God Is Like Jigsaw/Borg

[KevinM1]

The Northern Lights (The Golden Compass) is a harsh rip on religion as a means of control.

Apparently Nicole Kidman who starred in it is Christian or something but failed to notice the satire.

She's a Catholic and she sure got a lot of hate off groups like the Catholic League for it.

As for other examples, the one that always stuck with me was Yu Yevon from the Final Fantasy series. Kind of a long story but Yu Yevon was a king in the pre-historic past who invented a religion that would allow him to essentially control the world and make people reshape it as he wished.

What really caught my attention with this story though was Yevon explicitly forbade science, knowing that if people ever got too educated they'd eventually see through his cult and might even invent a plan to destroy him. Eventually someone did, but not before millions and millions of people died willingly or unwillingly for the Yevonite faith and had devoted their entire lived to preaching about and pandering to his every desire.

Really, the way the Yevonite faith is set up in the story with a single theocratic ruler and a savior (Yu Yevon) promising salvation for obedience it makes an eerily close analogy to several real religions, especially the Catholic Church. I was told the religion was inspired by Tibetan Buddhism but it does have some points of universal comparison. The game designers even went into such detail as to include practices like prayer rituals, and create side stories for people to discover how they were invented and what inspired them. The Yevonite opening prayer (bowing with cupped hands) for instance is later discovered to have been copied from a gesture crowds used to do at this worlds version of ancient soccer matches, and Yu Yevon copied the one done by his favorite team. So in a cruel bit of irony every time someone prayed to Yevon, they were doing a salute to Yevon's favorite sports team.

The most compelling line for me actually was in a description of the religion near the end of the game. "Nobody knows when Yevonism truly began, it probably even began with a good aim to bring about a better world and peace, but in efforts to justify its importance and gain power by any means it turned very, very bad. There's no point asking what inspired it, or if it's still working towards its initial goal. The time for those questions has long since passed, all that matters is stopping it".

It sure was creative, I must say http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Yevon

Yeah, FFX was really underrated on that front.  I hold it as one of the top three Final Fantasy games (VI, VII, X in no particular order).

Have you ever played Xenogears?  It has two churches:

The Holy Nisan Sect
The Ethos

They're both ostensibly Catholic.  Their garb, their titles, etc. reflect Catholicism.  They both seem to represent the popular take on religion.

Nisan: by far the smaller sect.  They are very clearly the positive side.  They provide succor for refugees, attempt to rediscover and maintain their area's history, and respect and help those that aren't believers in their faith.  They don't proselytize, and only speak about/explain their beliefs when asked.  And they never, ever threaten anyone with eternal damnation for having different beliefs.  Everything Catholics would point to as positive PR, Nisan is.  Their symbol is a pair of one-winged angels - one male, one female - with the idea that it's only by lifting each other up that they can fly to heaven.  LGBT snubbing aside, it's a decent sentiment.

Ethos: world-spanning.  They're in control of most of the world's science, and are among the only ones who can repair and maintain gears, the giant mechs of a previous age.  They intentionally withhold knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, to keep the masses under control.  They have enormous wealth, yet do little to help the people.  Even what few community services they run, like orphanages, have ulterior motives attached to them.  But, they manage to keep PR on their side for most of the game because they're in a position of power (gear services), keep most of their assholery on the down low, and, well, they've been an established religion for nearly 500 years.  They have inertia that's hard to stop.

It's on-the-nose to be sure, but it's presented very well.

Of course, the thing most people refer to as god in that game is actually a sentient biological weapon of immense power that crashed on the planet after destroying the ship that was transporting it....  Oh Japan, never change.