: Re: How can I portray a realistic "evil" religion? There is a veil which separates our reality from a parallel dimension that contains Eldritch abominations. An ancient empire has discovered that

@Megan928

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The first thing you need to do is drop all biases about what any of those terms mean. The term "Demon" already implies that you view this religion directly as evil, but to these people the religion isn't evil at all, otherwise why would they follow it? Good and evil is a perspective, so one of the clearest ways to resolve the issue is to use terms that reflect how that religion views things. What one religion may refer to as demons another may refer to as Gods, or Angels, or Spirit Beings, pick a term. Depending on what denominations and scriptures you read, technically demons are fallen angels anyway (at least from the Christian perspective).

Likewise, human sacrifice has been a staple of ancient religions the world over, we only consider it evil now because society has evolved to view it as murder, but the key term is sacrifice. Today we still believe sacrifice to be an entirely valid form of worship, whether that be by tithing to the church, time and labor, fasting, or giving up of material things. This doesn't have much difference from older religions, except that we no longer believe that death is something that God (or the gods) ask for. A big part of that comes from our change in understanding of the world and science.

For thousands of years religion was used to explain the natural processes of the world. Now that we understand nature and how things progress and can be predicted we no longer need religion to provide hope and security. It stands to reason though that if you want greater change you need to give greater sacrifice. Therefore, it makes complete sense in a world view where everything is granted by the gods/God that giving human life (i.e. the greatest sacrifice) will grant the greatest change. Hell, even Judaism considered human sacrifice entirely acceptable if God demanded it (see Abraham and Isaac), and technically Christianity was founded on the human sacrifice of Christ.

This also can be heavily influenced by how this culture views death, which again comes back to religion. If death isn't viewed necessarily as morbid (excuse the pun), but more as an event of glory, or a natural progression from one state of being to another, then people may simply not view the sacrifice as being negative at all, especially if the sacrifice is only enemies, or criminals, or such. Building a religion is building a society and a culture. They can definitely differ on many things, but they aren't mutually exclusive.

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