World Building Question: Faith verses blatant magic

[Lameth]

I am building a modern game based on a theme of magic starting to come back into the real modern world. Along with that magic, Elder Things and Beings of power, are also starting to be able to commune with earth again. They may have been called gods, demons, and angels in the mythic past of the world.

My question is; what happens when those of these other "faiths" or cults start to be able to perform miracles by power given to them by these Beings but those of "true" faiths do not. You may find a few true believers in Christianity, Hinduism, and Muslims that may perform magic and believe or say its from their faith. Overall the "true gods" of the modern world remain silent, or do not exist at all, but Beings and Elder Things are starting to speak to their devout and may even give powers and magic.

How would the world see this? What would happen to the "big religions" of the world when they see their priests and faith leaders not performing workings, but these "cults" and "heretics" doing them?

As an example:

A man in the Bronx says he can heal wounds by the power of his faith in Odin. When viewed he has seen being able to heal minor wounds by causing wounds to himself, or taking them on himself. He started out with a few worshipers, but its growing now.

A woman tells others that Apollo is whispering to her of visions that are coming true. She begins having meetings of his faith in her living room but its growing and many are coming to her for glimpses of their future.

A local neighborhood is being assaulted by a gang that has a leader that is supposedly a worshiper of "the devil" [but really its just a minor demon] and is able to conjure fire. The neighborhood turns towards their local Christian priest begging him to battle this gang leader with their gods power and to conjure his holy power. The priest is not able to do anything and he has no idea why his god does not hear his pleading prayers for divine workings to battle these gang members, yet the devil is hearing this gang member.

[Gnome]

Contrary evidence doesn't seem to shake the faith of believers in the real world, so I wouldn't expect it to do so regardless of what that contrary evidence looks like. It's fairly simple to explain away inconvenient truths.

Easy examples: our God is testing our faith by allowing the devil-worshippers to access demonic powers; my religious book forbids humans from messing around with magic; Elder Things, polytheistic gods of myth, etc. are all manifestations of the Devil; even seemingly benign uses of power contain hidden evil--the eventual loss of your soul, etc.; all of these events are omens, as you can clearly see from my holy book which can be interpreted to have predicted all of this anyway, and so my God is the true miracle-worker as we all knew.

[Anthony]

Same thing that happens when technology can do things that faith can't.

[khorboth]

I'm actually learning about paradigm shifts in my philosophy of science class right now, so I'll try to apply that. In general, people will try to explain things within their current paradigm. These take a few forms:

1) I don't have an explanation right now, but I'm sure one will come along. Maybe it's technological trickery, or maybe it's a test of faith, but I'm sure it's not that the fundamental nature of reality is not like I believe it to be.

2a) The observation must be wrong. People are inherently unreliable. Even if I saw it myself, I could be mistaken. Bad observations happen all the time and I'm sure this is nothing more than an honest mistake.

2b) The observation must be wrong. People are idiots. If I had been there, I would have seen right through the charlatan. People believe dumb things all the time. I'm sure it's just another example of dumb people believing dumb things.

3) If it doesn't fit within our methods it's not real. No matter how real it looks, it's either fakery or bad reporting. If I can't account for it within my world-view, then you're interpreting your results wrong because nothing outside of the realm of possibility is possible. That's what possible means.

Note that these work equally well for scientists and religious fundamentalists. The paradigm could be atheistic materialism or young-earth creationism.

For purposes of believing this new paradigm, people can be thought of on a bell curve. As initial evidence is presented, a few people will believe right away. As more is presented, the rate of conversion will increase. Once about half of people are onboard, the rate will drop off until there are a few holdouts clinging to their old ways in spite of strong evidence to the contrary. The speed of conversion will depend a lot on the way evidence is presented in the media, how widespread the emergence is, and how strong the evidence is.

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Same thing that happens when technology can do things that faith can't.

Those are different matters. Technology can be used by the faithful roughly as well as by others. That is not the case for magic in that setting.

Getting magic power can be a very powerful incentive indeed for switching beliefs.

[Black Leviathan]

I have to wonder about attacks that are within your paradigm. In the isolated case of the gang leader with fireballs from The Devil. When the faithful turn to their priest and he can do nothing to stop the reign of terror, I think some parishioners will take the blame on themselves for not having a stronger faith, but some will be angry that their faith isn't defense against the devil. They'll abandon their religion, possibly to start worshipping the Gang Leader. If the test of your beliefs comes within the freamwork that you understand it isn't so easy to dismiss.

[Stormcrow]

The supernatural system of Fantasy Wargaming by Bruce Galloway can be of use here. In that system, all supernatural forces have their origin in the the Ethereal Plane. Another name for ether is mana, and the more mana a spirit has, the more powerful it is. Mana is generated by human belief.

So the Christian God is really just a spirit who has obtained a near-monopoly on worship and belief. He is a jealous god because he wants exclusive control of the workings of the Ethereal Plane. As faith in and worship of Thor, for instance, diminishes, so too does Thor's power, and the Christian God tends to pick up those worshipers and power. The less mana a supernatural being has, the less often it will be willing to expend its mana helping you do what you want, and the less often it'll show up — which is why gods from older, abandoned religions don't show up anymore. Mana is also what powers magic, and mages accumulate it in themselves through rituals, orgies, sacrifices, and study.

GURPS can handle its own version of mana in the same way. Mana powers everything, whether it's learned magic, miracles by a god, self-conjured spirits of Fairy, or what have you. More modern treatments in GURPS have tended to distinguish between mana and sanctity, but there's no reason you have to do this; just power everything by mana. A cleric can gain mana by active worship or performing deeds that advance the agenda of their god. A god can expend mana in performing divine acts. A wizard can perform magic by accumulating mana in rituals.

Basically, there is no "true faith"; it's your faith that makes it true in the first place. This means the gods aren't exactly what they seem, but it was you who made them seem that way in the first place.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by khorboth

3) If it doesn't fit within our methods it's not real. No matter how real it looks, it's either fakery or bad reporting. If I can't account for it within my world-view, then you're interpreting your results wrong because nothing outside of the realm of possibility is possible. That's what possible means.

Note that these work equally well for scientists and religious fundamentalists.

No, stage three is bad science. Once you've eliminated errors of observation, reality trumps scientific theory. Now, some scientists may take a while to come round to that, but that's their problem.

[Flyndaran]

I imagine a lot of mainstream religions would develop factions saying that it's the apocalypse or end times. History's had lots of those in far less reality breaking eras.
If enough believe it is the end, it could easily become true with panic, mobs, and general paranoia.

[Lameth]

And I guess it can go the other way as well with those that instead of being bestowed magic from a Being or Elder Thing, instead someone of the big religions of the world has inborn magery:

Lets say that devout Christian priest in Boston suddenly finds he is one of the small few on the world that can do magic [he has magery]. Perhaps he finds this out from the opening of his supernatural senses after the sudden awakening of the supernatural on the world. Maybe he then starts hearing voices of the "dead" or "angels", or seeing odd things out of the corner of his eye.

He researches his ancient tomes in the cellar of his church and finds old books of rituals and prayers [spells] that speak of "god's might" and "angelic wonders" that can be conjured by his devote and chosen servants.

I use Ritual Path Magic in this world, with no spontaneous magic allowed, new spells require days or weeks to make as Inventing, see Sandman's posts on Dresden style Magic.

After many months of secretly studying the old tomes this priest learns of the "Celestial Spheres of angelic magic" [various Paths of Magic] and is able to do many wonders including healing another's minor wounds or sicknesses, summon birds to do his biding, make a single plant grow x20 faster, call blinding light into being, summon winds to knock over people or even cars, and has visions of the future in deep mediation [i.e. prayer].

He could now be the most powerful driving force of Christianity on the planet, depending on his attitude, advantages and skills. He could bring in millions of the faithful to his god, or if he wanted, away from the Pope, that Vatican, and the other "non- truly blessed" [no magery] servants of god.