Religion
Humanoid Cylons, except for the Cavil models, follow a monotheistic religion. Religious fanaticism partially motivates their genocide of humanity, and despite their origins, the Cylons believe themselves to be spiritual beings. This monotheism seems to share some of the characteristics as the Abrahamic religions: belief that God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, that he will one day deliver divine retribution, and that he intervenes in the mundane world.
Ronald D. Moore, the creator of the show, has said that this comes when a race becomes sentient and self-aware — questioning faith and religion and about what happens after death.
Their beliefs are different from the Abrahamic religions, in that they deal with issues such as consciousness, enlightenment and reincarnation.
The different models of Cylon have slightly different ways of talking about and dealing with their god, reflecting the different aspects of humanity that each Cylon model reflects. As shown in at least one case, the Number Ones in season four, the Cylons do not all believe in god and can be agnostic or atheist. In contrast, Leoben Conoy (model Number 2) is fanatically religious, even compared to the other Cylon models.
Read more about this topic: Cylon (reimagining)
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to children by the hands of storytellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the philosophers celebrate in vain. And nothing stands between the people and the fictions except the silly falsehood that the fictions are literal truths, and that there is nothing in religion but fiction.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The religion of England is part of good-breeding. When you see on the continent the well-dressed Englishman come into his ambassador’s chapel and put his face for silent prayer into his smooth-brushed hat, you cannot help feeling how much national pride prays with him, and the religion of a gentleman.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else’s morality.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)