Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: An advanced civilization abandons religion as outdated.

  • Straight: A highly advanced civilization considers religion to be a quaint relic of the past.
  • Exaggerated: In an advanced civilization, having a religion is punished by death.
  • Justified: The advent of space travel, along with several other social factors, eroded religion to nothingness in this advanced civilization.
    • Thanks to the new crap they have in the future, they no longer find religion a big deal.
    • All copies of religious text were destroyed, making religion impossible.
  • Inverted: The advanced civilization is more religious and deeply spiritual than we are now.
    • The advanced civilization considers disbelief in religion and/or atheism to be quaint and unreasonable.
  • Downplayed: Religion still exists in a highly advanced civilization, but since faith is seen as a more personal thing, open displays of belief are rare.
  • Subverted: An advanced civilization considers religion to be a false and a quaint relic of the past, but someone or something else decides to prove otherwise.
    • Alternately, we find out that our modern religions are regarded as superstitions by the civilization... but they have their own religion(s) to take its place.
      • "We've outgrown those silly superstitions. Now we all know that Xenu is the true god."
    • A previously atheistic society is destroyed in a violent cataclysm. In the aftermath, the survivors revive old religions and create new ones out of a popular belief that the disaster is a punishment from the gods for abandoning them.
    • Somebody discovers a long-forgotten religious text. He reads it, becomes engrossed with it, and begins preaching its tenets in public, leading to a massive religious revival.
  • Double Subverted: Upon discovering something powerful enough to justifiably call itself a god, the people of the advanced civilization punch it out.
  • Parodied: The civilization's people are Flat Earth Atheists who deal with Psychic Powers, Physical Gods, and the afterlife every day, but constantly find some ridiculous way to rationalize their way around it.
    • Somehow, even though the supernatural underpinnings of these superstitions don't exist, All Myths Are True and all prophecies end up being fulfilled anyway, much to the consternation of skeptics trying to undermine the religion(s) in question.
  • Deconstructed: The loss of religion has terrible social and political ramifications, as the civilization begins moving the passion and devotion once associated with religion into secular belief systems, resulting in crusades as violent as the days of old.
    • Alternatively, there is no religion in society because the society is The Empire or the People's Republic of Tyranny and religion is brutally and violently suppressed by those in power who view it as a threat.
    • Alternatively: The reason why the people had stopped to believe in religion was because they found out that their "holy men" were corrupt, hypocritical and powerhungry, causing them to lose their faith.
  • Reconstructed: Secular programs devoted towards bettering society replace religion, avoiding the inevitable terrible social and political ramifications.
  • Zig Zagged: Religion ebbs and flows, and events that are Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane never get fully explained.
  • Averted: Religion is about as common in the work as it is in reality.
  • Enforced: The author of the work is an atheist, and assumes any advanced civilization would necessarily abandon religion.
    • The author lives in a totalitarian state that follows state atheism.
  • Lampshaded: "Just as the sci-fi writers of old suspected, religion has no place in a truly modern society."
  • Invoked: A charismatic leader took over the world, and the changes made include indoctrination against religion.
  • Defied: "Humans have been worshiping in some shape or form for millennia. Space travel, cloning technology, meeting aliens; these might change the practices, but not the basic fact of it."
  • Discussed: "I can't believe how much has changed since I was last alive! What has become of all the cars? Of all the churches? Of all the bacon cheeseburgers?"
  • Conversed: "A lot of sci-fi assumes religion can't stand against scientific progress forever, doesn't it?"

Back to Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Outgrown_Such_Silly_Superstitions/Playing_With?oldid=1716972"