I've posted this in many different places, and I'm amused by how different the opinions and ideas are in each forum or community.
Context:
I'm writing a novel with no FTL/Wormholes/WarpDrive or any other means of instantaneous travel. All commuting between stars is done at near-light speed. Therefore, there is a lot of time dilation for those traveling. However, I've hand-waved FTL communication; it is possible but extremely expensive. Because of this, colonies outside planet Earth still use Earth time and calendars, besides their own local time and calendars.
Question:
I want to explore how human culture would evolve in this scenario. How different pockets of civilization would adapt to their environments. Since today is Good Friday for some Christians—a calendar-based holiday—I was wondering how these religious holidays would evolve in this setting. Would the colonies still follow the Earth's calendar? Or would they reinvent those holidays to better adapt to their own calendars?
Besides, how do you think that our current religions would evolve in this setting? Would the colonies create new branches of current religions? Or is it more likely that they develop their own beliefs? Or even no religion at all, since the current trend is that people are becoming less religious these days.
I would love to hear your thoughts to help me brainstorm this concept, Thanks!
I would love to help with this!
As a cultist of the Stars, being able to leave my fingerprints all over designing religious ideation throughout space is an alluring thing.
First and foremost, and perhaps the easiest to figure out, is diet. Diet will naturally change to reflect the environment. Just as during Covid, wine drinking was temporarily banned during communion, and the breaking of bread was switched out for gluten-free rice wafers which could be handed out without hands touching their own piece of Christ, the environment will impact the colonies.
Mars, with its extremely harsh silica dust, might lead to communion (and foods in general) be adulterated with something that can degrade the silica (that way, a religious ritual is not ruined by your insides bleeding from being torn apart).
Personally, I believe that the colonization will lead to a new age of religion. This statement is a bit dramatic, but I have more than a few reasons as to why.
One, isolation and extreme stress. The first and low number of people tends to lead to cabin fever, which has hallucinations. Hallucinations can have transcendent and religious experiences, which can create a nascent religion that a person will try to promote, believing they have seen a vision of divinity. In addition, extreme stress is an incredibly powerful thing. It can reduce sleep (increases hallucinations and decreases logical thinking, thus predisposes one to religion), it requires you to seek solace in something, anything at all, to relieve it (which religion offers in abundance), and in intense situations (like an accident in the colony), they can encounter miracles or such things they would chalk up to miracles much more easily.
Two, separation from original environment. Religions have always been Earth-centric, or had some form of Earth-centric element. Once religions move outside of their spaces, they must grow and evolve to adapt, or they die. For a personal, more immediate, example, my ideology as a cultist of the Stars has likely changed as it has exited Discord. It is even more clandestine (there are less roleplay cults on Scribble Hub than on Discord) and even less aggressive at proselytizing (I never have been interested in convincing others to join it, but with a greater concentration of Christian individuals, I am less blatant about the ideologies behind it). For a more mainstream, past example, Buddhism formed in India, but became China-centric as it entered Chinese society.
Let's set the stage. Imagine a metallic world of tin and indigo slate, populated by fungal bodies of spongiform build, because acid is required to dissolve the metals. The Stars are watching, as they always do. The colonists are a few generations old, relatively young as colonies go, and Christianity is the main religion.
The crucifixion is no longer an element of Good Friday. It is not even referred to, other than to reaffirm why they moved beyond the cross.
Why? It's not because the crosses cannot be made. They are certainly advanced enough, and if they can't do wood, metal is a suitable substitute.
Instead, tiny titanium nails are carefully hammered into a safe spot on the body. They mimic the nailing to the cross, but avoid the cross. This is due to them being an offshoot of an older colony. Beset by murders and criminalization, in combination with a pest killing all of the forests they relied on for their livelihood, many in the large colony were convinced that too much sin had been accrued. A prophet received a vision of Jesus breaking the cross in half, prying the nails out and hammering them into his eyes to atone for the new sins of those who left Earth. She became a martyr for religion by proselytizing the new version of Christianity, saying that Jesus had only atoned for those on Earth. For those who left and entered the heavens without God's permission, Jesus had to take it upon himself to endure suffering once more, as the Rapture had not yet occured. And so, she nailed her eyes in a fit of passion, used the medical machines to heal herself, and convinced everyone to convert with her sheer faith. The cross was no longer a satisfactory sign of faith, and the nails were.
And this colony does participate in a fast, as they do not have the surplus to not fast occasionally. So, to make it not a bad thing to hate and stress over, it became part of the holidays, to explain away why they couldn't eat.
Third, metaphor. The surrounding environment will impact metaphor, and subtly impact ideologies as a result. Those who blindly trust tend to die or cause death, so that ideology of blind faith must change to be "show as much faith as you can, but excise what you cannot show faith." As a result, the Bible would be heavily parsed and cut down to shorter form. Over time, as religious experiences abound, and Bibles are printed, and religious morals of holidays (like Christmas) are changed by other media (like Charles Dickens changed much of how Christmas was seen by Christianity).
Also, conflict is always an important influence of religion. Christmas was not nearly as prevalent or important in Ireland, and it was very different, until it was repurposed by the British to stifle the Celtic beliefs, who had conquered Ireland.
