What if the Legend of Zelda were the Dominant Religion in place of Christianity?

[trenton]

An interesting thought experiment occured to me. It is the idea that I could take something like the Legend of Zelda, make it structurally very similar to real world religions, and then replace the content of something like the Bible with tales from Hyrule. In this experiment, the goal is to imagine a world in which Christianity never emerged because what emerged in its place was the Legend of Zelda which would shape humanity for thousands of years, including to this day.

The beginning would be similar to the origins of the Abrahamic religions. Abraham would look at the statues in Egypt and ask "what if those statues are just statues?" After deep self reflection, Abraham has a vision in which he sees a divine light. Slowly, something begins to take shape. It is the Triforce, shaped by the true Goddesses that formed the Earth through Din's fire, Nayru's love, and Farore's abundance. Your temple would tell you this is the holy trinity.

As humanity developed, key figures from the Bible were replaced with Zelda characters. Instead of Jerusalem, there was Hyrule. Instead of Jesus and Satan, there was Link and Ganon. The crusades still happen and your history teacher tells you about it. He says that there were different factions trying to control the holy lands in the hopes of accessing the sacred realm and claiming the Triforce which held divine power according to their theologies. These different factions splintered into different religions, each claiming that their prophets were the descendants of the Hero of Time, Link.

When your family takes you to a temple which they are sure is based on truth, you see stained glass windows with the Hero of Time, Statues of Zelda characters who are worshipped, and a choir singing Zelda music.

As you watch the service, a priest stands before the group and begins to to preach. He tells you about why Link is eternally worshipped as humanity's savior. The story begins in the land of Hyrule where a boy hears a cry for help, roughly 2000 years ago from the present. It is the princess Zelda using telepathy to warn the hero that the evil wizard Ganon was assembling the Triforce. Link would need to meet with the sages and receive their blessings to get the Master Sword, located in the Temple of Time in order to stop Ganon from shaping the world in his image. Ganon was a cruel sinful man, overcome by his greed and lust for power. Those faithful to the Hero of Time were humble and surrendered the selfishness which drove people to trying to shape the sacred realm in their own image. Although Link recieved the blessings of the sages and took the blade of destiny, he was too late to stop Ganon's ritual.

Zelda was kidnapped and crucified as part of a ritual to extract the Triforce of Wisdom from Zelda's being. Link was too late, and Ganon now held two pieces of the Triforce. However, Link found something left behind by the princess. It was the Ocarina of Time. Guided by the sages, Link rushed to the Temple of Time where he played the sacred instrument. He was then sent back in time to before Zelda was crucified, but now he had the Master Sword when he needed it. Link challenged Ganon and stopped the ritual, using the blade of destiny to send a ball of lightening back at the demon king. Link then struck down the dark lord, saving the princess, and uniting the Triforce. Unlike Ganon, his intentions were selfless, allowing the world to be returned to harmony.

The religion is heavily debated by scholars. The archeological record confirms that these were indeed real people and there are various ancient texts referencing them. There is even a person named Zelda on a list of people who were intended to be executed on the cross. Some are skeptical because the religion is unfalsifiable. For example, Link is the Hero of time who prevented catastrophes through travelling the time and thus preventing them from happening such that history unfolded without us seeing what he had prevented. Nevertheless, everybody takes it seriously despite it being considered highly improbable in any other context with no such miracles ever being witnessed. Defenders claim that the miracles would be difficult to witness if it involved reversing time, thus maintaining the unfalsifiable position.

As a child you would read Hyrule Historia, a sacred book passed down through the generations. In the book of Genesis, you would learn about the origins of Earth and humanity. Instead of Noah's ark, you would learn about the trial of the water dragon from Skyward Sword. Instead of hell, you would learn about the dark world ruled by Ganon, which is where you go if you are sinful. Instead of David defeating Goliath with a slingshot, you would learn about Link defeating Queen Gohma in the Deku Tree by shooting her with a slingshot. The parallels go on and on until the entire Bible is replaced with Zelda stories like these. Some interpret them literally, others poetically. Some skeptics argue that there may be some translation issues due to parts of the holy book being written in a language other than Hylian, which is taught in your temple in place of Hebrew.

I find this kind of thought experiment very amusing. It seems like this could have actually been a real religion that humanity dies over if this emerged instead of Christianity. There would probably be people who would actually believe these things and devote their lives to worshipping Link. The structure can easily be molded to match real world religions, such that the content of religion could be replaced with things like this. None of the claims made here are any more radical than those made in books like the Bible involving splitting the sea, resurrection from the dead, and walking on water. This would therefore be something that people actually believe and die for. I guess my next question is, that if this were the content of the religion you grew up with, what questions would you ask to break out of this paradigm? What inconsistencies would you be able to identify? What doubts would you raise if your family and friends were all devout believers in the Hero of Time?

The question Leo would ask would be "how do you know this is true?"

[glassfire]

there are different planets with pure paganism as dominant religion. We can explore those planets via lucid dreaming

[shenanigans]

Anything can be religion with enough backing. But I think there’s something special about Christianity. It’s a bit of a hodgepodge between beautiful incorruptible teachings, and whatever the fuck someone wanted to put in a book.

There’s a zealous appeal because it gets both the lower-self, medium-self, and higher-self on board; because you can see the good you can see spiritual potential in there, some practical perks, but you can also see the room for corruptibility, attention seeking, and a whole host of other delusions and fantasy.
 

What you’re describing sounds like the Greek stories and fantasies and plays between gods and heroes. I don’t think that has the same exact flavor as the Bible or holds as much cultural drama as say the bible. Also the bible is intended to teach principles Etc. so I don’t think people would exactly die for link and for the preservation of the faith unless they were extremely devoted, but most people would kind of still worship it in a more communal like that’s a cool story kind of way like as you would in indigenous tribe in sharing about different tales and legends from their people. So no way I think you could make it a religion if you put the right structures in, but I think fundamentally what’s being proposer has a different structure the kind of stage blue mystic structure that’s being presented by Christianity, etc..

 

Edited 16 hours ago by shenanigans