[ATU] Rohan

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

To some extent advances in cosmology and biology undermined the idea of a supernatural creator. Rather more importantly advances in neurology, psychology, and artificial intelligence undermined the idea of an immaterial and especially of an eternal soul. Most important there were a couple of centuries on Earth during which advanced transport and communications gave lots of people first-hand experience of the variety of religious faith. It sank in that other people believed totally different things for pretty much the same reasons, and this undermined the concept of the "religious magisterium" or the "religious way of knowing". It became obvious that tradition, authority, and "revelation" were not ways of reaching truth but of reaching an unfounded sense of certainty.

But people still had the needs that religions had supplied.

So people tended to turn to non-religious activities (such as singing, dancing, drumming, running, screaming at hockey matches...) that put them into altered mental states, to sources of certainty and comfort that claimed a materialistic basis (psychoanalysis, Marxism, Objectivism...), and to religions or moral philosophies that [can be revised to] claim no supernatural basis of belief.

Which is not to say that traditional religions vanished away. They still have adherents, and not all are ignorant or savages. Theistic religions just aren't anything like as as common as they were a thousand years ago.

A thousand years is a long time for cultures to change. I like your approach.