Me> > This alleged inability to email our deity for an answer
> > is a red herring. In glorantha, they email them and get > contradictory
>answers depending on the god contacted. Whom > do you then believe? In
>resolving this riddle, you arrive > straight back at RW conundrums on the
>nature of truth.
>It's only a red herring if you think that the gods don't know who they are
>or how they relate.
So who are _you_ and who do you relate with everybody else? How do _I_ know that the answers you give are _true_ and that you are not someone stuck in the Matrix or a rogue aritificial intelligence? Do you see the problem?
>I see no reason why this should be so.
The existance of Yelm, Elmal and Kargzant giving differing answers is not sufficient?
>There's no
>sense in any RW religion that I know of that dieties aren't aware of who
>they are and how they relate (although it's not the sort of >topic that
>really occurs often in sources, so far as I know).
I can think of several. The Aztecs had some wierd concept in which all their gods were manifestations of two elusive dieties for instance.
You are however conflating between the answers a religion gives you and the philosophical problems in trying to _reconcile_ different answers from different religions.
> > However different cultures have different ways of talking to > the sun
>and get different answers. How do you as a gloranthan > determine which is
>the correct answer?
>I agree that Gloranthans have different ways of looking at the same
>thing, but ultimately, only one thing can have happened in any given
> >event, such as the slaying of the Sun.
The God Learners thought so too. However this doesn't help them in deciding which god's answers is true. So once again, how do you as a gloranthan determine which is the correct answer?
> > I don't see how you can claim "...everything suggests...", > when you
>have just admitted that the Lunars dispute it. For > instance, the Goddess
>is chaotic. Is she destructive and > essentially evil? No. There are
>also non-lunar myths in > which Chaos is used as a positive force.
>Let's see. We have Thed, the goddess of rape; Malia, the goddess of
>disease; Thanatar the god (or gods) of headhunting and knowledge >stealing;
>Urain, the god of senseless violence; [...]
So? It does not follow that _everything_ chaotic is destructive and/or necessarily evil. All you have shown is that some chaotic gods are so but it does not follow that all of them must be. For example, I can list plenty of evil Orlanthi but it does not follow that all of them must be.
BTW how do you explain the chaotic Red Goddess _not_ being destructive and essentially evil?
>Ompalam, the god of slavery and subjegation,
Ompalam is not a chaotic deity. See the Glorantha: Intro for details on his followers. He's only described as "evil" in the RQ3 materials (RQ3 Book 5 and Gods of Glorantha), but then the people who studied this in detail (the God Learners) were also the same people whom Ompalam fought against.
>If there are myths in which chaos is positive, I'd like to hear about them.
There is the Lunar mythology. If that does not appeal then there is an Ulerian song in Cults of Terror praising Chaos in Cults of Terror and mythlet of this in Wyrms Footprints. Alternatively you could listen to Borist missionaries...
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