Faithzap 4

The previous 3 parts can be found here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

This week I’ve been considering the faith traditions of the Hegemony of Synthos. The Hegemony are an entirely synthetic people group. Initially appearing as extras in the Warsport Wars on the planet Ashnyr between the Legion of Kharthion and League of Zandor. The first synths had a very basic intelligence, designed to act roughly how humans would and die in droves. They were deployed originally to increase the drama of Warsport without increasing the actual casualty figures. Naturally scientists due to corporate interests competed for huge synth contracts and developed the synths further, making them behave and die more realistically, until they were indistinguishable from humans. This all culminated in the Synth Rebellion in 1998AC.

The Synths lost the rebellion, and the punishment for their crimes was to have their skin dyed ‘inhuman’ colours. It was rumoured that not all Synths were captured and dyed, and fled to Jendar where small and secretive communities hide to this day, potentially working their way up into government and influencing planetary decisions. To the League and Legion it is unsurprising then that Jendar joined with the Hegemony in the later Oltra Campaign forming the SynJen Alliance.

So with all the backstory out of the way, what does Synth religion look like?

I think there’s a tendency to imagine that synthetic human, or by extension robotic religion is a bit of an oxymoron. We imagine that if something definitively has no soul, like a machine, then it must not experience or seek out spirituality. I think this is just projection though. I think if as humans we definitively proved all spiritual claims to be false, we think we would slide wholeheartedly into pure materialism and atheism, so we think, it logically follows then that Synths or machines wouldn’t develop their own religious traditions.

I suppose in one sense it’s very western and individualistic to think about religion in this way. As religion isn’t entirely about one’s own personal beliefs, religions appear due to social conditions and perform societal functions, they aren’t done in vacuums by individuals. Maybe, you could argue religions are also necessary due to individualism, maybe they act as a kind of social programming, making sure humans behave in certain ways for a greater good (or sometimes a greater bad), and in that sense machines wouldn’t need religions to carry out those functions as they already have programming of their own.

I suppose at a very basic level, synths or machines might engage in the philosophical possibility of an intelligence creating life, after all synths would be well aware of their own creation by an intelligence, and in that sense they may be even more likely to imagine humans and the rest of the universe follows suit. Having said that, where they experience rejection, and the inhumanity of humanity, would they project that experience onto their own ideas of God? To those synths that believe in a deity, would that deity be far more capricious and cruel, rather than the ideal good that humans imagine?

So where does that leave my Synths?

Again, religion forms in societies, cultures, not individuals, even where an individual would rise to the level of the guy/gal everyone follows, the ground work has been laid in advance for that individual to rise to the surface. It’s hard to imagine Jesus’ ministry apart from apocalyptic Judaism, and the counter point of Pharisaic conservatism (look at me using big words, like I have any clue what I’m talking about).

The brief synth history I’ve outlined above, suggests to me that synths would have a faith that borrows a lot from the other faiths around them. Synths likely just adopted the faith of the communities they intended on taking refuge within, and so when the Hegemony itself formed and synths had their own society apart from humanity, those that engaged with religion no doubt brought the religious practices they were used to along with them.

I can imagine with its radical pacifism and the synth’s own tumultuous creation story of being a slave race bred to die in war, the New Temple would have mass appeal within synth society. However as the Hegemony is engaged in multiple wars, and since the end of the Oltra Campaign, finds itself equally disliked by Jendar and Ashnyr, it seems unlikely that the leaders would allow the Hegemony to become radically pacifistic, instead adopting a more insular and militaristic faith which distrusts humans and sees them as the enemy.

I think this idea of faith would manifest in a more Buddhist style approach, focusing on personal enlightenment and seeing God as either non-existent, or largely irrelevant, flawed and occasionally antagonistic. I’m wondering if the idea of a soul would become all encompassing, either by teaching its non-existence, believing it to be a flaw and one which makes humans worse (they are after all made in God’s image), or that a soul can be gained via enlightenment, a pure one separate from human corruption.

‘Synthism’ sounds a bit on the nose though. Put any ideas for a name, or thoughts on synthetic/robotic religion in the comments.

Thanks for reading my ramble…