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[SixOfSpades]

can you be both pro and anti abortion; democrat and republican . . .

Actually, yes, and in fact quite a lot of people already are. One can easily believe that abortion is a horrible thing that should never be done, while also believing that in some cases, it's a better option than the inevitable alternative. (And that's not even counting the actual hypocrites, the people who believe that "Nobody at all should be allowed to get an abortion, except of course for me and the people I'm personally close to.") The political positions of Centrist and Libertarian could both be fairly (albeit simplistically) described as a mix of both Democratic and Republican policies. Even in cases where factors might seem to be completely contradictory, humans are great at finding loopholes & grey areas, especially where holy doctrine is concerned. Just look at every monotheistic religion, wherein the sole god is by definition the god of every sphere, including the mutually exclusive ones.

There is no 'life' sphere so the example should have been DEATH and LONGEVITY, or CONSOLATION and MISERY, etc.

Ask a Christian how a benevolent God can allow evil to exist and you'll either get a dodge like "to allow people to prove their faith by choosing to be good" or a non-answer like "God works in mysterious ways". They can also fall back on using the Trinity as a "secret" pantheon--the Father is the god of Misery, it's the Son who holds the sphere of Consolation.
But as for in-game workarounds, a priest of precluded spheres, such as Death & Longevity, might operate by expounding the doctrine of both of their gods, except where they're in direct conflict--they might even ignore the fact that such conflict even exists. Alternatively, he might be a Logan's Run type of authority, executing people when they reach a certain age. Or his connection with the sphere of Death might not be actually in favor of death, just in taking care of the funerary rites after it happens. Or he might reconcile the two spheres by believing that when somebody dies young, it was in order to ensure that other people could live longer. Or he might work as a Doctor, striving to help each patient towards longevity but also prepared to ease them into a relatively painless death if that's what's necessary. Or one of his gods might also hold the sphere of Balance, and so striking a compromise between diametrically-opposed spheres would simply be a perfectly normal part of the priest's job. Like I said, humans are good at finding loopholes.
Theoretically, the priest could also be the sole survivor of his fort (or at least the last priest), and is desperately trying to be a vessel for all the holy scripture of his people, even the parts that conflict with each other, until he can find his way back to civilization and impart his knowledge onto others. But that's obviously an extreme case that wouldn't count as a realistic long-term career path.

see entire guilds wherein every member works and dresses the same

I am not familiar with this, is there any guild group mechanics?

Not that I know of, but then I've never actually had a guild. When I wrote that, I was thinking of Miners (or whatnot) running around, all doing essentially the same task, carrying the same equipment, wearing the same clothes (because I just order up a whole ton of stuff to be made for the entire fort), and, in another recent thread, I argued in favor of guilds being able to issue petitions requesting guild-specific uniforms, including protective gear if applicable. So strongly encouraging all members of a given trade to also worship the same god was definitely too standardized for my tastes.

[jipehog]

We seem to be talking about different things. What you suggest sound like a simple prototype for a person belief system in RL, however, the premise I am following is that in DF gods exist and these sphere are their domains of power, some of which are mutually exclusive.

So yes, humans are very adaptive. We created god in our own image with religion to help groups cohere, influencing morals and values with promise of divine retribution to promote cooperation. We certainly were very inventive in how we adopted narrative to serve the needs of the group, include those that utilize opposite but interconnected forces side by side (like yin yang or Shiva being destroyer and creator). However, it is also true that outside of utopia there are mutually exclusive concepts in any idea/religion/ideology/world view, and given that gods exist and assuming you want to gain their favor then some things can't be bridged over, some things can't be both sin and virtue at same time, and thus any action to the contrary would result in cognitive dissonance.

Religion is fun, and flavorful, and realistic, yes. But what do the dwarves get out of it? I don't want to make this thread go off on a tangent about what might happen in the whole Magic arc, but I hope we can agree that religion should be good for something.

One factor in my "pray-to-play" plan, that I consider a flaw, is that it can tend to homogenize the dwarves:

What is the role of religion in DF is a very interesting question. As noted above religion have served a social role to help groups cohere, in what have been a much more tribal society, I feel that such group dynamics aren't very well represented in DF, if ethics weren't hardcoded civilizations would have fallen apart as everyone followed their work loops.

I think that more emphasize on group events utilizing relationships and emphasize on family events, there is also an interesting suggestion for holiday/mayor events and maybe add an outside influence events. Along with emphasizing individual traits, this should bring people outside of their work loop and create interesting dynamic.

I also wonder if worship will only have rewards or also punishment/mandates?

EDIT:
btw we in agreement that personality traits should play a role in ones affinity/beliefs, and I like the idea of dwarves developing grudges against certain deities, this could address the issue of life changing experiences.

[SixOfSpades]

I keep waiting for Orange-of-Cthulhu to pop back up and moderate "his" thread, or at least offer some feedback, but strangely he's been AFK for well over a week. Hmm.

This post will be pretty much entirely off-topic.

We seem to be talking about different things. What you suggest sound like a simple prototype for a person belief system in RL, however, the premise I am following is that in DF gods exist and these sphere are their domains of power, some of which are mutually exclusive.

No, we're still on the same page. We were discussing the theoretical possibility of a single dwarf being a priest of two different gods--I thought it'd be awkward but doable, but you said it'd be flat-out impossible because the gods might have spheres on each other's Preclude list. So I came up with a few different examples of how a DF priest might realistically cope with having patron deities at odds with each other. Personally, I'm of the belief that if anything can be explained in a plausible way, it should be allowed in the game--particularly if it makes for a good story, and finding a way to make precluded spheres work hand-in-hand with one another definitely sounds like a cool story to me.

And you know what? I'll even go a step further. Forget about simultaneously serving two different gods who have opposing spheres--I also think that it should be possible for a single deity to hold such spheres, at least under certain conditions. Don't get me wrong, I'm in complete agreement with you that opposing spheres should definitely be a thing, and some pairings (such as Torture-Mercy, or Fertility-Blight) seem nearly impossible to justify. Which is precisely why, in the event that some player does manage to justify them, such a deity would be a very interesting character, and a welcome break from the standard "sky god . . . nature god . . . war god . . . death god . . . etc." that so many pantheons seem to have. In short: They'd make a good story. Rule of Cool. These exceptions should be rare, yes, but they should be allowed to happen.

. . . given that gods exist and assuming you want to gain their favor then some things can't be bridged over, some things can't be both sin and virtue at same time, and thus any action to the contrary would result in cognitive dissonance.

Except that I listed multiple examples of ways one (whether it's one priest or one god) might handle opposing spheres, and most of those fully acknowledged--even embraced the contradiction. You yourself mentioned Shiva. I just said above that I think DF gods should be able to hold Precluded spheres, "under certain conditions". Let me list some possible conditions:
1) The god also holds the existing sphere of Balance. This enables the deity to wield closely-related but opposing spheres, such as Fertility and Blight, in harmonious conjunction, by understanding that both are necessary for the well-being of the universe. Picture a nature goddess who is largely disinterested; she does hear her followers all fervently praying for Fertility, and she does care for them (at least a little), but she also knows that she's got to look at the big picture--without decay, there can be no new life. So she giveth with one hand & taketh with the other.
2) The deity also holds the (invented) sphere of Opposites. This works much the same as Balance, except that instead of inner peace, the god is conflicted, perhaps even deeply troubled, by his opposing responsibilities. The difference is primarily for roleplaying reasons, of course, helping players to imagine a god of both Torture and Mercy who is a sadomasochist, or with multiple personalities. Such a deity might even be a god of contradiction, possessing multiple pairs of precluded spheres.
3) The god holds the (invented) sphere of Cycles. This works especially well for precluded spheres separated by time, such as Day/Night and their associated Sun/Moon, or Birth/Death/Rebirth . . . essentially, any progression that forms a closed loop. The Cycles sphere unifies the others, making the deity into a god of the loop itself.
4) Lastly, the invented sphere of Twins works on all pairs of related spheres, not just Precluded ones: It essentially rips the god in half, creating two new deities & splitting their related spheres right down the middle. Players could end up with siblings who are partners (she handles Nature-Animals-Rain, while he covers Weather-Trees-Fish), or bitter enemies (one is Truth-Laws-Order, and the other is Lies-Theft-Chaos), or in a love/hate relationship (e.g., Family-Duty-Loyalty paired with Children-Freedom-Treachery), but all gods thus created would have Twins listed among their spheres, so players would know that they're meant to go together. (Alternatively, this could be achieved by having any in-game depiction of one god have a 50% chance to also show the other one as well.)
There could be other possibilities, of course . . . the existing sphere of Marriage, for instance, could be altered to work much the same as Twins, except that instead of splitting a deity, it links two separate ones who happen to have related spheres. Hey, whatever works, whatever tells a fun story.

As noted above religion have served a social role to help groups cohere, in what have been a much more tribal society, I feel that such group dynamics aren't very well represented in DF . . .
I think that more emphasize on group events utilizing relationships and emphasize on family events, there is also an interesting suggestion for holiday/mayor events and maybe add an outside influence events.

I don't think there's a single player who doesn't want to see religious ceremonies, or holidays/festivals, and in fact more social activities in general. My current fort is 47 years old, and I've yet to see a single marriage, let alone an actual wedding. More social events that attract dwarves who already have something in common, such as a religion, would be better at building interpersonal relationships.

I also wonder if worship will only have rewards or also punishment/mandates?

I sure hope so. The game already has dwarves who defile temples & are punished with vampirism/lycanthropy, so we can blend our own "dissatisfied worshiper" in with that. He prays to her for skill at his job but she doesn't care, or help, so his level of faith drops. He prays to her for X but the opposite of X happens, so he develops a grudge & his prayers turn to curses. His curses are actually hurting her (detracting from the worship from her followers, which is what she feeds on), so she mandates some of her faithful to pay him a visit, to (threaten to) beat or kill him if he doesn't stop cursing her. Being the vengeful sort that he is, he gets drunk & topples one of her statues, and now he's a werezebra.

[Resmisal]

I need to refrain to post long posts.

I'm kinda thinking to just get rid of the thing where a dwarf follows a particular deity.

Exactly what I was proposing! Well, almost. To be exact, my first motion was to add an option to switch between many- and one-templed games. Currently, dwarves always live in a polytheistic world and yet overwhelmingly live a monolatrist lifestyle - something that is a departure from historical theology. Or is it 'theological history'? Anyways, tagging mundane objects and places can solve the problem of abstract spheres, such as a courthouse serving as the temple of justice (or vice-versa) and a refuse pile heap of poor quality crafts used in the temple of deformity. What's a tavern without gambling?
Our ideas are so compatible that we'd want one thread to continue our discussion.

One change I'd really like to see is to show the spheres of gods and religions on the embark screen. If six of my dwarfs belong to the same religion then they're off to set up a religious community. But I find it a little gutting if they turn out to worship an ocean god and I sent them to the mountains, or they worship a mountain god and I sent them to the plains.

This can be easily helped by disabling one-sphered deities and perhaps compel the world gen to add unrelated spheres. For example, Poseidon ruled over waters both fresh and salty, and over earthquakes, and horses; in Ancient Greek literature, horses were a metaphor for earthquakes, and the shakings of the earth were imagined to come from the sea rather than the other way around. Such complicated inner workings are best handled by an AI that's simple enough not to require a connection. I digress.

I think that DF would really benefit from group events (loyalty cascade excluded) to make the fort feel more like a community. Certainly such events would be disruptive to productivity, an important consideration when choosing whether to enact these.

Optimally, a fort would have a shared pantheon the inhabitants would sooner or later acquire plus the chance that migrants or caravans add a deity with or without the contest of your parent civilization.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Religious strife over the addition of one more mythological figure into a group of MFs, imagine that.

It is called Monolatry, it doesn't deny the existence of other deities or their validity.

I may or may not have used monolatry and henotheism interchangeably in the past and I don't want to correct my mistakes and falsify my posting history.
You're right. My only gripe is the fact that it's practically the only choice currently in the game. I can agree, and should have introduced it in my thread, that priests (incl. druids) become monolatrist while in service, then turn to other gods and goddesses while they tend to their personal needs outside of their office. And logically a realistic polytheistic society turns into zone spam. Hence, the option of monotheism.
To limit the creation of dozens of faiths, "interpretations" in the sense of interpretatio graeca and interpretatio germanica will help, translating the names so a human god is the same as a dwarven god. This is called syncretism. On the matter of elves, animism and pan(en)theism suit them well, although renaming force into power and then split that ubiquitary power into personifiable forces. By personifying I also include the use of totemic animals or animal-headed persons.

What my poorly worded thread was about, plus syncretism.

A very sensible question. Up until the sizeable magics update is released, political relations over a shared belief and a check against tantrums come to mind.

In theology there's a pervasive notion that humans need deities and rarely the other way around.

Good, no, great ideas! I wish I had them when I made this thread. While I did have the idea of ranking gods&goddesses, I had thought it was too complicated to implement. Mine was a system that gave rise to religious missions and wars for allowing or lacking certain figures, and disagreements over their treatment within a settlement (incl. fortresses).

Disagree.

Why not? Historically this has been the majority of cases excepting the famous example of Zoroastrianism with its explicit remark that the evil spirits are not to be served. Slavic paganism comes to mind: the goddesses of summer and winter, respectively the goddesses of life and death, are sisters and friends.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I need to mention that there's not one single Slavic paganism and reconstructions suffer from an ethnogenesis divided into three parts: the southern, the western, and the eastern Slavs. Right now I'm reading conflicting reports in Anglophone websites.

Let me reword my reply. You're right that priests shouldn't serve opposites, but exactly that was/is common in most heathen societies. Reconstructed Indo-European priesthood, the ancestor to a European and South Asian ethnic faiths, counted exactly three positions What I'm trying to say is - let the RNG decide.

Allowing diametrically opposed spheres may lead to esoteric schools of thought in addition to exoteric expressions of rituals and holidays.

What is the role of religion in DF is a very interesting question. As noted above religion have served a social role to help groups cohere, in what have been a much more tribal society, I feel that such group dynamics aren't very well represented in DF, if ethics weren't hardcoded civilizations would have fallen apart as everyone followed their work loops.

Now you're giving me ideas that ethics can be linked to belief systems and two dwarven civilizations with differing pantheons can have differing civilizational ethics. We can't deny the enormous effect religions have had on culture and the sociology of justice.

Great food for thought!

He prays to her for X but the opposite of X happens, so he develops a grudge & his prayers turn to curses. His curses are actually hurting her (detracting from the worship from her followers, which is what she feeds on), so she mandates some of her faithful to pay him a visit, to (threaten to) beat or kill him if he doesn't stop cursing her.

Except for that. I don't know why this god(esse)s-need-prayers idea is so popular.

I'll just leave this here.
https://imgur.com/a/QTIjECR

Resmisal -- Meditate on Suicide -- What is heroic death if not suicide? Is ego death a subspecies of suicide? Was saving the life of your future murderer extended suicide?

Edit: typo.

[jipehog]

We seem to be talking about different things. What you suggest sound like a simple prototype for a person belief system in RL, however, the premise I am following is that in DF gods exist and these sphere are their domains of power, some of which are mutually exclusive.

No, we're still on the same page. We were discussing the theoretical possibility of a single dwarf being a priest of two different gods--I thought it'd be awkward but doable, but you said it'd be flat-out impossible because the gods might have spheres on each other's Preclude list.

No, what I said is that some, not all, beliefs should be mutually exclusive but also allowed for a single dwarf to follow multiple gods.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I agree about the player choice part. Since anyone can be assigned to any task regardless of their suitability, a feeble pacifist can be made a soldier for example, then it should be possible to assign anyone to any priest job. The question is how we determine suitability, which could be matter of affinity and personal traits for example.

Since we don't have a working model there is some confusion between different suggested concepts as we go, and why I haven't tried to further explore this as I don't know if there is a reward and punishment etc etc etc.

Overall we talked about your suggestion as skill levels for beliefs. As noted I see skill and beliefs as inherently different. Skills are essentially knowledge, given enough time and effort one should be able to learn to do everything. However, beliefs are more, it is mental schema that we form through life and act as a filter to perceive the world around us and ourselves, some parts are layered so deep that it is core part of our identity and if challenged trigger various defense mechanism in our brain.

In other words learning a new skill change what you can do, beliefs change who you are and you can not just flip flop between core beliefs without consequences to your psyche. A person who join a ritualistic rape club for your god (can't recall the true detective plot exactly) can't wait few years for their belief to "rust" away to return to innocence..

You could argue that many such opposite or mutually exclusive concepts are personal and subjective and I agree in theory, but in practice we need some framework for an interesting model and you already have that in spades everywhere else in DF e.g. personality traits have similar extremes though you should be able to easily rationalize a scenario in which they shouldn't as you did so far.

Personally, I'm of the belief that if anything can be explained in a plausible way, it should be allowed in the game--particularly if it makes for a good story, and finding a way to make precluded spheres work hand-in-hand with one another definitely sounds like a cool story to me.

Yes but surely you can explain opposing forces in a plausible way, these have been the staple of conflict in storytelling for thousands of years.


Finally I would like to emphasize again that need for tribal/social aspect in spread of ideas, note that all group has in-group bias so even in our world where we could come up with any story everyone had their local dominant unifying story/god. And that in DF world gods exist with precluded spheres.

Also it looks like the wind is blowing in another direction so I will have to agree to disagree with and chime in when there is something more concrete I can offer something productive to what is in the works.

[Resmisal]

No, what I said is that some, not all, beliefs should be mutually exclusive but also allowed for a single dwarf to follow multiple gods.

I agree with you wholeheartedly! Types of faith, specific conceptions, attributes, experiences and practices, and related topics such as the topic of evil, are easily syncretizable excepting monotheism. One excellent, contemporary example is India, a metaphorical "salad bowl" and an equally proverbial "melting pot" which proves that the preceding shopping list can be brought together all but for monotheism. Belief that only one god has created only one world/universe and only one reality --

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

there's a strong notion that the ancients believed that every godhood had "their own reality" and that humans had no choice but to appease all members of a given local or wider pantheon --

logically demands that the other types of faiths are misguided or outright false.

On the idea of skill bonuses I don't see a problem. The faithful have always been mentally, spiritually, and above all emotionally invested. And we all know how well we learn when we're personally invested.

I understand your worries reservations about cognitive dissonance. We'll do well to remember that faith is inherently less rational than e.g. economics or history. I'm not saying belief is irrational, far from it(!), and yet I can't claim it's something STEM can tackle without leaving our universe. Unless you share Google's Bard AI's opinion that space is fake. Without going too deeply into neurology: religious belief and trust in science both come from the same brain regions. You're trusting someone else's word.

I can't help but feel that your ideas on theological evolutions fit well in http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=181313.0 and I'll be sure to follow URR with or without your contributions. Maybe you should start a thread regarding your own vision or post a lengthy post?

Finally I want to finish my post with both agreeing and disagreeing:
Agreeing in that priests should serve only one deity, one godhood male or female or hermaphrodite;
Disagreeing in that dwarves can and should live irrational lives because it's fun.

Edit: typo.

[Laterigrade]

I'll just leave this here.
https://imgur.com/a/QTIjECR

because of course

[A_Curious_Cat]

What my poorly worded thread was about, plus syncretism.

A very sensible question. Up until the sizeable magics update is released, political relations over a shared belief and a check against tantrums come to mind.

In theology there's a pervasive notion that humans need deities and rarely the other way around.

Good, no, great ideas! I wish I had them when I made this thread. While I did have the idea of ranking gods&goddesses, I had thought it was too complicated to implement. Mine was a system that gave rise to religious missions and wars for allowing or lacking certain figures, and disagreements over their treatment within a settlement (incl. fortresses).

Great food for thought!

I’m not sure what you’re replying to here as the quotes are all empty…

[Resmisal]

I’m not sure what you’re replying to here as the quotes are all empty…

Isn't that how it's done to mean the whole post? I felt the posts as a whole were really good and only singled out specific lines to respond to. Generally I feel the right to post long post is reserved to the poster who started a thread. And I love long posts.

[SixOfSpades]

First off, I'd like to note that anyone whose vocabulary can send ME reaching for a dictionary deserves a nod of respect.

In theology there's a pervasive notion that humans need deities and rarely the other way around. . . .

I don't know why this god(esse)s-need-prayers idea is so popular.

Because gods are more interesting when they're more human, more relatable. Dwarf Fortress is, in essence, a game about telling stories, and prayers that get answered make for far better stories than prayers that do not. But what reasons would a god have to answer prayers?
     1) They do so purely out of the goodness of their hearts, they feel sympathy/empathy with their worshipers.
     2) The gods are forced to grant prayers, either by the spheres that they hold or by some higher god, such as Armok.
     3) They do so because they reap some reasonably significant benefit for doing so. It is worth their time/energy to grant prayers.
Option 1 would mean that all gods, even the bloody-handed and apparently evil gods of spheres like Torture, Murder, & Nightmares, are actually benevolent (or at least neutral and compassionate) at heart. This would automatically discount the very possibility of Evil gods, deities who are feared rather than loved, which naturally would be a huge loss to potential storytelling. (Admittedly, the idea that good-natured gods might be compelled to exercise their more harmful spheres against their will also holds narrative promise . . . but nowhere near as much as a god who is genuinely Evil/contrary/destructive in his own right.)
Option 2, of course, does nothing but pass the buck--either to some "god's God", which is lame and hand-wavy, or to an impersonal object, which is even worse.
Option 3, however, has potential. If the gods do nothing but sit in their ivory tower and wreak their wills upon the hapless mortals, then that's worthless. The impotent humans/dwarves can do nothing but shake their fists at the uncaring gods, and there is no possibility that anything could ever change. But if the gods actually interact with mortals, if there's real give-and-take between them, if the gods have genuine needs that (only) worshipers can meet, then that's where things can really get interesting. Now we can start to have something that actually deserves to be called a mythology.
I don't know about you, but I'm strongly in favor of my dwarves having at least some minimal effect on celestial events, and making the gods have some stake in what goes on in my fort.

You're right that priests shouldn't serve opposites, but exactly that was/is common in most heathen societies. . . . What I'm trying to say is - let the RNG decide.
 . . . Allowing diametrically opposed spheres may lead to esoteric schools of thought in addition to exoteric expressions of rituals and holidays.

I'm of the opinion that Precluded spheres (either a single god holding them, or a single priest serving multiple gods who collectively hold them) should be possible, but unlikely.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Related: Earlier I mentioned the homebrew sphere of Opposites, & how it enabled a god to hold Precluded spheres, at the cost of some mental/emotional equilibrium. It occurs to me that this would be a great opportunity to have a god depicted with multiple heads/faces.

Perhaps the game could help shepherd the player into choosing appropriate priests, by sorting the potential appointees by suitability: The first names in the list would be those dwarves who are the most devout in their faith, and whose personality traits are most pleasing to the deity. And the higher a dwarf ranks in one god's list, the less likely he is to rank high on another--especially if the two gods in question hold opposing spheres. e.g., a dwarf whose "Vengeful" personality trait puts her in good stead with the god of Revenge is going to be far down the list of potential clergy for the god of Forgiveness.
This automatic ranking would give players the new options of 3) Simply go with the default first choice, it's basic but it's the most sensible, and 4) Choose the dwarf at the bottom of the list, the most irreverent of the god's actual worshipers, just to see if any ‼fun‼ comes of it. This would be in addition to the existing option of 1) Choose a dwarf effectively at random and the theoretical 2) Deliberately choose a dwarf who is already a priest of a different god, whether that makes any sense or not.

Meditate on Suicide -- What is heroic death if not suicide? Is ego death a subspecies of suicide? Was saving the life of your future murderer extended suicide?

Friendly reminder that the screenshot is really just the result of placeholder logic combined with some (un)lucky RNG hits. One the fort's gods simply has a high percentage of worshipers but only a few spheres, this same god (probably) doesn't yet have a dedicated temple, and a lot of dwarves just got off a big job. Go ahead & picture dozens of dwarves eagerly pondering the nature of self-slaughter if you want, but I wouldn't read too much into it.

I’m not sure what you’re replying to here as the quotes are all empty…

Isn't that how it's done to mean the whole post? I felt the posts as a whole were really good and only singled out specific lines to respond to.

If you wish to indicate that you're talking about someone's entire post, you can literally just say that as part of your comment. Quoting someone but removing everything that they said creates a lot of confusion, especially if you do it multiple times. If you wish to single out specific lines to respond to, you have to actually do so.

Generally I feel the right to post long post is reserved to the poster who started a thread.

Like this. And I don't think post length is ever an issue, no matter who the OP is/was. As long as your thoughts are constructive and on topic (and you yourself are familiar enough with the forum & the game to know that you're being constructive & on topic), type as much as you want.

[SixOfSpades]

Overall we talked about your suggestion as skill levels for beliefs. As noted I see skill and beliefs as inherently different.

Sorry, I think there may be some semantic confusion. I didn't mean to imply that dwarves must "learn how" to "get better" at their faith (although those with that inclination should be enabled to do so, once books of holy scripture & theological study become a thing), I meant that religious beliefs should have ranked levels, similar to those that currently exist for skills. Which is an idea that I don't think anyone objects to, especially considering that it's already implemented in the game. I'm just adding the wrinkle that, as religion-related events happen to a given dwarf, or significant time passes without any such events, that dwarf's level of faith could go up or down.

However, beliefs are more, it is mental schema that we form through life and act as a filter to perceive the world around us and ourselves, some parts are layered so deep that it is core part of our identity and if challenged trigger various defense mechanism in our brain.

That's a very important point, which I had entirely overlooked. At the moment, each dwarf has personal Beliefs, on topics such as Law, Family, Eloquence, etc. There is currently no such formal Belief for Religion. I suggest that a Religion belief be added, which will influence how likely, and how strongly, each dwarf is to believe in gods in general, and then their level of belief in specific gods will be dependent on that. Faith in individual gods can fluctuate--faith in religion in general cannot (at least not without some significant life event, the same as all other personal Beliefs).