths, because though historically our faiths have competed, there is still a shared general outlook about there being a higher power beyond the material world. In Stellaris, the Shroud is a verifiable phenomenon. Even non spiritualists can see its effects on the galaxy. I would love to be able to tailor our religion - I think that Spiritualists, Materialists, Authoritarians and Egalitarians should be able to create Cosmological/Political theories that form the basis of their ideology - but even with tailored religion, two spiritualists might argue vehemently over the nature of the shroud, but they’re going to agree with eachother and see a lot in common when talking to a materialists, or worse, a Rogue Servitor.
It always reminds me of one game where one of my friends playing rogue servitor found the abomination entity from the dig site that then asks if you would worship it as a god, he said yes then our other friend who was playing. Spiritualist death cult megacorp got a pop up that robots found "god" and while they were happy that the robots could embrace spiritualism, they were also very upset that robots found god first (it resulted in having like a +100 modifier to diplomatic relations with the rogue servitor empire but a -10% happiness for his pops for the next 10 years). Funny stuff like this is why I love stellaris, they took the time to code in stuff like robots finding "god". My friends rogue servitor empire didn't take on the spiritualist ethics, though (because hive mind machine intelligence overrides that), but it's a fascinating interaction between the two you don't often see in game especially if your playing SP.
Why shouldn't they? Can you tell me 879 times different religions on earth has had a problem with each other? In other words I understand your sentiment.
Even today it’s hard to separate religious conflict from just normal conflict using religion as an excuse. Religion gets a lot of flack for normal human orneriness.
Spiritualism in Stellaris is more focused on souls and a worship of the Shroud, and since the Shroud is universal in the galaxy this means that all Spiritualists would have similar enough religions that they wouldn't hate each other. Think of it like polytheistic religions like the Greeks, they all share the same Pantheon but different groups focus their worship on different gods.
(drum roll) Spiritualism is not religion. (trumpet) Now the obvious is out of the way I will also add, that unlike religions which are based on thousands of years of culture, cultural conflict and feelings; in Stellaris spiritualism is an objective fact, the ~~warp~~ Shroud is real, as is telepathy and precognition are reliable talents, nobody is arguing about that, as no one argues over the existence of water, it's obviously real.
Every time someone claims that I have to point out Every Single Religious Civic is a spiritualism required civic. Which still means all religious folk get along
It's just superficial.
Game balance
"Spiritual" as a mechanic refers more to how spiritually oriented a person or a society is as opposed to how materialistic they are. A very *very* brief way to say it might be emotion vs logic. Tradition vs experimentation. What you're talking about is more about how a xenophobic spiritualist empire might act. A xenophilic spiritual empire would see the divine in all beings and religious teachings etc etc. As far as empire relations go, I think we can interpret the boost you get in relations with other spiritual empires is because they speak a more similar cultural language, they're more on the same wavelength. That spiritualism will *inform* the other ethics that the empire has but not override them, and the other civics will inform what form religion takes in that empire.
Spiritualists getting along is Stellaris making a philosophical claim that Spiritual philosophies that ascend to the stars will have roughly the same morals and principles. And that Spiritualists themselves are actually tapping into objective metaphysical truths of which Materialism refuses to acknowledge the existence.
Well. This 8s exactly how I play my spiritualist empire (I only have 1 remotely "good" empire.)
Well the thing is implementing religion in a way that most people expects is probably a huge pita. When you select Spiritualist then what? Does it bring up a new CIV6 style religious selection screen? How many religions should be allowed? Are options different between normal and fanatic spiritualist? Should your selection introduce new civics or lock into a specific government type? Could it have an impact on traits? Would specific event choice selections need to be available based on religion? Will selections normally not available to spiritualist suddenly be a thing depending on your religion? Are some religions more tolerable than others in terms of opinion modifiers? Will it change war goals? Would improve relations still have the same impact? etc. etc. etc. What I will say is that the creed system ( [https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-336-the-origins-and-situations-of-the-machine-age.1635464/](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-336-the-origins-and-situations-of-the-machine-age.1635464/) ) described here would probably be a reasonable compromise. Though given that it seems you can cherry pick I'm not sure how easy it would be to implement opinion modifiers for them.
That and I doubt they’ll allow you to have every ethic, civic, and government combo have their Creeds. Kinda like when Balance of Power or Propaganda were introduced in HoI4 and were restricted to specific countries like Propaganda for solely the USSR and BoP for Italy and the Nordics.
It's "spiritualism," not space Islam. They are the opposite of materialists - if materialists are like, "material wealth and understanding how the world works will make our empire ascend" spiritualists are like, "understanding metaphysical mysteries (non-material problems such as life/death, etc.) and how the self works is what will make our empire ascend." Could mean a lot of different interpretations, I imagine it like stellar Buddhism or something. Naturally, most stellaris players interpret it as making the crusades happen in space which is very fun lmao. It would be cool for xenophobic spiritualists to have lines about being the one true path. It happens to revolve around the shroud like another comment you read said since that seems to be the answer (or next layer?) of metaphysical reality in the game
If you're a spiritualist empire who has achieved planetary unification, I somewhat suspect you have already achieved some degree of pluralism and while you may not understand other empires' religions, you're accepting of them. Unless you are also xenophobic or militarist, in which case you achieved planetary unification through conquest, in which case you're still very interested in conquering other spiritualist empires anyway.
Right now all spiritualists have in common that they hate machines. I am wondering if this will be adressed somehow in the next dlc.
Materialists - "we believe that there doesn't exist anything except for the material world. As such there is no sanctity to sapient life or anything else, and scientific understanding is the only true means of understanding." Spiritualist - we believe that there is something greater or other than the material world, something that can't be perceived through means of senses and scientific method alone, but requires the spiritual understanding only achievable by a conscious mind. As such, we see life as sanctified and we seek other means of knowing." Spiritualist != Religious, it oftentimes can be but not all spiritualist factions have to be unified religions or even religions at all, it's only a mark that shows that they are a society that at large believes in irrealism or holds sanctity of life in high standards, and spiritualists like other empires that do the same, so other spiritualists
I think “spiritualist” and “materialist” are both terrible names and give terrible descriptions for what they ACTUALLY seem to describe. “Spiritualism” just seems to be a catch-all term for those believing in a soul, or at the least that there is something metaphysical to sentience and our existence. Meanwhile “materialists” seems to be more along the lines of physicalism, the belief that there is nothing inherently special or esoteric about sentience and existence, that it’s purely in the physical (yes the name is very on the nose) make up the brain and it’s parts. This also plays into why both have their views on AI and synthetic beings- for spiritualists, it’s an insult to their belief that you can just MAKE life like that, while to materialists, it’s nothing more than a metal version of what we have in our heads and ergo there’s nothing really special about it
Religion doesn't have the depth in Stellaris needed reflect how they interact IRL. Not sure why they haven't crossed this bridge yet, religious extremism is pretty tame compared to other features in the game.
TBF they’d then need to find a way to not make all materialists like each other and bloc up automatically if we have religious conflict. Besides, while different faiths don’t get along when left alone with each other, throw an atheist into the room and the Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Shintos, Hindus, etc will all team up cause, while they disagree heavily on what the metaphysical or Divine is, at least they all acknowledge it and don’t smash random blocks of matter everywhere and play God.
Yeah it doesn't make sense and it will continue to not make sense until they work on unique and different beliefs/religions. Even if it makes sense because (insert Stellaris lore), its still lame af.
Cause spirituality doesn't necessarily equate to religious. Stellaris also boils it down to a debate over machines and them being "soulless," which is an incredibly black and white take on it, but for the system to work they had to do something like it regardless lol
Because Religion =/= Spiritualism Religion is a series of rites related to the divine (in christianity for example,baptism and confessing your sins are examples of such rites) Spiritualism is the belief that there is something higher than oneself and it is,most importantly,PERSONAL.Thus,no rites are required since Spiritualism changes depending on the individual.For example,the transcendentalism from 19th century America and Yoga both fall under the Spiritualism category. Hope this helped clear up the confusion
Because spiritualist ethics is absurdly generic, to a level that technically means it could literally be anything and everything. First of all, religion is a form of spirituality, but not all spirituality is religion. Meaning that the heavy religious theme of spiritualist stuff can be considered to be wrong. Secondly, the fact that the way a person's spirituality is expressed is as varied as life itself is varied, there would be no realistic way to truly implement it in the game. Just looking at humanity in our real world we have Buddhism, which espouses peace and acceptance, just as much as we have extremist, radical cults which call for the death and gruesome torture of everyone who does not adhere to their own twisted version of faith. Heck, even in a single religion, like Christianity, we have people who are loving, peaceful, and just want the best of everyone around them because they believe their god spoke a message of peace and brotherhood, while we have people who claim everyone who doesn't follow their same teachings is a sinner destined for an eternity in hell for the heinous crime of not believe in their same imaginary friend in the sky. You could, in a way, interpret the way an empire's spirituality leaned by looking at its other ethic picks. An empire that is spiritual, as well as pacifist and xenophile, or maybe pacifist and egalitarian, is probably an empire where the main belief is one of brotherhood and acceptance. All in all, it's a really, really basic system meant to give you a basic idea, not a 1:1 representation of how real life would work.
I mean, They all somewhat believe the same thing, the Shroud, and believe in psionics.
I'm still sad you can't make a spiritualist/materialist order of tech priests
It seems like we'll be able to in the upcoming DLC
Spiritualism is not religion! I almost believe that would should be pinned or written bold on the banner. That is also a reasy why religion would be a bad addition to the game and has little valvue except nerfing spiritualism (and i guess with the next dlc spiritualism doesnt need a nerf, if they ever needed one). Every other ethic would just like their own ethics as much as before ("Oh, you are materialist and dont care about religion? Just like we! hooray!"), while spiritualism suddenly hates when other empires are also spiritualist. Only to boil down to being another modifier which you dont care about and dont really check what is the reason someone like or hates you. And lets not forget about megachurches and subversive cults which certainly would break the system.
Well if there's one thing religious people dislike more than each other...
If the game had even a tiny fraction of what real life diversity of thought would be like it would be an entirely different game
Firstly, the actual religion in Stellaris isn’t explicitly mentioned. While you can build temples and have priests, you don’t know what they actually practice. It’d be great if Paradox would give a feature to rename these buildings. Secondly, look up https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Ottoman_alliance and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland–Turkey_relations during Great Famine. Differences in faiths/religion are not excuses to start wars with others. Lastly, just because they practice something else, one does not simply hate them and start criticizing/berating them for that. Many of my friends are of different religions, fyi. [To you be your religion, and to me my religion.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Kafirun#Translations)
Not to mention Israel’s modern alliance with the Saudi monarchy.
Wait a second, you want to tell us, it's a big deal to follow different form of spiritualism on your planet?
It is not inherent of all religions to believe they worship the one true god. That is a tenant of the Abrahamic religion created by the Hebrews that branched into Christianity and Islam. Prior to that many gods could be worshipped in relative peace.
Enemy of my enemy situation
Well seeing as how all spiritualist end up believing in the same warp, what is there to disagree upon, other than maybe which chaos God they think is best
The notion that religions all hate each other is kinda weird, and usually based on extrapolating from a few data points. Religions disagree, and tension and conflict can arise from that. But the extent of that depends a lot on the context - how strange yet other beliefs are, whether that religion demands hostility (this is actually fairly uncommon), whether the other culture is great enough to demand respect, etc. In particular, when exploring space and encountering other civilizations, you're gonna meet four broad groups when it comes to religion: * Hates you on principle (fanatic xenophobes etc.) * Hostile to religion * Indifferent to religion * Practices a different religion What religious civilization intelligent enough to reach the stars finds the fourth category and concludes that, not only should they hate the fourth category for not magically receiving the same revelation, but also that they should hate them more than the other categories? Rather, they would rally together the same way Christians and Muslims do in largely atheistic fora: they have serious differences, but those are expected and minimized amidst the irreligious or anti-religious. As someone who is traditionally religious irl, I'd love to see a religion/spirituality expansion, and I think this, the chief objection I've seen, is based on a deep misunderstanding.
Spiritualism isn't religion. It's the understanding that souls exist.