Board Thread:Assassin's Creed general discussion/@comment-26314858-20150714112803/@comment-2112031-20170724172528

Callum Konstantin wrote: No one would see their work as Divine unless of Divine intervention. The Templars are not atheists....desipte their knowledge of the Isu....they are theists or more likely deists....Rodrigo Borgia deeply believed in God, not the Bible, but God... in contrast to Ezio's atheism.

Perhaps the Father of Undertsnading is a divine entity who was worshipped by the Isu....and the Isu founded the Templars to carry on the religion of the Isu. This is what i deeply believe.

Truth is Assassins do their work as a religion as well. The Assassin's quote "We work in the dark to serve the light" could mean anything.

The Templar's quote "May the Father of Understanding Guide us" Not May Understanding Guide Us". The "Father" is an non-human entity....hopefully not an Isu...i want it ti be something or someine higher than them. The Templars and Assassins are both secular organizations, but individual members can still be part of any religion and faith. For example, Altaïr's father and mother were a muslim and a christian respectively, whereas Altaïr himself was an atheist.

As for the Father of Understanding, it's likely that it has different meaning to different members. As Sol Pacificus pointed out, the phrase could easily just be symbolic of their belief that their logic is indisputable, to the point of being almost a religion in and of itself. However, different individual members likely held different opinions on the matter.

I'd image that certain members of the Greek Rite around the time of Alexander the Great probably believed that the "Father" was Zeus. Similarly, some members of the Persian Rite during the time of the Achaemenid Empire might have thought of the "Father" as being Ahura Mazda. The phrase is ultimately ambiguous enough that different members of different religions, or no religion at all, can interpret it as they wish.

It should also be noted that their use of the term "Father" does not imply that the Templars necessarily have to believe it to be some kind of anthropomorphic being. For example, people often use the term "Mother Nature" to describe nature without in any way suggesting or implying that they believe it to be some kind of supernatural being.